Hard drive accesses

[anguis 4]

Hi, folks,

I did a few searches regarding virtual memory and paging files and was unable to find info that addressed my issue.

It happens that OFP thrashes my hard drive a great deal, regardless of mission (though it's moreso during big ones like Battlefields and some of the FDF ones). My fps rates, as shown by dxdll, range from the low single digits to the low 30s if I'm looking at anything but the sky.

In Vista's Task Manager, I can see that I have plenty of RAM available for use.

Here are my questions: Is it possible to force OFP to use more RAM and less virtual memory? If so, how is it done?

My specs are in my sig and my CPU benchmark is 7389. I do run -nomap.

Thanks for any help!

[baddo 0]

I some time had a thought of if it would be possible to install the games into a RAM disk and start it from there.

This would require plenty of RAM first of all.

Then you would have to have an operating system which supports that amount of RAM.

Then you would create a "disk" into the RAM.

And install the program into it.

Then start it from the RAM disk.

I never tried this because it would first of all be too expensive for me to try. But I was thinking if it is possible at all.

If it is possible to make it work then it could speed up data access several magnitudes. Because the game would not access the hard disk drive, it would move data between different regions of RAM.

The operating system would probably still try to interfere and mess things up by caching to hard disk drive but I think for that we could disable paging file, as far as we can go with that.

Of course this requires so much RAM that it isn't really a cheap option to try out. And I don't know if the games work if we try to run them from a RAM disk.

I think some of the things you should try are:

- Ensure you load only the addons that are actually needed. This is obvious but I've seen people often not even thinking about it but just loading everything they have.

- Optimize your hard disk drive:

a) ensure it is running in its fastest mode.

if problems getting it to its fastest supported mode, check that the cable which connects it to the motherboard is correct one, because it affects the maximum speed mode that can be used. IDE 80 vs. 40 wire cables can both be used but with 40 wire cable the speed is limited. I don't know if you have IDE or SATA or what.

b) defragment it!

- I think you should also ensure that you have updated your Vista with latest updates. I heard from friends that this will speed it up clearly.

I think then it's mostly up to the maximum performance of the hard disk drives. That's a broad topic. You could then research if it is worth to invest into a faster setup like having a RAID or something like that.

[zulu1 145]

Quote[/b] ]I some time had a thought of if it would be possible to install the games into a RAM disk and start it from there.

A ramdisk is quite possible, even these days. What I have done since I have 3gigs of ram is I shut down my Windows page file and just run with the ram I have. Seems to work fine, no slow down much less drive activity.

[Pulverizer 1]

Up the total memory value in FlashpointPreferences.exe -> advanced, to the amount you usually have free.

[anguis 4]

Quote[/b] ]

Up the total memory value in FlashpointPreferences.exe -> advanced, to the amount you usually have free.

Thanks - could you explain this one a little more? Total memory is set to 2032 already, and the slider is all the way to the right.