ArmA2 8GB RAM Problem

[datter 0]

your 3D cp setting for ARMA2 is local and set to multigpu? single display?

Sir, yes sir.

[shuurajou 10]

suma; "..with nVidia 190.38 drivers"

The behaviour is the same for 190.38.

[desertjedi 3]

I tried the -winxp fix and the game now works fine. BUT, what does this fix do? Is the the same as "disabling" 4 GB of ram?? I dont want my performance to suffer by using this fix.

I want to use my whole 8 Gigs of RAM also - without any errors.

For perpspective, those of you running 8GB under Vista 64-bit or Win 7 64-bit might want to try this...benchmark your games with 8GB of RAM installed and then yank 4GB and run the same benchmarks with only 4GB. When you see the identical performance results, you might view this problem in a slightly different light.

Those of you with 6GB in Tri-channel might see some added benefit simply from having the RAM run in Tri-channel mode (added memory bandwidth), not from the actual amount of memory.

I put an extra 4GB of RAM in my box but it was sort of for future-proofing but mostly because it was dirt cheap. To me, it's not really serving any purpose and I may pull it to use in a test-bench setup.

Win7 64bit and 8GB ram here... why bother? 3d animation, HD video editing. etc. There is more to life than game playing

I think you've got a whole 1% of this forum covered with that one but I hear ya...I do a lot of photo editing and some video editing as well.

[wheelcipher 10]

For what it is worth at this point (and that may not be much), I bought and installed the game today and got the exact same results as Desert did in the very first post in this thread. After jerking around with the video settings for a bit, I came here and found this thread. I removed 4G of RAM and the problem is fixed. I now have all settings at "Very High" with no issues other than I am down to 4G RAM from 8G. My specs are below:

VIDEO:

HIS (ATI) Radeon HD 4890 Turbo Video Card

1024MB DDR5, PCI Express 2.0 x16 900Mhz core

MEMORY:

Patriot Viper 4096MB PC12800

Dual Channel DDR3 Memory - 1600MHz

Four sticks of 2Gigabytes (8G total)

OPERATING SYSTEM:

Windows Vista Ultimate (x64) Service Pack 2

MOTHERBOARD:

MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL 790FX-GD70 (MS-7577)

Bus Clock: 200 megahertz

BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. V1.4 07/02/2009

PROCESSOR:

3.40 gigahertz AMD Phenom II X4 965 AM3

512 kilobyte primary memory cache

2048 kilobyte secondary memory cache

6144 kilobyte tertiary memory cache

64-bit ready

Multi-core (4 total)

Not hyper-threaded

MONITOR:

Dual Samsung SyncMaster 23.1"

SOUND:

Creative SB X-Fi Fatal1ty

[Desert 10]

wheelcipher, if you like, you can put the other 4GB back in and try the -winxp Parameter in the Game Shortcut. That worked for me and i dont have to limit my 64bit System to 4GB.

[shuurajou 10]

wheelcipher, if you like, you can put the other 4GB back in and try the -winxp Parameter in the Game Shortcut. That worked for me and i dont have to limit my 64bit System to 4GB.

The only problem being in that case I believe VRAM detection will still be broken and the 'default' setting won't result in the optimum performance of his 4890. May be different with ATI though.

[kklownboy 43]

Th... May be different with ATI though.

It is.

[Aria 0]

Ummm ok dumb question here but is there anyway to fix this problem without doing something crazy to the computer like messing with the MSconfig etc? I mean only asking cause I don't want to screw my computer up just to get ARMA II to run. :confused:

That being said if it was already posted as far as a solution goes I'm sorry to asking.

In anycase to verify that this is indeed the problem, my computer was being worked on for several weeks so natrually I got online to get new drivers now ARMA II looks exactly like what everyone is describing.

My computer Specs are:

EVGA GTX 285

8 GB of OCZ DDR3 Reaper Memory

Striker II Extreme Mobo

Intel Q9650 3.0 GHZ

Running Vista-64 bit.

[-s!Gm4- 10]

You did read other threads in the forum?

You can either try the command line tag -winxp , which limits the RAM used to ~2GB, or you can manually remove (thats what I did) some RAM.

[shuurajou 10]

You did read other threads in the forum?

You can either try the command line tag -winxp , which limits the RAM used to ~2GB, or you can manually remove (thats what I did) some RAM.

VRAM detection is still broken even if you use -winxp.

[mlenser 10]

You can either try the command line tag -winxp , which limits the RAM used to ~2GB, or you can manually remove (thats what I did) some RAM.

Taken from the ARMA II Startup Parameters Wiki Page HERE

-winxp= use it in Vista/Windows 7 to enable multi-GPU support (Arma2)

-maxmem= Limit memory allocation (in MB). 2047 is hardcoded maximum at the moment (Arma2 1.01 final, anything higher falls back to 2047).

When running on Win7 64-bit I use -winxp -maxmem=2047 -nosplash (and if I'm testing a beta build -cpucount=4 as I have an i7) and i don't get any texture issues.

[shuurajou 10]

Taken from the ARMA II Startup Parameters Wiki Page HERE

-winxp= use it in Vista/Windows 7 to enable multi-GPU support (Arma2)

-maxmem= Limit memory allocation (in MB). 2047 is hardcoded maximum at the moment (Arma2 1.01 final, anything higher falls back to 2047).

When running on Win7 64-bit I use -winxp -maxmem=2047 -nosplash (and if I'm testing a beta build -cpucount=4 as I have an i7) and i don't get any texture issues.

That may be true, but if you look at the nonlocalVRAM & localVRAM parameters in your ArmA2.cfg are they accurate (convert bytes to megabytes)? If they are inaccurate and then you are likely getting performance that isn't taking full advantage of the RAM on your video card.

[mlenser 10]

No mine aren't correct either, Arma 2 auto detects:

localVRAM=1947303872;

nonlocalVRAM=1947303872;

Should be 6Gb DDR3 and 896MB Video memory. I read somewhere that you can edit the file yourself and make it "read only" if its a concern to you.

[shuurajou 10]

No mine aren't correct either, Arma 2 auto detects:

localVRAM=1947303872;

nonlocalVRAM=1947303872;

Should be 6Gb DDR3 and 896MB Video memory. I read somewhere that you can edit the file yourself and make it "read only" if its a concern to you.

Even if you set the read as read only ArmA 2 only writes to those parameters to help with debugging, it doesn't read from them so you can change them to 2MB and it won't help.

[Sniperdoc 0]

While I was able to reproduce this issue, it seems it is gone with nVidia 190.38 drivers.

Negative. I have them on my setup and am experiencing the same texture problems as in the OP's screenshots. Bushes and trees = non-textured squares, heads of characters as white model heads, and untextured vehicles/buildings.

I have the latest Win 7 RC. I'm running two GTX280's in SLI with PhysX enabled and have the 190.38 drivers.

I was running the 186's? before and had no problems with everything maxed out at 1680x1050. I did the upgrade to the 190.38 drivers and got hit with that texture bug.

I can run the game with the -winxp switch and it seems to correct it, but I know I'm not getting the most out of my system. I've tried renaming the .cfg file to .back and having A2 recreate the file for re-detection of RAM, but it didn't help. Going to try setting memory in Win7 startup.

See system specs in sig.

[mlenser 10]

I just did a bit of monitoring of my video memory usage while running Armamark and it appears that it was using about 620-630mb of LocalVRAM and 8mb of Non-LocalVram although without Arma running its already reporting 7.7mb being used.

[Desert 10]

No Change with Patch 1.04 here. Thats sad. :(

[datter 0]

At least that means I don't have to bother patching I suppose. Sadly, shelved until this is resolved.

[Ruges 0]

I saw there was a new patch today and was like ohhh, maybe I can start playing the game again. Nope not fixed. Seems like this is an important issue that would be resolved asap.

Ohh well shelfed till hopfully next patch, it can sit next to HOI3.

[Aria 0]

Yep same I've shelving ARMA II alongside the other failed game, HoI III.

Heading over to the Operation Flashpoint: DR forums and maybe informing them of the issue that this game has, not that they use the same engine but just to make Codemasters aware of the issue, so it won't happen to them.

[trunkz jr 0]

wheelcipher, if you like, you can put the other 4GB back in and try the -winxp Parameter in the Game Shortcut. That worked for me and i dont have to limit my 64bit System to 4GB.

Yep this is what I did, my desktop shortcut looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe" -winxp (now my graphics look much better)

Mine works fine, no way I'm taking out 4gig of ram just to play anyway, you shouldn't have to in the first place, I payed for the extra anyway so Might as well keep it in (even if it doesnt make a difference then 4)

[mlenser 10]

Aria & Ruges. Let me get this straight, you two are shelving the game because you can't be bothered putting -winxp -maxmem=2047 in the shortcut ?????? :j:

[Sniperdoc 0]

They're shelving the game because it's not functioning as it was intended to.

Do this for me:

1. Go buy a blender
   
2. Restrict yourself to only using the lowest option even though you'd get much better results blending smoothies at a higher setting
   

You might still have a smoothie, but it could be a hell of a lot better if you put it on a higher setting.

Same concept with Arma2. Why do I have to go into MSCONFIG, manually change from maximum ram to less than 8GB just to get the game to function properly? Same with the -winxp fix. Why drop your allotted amount of memory to less than 4GB with that option when you have 8GB?

Kind of a crappy work-around... I think it's an issue with the nVidia drivers myself. I had the 186somethings and had no problem with 8GB and was running everything just fine. I upgraded to the 190.38's and "BAM!" I got stuck with that 8GB no-texture issue.

I can totally sympathize with their frustration since BIS isn't conveying any validation of that issue or any steps to mitigate that problem with nVidia.

[kklownboy 43]

T...since BIS isn't conveying any validation of that issue or any steps to mitigate that problem with nVidia.

why do you say that? The have even posted about it. But i'am not your google/ search guy, do your homework first.

[Sniperdoc 0]

If they acknowledged it, then I haven't seen any semblance of validation from BIS about the matter.

It seems to be a very large issue. If I was BIS, I'd be stickying that on the top of the forums. I'd put a sticky for BIS known issues, so that visitors don't HAVE to search.

I did and found nothing from any dev about acknowledging the issue and how they plan to resolve it.

About the homework comment, don't presume to know what I have and haven't done. I'm quite versed in the Advanced Search Maybe next time it won't make you look like an ass.

Edited September 17, 2009 by Sniperdoc