Yoma 0 Posted July 1, 2009 I currently don't have any real perfomance problems, the game does what it has to most of the time. Still i wonder and in fact have been wondering since Arma introduced a streaming engine for terrain/objects: What factors in mostly for the streaming engine to work optimally? I bet a lot of things have to be taken into account, starting with -disk seek time -disk random read throughput -communication speed between system memory and vga -general cpu processing speed/memory bandwidth -vga processing power All this makes me wonder: Are there people out there that have been experimenting with high quality SSD's (intel x25-e or intel x25-m spring to mind), do they make a difference in how the engine performs? I don't want feedback from guys that just installed the game and nag about how it doesn't perform like game x or y, but guys that know the engine, had a normal harddrive and put arma2 on a highspeed highquality SSD. Also i'm currently running Arma2 on a gtx285 on a p35 (pci 1.1) motherboard. Would switching to a pci 2.0 based mainboard make any difference in Arma2? The bandwidth for pci 2.0 is about double that of pci 1.1 and this IS noticable in some games, but i really only care about Arma2. This is not a call for help, just an inquiry on how to optimise your system for the engine. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bushlurker 46 Posted July 1, 2009 I'm interested in pci-e 1.1 Vs 2.0 too! I'm currently using an Asus M2N32 board and have been considering upgrading... If my memory, CPU and G-card were unchanged, but I was on a pci-e 2.0 board - would that make a difference??? B Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
flake 10 Posted July 1, 2009 i ran a performance report in vista and it stated that the hd was *unstressed* during arma2 play, operating well below capacity. just a normal sata300. so, dunno tbh maybe more likely somebody has a 10krpm wd could respond with performance comparisons. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
no use for a name 0 Posted July 2, 2009 I've noticed when driving (especially thru towns) my HDD is thrashing constantly loading textures/LOD's. When I walk it's not near as bad and I don't get as many pauses/lag either. So far this is the only serious problem I have with the game as once I get into forests and unpopulated areas it runs nice and smooth As for PCI 1.1 vs 2.0, I'v read (but haven't confirmed) it will only bottleneck with the higher-end dual-GPU cards like the gtx 295's and 'x2's at higher resolutions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
S!fkaIaC 10 Posted July 2, 2009 I've noticed when driving (especially thru towns) my HDD is thrashing constantly loading textures/LOD's. When I walk it's not near as bad and I don't get as many pauses/lag either. So far this is the only serious problem I have with the game as once I get into forests and unpopulated areas it runs nice and smoothAs for PCI 1.1 vs 2.0, I'v read (but haven't confirmed) it will only bottleneck with the higher-end dual-GPU cards like the gtx 295's and 'x2's at higher resolutions. That is normal and it works as intended. The faster you move through the virtual environment and the more often the required textures around you changing, the more often streaming needs to play with your HDD. The only solution to avoid this is a GPU with 5TB VRAM on it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bulldogs 10 Posted July 2, 2009 If you are getting heavy load on the Hard drive then you should do 2 things. 1 - Defrag (once a month is perfect, any less you'll get slow down, any more you could damage your hard drive), use a 3rd party defrag (Windows one is quite pityful) 2 - Buy more RAM. Arma tends to only address around 2GB in game, but other background programs and windows take up RAM too, so under 4GB could be problematic. The less RAM you have, the more your Hard drive is used (transfering data to your swap file instead of RAM) As for faster drives, I don't think it'd help much as long as you follow those 2 suggestions, but if you really want to go all out, then ignore SSD's (they're expensive and still have a degredation problem over time), get 2 SATA drives and run them in RAID0 (striping) Alternatively, you could do 2 SCSI drives in Raid 0 setup, but that's also expensive. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BaseJumper 10 Posted July 2, 2009 If you really want super fast I/O (input/output) to a disk, check out RAM SSDs. These things run wholly on RAM modules (eg DDR2 ramsticks). They cost a bomb too.. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
.kju 3245 Posted July 2, 2009 SSD is a dream for A2. Or go hardcore with a RAM drive. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
paragraphic l 2 Posted July 2, 2009 What could give me a bigger boost in performance? Going from SATA 15000 rpm to a fast SSD? Going from PCIe x16 to PCIe x16 v2.0 mainboard? Not looking at all the other specifications. Can PCIe v2.0 enhance GPU, CPU and HDD performance? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
slimSpencer 10 Posted July 2, 2009 i recently bought a 128GB-SSD from Supertalent... It improved in-game-reloading (especially when driving) a bit, but you still realise some stutter when driving around. Better than convential hard-drive - far away from beeing perfect. Guess it would be much better if arma2 could just use more RAM and preload more textures/objetc/etc... Driving is sometimes really annoying because of this! regards Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kenjara 0 Posted July 2, 2009 Hi I had some stuttering on my pc regardless of settings. I then replaced my core 2 duo 6600 with an e8400 and can run on very high everything now. my specs are. core 2 duo e8400 4 Gig of DDR2 800Mhz Dominator RAM Ati 4870 1GB 3x sata hard drives no raid (arma is on a 250GB sata 2 drive might move it to my new samsung f1 though) creative xfi gamer. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
S!fkaIaC 10 Posted July 3, 2009 Hi I had some stuttering on my pc regardless of settings. I then replaced my core 2 duo 6600 with an e8400 and can run on very high everything now.my specs are. core 2 duo e8400 4 Gig of DDR2 800Mhz Dominator RAM Ati 4870 1GB 3x sata hard drives no raid (arma is on a 250GB sata 2 drive might move it to my new samsung f1 though) creative xfi gamer. To judge HDD influence the efficiency of streaming you need to know among other: - MB type - MB firmware - configuration of disk controller - some OS parameters influencing the utilization of the controller/disks - the HDD type - the HDD firmware - HDD cache statistics pretty simple, you need another year of study to get your HDD compliant to ArmA 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
