Precaching

[D416 10]

Ok , after extensive command lines , hacks , aram2 profile tweaking , gtx285 tweaking , nvidia tweaking , CPU Q9550 tweaking , paging file tweaking & even no paging file with 8 gigs of DDr2.

You suggest it...ive tried it ...now..some have presented modest improvements but nothing thats stands out & says .."Yea ..im the cause of low frames."

Until now.

Ive did all this trail & error with the Allmark scenario benchmark & i came to 1 simple truth... *from what i can see*

This game has little to no precaching , i ran the test...noted on paper the FPS i got per test * final score....then hit the restart button on the scenario & off i go again.

And surprise surprise ..the FPS got better & the LODs was faster loading & the stuttering had near but all disappeared.

Now ..with all the tweaks i did , was running the test once ..then exiting & moving onto the next tweak after reseting the config files.

But..once i started running the benchmark 3-4 times in a single load up. i notice the game precaching got better & better , with it ..the FPS scores were getting higher & higher.

Now..those familar to the test know the last test ..test 5 space capsule .is a miser ..you pull 2-7 fps..then 20+ at the end...but ...let the test run a full 5 test once..then restart the test series again..& that PC crushing test 5 suddenly pulls a steady 20+ fps.

So..if some 1 has made sense of what im drving at. able to confirm what ive found? ..or am i just got random Arma2 " I dont like your PC attitude" ?

If some 1 else finds the game gets better with more loops ...then ..is there a command line somewhere i can enable to do a full MP map preload b4 i get into game to stop texture & item pop in. *ala BF2*

Most noticeable when you scope & unscope with sniper rifles ..the loading can drop frames from a steady 40+fps , to 7fps ..whilst it reloads all the textures & items , which seems stupid considering..i was looking at the same dam things 2 seconds ago.

Its 1200 am ..& im tired..i may be rambling..but just wondering ...i heard about the streaming of the game..but surly theirs an option..or command line to shuffle the streaming to preload in the Ram rather then paging file..or preload to the GPU's ..so its more accessible ?

Feel free to correct me on any misconceptions , been testing all day long & its the one thing that stands out.

What does looping a test do to the game..that makes it go faster ?

And is it possible to simulate this on the fly 100% in the game normally?

[thr0tt 12]

Your hard disk caches the information. You will see exactly the same improvement in many other games when running bunchmarks, that is why the first test is normally discarded, 2nd and 3rd tests are probably the ones that get reported.

I like tweaking, running the test once, if I can get better frames on the first pass only then that is where the gains are. Sure, I can run it a few times and I get a few hundred points difference in ArmAMark II but that is not what I want, I need to be able to go to an area and get solid FPS immediately.

[.kju 3245]

You could try a RAM drive/disk.

An Intel SSD or similar does wonders too. Also you could tell the game to preload more

configs or files via configs. Might be worth exploring.

[pauliesss 2]

So what is the recommended pagefile for ArmA2 on Windows XP SP3 with 4GB RAM(I know, XP can only use 3.25 or so..) ?

Thanks.

[thr0tt 12]

So what is the recommended pagefile for ArmA2 on Windows XP SP3 with 4GB RAM(I know, XP can only use 3.25 or so..) ?

Thanks.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm

I wouldn't worry about modifying what windows does with it tbh, I have never gained or lost performance when tweaking the pagefile. Tried static min / max, no pagefile, massive pagefile and now have it on another disk, it makes absolutely no difference.

Just leave it as Windows manages it.

[Yoma 0]

You could try a RAM drive/disk.

An Intel SSD or similar does wonders too. Also you could tell the game to preload more

configs or files via configs. Might be worth exploring.

Do you have a x25-m or the likes?

I'm considering buying one of these or a OCZ vertex.

What would be real nice if there was a way to hack into VISTA/Win7's pre/superfetch thingy and TELL IT to bugger off but to prefetch most used Arma2 files only.

I would give an arm for a batchfile thinghy/exe that does just that.

A ramdrive is not really feasable atm given the total data size involved.

It would be with default game files and 16GB of ram, but it would quickly turn out too small with lots of addons involved.

[thr0tt 12]

Yoma, do you have any other games that have this issue ? If you do then fair enough keep searching and I hope something is found to help otherwise why don't we wait for BI to fix the streaming engine and getting it to increase its game cache or whatever it is that 'streams' which would mean no need for any of us to build super computers just to run a single faulty game.

just a thought.

Ta for the reply on the Sync Tool btw. Its the best launcher and tool out there and I tried a few :)

[.kju 3245]

Intel X25-M 80GB basically yes. Re-brand from Kingston.

A2 loads so much faster. Can no longer live without it. ;)

You don't have to put all files in the RAM drive.

You can split the addons. -mod= also supports different harddisk via absolute path.

[Yoma 0]

Yoma, do you have any other games that have this issue ? If you do then fair enough keep searching and I hope something is found to help otherwise why don't we wait for BI to fix the streaming engine and getting it to increase its game cache or whatever it is that 'streams' which would mean no need for any of us to build super computers just to run a single faulty game.

just a thought.

Ta for the reply on the Sync Tool btw. Its the best launcher and tool out there and I tried a few :)

I don't have any other games that stream as much objects with that far a viewdistance and great ai either...

I'm sure BIS will optimise their engine, however there are other reasons for me to start experimenting with SSD's, insane SQL server performance for instance ;-)

[D416 10]

cheers for some other suggestions. *now to make a placard & walk about in a circle demanding BIS cough up the specs & setting that they use to get steady FPS and at what point did they say ..yep ..this will do nicely ?!