Running Arma2 from SSD

[lozz08 10]

A SSD will only ever show an average frame rate increase because of less stutters, because a benchmark will see a stutter as 0 fps for a short time and therefore reduce the average frame rate for the session.

The idea that your storage medium being faster can increase actual frame rate and not average frame rate over a benchmark in this game is bogus.

If anything a SSD could show a minutely lower frame rate because its file transfers during streaming happen much faster, and so utilize the CPU much more, but for a shorter time. Ie. With a normal HDD a texture load may take 3 frames to complete, whereas with a SSD that operation only takes one, but it takes that frame a slightly longer time to be rendered because the cpu has a tiny bit more work to do for that frame.

[Dreahack 10]

In ArmA 2, SSDs provide data at a faster rate than HDDs so the game feels smoother because there is less hitching etc.

That's all i want,just the feeling...

[Shadow NX 1]

Didnt read the whole thread but on a quick note i can say that offcourse ArmA2 doesnt run better with just a SSD in regards to Frames but since i use one ( Crucial C300 ) im very happy as i didnt had one texture or lod popup since then and i have everything on max.

So yes, for me it was a great investment in regards to enjoy the game more, for the frames i bought a X4 965 ( @3,8 now ) + HD6950 and now my frames are excellent enough for me to play very smooth without problems.

[old_painless 182]

Hi all, does anyone here know if it is possible to run Arma2/Combined Ops from a USB stick, you could think "Arma2 portable"?

I would imagine that you would have to make a regular install to a hard drive, and then copy the full Arma2 folder to the USB stick. But then how about registry settings?

Any advice is much appreciated!

-OP

[rangerpl 13]

I'm no expert, but just launching ArmA 2 like that might cause FADE to come and kick your ass.

[rekrul 7]

It shouldn't if you symlink the files in the same fashion as a ramdisk.

Edit: I don't know how the performance would be though. I don't know how fast the usb is on random reads.

[old_painless 182]

Hi, it is of course a legit copy so hoping that FADE would not kick in. I am contemplating using my work pc for Arma, however they don't appreciate disk space being used for games. So I figured having the registry set up correctly and then have the entire install on the stick (32Gb sized) would work.

I'll look into symlink to see if that would work, thanks. If so, I'll let you know what performance is like

-OP

[nikiforos 450]

Can somebody recommend a good SSD for Arma 2? I read a lot that SSDs are still unstable and I want to buy something without the risk of having problems. But if you guys can recommend some SSDs that have less issues im willing to consider a purchase.

[Leon86 13]

You can just copy the AddOns folder to your usb stick and put -mod=G:\ in the arma shortcut. That way you run almost all of the game content from your flash drive. (if your flashdrive is G of course, but I assume people here aren't total tools)

As for ssd's, the really new ones might have some issues on some systems but generally work fine. I have a kingston V+100, no issues. Someone I know has a crucial m3 and m4, no issues yet. Intel ssd's are probably the best choice if you are really scared of a comptibility problem.

Edited August 23, 2011 by Leon86

[Blaaarg 10]

Can somebody recommend a good SSD for Arma 2? I read a lot that SSDs are still unstable and I want to buy something without the risk of having problems. But if you guys can recommend some SSDs that have less issues im willing to consider a purchase.

Good ssd have no perf / unstability issue anymore. Here's the SMART of my intel x25-m v2 (postville)... 7600h and still working like the 1st day. No data loss, no perf loss and no tweaks with win7 => plug it and it work.

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8503/ssdor.jpg

The Crucial M4, OCZ Vertex 3 & Intel SSD 510 (and probably the 320, it's more or less an intel x25v2) are fine, the corsair c300 too.

If you have to choose, take the cheaper. You won't see any difference outside a bench between the little intel 320 and the big vertex 3.

[nikiforos 450]

One thing that irritates me is the slow loading textures of grass and houses(from air) sometimes.

Would I resolve the problem by getting an SSD ?

[Blaaarg 10]

One thing that irritates me is the slow loading textures of grass and houses(from air) sometimes.

Would I resolve the problem by getting an SSD ?

I can still see lod change but the texture load really fast.

It's the armory, no ai / vehicule but it may give you a few answere.

Only 4k view distance, full size fraps hit the fps really hard. I'm not really good at making video and can't get a crisp picture. (the shuttering is video encoding related, i don't know how / i'm too lazy to fix that.)

Edited August 27, 2011 by Blaaarg

[Hud Dorph 22]

One thing that irritates me is the slow loading textures of grass and houses(from air) sometimes.

Would I resolve the problem by getting an SSD ?

The SSD solved that problem for me.

[nikiforos 450]

Yeahh I have no problems with FPS Im totally happy with it . But when it comes to loading textures it feels like it can get much better. So I hope that the SSD will att least make things better for me.

[Tankbuster 1746]

Just a quick note that may be of interest to SSD users.

We all know about the limited write cycles that SSDs have - eventually, the cells wear out, and although the sensible opinion seems to be that in normal use, an SSD won't wear out in this way any quicker that the usual lifespan of a rotational HDD, it's something to bear in mind.

Also, my SSD is quite small. It's a gen2 80GB Intel, so space is at a premium and with the write cycles thing at the back of my mind, I decided to move my pagefile. Having bought 16GB of RAM, I created a 4GB RAMDISK in memory and moved the pagefile to it. After a couple of reboots and persuading Windows it only needed one, I'm happy with the results. More space on the SSD and less writing to it. Perhaps even improved performance. :)

More info here.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=2091114&postcount=436

Tanky.

PS. I'm really not interested in users who don't use a pagefile because they have masses of RAM. Everyone sensible and informed knows this isn't the way forward so please don't discuss it here. Ta. :)

[Tankbuster 1746]

I've now bought the full version of RAMDISK. 4GB wasn't enough to run (when mission testing) a local dediserver and the game. I've now given half of my 16GB RAM to the RAMDISK and the pagefile is in it. What's most important to me is the space I've saved on my SSD.

[sickboy 13]

Tankbuster, I cannot fathom what would be the purpose of moving the Pagefile to a ramdisk.

It sounds like a lot of overhead, for something you can accomplish by simply turning off the page file!

The page file normally is used as extension to the internal RAM, for when it is full etc.

Therefore I really cannot see the logic in creating a ramdisk, to put your pagefile in;

You are using memory to make (the same amount or less) memory, adding complexity/overhead in the process...

In this case, turning the pagefile off seems like the better choice.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Sickboy

[Tankbuster 1746]

I have problems when I turn off the PF. Because I'm short of space on the SSD, this saves me a load of real estate.

[sickboy 13]

What problems do you have when turning off the PF?

And when it's turned off, you have the same amount of SSD space, as when you put the pagefile in RAM? :)

Turning off the page file, or reducing your RAM by adding only a 4GB pagefile in it, seems little different, other than that the latter case adds more overhead and hurt performance, and increases complexity.

[Tankbuster 1746]

Can't remember what exactly Windows said, I'm at work now. I think it was something along the lines of "Run out of virtual memory".

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Page file off makes arma use the rest of the RAM when it reaches 2gb,i hope i'am right :D

[MavericK96 0]

I have my page file off and I've never had a problem. Then again, I have 12 GB of RAM...

I think I had it off back when I had 6 GB and it never posed a problem either, though.

[Muahaha 10]

Guys,

Quick and I hope easy question, will having my OS on normal HDD and Arma2 on SSD increase performance drastically comparing to fully having everything on SSD (OS+Arma2) ? Planning to get 1 SSD but lazy to reinstall the entire OS to the SSD and I don't think the capacity is large enough for it.

Thanks

[cslayer211 1]

yea they just need to improve their life span

Life spam is really no longer a problem with garbage collection/TRIM enabled on Windows Vista/7. The read/write speeds aren't really effected either as long as those are enabled, which they are on all modern day SSD's. However, If the SSD does happen to degrade, it's a really simple fix to get it to it's factor default speeds. All you have to do is perform a secure erase and it resets the NAND memory.

As for the performance increases, I have an SSD but I don't have Arma 2 installed to it. I'm sure that loading times would be decreased by a lot and texture pop-in would be a lot less noticeable.

[lockjaw-65- 0]

Has anybody got an answer to this question....

Guys,

Quick and I hope easy question, will having my OS on normal HDD and Arma2 on SSD increase performance drastically comparing to fully having everything on SSD (OS+Arma2) ? Planning to get 1 SSD but lazy to reinstall the entire OS to the SSD and I don't think the capacity is large enough for it.

Thanks