Let's talk about VRAM, 8GB RAM & Video Memory.

[shuurajou 10]

There's a huge amount of debate and discussion about all these things below - so I've tried to make some sense of it...

FYI - my specs are at the bottom.

In Arma 2, there is a setting called 'Video Memory'. There is a massive amount of debate around what it should be set to and a huge amount of what I suspect, is misinformation. This setting doesn't appear in any Arma 2 manuals I can find (I bought Arma 2 from steam myself), so as the community we'll have to guess what BI want us to do with this setting.

Digging around the forums, someone (sorry, can't remember who now) highlighted that back in Arma 1, it was a time when the biggest amount of memory you could get on a GFX card was 512mb. When the 8800 card series started to come around, obviously that GFX card memory ceiling increased, and apparently, I think in the Arma 1 1.05 patch, BI introduced the 'default' setting to be used with cards higher than 512mb. Although this is unclear, it seems BI just carried this over 'as is' to Arma 2. It also seems when the default setting is selected, Arma 2 will try to utilise and work with what GFX memory Arma 2 THINKS you have as a result of it's autodetection. It's commonly believed (although unconfirmed), what GFX card memory Arma 2 thinks you have, is documented by Arma 2 in the localVRAM parameter found in the Arma2.cfg file...

Many people believe that the 'localVRAM=X' parameter in the Arma2 CFG file is something that you can change, and Arma 2 will use. Despite this popular belief, I think (and could be wrong) that it's actually something else. We know that Arma 2 itself, does automatic VRAM detection. It seems that, once Arma has been started and done this automatic VRAM detection, it enters the values it has detected (in bytes), into this parameter. It's unclear what it should read if you have SLI (although it's debated it should be 1 of the 2 cards memory), or that it's actually your GFX card memory at all (as nobody from BI has confirmed any of this - let's assume for now this is accurate).

There is also a 'nonlocalVRAM=X' parameter, and many believe that SHOULD if Arma 2 has detected it correctly, show your PCs page file size - I'm not too clear on this, so I won't go into it further for now.

So... VRAM detection. In 64bit Vista (and let's guess Win 7 inhereted this too), Arma 2 has had a bug where it incorrectly detected VRAM, specifically if you had 8GB (perhaps other values of RAM too). BI's CEO confirmed in the 1.02 change log that the bug should have been fixed. It seems that this may not be the case.

In my own experience, I had previously run 2x Leadtek 8800 GTXs in SLI. At the same time, I also had 8GB and was running Windows 7 64bit (release version from MSDN) and the 190.62 WHQL nVidia driver. At this time, I did not need to add any command line arguments (such as '-winxp') onto my Arma 2 shortcut. However, at this time, Arma 2 thought my GFX card had 2GB RAM (if the localVRAM=X value is believed) and 2GB of 'nonlocalVRAM' (both incorrect). The game worked though - not perfectly (average 30fps?), but it did work. After wiping my HDD and formatting, installing a fresh Win 7 with the same drivers etc, the outcome was the same.

After formatting again, I installed a BFG GTX 285 OCX (flashed mobo CMOS at the time). Same drivers as previously (190.62 WHQL). Interestingly, without the '-winxp' parameter (just as before with the 8800 GTXs), Arma 2 gave me loads of blank textures (a problem people often associate with having 8GB of RAM). Looking at the CFG file revealed that Arma essentially though that my GFX card only had 2mb of memory (incorrect - it has 1024mb) & 2mb of nonlocalVRAM (again, unclear what this is meant to show). That kind of made sense to me - you can't do a lot with only 4mb total available memory I suppose - so the textures weren't able to load properly (and were blank as a result). To try a test, I changed the values in the CFG file to what they should be (assuming nonlocalVRAM is pagefile), and set it to read only. The textures were still blank. So, I genuinely don't think that Arma actually looks at these values for instructions, just fills them for diagnostic purposes.

Adding the '-winxp' command line argument changed things. Arma 2 then started to detect that I generally had '2GB' of GFX card memory (localVRAM) & 2GB of nonlocalVRAM. This is incorrect, but as before, the game would run - just not great. Interestingly, if I loaded an old 186 driver, Arma 2 would load, with the new card, and my 8gb RAM, without -winxp & without blank textures.

So what does this tell me?

Having 8GB doesn't seem to be the sole root cause of people having blank textures. What GFX card you have, and the driver your using, does seem to influence Arma 2's ability to correctly detect these values.

Having 8GB does seem to be related though... from what I can tell (again, it's a guess, as it is for everyone, as BI haven't told us what it truely does) using the -winxp command line argument has the game use the WinXP version of Direct3D 9 (Vista/Win7 use a slight varient Direct3D 9EX which works with WDDM) which seems to not use Vista/Win7's WDDM. It may also be reasonable to assume to some degree, that in this case, Arma 2 can't see all your 8GBs of RAM, so it doesn't get subjected to a bug with 8GB RAM, but if this was true, why did 8GB ram work without issue when I had an 8800 GTX and the same drivers? So the graphics card or it's drivers do seem to influence this somehow.

So, even with the -winxp command line, or with my old 8800 GTXs, Arma 2 still didn't seem to detect things correctly. So, I tried limiting the RAM my machine can utilise with msconfig to approximately 4gb. After rebooting, it seems that with my GTX 285, Arma 2 then successfully detected my video card RAM (it said 1002mb, but you know, it's pretty close). That's interesting, so having 4GB vs 8GB does influence the localVRAM detection & nonlocalVRAM detection to a degree. So I guess, that 1.02 hasn't 100% fixed this yet.

So folks... this is all I've been able to find out, and make sense out of, and all I can. It's all 100% speculation as BI haven't confirmed what these different parameters and command line arguments actually mean/do. Until then - maybe this'll help us get to the bottom of this.

Shuurajou

Version of Arma used in all of the above is 1.03. I quoted 1.02 only as reference due to BI stating 1.02 should have fixed incorrect VRAM detection in systems with 8GB RAM.

GFX: BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX

Sound: X-Fi Fatal1ty

Mobo: ASUS P5N-T Deluxe (BIOS 1303)

CPU: Intel Woldfale E8400 Intel Core 2 Duo

Cooler: Tuniq Tower 120 (on the CPU)

Case: Cosmos S

Keyboard: Microsoft Natural 4000

Mouse: Razer Diamondback

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Final RTM Build

RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC 8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 PC-8500C5 @ 1066MHz

Display: Dell 2005FPW

PSU: Hiper Type M 880W

Edited August 28, 2009 by shuurajou

[Yapab 10]

Pretty detailed information, however you are refering to version 1.02?

Do you mean version 1.03 has not fixed this issue yet? Because version 1.03 has been out for a while now... and there are even beta patches which might also address this issue.

http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

Yapa

[shuurajou 10]

Pretty detailed information, however you are refering to version 1.02?

Do you mean version 1.03 has not fixed this issue yet? Because version 1.03 has been out for a while now... and there are even beta patches which might also address this issue.

http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

Yapa

Hi Yapa,

The version of Arma used in all of the above is 1.03. I quoted 1.02 only as reference due to BI stating 1.02 should have fixed incorrect VRAM detection in systems with 8GB RAM.

I don't believe any beta patches or 1.03 have addressed the issue any further than 1.02 attempted to.

I've updated the main post with this info.

Cheers,

Shuurajou.

[maddogx 13]

Very nice and detailed post. Kudos to you. :)

I, admittedly, haven't actually looked at the VRAM parameters yet, because the game has always been running pretty well for me. (4GB RAM FTW!)

However, I'm pretty sure you're right about the VRAM parameters not actually being read by Arma2, but simply being overwritten (if possible) when it does its autodetect thing. Actually I believe the fact that Arma2 tries to overwrite anything people put in there is a clear indicator that this is the case. Basically I guess the game behaves like this: "Well, I've detected the VRAM values and... wait, I can't write them to the config file. Ah screw that, I'm using my values anyway."

Edited August 26, 2009 by MadDogX

[shuurajou 10]

Very nice and detailed post. Kudos to you. :)

I, admittedly, haven't actually looked at the VRAM parameters yet, because the game has always been running pretty well for me. (4GB RAM FTW!)

However, I'm pretty sure you're right about the VRAM parameters not actually being read by Arma2, but simply being overwritten (if possible) when it does its autodetect thing. Actually I believe the fact that Arma2 tries to overwrite anything people put in there is a clear indicator that this is the case. Basically I the game behaves like this: "Well, I've detected the VRAM values and... wait, I can't write them to the config file. Ah screw that, I'm using my values anyway."

Thanks MadDogX, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of the issues. There are threads of 60+ posts of people trying to figure it out. These threads would be dramatically shorter if BI told us what the different commands/settings mean and/or do.

Obviously this thread has all of my own trouble shooting, but there's a key issue here in that we're guessing what a lot of the settings do and what the different parameters mean. I've made another thread here which is a request to BI to provide details on how we should use these settings/parameters to help ourselves - I've also forwarded the request to the publisher (the publisher is meant to be the official support channel) in hope they can get the attention of BI.

But for the purposes of this thread, it's meant to be a discussion point to see if we can conclude any of these questions ourselves, so we stop misinformation each other when someone needs help.

[InFireBaptize 0]

even if you understood everything the game won't run better, i have played with those settings more than i played the game and probably everybody else did. You'd probably be better off playing it on low resolution, lower than your native screen resolution, i know it sucks but gameplay will be silky smooth... Disco...Disco

[shuurajou 10]

even if you understood everything the game won't run better, i have played with those settings more than i played the game and probably everybody else did. You'd probably be better off playing it on low resolution, lower than your native screen resolution, i know it sucks but gameplay will be silky smooth... Disco...Disco

The thing is, whether or not the game is utilising the RAM on your graphics card correctly could have a large impact on performance. There is no configuration parameter associated with the game that a user can change to fix this autodetection we know for a fact Arma 2 does.

If we can understand truely what the localVRAM & nonlocalVRAM Arma2.cfg parameters mean, then we might be able to use them to diagnose issues & highlight them to BI.

Edited August 26, 2009 by shuurajou

[shuurajou 10]

Updated as I misread the initial calculations. Without the -winxp command line argument the game actually only detects 2MB localVRAM & 2MB nonlocalVRAM (4MB total?!).

[kklownboy 43]

its a freaking 32bit app. It will never see more/use more than 2gb system. If you want to see how much vram it uses then get a vram mapper. But its also up to the driver to use the buffers correctly for the dx calls, It will never use more than 2gb of vram... Datters lack of usable vram(225, instead of 680? 1200mb?) is do to his drivers and OS/SLi being borked right now... The 8gb has been a issue is in alot of games for both ATi and NVDA. 8gb is for the most part complete insanity on old MB chipsets and or of any use in any app bar some VM/encoding/PS,RAMdrive

And i would bet you that 3d encoding with SLi'd 8800gt's is not getting ANY where close to 8gb...maybe a spike at 4.5gb on rc7x64...8gb is for the most part a nightmare for ppl to get stable at any OC filling up all the slots with 2gb sticks is a huge drain on most chipsets from intel,they dont run at the true speed/ timings , and is in the disclaimer on ALL MBs, fill the slots its slower. But hey its only 20$ to 40$ more so buy the SLOW ddr2 pc6400... I would rather just buy more beer.

That being said It will be nice for Bis to "fix" the issue, then the noise would go down here for unused ram on old comps borking the renderer.

---------- Post added at 06:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:19 AM ----------

Updated as I misread the initial calculations. Without the -winxp command line argument the game actually only detects 2MB localVRAM & 2MB nonlocalVRAM (4MB total?!).

with or with out the para,it can only detect upto 2gb vram, and 2gb_nonv, your whole premise is how/why it detects? The -winxp flag is so you can use SLI rt now and or limit the ram detect if using x64OS with over 4GB, making it a 32bit OS to the engine? Running the -winxp on a 32bit XP, because you have 8gb is wacky in more ways than i can mention.

[shuurajou 10]

its a freaking 32bit app. It will never see more/use more than 2gb system.

That is absolutely fine and I have no expectation that ArmA 2 will actually make use of my 8GB RAM. I mention 8GB RAM because it seems that because my computer has 8GB RAM ArmA 2 is unable to accurately detect my video card RAM (1024MB).

If you want to see how much vram it uses then get a vram mapper. But its also up to the driver to use the buffers correctly for the dx calls, It will never use more than 2gb of vram...

I haven't used one of these tools before - can you suggest one? I don't want ArmA 2 to use 2GB of VRAM as I only have 1024MB of VRAM - I just want it to use that correctly. It cannot use it correctly if it doesn't realise it's there (because autodetection of VRAM for me (which the 'default' video setting requires to be accurate) is broken).

Datters lack of usable vram(225, instead of 680? 1200mb?) is do to his drivers and OS/SLi being borked right now... The 8gb has been a issue is in alot of games for both ATi and NVDA. 8gb is for the most part complete insanity on old MB chipsets and or of any use in any app bar some VM/encoding/PS,RAMdrive. And i would bet you that 3d encoding with SLi'd 8800gt's is not getting ANY where close to 8gb...maybe a spike at 4.5gb on rc7x64...8gb is for the most part a nightmare for ppl to get stable at any OC filling up all the slots with 2gb sticks is a huge drain on most chipsets from intel,they dont run at the true speed/ timings , and is in the disclaimer on ALL MBs, fill the slots its slower. But hey its only 20$ to 40$ more so buy the SLOW ddr2 pc6400... I would rather just buy more beer.

I don't know enough about Datter's specific problems to really comment on that side of things. I too am coming to the conclusion though that 8GB is a massive pain for very little gain in most circumstances. Regardless, the OS supports it so it should work. I could do with a beer right now too...

That being said It will be nice for Bis to "fix" the issue, then the noise would go down here for unused ram on old comps borking the renderer.

The thing is, the way BIS have designed the game, in order to get the benefit from having a GFX card with more than 512MB VRAM, you have to use the 'default' setting, and that is dependant (seemingly) on the VRAM detection working, which it doesn't with the 8GB bug. So, BIS can let us manually define our VRAM value so ArmA 2 doesn't have to autodetect, or, they can see if they resolve the bug.

with or with out the para,it can only detect upto 2gb vram, and 2gb_nonv, your whole premise is how/why it detects? The -winxp flag is so you can use SLI rt now and or limit the ram detect if using x64OS with over 4GB, making it a 32bit OS to the engine? Running the -winxp on a 32bit XP, because you have 8gb is wacky in more ways than i can mention.

I acknowledge that ArmA 2 cannot make use of more than 2GB system RAM. It's 32bit of course. However, I have come across instances where the nonlocalVRAM value has been detected at 3GB, but this is the graphics card shared memory, so not necessarily wrong. If you run dxdiag & export dxdiag.txt, I believe, if VRAM autodetection is working as designed, the values detected in nonlocalVRAM & localVRAM should be very close to the 'Dedicated Memory' & 'Shared Memory' output in dxdiag under the 'display devices' category.

For example...

---------------

Display Devices

---------------

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip type: GeForce GTX 285

DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC

Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_05E3&SUBSYS_0F7D19F1&REV_A1

Display Memory: 4079 MB

Dedicated Memory: 1007 MB

Shared Memory: 3071 MB

This is a snippit from my DX diag. I believe if I have 4GB RAM, the values ArmA 2 detects align almost perfectly with 'dedicated memory' (localVRAM) & 'shared memory' (nonlocalvRAM) from dxdiag.

I just want to be clear I'm not here to argue - just trying help everyone get the most from the game with their systems and where possible, furnish BIS with as much information as possible.

[InFireBaptize 0]

Originally Posted by kklownboy

its a freaking 32bit app. It will never see more/use more than 2gb system.

wrong wrong wrong...............

32-bit applications on 64-bit platforms can address up to 2 GB, or up to 4 GB with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES linker flag

reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb147385(VS.85).aspx#Compatibility

[nyran125 10]

can someone tell me why the hell, you even NEED 8 GB's ram? What crazy game specs says you need 8GB's ram, in the first place?.

Has vista got you so bad, that you needed to OVER compensate for every bit of hardware? get rid of about 4 GB ram, you might actually be able to run stuff properly.

Secondly what are you trying to do with 8 GB ram, future proof your computer for the next 6 years? I can guarentee in the next 6 years it will be up to 4GB ram for games most probably, but not 8. Madness. people , madness. No wonder you people are having problems. Are You trying to outgun the game designers?. Or do you want to just spend loads of money pointlessly to just have the LATEST of everything?

Vista prooved that having the latest stuff with the awful resource hog of DX10 isnt better at all, having what WORKS is the most important for gaming. Ive heard so many issues with 8gb ram for gaming ,its insane. Get rid of some of it then. and Get rid of Vista, the thing that made you have to overcompensate your pc specs in the first place. Arma 2 and all other games run great for me with alot less ram than what you guys have.

Tip on upgrading, wait till the game comes out BEFORE upgrading your pc so you know what your in for, then wait for a YEAR, then upgrade. Youll have way less headaches.

[sig 10]

I know a graphic desginer who uses 8gb ram for his working computer, but someone who wants to play computer games with this amount of ram - yer MAD!

[mlenser 10]

32-bit applications on 64-bit platforms can address up to 2 GB, or up to 4 GB with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES linker flag

How much ram can a program use under a 32-bit OS? If I read it right somewhere we cannot just add the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES flag to an existing 32-bit program to make it address more than 2gb of ram but that the program has to be written to recognise that option (on an 64-bit OS) - is that correct?

[Kramxel 10]

I know a graphic desginer who uses 8gb ram for his working computer, but someone who wants to play computer games with this amount of ram - yer MAD!

IRONIC MODE ON

Did you know, BIS still uses ZX Spectrum for their game programming?

IRONIC MODE OFF

[Raechaer 10]

How much ram can a program use under a 32-bit OS? If I read it right somewhere we cannot just add the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES flag to an existing 32-bit program to make it address more than 2gb of ram but that the program has to be written to recognise that option (on an 64-bit OS) - is that correct?

No, that's not correct, it's kinda the other way around. Some old programs take advantage of the fact that there's only 2 GB of memory and use highest Bit of memory addresses for their own purposes. This of course fails terribly if you have the full 4 GB address space and that highest Bit is actually part of the address. So for compatibility reasons with those applications 32 bit applications only get the old 2 GB address space by default. The /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES flag just indicates to the OS that the application does not do anything special with memory addresses and it's thus safe to provide it with the full 4 GB.

[shuurajou 10]

In the end of the day the OS supports 8GB so it's not acceptable to have bugs because a computer has 8GB. That's like saying it's OK for the game to have bugs on 24" monitors or an xbox 360 is OK to have bugs with wired controllers. If it's officially supported by the core OS then all subsequent pieces of software need to be able to co-exist with that config without negative impacts.

[datter 0]

can someone tell me why the hell, you even NEED 8 GB's ram? What crazy game specs says you need 8GB's ram, in the first place?

As I've said elsewhere, I'm do 3d animation, HD video editing and a lot of photo work and the 8GB is absolutely necessary. The system I do my gaming on is used for more than gaming.

[bangtail 0]

can someone tell me why the hell, you even NEED 8 GB's ram? What crazy game specs says you need 8GB's ram, in the first place?.

Has vista got you so bad, that you needed to OVER compensate for every bit of hardware? get rid of about 4 GB ram, you might actually be able to run stuff properly.

Secondly what are you trying to do with 8 GB ram, future proof your computer for the next 6 years? I can guarentee in the next 6 years it will be up to 4GB ram for games most probably, but not 8. Madness. people , madness. No wonder you people are having problems. Are You trying to outgun the game designers?. Or do you want to just spend loads of money pointlessly to just have the LATEST of everything?

Vista prooved that having the latest stuff with the awful resource hog of DX10 isnt better at all, having what WORKS is the most important for gaming. Ive heard so many issues with 8gb ram for gaming ,its insane. Get rid of some of it then. and Get rid of Vista, the thing that made you have to overcompensate your pc specs in the first place. Arma 2 and all other games run great for me with alot less ram than what you guys have.

Tip on upgrading, wait till the game comes out BEFORE upgrading your pc so you know what your in for, then wait for a YEAR, then upgrade. Youll have way less headaches.

Or we could follow your advice and upgrade every 10 years :rolleyes:

Oh, and you can "guarantee" us that games will use no more than 4GB of RAM for the next 6 years can you?

There are plenty of uses for 8GB of RAM outside of gaming. Your ignorance seems to know no bounds.

Best quit while you're ahead (actually, best to just quit) :D

Eth

Edited August 29, 2009 by BangTail

[datter 0]

For the record, with all 8GB system ram in place and no -winxp switch on the shortcut the CFG shows my localvram at 3mb when set to "very high". Three megabytes. Tell me something isn't busted.

[InFireBaptize 0]

How much ram can a program use under a 32-bit OS? If I read it right somewhere we cannot just add the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES flag to an existing 32-bit program to make it address more than 2gb of ram but that the program has to be written to recognise that option (on an 64-bit OS) - is that correct?

there is explorersuite which allows you to alter the heading of the 32bit application to tell the OS that yes i can handle more than 2gb of RAM. I tried it but didn't work with ArmA2.

---------- Post added at 03:57 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:55 AM ----------

the best options i found to run this game is to click on the default button on your video settings in the game and only change the 3D resolution to 100%

[Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz 10]

Hmmm; I've read this entire post, and it seems that differing amounts of RAM may be leading to graphics problems in-game. Currently, I'm having a serious problem with stuttering in-game. I was told that this could be due to high amounts of RAM, or hyperthreading.

I hope that guy who freaked out about 8 GB of RAM doesn't read this reponse;

Currently I'm running a system with:

intel i7 920 @ 2.66 GHz (not overclocked)

NVIDIA GTX 285 (1024 MB)

12GB of DDR3 tri-channel RAM

The game seems to run very smoothly (~30-35+ fps), however it will stutter every 4-5 seconds and completely bog down briefly, then run smoothly for another 4-5 seconds (and it repeats, repeats, repeats, etc).

I've been told that this is a fairly well-known problem but have not been able to find a resolution from reading other posts.

Is anyone familiar with this issue? Should I be running the -winxp thinger in my start-up diddly? Or should I be altering my arma2.cfg diddly?

Currently, in my cfg file, it says:

localVRAM=2146959360;

nonlocalVRAM=2146959360;

Does that imply that ArmA 2 is reading my PC as having 2 MB of localVRAM and 2 MB of nonlocalVRAM?

[private plowjoy 0]

Hmmm; I've read this entire post, and it seems that differing amounts of RAM may be leading to graphics problems in-game. Currently, I'm having a serious problem with stuttering in-game. I was told that this could be due to high amounts of RAM, or hyperthreading.

I hope that guy who freaked out about 8 GB of RAM doesn't read this reponse;

Currently I'm running a system with:

intel i7 920 @ 2.66 GHz (not overclocked)

NVIDIA GTX 285 (1024 MB)

12GB of DDR3 tri-channel RAM

The game seems to run very smoothly (~30-35+ fps), however it will stutter every 4-5 seconds and completely bog down briefly, then run smoothly for another 4-5 seconds (and it repeats, repeats, repeats, etc).

I've been told that this is a fairly well-known problem but have not been able to find a resolution from reading other posts.

Is anyone familiar with this issue? Should I be running the -winxp thinger in my start-up diddly? Or should I be altering my arma2.cfg diddly?

Currently, in my cfg file, it says:

localVRAM=2146959360;

nonlocalVRAM=2146959360;

Does that imply that ArmA 2 is reading my PC as having 2 MB of localVRAM and 2 MB of nonlocalVRAM?

I run with 12gb in triple channel, with an i7 plus Nvidia 295GTX so we're not a million miles apart in this respect. I don't have the problem that you're talking about.

What OS are you on?

[Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz 10]

I'm running Windows Vista 64-bit

[datter 0]

Currently, in my cfg file, it says:

localVRAM=2146959360;

nonlocalVRAM=2146959360;

Does that imply that ArmA 2 is reading my PC as having 2 MB of localVRAM and 2 MB of nonlocalVRAM?

I believe those numbers are in bits not bytes, meaning it thinks you have 255mb of vram. I have the same problem.