A1/A2 hard drive performance

[frag85 10]

When A1 came out i upgraded my system by purchasing a 150gb 10k RPM Raptor hard drive. It was like night and day. I recently made a video comparing a modern day, high-end 7200 RPM drive to the old Raptor because even with a new mainstream drive, it is like night and day. The performance from going from a 7200 drive that was defragmented by your standard "windows defrag" and a 10k RPM Raptor is like going from something that is barely playable with maxed out settings, to something that is very playable. Going a step further and short stroking, or defragmenting the drive with Ultimate Defrag is going from playable to nearly silky smooth. I could reduce the texture quality, but then it doesn't look quite as good. Even then the Raptor still easily outperforms the 7200rpm drive when textures are loaded.

The 7200 RPM drive in the video is a Western Digital 640GB "AAK", which is a dual platter drive. It is considered one of the faster of the 7200 drives on the market today. I did not call this topic "...On a FASTER hard drive" because speed is more subjective, and either drive could be called the faster of the two depending on what figures you look at. The 7200rpm AAK drive as FASTER read write speeds, but the Raptor has faster access times, and also more I/O capabilities which help for a game like ArmA and ArmA 2 where frequent reads are made.

the captures were recorded to another hard drive, so ArmA 2 reading and FRAPS recording were not made to the same hard drive.

i wish i had some solid state drives.

edit: here are some comparisons using a short-stroked 1+TB drive vs. the newer Velociraptors. Short stroking is by far more cost effective and if you could break down performance vs. cost, it would be far superior to the raptor or Vraptor, IMO. at the time i purchased my 1st gen raptor for the same price i could have gotten a 200-300gb drive, which would have had lower read/write speeds, slower access times and lower i/o capabilities. i can't find the link, but somewhere there is a thread on a computer hardware enthusiast site with members comparing short strok raid-0 arrays of 1TB drives and VRaptors and saw the exact same results of the TechWarslab link above. To put it in perspective, what Raptors were compared to a 7200 RPM drive untill the large 800+GB drives came out are what Solid State drives are today compared to a 7200 RPM drive as far has performance.

Edited July 1, 2013 by frag85
fixed video links

[LondonLad 13]

Any chance, for the sake of it posting up you're system component specs? (more for my own curiosity) :)

[frag85 10]

Intel Core i7 920 (4.2ghz, 21x200 w/ 1.22v)

6GB OCZ DDR3@1600 (3x2GB, 8-9-8-18 timings)

WD AAK 640GB (dual 320GB platter, WD6400AAKS)

WD 150GB Raptor (old model WD1500AHFD)

EVGA GTX275

BFG ModxStream 700watt PSU

Win7 RC 7100, 64bit

resolution is 1280x1024

[hamis 0]

Beware all raptor owners!My raptor just got toast.Controller failed,and it's common "feature" on raptors.So,if you have one take backup very often.

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

Beware all raptor owners!My raptor just got toast.Controller failed,and it's common "feature" on raptors.So,if you have one take backup very often.

Raptor specs are a tad misleading, yes, the RPM's are at 10K RPM, but you have to look at data transfer rates. I found my Raptor to be much slower in data transfer than a my Seagate 7200 RPM drives. Raptors are made really to be in a RAID-0 configuration, then the RPM's and Transfer rates are much better. Raptors run hotter and it's best to put at least one drive bay empty between two of them. Or heat-sync them.

Of course your machine may transfer data faster, but in my case the speedy drives, just couldn't offload as fast for some reason.

[TimRiceSE 10]

best scenario would be to just use an SSD, no? :O

[kklownboy 43]

Beware all raptor owners!My raptor just got toast.Controller failed,and it's common "feature" on raptors.So,if you have one take backup very often.

lol i have old old raptors that are 24/7... but yeah if you love it back it up.

[Murklor 10]

More interesting, it'd be nice to see what 2 WD Black 640gb in RAID0 does vs the raptor... If they come closer to each other or if the faster access times on the vraptor still make it leap ahead.

[frag85 10]

my raptor never goes above 34*C (all system components idle between 30 and 32C), its cool to the touch.

they come with 5 year warranties, i have had mine for several years and it has never had any errors.

How are the specs misleading?

Raptor: 85MB/s Max read, 72MB/s average, Acess: 8.1ms, burst 12MB/s

640GB: 120MB/s Max read, 95MB/s average, Access: 16MS, Burst 130MB/s

raptor is in green:

edit: my arma+arma 2 folders take up ~30GB, so the first 5% of yellow, and 20% of green are where you want the lease access.

here is a link to the comparison of the hard drive i had at the time i bought the raptor (which was one of the faster of the 7200RPM drives of the time).

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g27/frag85/computer/HDD.jpg

Just by watching how much data is being transferred and how often, A1 and A2 really want access time. You have a lot of small, on the fly reads as new textures/models are loaded.

If anyone has SSD and a short stroked drive that would be interesting to see the arma mark results, or just frame rate results using the Fraps benchmark. I used to do that for tweaking A1 with a flight over Sahrani,

Edited October 6, 2009 by frag85

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

my raptor never goes above 34*C (all system components idle between 30 and 32C), its cool to the touch.

they come with 5 year warranties, i have had mine for several years and it has never had any errors.

How are the specs misleading?

Raptor: 85MB/s Max read, 72MB/s average, Acess: 8.1ms, burst 12MB/s

640GB: 120MB/s Max read, 95MB/s average, Access: 16MS, Burst 130MB/s

raptor is in green:

edit: my arma+arma 2 folders take up ~30GB, so the first 5% of yellow, and 20% of green are where you want the lease access.

here is a link to the comparison of the hard drive i had at the time i bought the raptor (which was one of the faster of the 7200RPM drives of the time).

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g27/frag85/computer/HDD.jpg

Just by watching how much data is being transferred and how often, A1 and A2 really want access time. You have a lot of small, on the fly reads as new textures/models are loaded.

If anyone has SSD and a short stroked drive that would be interesting to see the arma mark results, or just frame rate results using the Fraps benchmark. I used to do that for tweaking A1 with a flight over Sahrani,

I think it's because my raptors are older. I just got a cheap Seagate 1Tbyte drive for like $85 bucks and slapped it in, then ran the same test as you and that the raptor was slower in transfer rate. Once I get my new machine, I'm going to go with two Raptors in Raid-0 and be done with it. But Arma2 just hammers the drives constantly.

[1longtime 10]

We should all be talking about hard drive speed alot more.

Edited October 6, 2009 by 1longtime

[hamis 0]

they come with 5 year warranties, i have had mine for several years and it has never had any errors.

If controller goes out you don't get any warning before it happens.When you need another controller (circuit board under the disk) which is same revision to save your stuff.

[dogz 10]

We should all be talking about hard drive speed alot more.

very true

I have been on these forums for a while now and I still see ppl posting their mega rigs without listing their HD configs...

I think it is possibly the most important component for A2..and of course we all know it is the slowest component in the PC...

my game has constant HD activity...

I have a very low spec rig but have two WD750 AAKS in raid 0 with all the swap file tweaks etc and I get a pretty good game...

I will up to SSD before I up my 9800GT

[frag85 10]

From the grave!

HDD vs SSD, 2nd half shows the loading time.

Watch it in HQ

SATA HDD vs SATAIII HDD vs SSD

Edited July 1, 2013 by frag85

[Serged 1]

thanks for these. Always nice to see how a component influences game performance.

But in this case I didn't really see much of a difference. Mabye it's just me though?

[frag85 10]

A3 Beta Ramdisk vs SSD vs HDD.

Almost no difference between the RD and SSD in loading times. Hardly any texture pop on the mechanical HDD.

note: I think the stuttering in the video is just dropped frames, the frame rate was hovering around 30 and I was trying to record at 30fps.

Here are some benchmarks for large file reads on my hard drives(greater than 4k):

Top left: Hitachi 1 TB, SATA III

Top Right: WD Black 1TB, SATA

Bottom: Intel 520 SSD

http://i.imgur.com/fjMl8.jpg (373 kB)

RamDisk

http://i.imgur.com/zIMNGyH.jpg (108 kB)

6.5GB/Sec :eek:

Edited July 1, 2013 by frag85

[chrisb 196]

A3 Beta Ramdisk vs SSD vs HDD.

Almost no difference between the RD and SSD in loading times. Hardly any texture pop on the mechanical HDD.

note: I think the stuttering in the video is just dropped frames, the frame rate was hovering around 30 and I was trying to record at 30fps.

Here are some benchmarks for large file reads on my hard drives(greater than 4k):

Top left: Hitachi 1 TB, SATA III

Top Right: WD Black 1TB, SATA

Bottom: Intel 520 SSD

http://i.imgur.com/fjMl8.jpg (373 kB)

RamDisk

http://i.imgur.com/zIMNGyH.jpg (108 kB)

6.5GB/Sec :eek:

Great test. Did you put it onto the A3 forum..

[.kju 3244]

Nice test - although some thoughts:

# Did you start the game with -nosplash -skipintro -world=empty?

# A3 engine/models might be more optimized

# Stratis might have too little different objects/models overall/in these scenes

# Chernarus in big cities would be a though test

# You might have to push the engine more with faster camera speed and quicker/more frequent camera position jumps

[frag85 10]

;2430975']Nice test - although some thoughts:

# Did you start the game with -nosplash -skipintro -world=empty?

# A3 engine/models might be more optimized

# Stratis might have too little different objects/models overall/in these scenes

# Chernarus in big cities would be a though test

# You might have to push the engine more with faster camera speed and quicker/more frequent camera position jumps

No' date=' just the standard launch from Steam, no arguments, so some of the terrain was already loaded from the 'spy plane' menu background. Startup is pretty much identical between the Ramdisk and the SSD though. The only real difference is between the SSD and HDD.

I think #2 and 3 play with each other. Stratis is such a small island with so little content. It barely uses much of my video memory, and I don't have much. The newer A3Beta version of A3Mark on armaholic doesn't seem as demanding as the A3Alpha version, or A2mark.

I haven't messed around with any additional islands yet in A3.

I was using the A3Mark because its publicly available to make it easier for people to make a comparison to their own system. I was actually messing around with this a little in A2. Quick camera flight along the southern edge of the continent, then NW towards the large airfield. It would have been interesting to see with the initial release version of A2 since much of the streaming/stuttering has been greatly reduced.

Today I went through and did an A2 test using ArmA2Mark. Results were very similar. And here I have world=empty.

Conclusion:

Bottom Line, Not really worth it. Maybe if you have unlimted funds and nothing better to do with your money.

TL:DR

Is a Ramdisk benificial?

Sort of, but not really. Your mileage may vary. But you're probably better of spending the money on an SSD.

I would by no means say it is crucial for your arma experience. Especially when considering the cost. The software ranges from $20-$80 for home use (for of over 4GB), and RAM has been going up in price a lot lately. My 3570k only support 32GB and running a 20GB ramdisk I still cannot fit all my A2 stuff. My A2 install is >30GB. Just the base A2+OA content filled up a 20GB ramdisk. A3 unmodded takes up ~6GG currently, and that is with just Stratis.

As far as cost, in November I bought 16GB for $55 shipped. It was normally $85. Soon after it was $95, then $115, then $125 a couple months ago. I just checked it again and it was $135+shipping. Throw in the software and you are looking at $155-205 for a good ramdisk setup to fit the most frequently used files for one game at a time.

I only have 32GB right now because I was staring at 4x8GB sticks and figured why not, FOR SCIENCE. One of my original 2x8GB sticks had gone bad. They were always run at their rated specs and never OC'd. The only thing in my system that has been OC'd was my CPU's multiplier. I don't know if the problem was there since I bought them, but all of a sudden I was having memory errors and relaxing timings and reducing frequency did not solve the issue. I bought an identical 16GB kit while I RMA the original and plan on selling the Ram I got back from RMA. I have been testing them in my system over the past few days to make sure they are stable before I sell them.

Is there a performance difference?

Sort of. Overall I'd say there is less stutter/hitching going on in A2, but an SSD does a great job of reducing this. Texture pop (from textures streaming) is almost nonexistent with an SSD. You really have to be looking at very specific things to notice the difference between an SSD and Ramdisk. I loaded RO2, MWO, PR for BF2 and MWLL onto the ramdisk, and there is virtual no, to absolutely no difference in loading times over the SSD, and even the HDD in PRs case, which is CPU bound. I didn't try PS2, but I would probably say that would have a small reduction in loading times. Going from an HDD to SSD PS2 loads in 10 seconds vs a couple minutes to load into the warp gate.

Am I going to be running a ramdisk for anything?

Nope. I'd rather put the $125 I'm getting for my 2nd 16GB kit towards and SSD, or better yet a new GPU. I'm running SLI GTX275s which offer performance in the range of a single GTX560ti/570 which is enough for A2/A3 even @3840x1024, but I'd like to replace my 1280x1024 monitors with 1920x1200 at some point.

[Dwarden 1125]

great tests, hint to utilize the 4th empty square , maybe add there loading from either network drive or USB 3.0 :)

[Valken 622]

Can you do a test with AllInArma and load the built in A2 benchmarks with a bigger map such as Chernarus? You can use ARMA2 FREE from steam instead.

Or even A2mark running AIA.

SDD on SATA 3 GBs, SATA 6 GBS, HDD SATA 3 and 6 GBS vs RAMDISK.

So far, I have an HDD on SATA 3 GBS vs an 8 GB RAMDISK. RAMDISK wins by a large margin for me but I am considering a SDD just for ARMA 2/CO, ARMA 3, and GTA series including the upcoming installment. If ram was cheaper like last year, I would get more ram hands down.

Edit- noted you did ran the A2 benchmark. :D Thanks!

Edited July 7, 2013 by Valken

[frag85 10]

Can you do a test with AllInArma and load the built in A2 benchmarks with a bigger map such as Chernarus? You can use ARMA2 FREE from steam instead.

Or even A2mark running AIA.

SDD on SATA 3 GBs, SATA 6 GBS, HDD SATA 3 and 6 GBS vs RAMDISK.

So far, I have an HDD on SATA 3 GBS vs an 8 GB RAMDISK. RAMDISK wins by a large margin for me but I am considering a SDD just for ARMA 2/CO, ARMA 3, and GTA series including the upcoming installment. If ram was cheaper like last year, I would get more ram hands down.

Edit- noted you did ran the A2 benchmark. :D Thanks!

The A2 benchmark crashes in A3 using AiA.

Just get an SSD. There isn't much to be gained by a Ramdisk once you have the SSD.

[frag85 10]

Old thread, but I want to keep the work I've done in the same thread.

I re-did the A3 test with 1.14 coming out. The ramdisk software I am using now; Softperfect Ramdisk, is giving me about 10GB/s sequential and just over 1GB/s random 4k read/write. I tossed them a few $ donation because this ramdisk software has all the features I was looking for.

If you watch it on youtube, there are links to the indivitual videos. You can youtubedoubler it or watch on 2 monitors if you want a clearer picture.

Edited April 14, 2014 by frag85