Here's how I got ARMA2 to perform smoothly using RAMDISK

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

Placing the page file on another partition of the same HD doesnt simulate the benefits of having two hard drives since the read head of a single drive can still only seek information from one place at a time.

That's exactly what I was thinking... sad.

[tcp 10]

No, you cannot put a page file on RAM, that's where the data is to begin with.

RAM holds data that is being worked on by applications that are open.

Some of this data is not being accessed as frequently so it is temporarily moved to a paging file on the hard drive to make room for higher priority data.

Ideally, you would like to have enough RAM so that you never need to page anything because it a slow process to write it to disk, then have to read it back into RAM when you need it again.

Unfortunately, it happens, especially if you have a lot of background programs running or low memory. If you have a secondary, physical hard drive (partitions don't count) then you can make use of the full speed of both drives. If you already have ArmA2 installed on your other drive, then you are already making use of both drives. However if your Windows and your ArmA2 are on the same drive, then move your paging file to a second drive. You can do it through the Control Panel, just google for instructions.

It's not gonna be a big performance boost. Defragging your hard drive would probably provide more of a boost depending on how fragmented it is.

Not many people have 16GB of RAM, (I only have 4GB on 32bit windows, but I am fine with that) so another poor man's version of this tweak is to get a USB 2.0 Flash Drive (your motherboard also has to support USB 2.0). Most flash drives have slow write speeds, but their read speed is actually very fast. You don't have to reinstall ArmA2, just copy your install folder to the flash drive and change your shortcut to run the game from there. Just don't let anyone know you're running ArmA2 from a flash drive, they'll probably be dicks and pull out the stick while you're playing the game.

Edited October 14, 2009 by tcp

[schaefsky 0]

Regarding pagefile, partitions and so on:

The problem is that Arma 2 has to access the harddisk very often. Accessing the harddisk is VERY slow in computer terms.

The pagefile (a part of the harddrive that Windows uses to "extend" the main memory) will also be accessed fairly often on most running systems.

So, how to gain something?

Having the pagefile on a different PHYSICAL drive than "your other stuff". So when Windows is accessing it, it is still "slow" because of being a harddisk, but it is faster than having it on the same drive because there will less mechanical movement in the harddisk to access it (it allways accesses the same "space"). The same goes for your other disk. Again, computer terms: mechanical movement => slow.

Having Arma 2 on a seperate partition for itself can be a benefit, because it may be easier (faster) to defrag that partition, so you might actually do it more often, especially after patching or deinstalling/installing mods. Defraging your harddrive => your data is "more in one place" => less mechanical movement => you know the deal.

Keep in mind that IIRC in XP you need around 20% of free disk space (partition space) to run a defrag properly.

In XP at least, you can set your virtual memory (pagefile) to be of fixed size (rather than let Windows determine needed size on the fly). Doing so might also improve your system speed.

[qwertz 10]

Lots of questions - let me try to answer.

I have steam version, do I have to install again or like you said, just move the folder?

It depends. If you want to start Arma2 from within Steam, you need to reinstall. If you don't mind, you can just start arma2.exe from the folder on the ramdisk (or create shortcut to your dektop).

Could you please help us idiots setup a RAM disk? I've got 6 GB of memory, 4 of which ArmA II never touches, so that may help.

It very much depends on which RamDisk software you use. I only have experience with RamDisk plus (and tried it the first time with this exercise), and it was pretty painless. I would suggest though that you read the FAQ/Helpfile that comes with the program carefully. (http://www.superspeed.com/)

In regards to your RAM - 6GB is not enough to get everything into the ramdisk. The folder with all the assets (pbo files and such, I'm not at my gaming PC right now), which is the stuff you want to have on the RamDisk, is 8.2GB alone after a fresh installs and might be bigger with addons/mods.

What I would suggest in case of less than 12GB RAM (besides adding another 6GB) is to to be selective. Use Process Monitor from Sysinternals, set a filter to only monitor your Arma 2 directory, play for a while, identify the files that are being read from most in ProcMon, and move these files to the RamDisk. You can then create NTFS symlinks to the files you moved from the original directory to the RamDisk (in Vista and above, the command is mklink x:\filename.extension y:\filename extension, in XP you need tools).

This might in fact be a rather clumsy way to achieve some of the benefits - I guess the best solution is to buy more RAM. If you are really into ARMA2, it is well worth it.

So this only works for people who have a shitload of ram, or does it use hard drive space?

Without workarounds (see above), yes. My ARMA2 folder is 8.5GB. You need at least 12GB RAM to be able to create a 8-10GB Ramdisk. Even this might be too small if you have lots of custom assets files - your mileage may vary.

What size is Your Arma II folder? My Arma II folder is 11.4GB with a few addons and the CAA1 mod

I am not an expert with mods and assets - could someone check whether they use their own pbo's ?

Edited December 31, 2009 by qwertz

[tcp 10]

My ArmA2 is 12.8GB! CAA1 is 2.73GB. Steam game cache is 7.8GB. That's 2.27GB of addons!

Let's see if I install 32GB of RAM it might just be enough to install Windows and ArmA2 into RAM. I'll need either a VM or some kind of RAMdisk bootloader. Any suggestions? LOL j/k.

[qwertz 10]

No, you cannot put a page file on RAM, that's where the data is to begin with.

Actually, you can. And it might help - if I would have more than 12GB Ram, I would actually put the pagefile on the Ramdisk as well. Having only the pagefile on a Ramdisk might not alleviate the problem that ARMA2 still streams gigabytes of data during gameplay form the HDD. Of course, this would not make sense on a 64bit system, because as you said you better use your ram as ram. However, on 32bit systems, all physical memory above 4GB is not used at all, so it actually makes sense to use it for the pagefile.

By the way, a few clarifications:

1) I chose to use XP 32 bit for my dedicated ARMA2 install/hard drive for reasons stated above. With any 32 bit system,I can only use 4GB of my 12 GB. Actually, because ARMA2 is only able to use up to 2GB of RAM (and I have yet to see that happening in real life), and you really only need 2.5GB available physical ram on Win XP for ARMA2.

However, on 32bit systems that does not fully use the 36bit PAE mode (and this applies to WinXP/Vista/Win7 32 bit), the system needs to reserve memory address space for all memory mapped I/O (MMIO) devices such as your GFX and other system devices below the 32bit address room barrier of 4GB. This is the reason why you can use only 3.0-3.5 GB max on a Windows 32bit system.

The reason why I am writing this is that you have to have that in mind when creating your RAM disk. Ramdisk software such as RamDisk plus is able to use all physical memory above and below the 32bit barrier for the ramdisk, however, it is not automatically detecting how much memory adressable space needs to be reserved below 4GB for add-in cards and devices, so there is a chance you crash your system if you are cutting it to the edge.

I have reserverd 1.5GB for my GFX and system devices in BIOS (your mileage may vary - add another GFX in SLI and you need more), which means that I only see 2.5GB usable memory in Windows 32bit. At the same time, I have created a 8.5GB RAM disk to fit the whole ARMA2 folder into the ramdisk.

1.5+2.5+8.5 = 12.5, which is 0.5 GB more than I have installed. This means that 0.5 GB of the Ramdisk is cutting into the 1.5GB reserverd for MMIO devices - which is risky and really cut very close, but works in my case. Again, your mileage may vary.

This all sounds like a lot of hassle, but I will never go back to playing Arma2 from a HDD, that's for sure ! :-)

Edited December 31, 2009 by qwertz

[Chunk3ym4n 10]

So if I am using the Ramdisk trial I should do it on my secondary hard drive? Also would I need over 8.5 gigabytes of ram?

Edited October 14, 2009 by Chunk3ym4n

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

Random question here: What would happen if I got rid of my paging file completely? :D

[tcp 10]

Well, it does seem counter-intuitive. A paging file is data taken out of RAM to make more room, so why would you ever put it back into RAM?

However, you are working beyond the limitation of 32-bit Windows. Essentially, you have a super-fast drive, not used as RAM. Putting the pagefile and whatever else you can would be a benefit.

I suppose you've got a great idea because even if you had 64-bit windows, ArmA2 and most games don't taken advantage of it.

Traditionally, if you had enough RAM, you could get rid of your paging file without risking out of memory errors. However, due to increased memory usage of windows, games, and applications and the amount of reserved RAM required for the increasily larger memory video cards, everyone needs a paging file.

Oh and sorry for going sorta off-topic with the paging file stuff, a lot of people seem to be confused now.

Edited October 14, 2009 by tcp

[Chunk3ym4n 10]

If I have two harddrives would the stuttering be better if I moved ArmA 2 to my secondary physical harddrive?

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

Well, it does seem counter-intuitive. A paging file is data taken out of RAM to make more room, so why would you ever put it back into RAM?

However, you are working beyond the limitation of 32-bit Windows. Essentially, you have a super-fast drive, not used as RAM. Putting the pagefile and whatever else you can would be a benefit.

I suppose you've got a great idea because even if you had 64-bit windows, ArmA2 and most games don't taken advantage of it.

I do have x64 Win7. So I've got 6GB of DDR2 RAM that my computer never uses. WHY MUST THIS BE SO COMPLICATED!? Optimize your F'ing game BIS!

What should I set my paging file to? I'm a memory nub and gfx card EggXpert so idk.

[jumpinghubert 49]

i have arma2 on a second harddrive AND on the first partition of this drive. XP-32bit home is on my first harddrive. No pagefile at all. I have no popping textures and only a little bit lag in the first seconds on map when turning around. After that no lags. All @veryhigh except for landscape on low and objectdetails on high.

[tcp 10]

jugg, you're probably not using your paging file if you have more than 4GB of RAM.

You could create a RAMdisk as qwertz suggests and use the symlink method for only the most important ArmA2 files.

[qwertz 10]

u had a point for me talking about the popping up textures.

this is a pretty annoying thing for me..

Is this caused of the only 512Mb in my graphics or more likly the CPU?

Also i wonder if i could change the HD4850 with same model with 1024RAM..

Maybe i could do this without spending some money,but it would be some effort...

Having more video ram should definitively help, but will not completely eliminate the problem. Heres the problem:

I believe that Arma2 has >8GB of game assets that get dynamically loaded. Only <1GB will fit into your video ram (actually, much less if you use AA or triple buffering etc.). The rest will be requested from RAM. If it is not found in RAM (and it is only in RAM if it has already been loaded before AND is still there, which means you need a lot of RAM to increase your chances here), a "page fault" happens, meaning the data is then being looked for in paged memory, or, ultimatively, in your game directory on the HDD.

Moving from 512MB to 1024BM only slighty increases your chances here.

The ideal solution would be having 8+ GB of video memory. As long as we don't have this, the next best option is to have the data in system RAM. Arma2 uses only max 2GB for all its data, and 32bit systems can only use 3-3.5 GB. So, we are still limited here.

This is where the ramdisk comes in handy. Effectively, you have all the data you need in RAM.

So, when a texture or other asset is not found in video memory, it will be looked at in RAM. As we are still limited to 2GB usable for ARMA, there will still be page faults and the data will be looked up on the disk. The disk is now RAM as well - voila.

The only caveat here (and this i why I said that with 16GB rather than 12GB I would put the pagefile on the ramdisk as well), is that some date will still be read from paged memory, which is the pagefile residing on some HDD. The best solution here is to reduce the size of the pagefile to a very small amount (switching it off is likely to cause issues).

Would setting up the paging file on the secondary partition on the same HDD (where the game is not installed) improve FPS?

This has nothing to do with FPS - it could improve stutter and texture popping, though.

Having said that, before I moved to using a ramdisk, I had my ARMA2 folder on my Vertex SDD RAID, which delivers around 500MB/s transfer rate and very low latency. This was not enough to eliminate the stutter. With a ramdisk, you are in the 3-5GB/s range. Therefore, I don't think that moving the pagefile to another (compared to the above SLOW hard disc) will help a lot, but feel free to try it out, I might be wrong.

Edited December 31, 2009 by qwertz

[demonlord89 10]

So....could this be useful info for the developers?

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

jugg, you're probably not using your paging file if you have more than 4GB of RAM.

You could create a RAMdisk as qwertz suggests and use the symlink method for only the most important ArmA2 files.

So should I just get rid of the paging file then? I really don't want to do all that RAMdisk shit if I don't have 12GB of RAM to use it properly. What are the cons of deleting the paging file?

[qwertz 10]

So should I just get rid of the paging file then? I really don't want to do all that RAMdisk shit if I don't have 12GB of RAM to use it properly. What are the cons of deleting the paging file?

No you should not. If data is not found in RAM, it might be mapped in the pagefile. If it is not mapped there, it will be loaded form you game files on the HDD.

In both cases, it will be loaded from the HDD, but the pagefile is likely to be faster than your game directory.

On the other hand, many applications don't work correctly without a pagefile, and might crash. There is no reason to NOT use a pagefile.

In my case, with the ramdisk, it matters though, because the pagefile is the only data location that is left on the slow HDD. Therefore, I want to avoid a lot of data being found there, because the next level is the ramdisk, which is faster than the pagefile.

Edited December 31, 2009 by qwertz

[tcp 10]

This is not new information. They've given us a few tweaks here and there, but at the same time added more content to slow us down. I am sure they have people working on the engine, but I think most of the work goes into VBS2. It would be nice if they used us as a testing ground since we are constantly dealing with issues anyways. I would think the government would be pissed if they had to deal with crashes. However, I suppose the versions are too different. I hope whenever we do get a engine rewrite, they make it 54-bit friendly.

[Iena 0]

Hi my friend, sorry but you have 2 Vertex SSD da 120GB in RAID0,and Arma 2 don't run well???

Why?

Please can you benck with hd pro,to campare the SSD VS RAM?

I wiil buy 2 ssd for Arma (Corsair Extreme Series),but if you tell that it's useless i will saving more money...

Thanks a lot my friend

Da quando ho comprato ARMA 2 a pochi mesi fa, ero infelice con le prestazioni del gioco. Oltre a un ampio potere di hardware (i7 @ 4Ghz, 12GB DDR-12800, GTX280 Hydro Copper, 2 Vertex SSD da 120GB in RAID0, ecc), io soffrivo un frame rate piuttosto basso e - più fastidioso - balbettare e cestinare LOD texture.

Ho fatto una quantità folle di prove per trovare una soluzione a questi problemi, e ora hanno finalmente raggiunto una fase in cui io sono felice con i risultati, che voglio condividere.

Tutti questi test sono stati fatti sulla risoluzione 1920x1200 (sia 3D e display), e con 3000m vista la distanza e tutto su molto alto, e post elaborazione off.

1) Selezione del miglior sistema operativo

[/ U]

Ho cercato Win7 in 64bit/32bit, Vista a 64/32 bit e XP in 64bit/32bit. In termini di prestazioni, ARMA 2 funziona meglio con XP32 [/ B] - Ecco la classifica (dal bene al male):

1) XP 32bit

2) XP 64bit

3) Win7 64bit e 32bit (nessuna grande differenza)

4) Vista 64bit e 32bit (nessuna grande differenza)

ARMA 2 sembra non fare uso delle capacità maggiore di un sistema operativo x64 bit - è una pura applicazione a 32bit. Esegue un'applicazione a 32 bit in Windows a 64 bit in teoria non dovrebbe causare hits significativo delle performance (grazie a WOW64), ma in caso di ARMA2, lo fa realmente causare problemi. Questo è più vero per ciò che io chiamo la morbidezza "del gioco: In 32 bit, c'era meno balbettare (cioè se si effettua una virata di 360 gradi, è stata una svolta liscia senza singhiozzo).

In termini di framerate, XP batte tutte le altre versioni di Windows, e 32 bit viene fuori meglio.

Balbuzie è stato anche meno evidenti con entrambe le versioni XP, e meglio con la versione a 32 bit.

Nessuna differenza è stata trovata nel mio test, in termini di texture / cestinare LOD - in tutti i casi, dopo alcuni minuti di gioco, texture sarebbe visibilmente pop quando si sposta veloce, che ho trovato molto fastidioso.

Il che mi porta al secondo punto.

2) RAM disk [/ U]

Volevo sapere quali sono le ragioni per le texture è il caos. Fare restringere il problema, ho controllato la memoria e l'utilizzo del disco durante il gioco.

Per farla molto breve: il disco rigido è un colpevole di primo piano, in quanto vi è ~ 8 GB di dati e le texture che sta ottenendo in streaming mentre ci si sposta in tutto il gioco. Sia la occasionali "rallenterà" così come texture popping accadere quando ARMA 2 inizi lo streaming da disco.

Per risolvere il problema, ho creato un disco di 8,5 GB di RAM con SuperSpeed RamDisk più (c'è una versione di prova di 14 giorni. Il motivo per cui ho scelto questo software rispetto ad altri è che si può affrontare lo spazio di memoria superiore a 4GB su sistemi a 32 bit, supporta Auto Save / Load del ramdisk quindi è persistente, e supporta ramdisk grandi).

Ho poi spostato l'intera cartella di ArmA 2 (Steam Version) nel ramdisk (si ricorda che è necessario avviare ARMA 2 utilizzando il arma2.exe all'interno della directory spostato. In alternativa, è possibile creare un collegamento simbolico alla cartella - pls Google it) .

Il risultato è stato - per la prima volta - a buon [/ B] esperienza di gioco. E 'difficile da descrivere, ma senza tutte le balbuzie e la consistenza popping, il gioco raggiunge un nuovo livello di qualità percepita visiva. Tutto è liscio, disegnare LOD's istantaneamente, e il gioco intero gioco si sente molto più scorrevole. Per la prima volta, mi sento soddisfatto delle prestazioni di ARMA 2.

Fatemi sapere se avete delle domande, e pls provalo se stessi e condividere alcuni dei tuoi risultati, se volete!

QWERTZ. [/ QUOTE]

[qwertz 10]

Hi Iena,

here's the HD Tune result:

By no means is it useless to buy SSDs - you will be surprised how much they will speed up your system in general, and it certainly helps for ARMA2 compared to a standard mechanical hard disk. However, as you can see above, that's still a different animal compared to RAMdisk speeds.

:eek::)

Edited December 31, 2009 by qwertz

[Greg 0]

So....could this be useful info for the developers?

Yes, if they improved their streaming technique, the game would not stutter or slow while waiting for resources to load from disk.

[Alex72 1]

so basically you need another hard drive and win xp.

which means spending an extra $200-$300 dollars to get a single $50 game to work properly

But it is a $50 game that lasts for years. ;)

[yanquis 10]

well crysis still doesnt work 'properly' on 99.999% of systems depending on how u define that word (i mean here running smoothly at all times with all settings maxed)...and this is a way better game than crysis. alex has a good point as your system upgrades over time the game engine upgrades along with you. this will probably have to last us 2-3 years so anyone who doesnt have a brand new system will upgrade by that point.

[Alex72 1]

So if I am using the Ramdisk trial I should do it on my secondary hard drive? Also would I need over 8.5 gigabytes of ram?

If your game with addons is over that then yes you need more. Needs to fit everything into yout RAM.

Personally ACE2 is what will make ARMA2 real REAL good of a game, and i think it might land somewhere @ 2GB roughly(?), and thats about 10-11GB. So i just have to buy 10GB RAM then... Oufh.

[Tankbuster 1746]

so another poor man's version of this tweak is to get a USB 2.0 Flash Drive (your motherboard also has to support USB 2.0). Most flash drives have slow write speeds, but their read speed is actually very fast. You don't have to reinstall ArmA2, just copy your install folder to the flash drive and change your shortcut to run the game from there. .

Is this really a workable solution?