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

[MavericK96 0]

I also had a negative experience using RAMDisk. Honestly the best performance increase other than overclocking your CPU is getting an SSD.

[old_painless 182]

But isn't a RAMDISK just as fast as an SSD, on paper at least? Neurofunker, no sorry, I have turned signatures off - keeps my smartphone happy!

[Dwarden 1125]

RAMDISK is way faster than SSD but it cost way more CPU power, so you need several physical cores dedicated to handle just the I/O

[NeuroFunker 11]

RAMDISK is way faster than SSD but it cost way more CPU power, so you need several physical cores dedicated to handle just the I/O

oh, even that! Nice to know it. Ok then, it's time to save for an SSD, we have got year 2012 already...

[Punisher5555 0]

If your mobo can go to 32 GB RAM I would do that instead. RAM is super cheap now. With that amount you can load all the PBO's and pretty much anything else in a ramdisk.

This is what I do. The game plays like it should.

Remember for all you potential ramdisk'ers out there make sure you save 4GB for the game and at least 1-2GB for Windows/teamspeak. All the rest for your ramdisk.

With that setup you will have no problems.

Edited February 17, 2012 by Punisher5555

[MavericK96 0]

I still have to disagree, I made a 6 GB RAMDisk and the stuttering that I used to get back when I used a HDD and not SSD came back full-force.

[mach2infinity 12]

I would've thought that sticking to a SSD would be far more simpler. I haven't checked SSD prices but given the flooding in Thailand last year, where much of the hard drive components are made and assembled. Some of the better HDDs may be closer to SSDs in price still. So I would bet that it's worth going for a SSD. I did and whilst mine doesn't have tons of storage, for 60GB it's not bad. I have to say, gameplay on a SSD for me is a lot smoother. You still need a decent CPU (very important), graphics card and RAM but you don't need to defrag a SSD. I think the only thing with SSDs is their shelf-life isn't as good as a HDD due to the cells degrading over time/after successive data writes.

Edited February 25, 2012 by Mach2Infinity

[MavericK96 0]

I think the shelf life of an SSD is something like 10 years running 24/7. Most HDDs probably won't last that long, so I'm not sure reliability is a huge issue. I'd say that SSDs are even more reliable simply due to the fact that they have no moving parts that can break.

[doveman 7]

Works a ton better without any advanced config, Fancy Cache.

http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/

Also uses the RAM for anything else you might be doing instead of wasting it all on ArmA.

My HDD rarely spins up while playing/loading.

Plus you can put a inexpensive SSD in as a cache drive to make it even faster.

Ideal setup is Windows/Games/Etc on a HDD or HDD RAID array (think 4x 1TB drives), a 40-64GB SSD sitting in front of it teamed up with 8GB+ of RAM for caching, freaky fast at low cost with HUGE storage. It's what I'm doing right now actually.

I just got round to trying this. I set up a fresh XP, as I normally play in Win7 but I've seen tips that Arma works better in XP and I saw FancyCache can use Invisible RAM, so thought it could use some of my 8GB as cache even in XP. However, after enabling the IM feature XP would no longer boot and just BSOD. It may have been a coincidence and I'll try again sometime now I've repaired XP and made a True Image. My motherboard (MSI 990FXA-GD80) doesn't have onboard graphics, so the problem isn't anything to do with part of the Invisible RAM being reserved for that.

I set FancyCache to Read-Only cache my D: partition, which is where my games are stored.

Monitoring the Perfomance Stats, after playing a couple of campaign missions in OA, it says:

Read Bytes (Total): ~1.16GB

Read Bytes (Cached): ~12MB

So it doesn't seem like it's done much caching! I found the game quite laggy, particularly when switching my gun to Optics mode, but that may be due to my OA settings rather than anything to do with FancyCache so I'll try again with it disabled to see if it makes any difference.

[MavericK96 0]

Holy thread necro!

I wouldn't bother with XP TBH, and just get an SSD if you want a real increase in performance.

[doveman 7]

Holy thread necro!

I wouldn't bother with XP TBH, and just get an SSD if you want a real increase in performance.

Yeah, I probably will sometime. It runs OK under Win7, I just wanted to see if it would run any better under XP with some of these free apps. I might try putting the swapfile on a RAMdisk next.

[Rhan 1]

Morning all, quick backstory and question about this,

Following the guides in this thread (Particularly Liquidpinky 's), I am using a RAMdisk (4gb from Dataram) but here's the problem

I put the suggested PBO's on the RAM in a folder, which I symlinked to the original addons folder, but when I try to use the game it says I am missing chernarus. I have the chernarus PBO's on my RAM, and if I move them back, it seems to somewhat "fix it". This is leading me to believe that somehow the 2 folders are not actually linked, despite being symlinked, though I'm not sure if that is actually possible.

What I'm getting at is, has anyone run into this kind of problem while setting up their RAMDisk, or does anyone know of any reason why the symlinked RAM folder might be preventing the game from accessing whats on it?

As well, just tried symlinking by right dropping symlink inside the actual folder, instead of the folder itself, and it gives an error "Data file too short. Expected ----, got ----"

Edited July 26, 2012 by Rhan

[BasileyOne 10]

RAMDISK is way faster than SSD but it cost way more CPU power, so you need several physical cores dedicated to handle just the I/O

quite opposite in fact.

IO handled by storage subsystems usually eat LOT more CPU, even in AHCI mode.

let alone any kind of proprietary drivers[like IAA] side-effects on-topic.

what it may only cost is about extra 8W for switching from 4Gbx2 to 8Gbx4 inexpensive ordinary unbuffered DDR3 memory.

also some G32 and S2011 mobos had 6 or 8 RAM slots.

and in case if you had board supporting registered modules, you can double and quadriply this amount[for whopping price spike, sadly]

generally-speaking, RAM is about 150x times faster than best-offered SSD's on market.

maybe switching from [20yrs old]flash memory to RRAM/MRAM/FRAM will change this[its non-volatile like flash, faster than RAM(and some versions compete with SRAM), had nearly infinite resource, don't need refresh, don't need erase bfore write, consume LOT less power[than RAM even] and etc and etc]?

Edited July 26, 2012 by BasileyOne

[MavericK96 0]

You can shoot off theoretical numbers and whatnot, but in my personal, direct experience, SSD provides a much smoother and faster experience than a RAMDisk did. If someone wants to do some tests and provide some benchmarks detailing what they did with a RAMDisk and showing that it's better, by all means. Until then, I'll stick with my SSD.

Trust me, I'd love for RAMDisk to be a noticeable improvement over SSD. I bought another 6 GB of RAM pretty much specifically for RAMDisk. However, when I tried it, there was a lot more stutter than SSD and thus it was useless for me to use a RAMDisk.

[BasileyOne 10]

well, to trust[why? how? what for?] you im should reject my Id, Ego, personal and working experience[in many years].

which is contradict with main idea of existence/personalty against God will.

nobody force you to use ramdisk and i wish you luck w/that way.

but personally [reasonably]prefer better way around.

maybe when SSD's switch from [slow/unreliable/hungry/deprecated]flash things with impotent controllers and tiny ram buffers, something change in that sectors.

until that SSD's are remain for "wannabe geeks" with money burning their pockets toward Earth centre, military applications, Database workload and other Random-Access Read performance importance accents, built with huge emphasis on redundancy/reliability[opposing to consumer devices].

[MavericK96 0]

I'm not trying to offend you, I'm just asking if you've actually tried playing ArmA 2 on a RAMDisk versus SSD and what your results were. You have technical knowledge of the two systems, okay, but what I'm saying is that in practice it doesn't pan out that way, for me anyway.

Based on your comment about the worthlessness of SSDs it kinda seems to me like you've never actually used one in a gaming machine before. Next to overclocking my CPU, getting an SSD was the best thing I did for my performance in ArmA 2.

[BasileyOne 10]

well you anonyingly repeatable "guessing game" attempt with me fail/

again.

basically, you wrong.

completely.

also you heavily obsessed with mission point/topic of discussion, for example, there is no "does SSD worth use with Arma2 workload?" question, but "what better for Arma2 setup - Ramdisking-it or putting it[and/or OS]on SSD ?"

get 32 Gb or 16 Gb of RAM and try again.

and again and again.

with different Ramdisk[basically free from MS wasn't bad btw] products from completely free to VERY expensive enterprise-grade solutions.

thats about you "seems to me like you've never actually used one in a gaming machine before" invalid/rhetorical/pointless flame in Ramdisking game/swap/temp folders/scratch files context.

Do it !

and do it FAST !!

or God will kill you !

or cute bunny !

or both !

[MavericK96 0]

I don't know if there is a language barrier here or what, but I'm not trying to offend you and you are freaking out. So never mind, forget I said anything. :rolleyes:

[Tankbuster 1746]

I don't know if there is a language barrier here or what, but I'm not trying to offend you and you are freaking out. So never mind, forget I said anything. :rolleyes:

I swear, Google translation will be the cause of world war 3. The scope for misunderstanding is huge.

I'm not sure what he is saying either. It makes my EYES hurt trying to read [understand] it. The stuff about bunnies does make him look considered and grown up though.

I do know this; I used run a RAMDISK, before I got my current SSD and it was very impressive for getting textures into the game.

[rekrul 7]

Hehe, Basiley seems to be a RAM-extremist who has declared jihad on SSD disks.

I must say that when I was testing RAMdisk in Arma2 due to this thread it was unbelievable smooth, but when I tried recently I got stuttering again, both in OA and A2. Have no idea why. Either way I guess we can conclude with "A RAMdisk should make it smoother, but it might not due to <random> factor". :)

[BasileyOne 10]

Hehe, Basiley seems to be a RAM-extremist who has declared jihad on SSD disks.

I must say that when I was testing RAMdisk in Arma2 due to this thread it was unbelievable smooth, but when I tried recently I got stuttering again, both in OA and A2. Have no idea why. Either way I guess we can conclude with "A RAMdisk should make it smoother, but it might not due to <random> factor". :)

use you common sense, as im do mine.

basically you can had different experience [and thus different opinion, thus], but thats not invalidated mine, "just because", ever.

issue you're talked about is more related to [buggy/test-of-concept]nature of majority of provided RamDisk's, when a related software become mature/optimised, benefits become even more noticeable.

and no, im not counter-SSD extremist and warmly welcome SSD's "in general", i just reject [any degree]flash-memory usage in anything more or less serious, with predictably unsatisfying/disastrous consequences.

in my personal opinon, 128Gb RRAM/MRAM SSD would be quite nice entry-level device to talk about, but modern level of such tech, aswell as FRAM, mean talk about 8Gb-size-alike SSD's, in best case, sadly.

iNtel and Micron[and then Samsung and Hynix and Toshiba] put too much cash into R&D of bottlenecked/EoL technology, instead of moving forward to tech, they already aware[and optimisitially reviewed in-house/within corporations]

also quite welcome could be RAM-based SSD with SATA3-interface. current memory chips/tech allow pack about up to 320Gb into usual SSD's case, which can lead to skyrocketing performance, especially in DB bench/workload. dark side: its need really GOOD backup battery, BUILT-in within with TTL/lifecycle for 2-3yrs at least.

basically Gigabyte together with SK Hynix discussed such joint project, 5-7yrs agoif im remember correctly titles.

Edited August 3, 2012 by BasileyOne

[Tankbuster 1746]

Hehe, Basiley seems to be a RAM-extremist who has declared jihad on SSD disks.

You think so? I can never understand a word he writes. It's English, but makes no sense at all.

[doveman 7]

Dummies Guide, by a dummy.

Download this app for the symlinks, saves a lot of time and hassle for those like myself who really have not a clue.

Link Shell Extension

Go to the downloads section and get whatever one is for your OS/system.

Install as per the installation instructions on the page linked.

All the instructions for using are also on that page but I will guide you through it anyway.

Fist off create a new folder for putting the files you want separated from the main game folder.

The ones I moved were the following as they are most likely the main streamed ones, these are all located in the file called addons in the main game directory.

Cut and paste these files in your new folder and keep it somewhere as backup, you also need it to reload into the RAMdrive depending on how you use it.

buildings.pbo

buildings2.pbo

Buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo

Ca.pbo

chernarus.pbo

chernarus_Data.pbo

chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo

misc.pbo

misc2.pbo

misc3.pbo

plants2_Bush.pbo

plants2_Clutter.pbo

plants2_misc.pbo

plants2_Plant.pbo

plants2_Tree.pbo

Roads2.pbo

rocks2.pbo

signs2.pbo

structures.pbo

utes.pbo

water.pbp

water2.pbo

The above files totals at 3.21gb altogether so I went for a 4gb RAMdrive, you can chop and change to suit yourself or do some testing and see what ones really are used most. Don't bother moving the .bisign files, no point doing it really.

Has anyone made a list of files to put on the RAMdisk for OA/CO?

I just compared the files against this list and found:

OA has these files in Expansion\Addons:

25/02/2012  15:58        11,883,734 ca_e.pbo
25/02/2012  15:57       110,965,726 misc_e.pbo
25/02/2012  15:58       204,312,810 plants_e.pbo
20/02/2012  20:48       100,481,903 roads_e.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59        21,886,526 rocks_e.pbo
20/02/2012  20:48        17,540,897 signs_e.pbo
25/02/2012  15:58       676,048,239 structures_e.pbo
              7 File(s)  1,143,119,835 bytes

and these in Common:

20/02/2012  20:41        58,100,345 buildings.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59        76,599,188 buildings2.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59         6,961,258 buildings2_ind_cementworks.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59       135,729,968 ca.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59            20,693 ca_pmc.pbo
20/02/2012  20:42       172,399,732 misc.pbo
20/02/2012  20:42        45,920,685 misc2.pbo
20/02/2012  20:43       125,795,552 misc3.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59         3,913,323 plants_pmc.pbo
20/02/2012  20:43        19,322,525 roads2.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59           645,493 roads_pmc.pbo
20/02/2012  20:44       257,981,140 structures.pbo
25/02/2012  15:59        10,585,493 structures_pmc.pbo
20/02/2012  20:44         2,365,273 water2.pbo
             14 File(s)    916,340,668 bytes

A2 has these files in Addons:

11/05/2012  01:14       251,863,094 buildings.pbo
11/05/2012  01:14       359,035,400 buildings2.pbo
11/05/2012  01:05        62,030,732 buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo
26/07/2012  01:44       135,790,858 Ca.pbo
11/05/2012  01:06        95,534,991 chernarus.pbo
11/05/2012  01:02        55,060,120 chernarus_Data.pbo
11/05/2012  00:47       219,076,450 chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo
11/05/2012  01:15       219,614,137 misc.pbo
11/05/2012  01:15        47,538,300 misc2.pbo
11/05/2012  01:15       137,412,062 misc3.pbo
11/05/2012  00:47        87,002,749 plants2_Bush.pbo
11/05/2012  00:47        35,105,965 plants2_Clutter.pbo
11/05/2012  01:03        20,588,709 plants2_misc.pbo
11/05/2012  01:16        17,955,911 plants2_Plant.pbo
11/05/2012  01:06       357,641,549 plants2_Tree.pbo
11/05/2012  01:10       190,002,902 Roads2.pbo
11/05/2012  01:06        35,495,941 rocks2.pbo
11/05/2012  01:06        39,653,945 signs2.pbo
11/05/2012  01:15       907,914,948 structures.pbo
11/05/2012  01:07        51,981,055 utes.pbo
11/05/2012  01:11        11,686,598 water.pbo
11/05/2012  01:15       102,639,823 water2.pbo
             22 File(s)  3,440,626,239 bytes

these in Common:

26/07/2012  02:53        58,100,345 buildings.pbo
26/07/2012  02:53        83,560,997 buildings2.pbo
26/07/2012  02:53       135,732,603 Ca.pbo
26/07/2012  02:54       172,399,732 misc.pbo
26/07/2012  02:54        45,920,685 misc2.pbo
26/07/2012  02:54       125,795,552 misc3.pbo
26/07/2012  02:54        19,322,525 roads2.pbo
26/07/2012  02:54       257,981,140 structures.pbo
26/07/2012  02:54         2,365,273 water2.pbo
              9 File(s)    901,178,852 bytes

and these in Expansions\Addons:

26/07/2012  02:59        11,883,734 ca_e.pbo
26/07/2012  03:00       110,965,726 misc_e.pbo
26/07/2012  03:00       204,312,810 plants_e.pbo
26/07/2012  03:00       100,481,903 roads_e.pbo
26/07/2012  03:00        21,886,370 rocks_e.pbo
26/07/2012  03:00        17,540,897 signs_e.pbo
26/07/2012  03:01       676,048,239 structures_e.pbo
              7 File(s)  1,143,119,679 bytes

and A2Free has these files in Addons:

22/02/2012  02:36        35,197,992 buildings.pbo
22/02/2012  02:36        52,303,928 buildings2.pbo
22/02/2012  02:36        11,657,398 buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo
22/02/2012  02:36       135,790,578 Ca.pbo
22/02/2012  02:36        95,535,037 chernarus.pbo
22/02/2012  02:36           755,879 chernarus_Data.pbo
22/02/2012  02:36        30,874,993 chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37        17,275,581 misc.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         8,750,174 misc2.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37        27,549,515 misc3.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         5,042,799 plants2_Bush.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         1,728,625 plants2_Clutter.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         1,726,035 plants2_misc.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         1,820,686 plants2_Plant.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37        21,933,610 plants2_Tree.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         2,868,809 Roads2.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         1,619,734 rocks2.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37        18,610,717 signs2.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         4,124,581 utes.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37         4,651,480 water.pbo
22/02/2012  02:37        11,247,072 water2.pbo
             21 File(s)    491,065,223 bytes

So the A2+OA files come to 1964MB+5230MB=7194MB and A2Free+OA 1964MB+463MB=2427MB. Clearly the A2+OA files are too much to fit on a 4GB RAMDisk but then some of them are duplicates (with the A2 files being much larger) so they wouldn't all be on the RAMdisk. Then again, maybe some of the Island files from OA need to be on there, as the list only includes chernarus.

EDIT: Comparing the folders again, it seems OA-Common more or less mirrors A2-Common and OA-Expansion-Addons mirrors A2-Expansion-Addons, so if we use the OA folders that would be 873MB (OA-Common)+1090MB (OA-Expansion-Addons)+3281MB (A2-Addons)=5244MB which is do-able with 8GB RAM but as I said, it depends on whether any additional files from OA need to be added to the list. It also would require RAMdisk software that allows using both the space above 4GB and some of the space below to combine as a 6GB RAMdisk, which it appears Dataram RAMdisk (which I'm currently using) doesn't facilitate.

Edited August 7, 2012 by doveman

[doveman 7]

I tested with FancyCache under XP yesterday, with the L1 Cache set to 300MB and the L2 Cache set to 4000MB. It doesn't seem to allow for using the Invisible Memory for L1, only L2 so that's why the L1 is so small.

Anyway, after about 4 hours it shows:

Read Bytes (Total): 1.59GB

Read Bytes (Cached): 676MB

Read IOs (Success): 74491

Read IOs (Failed): 0

L2 Read Bytes: 891MB

L2 Write Bytes: 2.46GB

Write Bytes (Total): 1.66GB

Write IOs (Success): 36319

Write IOs (Failed): 0

Total IOs (Read/Write): 110810

Read Hit Rate: 41.51%

It doesn't look to me like it's used a lot of the 4GB I've given it so I imagine it can't be helping as much as if I loaded a 4GB RAMdisk with the most used files but I'm no expert.

[doveman 7]

I guess the best solution for me would be to get another 8GB RAM, as then with Dataram RAMdisk using the memory above 4GB I could have a 12GB RAMdisk, so I could fit the entire 5GB needed for those files from OA-Common+OA-Expansions+A2-Addons, plus a fair few other mods (maps/islands would be the most useful I guess of which I've currently got about 6.5GB).

But in the meantime, if anyone could recommend which of the files to put on a 4GB RAMdisk, which is all I (and I imagine many people, as 8GB is quite a common amount of RAM) can use at the moment, that'd be great.