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

[Muscular Beaver 0]

The trees are fully textured up throughout the flight and the map switch is so fast, I'm confident enough to have a quick look at it in flight.

Then a bit of running around, bit of zooming with the modified binoculars.

As you can see, no texture lag and no stutters. There's a LOD pop at the end when I zoom back out and the front hull furniture on the LAV pops in. The stutters you are seeing in the vid are all video/compression artifacts. I have the originals here and they are smooth.

Looks just like mine incl. stutters and LoD trashing. What you said proved how subjective this topic is.

I saw a lot of stutters in your video (which I also have and most of them are are not video related because I know videos stutters myself), best noticed just as you turn your head in the helicopter. When you start to land objects are popping up and LoD trashing is happening (look at the building to the right for example) and the stutters also happen right as the textures and models are loading. The map switching also doesnt seem instant, as you claimed before, instead its as fast as its on my computer, but I dont actually think its fast.

It looks absolutely the same on my computer, but you dont seem to bother much about the problems that are still there.

Too bad you didnt test in a big city with many AIs and players around. Switching there from scope to normal view causes a lot of LoD trashing. Its not very noticeable on the airfield (but still there).

Did you use a ramdisk in that video?

He didnt put the whole folder,that is to big for his amount(and just about anybodys).

Wrong:

I then moved the whole ARMA 2 folder (Steam Version) into the RamDisk

...

The result was - for the first time - a smooth game experience.

Every time I read his post I envy him. I wish I had 16 GB to do as he did, but Im not spending 500 - 700 Euro for 4x 4 GB so that only one game runs smooth while 99.9% of other application wont use that kind of RAM.

Edited February 1, 2010 by Muscular Beaver

[kklownboy 43]

....

Wrong:

Every time I read his post I envy him. I wish I had 16 GB to do as he did, but Im not spending 500 - 700 Euro for 4x 4 GB so that only one game runs smooth while 99.9% of other application wont use that kind of RAM.

My bad, you can get "Basic" arma2 in the 12GB that he has. Using a lot of Mods/addons though is a different story. But you dont need all of it in.

[dmitri 0]

Is this really 33 pages on ramdisks? Snake oil.

In this engine, a blazing fast processor is the closest thing to a "magic bullet" for gaining FPS.

[Tankbuster 1733]

Looks just like mine incl. stutters and LoD trashing. What you said proved how subjective this topic is.

I saw a lot of stutters in your video (which I also have and most of them are are not video related because I know videos stutters myself), best noticed just as you turn your head in the helicopter. When you start to land objects are popping up and LoD trashing is happening (look at the building to the right for example) and the stutters also happen right as the textures and models are loading. The map switching also doesnt seem instant, as you claimed before, instead its as fast as its on my computer, but I dont actually think its fast.

It looks absolutely the same on my computer, but you dont seem to bother much about the problems that are still there.

Too bad you didnt test in a big city with many AIs and players around. Switching there from scope to normal view causes a lot of LoD trashing. Its not very noticeable on the airfield (but still there).

Did you use a ramdisk in that video?

Those stutters are video and compression artifacts. The original captures are silky smooth. I had to use Windows Movie Maker to make that vid and it's known to be jumpy. You can't say how responsive the map switch is because you don't see me pressing the key (actually a joystick button).

I will do a town overflight and post some more.

No, no ramdisk. 6G of DDR2 all in use for the system.

My point was that the experience, while far from perfect, is considerably improved from when I had XP installed on a HDD.

I take your point. Perhaps I'm not bothering or not seeing the problems you can see. I'll have another look at the original captures. Maybe a fresh viewing will be more instructive.

[Leon86 13]

I dont use the ramdisk anymore, I put texture detail on normal, terrain detail on very low, that saves some HD traffic I guess. In 1.05 the game keeps running even when it needs a buiding texture, (then it's a grey blob) but I just ignore that.

[maturin 12]

I have 4GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 7. How big can/should I make my ramdisk (default is 32MB)? Ideally I would like to have the trees, bushes and/or buildings loaded from there. And Do I just move the .pbo files or the bisigns too? And do I move them and save a backup or just copy them?

[Leon86 13]

I would stay under 2 GB, Arma2 uses 1.3 sometimes and windows needs some (actually quite a lot) too.

you should copy them to a folder named AddOns on your ramdisk and then add -mod=R:\ to your shortcut (if your ramdisk is R that is)

[maturin 12]

I would stay under 2 GB, Arma2 uses 1.3 sometimes and windows needs some (actually quite a lot) too.

you should copy them to a folder named AddOns on your ramdisk and then add -mod=R:\ to your shortcut (if your ramdisk is R that is)

Windows uses up to a gig of RAM on my system. Does ARMA really only use 1.3? Is that an exact figure?

[kklownboy 43]

A2 seems to stay around .9GB~, It will push up to 1.3 ~. I have seen 1.7~ 1.9 but thats been awhile. Now its in the 1.1~for peak, COOP MP. Not sure of EVO or crazy DOM. WarFare is good for over a GB...

[cjph 0]

I've been running with 8Gb of total RAM split 2Gb system and 6Gb RAMdisk using xp32 for several months now. I get an occasional freeze, typically when alt-tabbing, which sorts itself out after a few mins (not sure if this is RAM limited or some other fault though it would tie in with the above comments). It is on my to do list to see if the freezing goes away if I split the memory 3/5Gb instead.

[maturin 12]

If you have 6GB in a RAMdisk, then as I understand it, you have 1GB left for Windows and only 1GB for Arma, which is not always enough, as kklownboy says.

Edit: And I just loaded all the foliage and half the building pbos, with their bisigns into a 1 gig ramdisk. I used the shortcut parameter shown above, with the correct letter and listed after several mods and other commands (ie, -nosplash). Is there any way to tell whether the game is using the ramdisk or its usual files? Because texture loading shows no improvement. Should I delete the original files in the C:/ ...Arma2/Addons folder?

Edited February 3, 2010 by maturin

[Leon86 13]

I ran a 4GB ramdisk once on my 6GB system, windows (7x64), in all it's wisdom decided to start using the pagefile for arma2, I saw this using the tool qwertz uses in his I/O analysis thread (wich really should be called I analysis thread, but whatever). You can see arma2.exe reading from the pagefile. When I ran a 3GB ramdisk this never happened.

If you run windows XP I think you should be ok with 2 GB, I remember running operation flashpoint on it with way less memory.

@maturin, of course if you move it and arma2 still works that means that it loads everything from the ramdisk but if you run windows seven you can open the task manager: Ctrl-Shift-Esc and then click rescource monitor, then click Disk and there you can filter for arma2, if you see files being accesed from the ramdisk you see it's being used. If you dont have windows seven I wouldn't know but you can always use the tool from this topic Arma 2 I/O analysis

Edited February 3, 2010 by Leon86

[major woody 11]

I'm having a bit trouble making the .xslx file work properly... - I do have the .csv file however - Can someone plz be so kind doing the analyze for me if I send the .csv file...? :)

Tnx in advance

[Elcivor 0]

I would stay under 2 GB, Arma2 uses 1.3 sometimes and windows needs some (actually quite a lot) too.

you should copy them to a folder named AddOns on your ramdisk and then add -mod=R:\ to your shortcut (if your ramdisk is R that is)

so, a 1.8gig ramdisk is enough? I mean, is it required to make a large ramdisk?

I'm not quite familiar with ramdisk or how it works with ArmA :P

[Leon86 13]

you can make the ramdisk as big or small as you want of course. 1.8GB is enough for most of the buildings and plants on chernarus.

[evilfury 0]

Which pbos are most important to put on ramdisk?

[kklownboy 43]

Which pbos are most important to put on ramdisk?

Depends on how much RAM you have, and how you play. In this thread are a few "blue prints" of addons. I use all the graphix stuff and sounds, If you play on different islands its good to get all of them too. My RAMDisk is now at 7.8GB.

[maturin 12]

Wait, so checking the 'Save' box in the ramdisk creation wizard isn't enough to keep your data in there? Mine is empty again. And I did notice some unusually crisp pinetrees while running it.

[cjph 0]

Depends on the software - I use Superspeed (I think) and there is both an option to save the contents and an option to automatically load on system startup. They are on different tabs in a setup menu so might be missed.

[Leon86 13]

I made a folder called AddOns on my desktop and put everything I wanted in my ramdisk in there. I dont want to add a minute to my boot time. When I want to play arma2 with The ramdisk I copy it there. And when I dont care It doesn't matter because my Arma2 folder is still intact and -mod=R:\ doesn't load anything.

[cjph 0]

Good plan - I mainly play Arma and rarely shutdown, so it would make sense to load it up only when needed.

[Muscular Beaver 0]

I too noticed that on my system (win7 x64), the pagefile is used when I dont leave 3 GB of RAM for the system & ArmA 2. ArmA 2 sometimes freezes for a few seconds if it doesnt have enough RAM to use. If I use even more RAM for my RAMdisk, the freezes are far more often and take much longer.

So I would guess, if you have 4 GB, 1 GB for a RAMdisk is the maximum (maybe 1.5 GB, you should try for yourself, I still had minimal freezes with 1.6 GB as RAMdisk and 4 GB of total RAM), if you have 6 GB, its 3 GB RAMdisk, if you have 8 GB, its 5 GB RAMdisk, and so on.

Dont ask me what files are best to put on it. I would like to know that myself.

Right now I only have structures.pbo, buildings2.pbo, plants2_tree.pbo, chernarus.pbo on it, and I still get lots of LOD trashing (especially vehicles) in bigger towns and cities (even with grass turned off).

[cjph 0]

I've got 8Gb RAM and changed the split to 5Gb RAMdisk and 3Gb for the system from 6/2Gb. I get minimal slowdowns or stutters, just one annoying delay with the white office building on the seafront in Chernogorsk. At the start of my sample battle (there are several inf and armour units slugging it out) it can take 10-12 seconds before the full detail is in place, though changing the settings from very high to low does help. I have all the building and Chernogorsk pbos on the RAMdisk, so am confused why it takes so long to get into focus, unless it is simply a one off at startup (because once loaded, it seems to run OK). Maybe there is so much for the system to process, and it happens to be one of the last objects to be loaded and drawn ?

[killerwhale 1]

I can run the game @ 60 FPS without doing any tweaking:bounce3:

System

Windows 7 64

Intel Quad Core @ 2.66 MHZ

4GB dual channel memory

HIS Radeon HD 5970

just go get Radeon 5970 and you wont be dissapointed

@ the moment, heat is a problem for this card. better have a good case. I'm idling @ 55 degrees celcius.

[Muscular Beaver 0]

This thread is not about FPS numbers (I have more than enough with my "old" GTX 260). Its about hickups and stutters. If you claim to not have those, then I simply dont believe you.