ArmA 2 I/O analysis results

[cjph 0]

Help - I am using the Superspeed RAMdisk and have been running with 6Gb total RAM for a few days, using 4Gb as a RAMdisk under xp32 to hold the 3.21Gb of files posted in the original thread. I got some more RAM today so I now have a total of 8Gb, but if I increase the RAMdisk size beyond 4Gb it trashes Arma2 performance with much worse stuttering and freezing than without a RAMdisk. In fact, the tool will not let me set a single RAMdisk size much more than 5.5Gb, and splitting to another disk to get a pair of 4Gb and 1Gb disks also hits performance, so I wonder if 4Gb is the maximum ? What I read was that much more than 8Gb is possible, even under xp32, so is there a Windows setting which needs to be enabled ? I tried everything in the Superspeed help files but nothing works.

Any suggestions, or have I just wasted the money (which I could put towards a better HD, CPU or GPU) ? I wanted to add some mods and other files to the disk but it appears this might not be possible.

cjph

[oktane 0]

Edit: never mind.. Superspeed = Ramdisk Plus! Anyone use a different ramdisk software that allows access to 'unaccessable' memory?

I have to say, that sounds familiar to the problem I was having. I will try to make mine smaller. Remember that the ramdisk will incur a huge CPU cost, not because its so CPU intensive, but because its so fast..

Help - I am using the Superspeed RAMdisk and have been running with 6Gb total RAM for a few days, using 4Gb as a RAMdisk under xp32 to hold the 3.21Gb of files posted in the original thread. I got some more RAM today so I now have a total of 8Gb, but if I increase the RAMdisk size beyond 4Gb it trashes Arma2 performance with much worse stuttering and freezing than without a RAMdisk. In fact, the tool will not let me set a single RAMdisk size much more than 5.5Gb, and splitting to another disk to get a pair of 4Gb and 1Gb disks also hits performance, so I wonder if 4Gb is the maximum ? What I read was that much more than 8Gb is possible, even under xp32, so is there a Windows setting which needs to be enabled ? I tried everything in the Superspeed help files but nothing works.

Any suggestions, or have I just wasted the money (which I could put towards a better HD, CPU or GPU) ? I wanted to add some mods and other files to the disk but it appears this might not be possible.

cjph

Edited October 25, 2009 by oktane

[cjph 0]

Hi - yeah I saw the posts, though it seems to be a sharp cut over from the 4Gb, so I wonder if it is causing some addressing issue as it appears to page more once another disk is added. I have a modest CPU with small cache, though the cost of a decent quad etc may not be worth it.

cjph

[liquidpinky 11]

Help - I am using the Superspeed RAMdisk and have been running with 6Gb total RAM for a few days, using 4Gb as a RAMdisk under xp32 to hold the 3.21Gb of files posted in the original thread. I got some more RAM today so I now have a total of 8Gb, but if I increase the RAMdisk size beyond 4Gb it trashes Arma2 performance with much worse stuttering and freezing than without a RAMdisk. In fact, the tool will not let me set a single RAMdisk size much more than 5.5Gb, and splitting to another disk to get a pair of 4Gb and 1Gb disks also hits performance, so I wonder if 4Gb is the maximum ? What I read was that much more than 8Gb is possible, even under xp32, so is there a Windows setting which needs to be enabled ? I tried everything in the Superspeed help files but nothing works.

Any suggestions, or have I just wasted the money (which I could put towards a better HD, CPU or GPU) ? I wanted to add some mods and other files to the disk but it appears this might not be possible.

cjph

I am running 5Gb no problem.

I have 3.21Gb game files and 1.5Gb as pagefile, I have also disabled paging on my proper HDDs and only the RamDrive deos the paging.

Runs quite smoothly now, you should benefit if you do the same.

[cjph 0]

Hi LiquidPinky

Thanks - do you run as a single 5Gb file ? I tried as both a single 5Gb RAMdisk and a pair of RAMdisks (a 4Gb one and separate 1Gb) and in both cases performance was severely impacted, even if just the 3.21Gb of pbo files were loaded. I have tried having a 2Gb paging file on the Raptor where the game sits, and on the OS HD, both with the same result of poor performance.

I'll try setting the pagefile to 1.5Gb (do you use 1500Mb or 1536Mb?) and the RAMdisk to 5Gb, and see what the performance is like - it is pretty smooth with a 4Gb RAMdisk and pagefile on the Raptor only so no complaints - just wanted to load as much as possible into a RAMdisk.

Incidently, you are definately on xp32 ? I think your original post said you were.

cjph

[liquidpinky 11]

Hi LiquidPinky

Thanks - do you run as a single 5Gb file ? I tried as both a single 5Gb RAMdisk and a pair of RAMdisks (a 4Gb one and separate 1Gb) and in both cases performance was severely impacted, even if just the 3.21Gb of pbo files were loaded. I have tried having a 2Gb paging file on the Raptor where the game sits, and on the OS HD, both with the same result of poor performance.

I'll try setting the pagefile to 1.5Gb (do you use 1500Mb or 1536Mb?) and the RAMdisk to 5Gb, and see what the performance is like - it is pretty smooth with a 4Gb RAMdisk and pagefile on the Raptor only so no complaints - just wanted to load as much as possible into a RAMdisk.

Incidently, you are definately on xp32 ? I think your original post said you were.

cjph

A single 5Gb file with 1536 set as paging file, my raptors have had paging disabled. The paging file is definatly a problem with the stuttering, so removing it from your HDDs will be an improvement as it was on mine.

I run Vista 64 as well and not XP32, I think it was qwertz who tried out multiple OS for his data collecting.

[cjph 0]

Ah ok, thats where the problem is since xp32 does not allow above 4Gb as I found some information confirming on the RAMdisk site (no issues with the 64 bit systems). I could have sworn I read that larger RAMdisks were possible or I would'nt have stumped up for the extra RAM. I think over that and some excessive paging takes place and performance drops.

Oh well, I'll try and return the memory and maybe look at a CPU/GPU upgrade. Thanks for your help.

cjph

[liquidpinky 11]

Ah ok, thats where the problem is since xp32 does not allow above 4Gb as I found some information confirming on the RAMdisk site (no issues with the 64 bit systems). I could have sworn I read that larger RAMdisks were possible or I would'nt have stumped up for the extra RAM. I think over that and some excessive paging takes place and performance drops.

Oh well, I'll try and return the memory and maybe look at a CPU/GPU upgrade. Thanks for your help.

cjph

You should be able to use the extra RAm in 32bit OS as well though, anything above 4Gb wont be detected by the OS but can be still used as a RamDisk.

Try cutting the game files down to around 3Gb then allocating all spare to pagefile, I did that before going to 5Gb and still got a good performance increase.

[hamis 0]

I have Vsuite Ramdisk Free Edition,but can't make it save/load image.Save button is greyed out and their help page doesn't help in this matter.What should i do to make it work?

[rekrul 7]

Without reading the 19 pages of discussion is the general consensus that ram-disks offers better performance than SSDs? If so, should I cancel my SSD order and go for more ram instead?

Also, is the 8GB RAM bug fixed yet?

(I'm running x64 Win7 7100 with 4GB RAM atm)

[cjph 0]

You should be able to use the extra RAm in 32bit OS as well though, anything above 4Gb wont be detected by the OS but can be still used as a RamDisk.

Try cutting the game files down to around 3Gb then allocating all spare to pagefile, I did that before going to 5Gb and still got a good performance increase.

Just tried various combinations but it seems disk activity is much increased when I set up a disk or disks with a total RAMdisk larger than 4Gb, and so hits performance. I think that xp32 uses/allocates 3.xGb of RAM so a 4Gb RAMdisk makes a total of 7.xGb, within the 8Gb installed. As I move to 5Gb or more RAMdisk the total exceeds the installed RAM and so the system starts paging. I'm not technical so might be wrong, but it would explain what I am seeing.

cjph

[Leon86 13]

Just tried various combinations but it seems disk activity is much increased when I set up a disk or disks with a total RAMdisk larger than 4Gb, and so hits performance. I think that xp32 uses/allocates 3.xGb of RAM so a 4Gb RAMdisk makes a total of 7.xGb, within the 8Gb installed. As I move to 5Gb or more RAMdisk the total exceeds the installed RAM and so the system starts paging. I'm not technical so might be wrong, but it would explain what I am seeing.

cjph

you could try to test this with the process monitoring tool we use to create the files for quertz's excel file. just filter to exclude everything that doesn't have pagefile.sys in the path and exclude anyghing that isn't the process arma2.exe. Now you can see how often arma2 reads from the pagefile (only system can write to the pagefile). On my system (win7 6GB ram) the pagefile is used when I make a ramdisk that's about 3.5 GB or more.

[liquidpinky 11]

Without reading the 19 pages of discussion is the general consensus that ram-disks offers better performance than SSDs? If so, should I cancel my SSD order and go for more ram instead?

Also, is the 8GB RAM bug fixed yet?

(I'm running x64 Win7 7100 with 4GB RAM atm)

Yes it's faster than SSD, no the 8Gb isn't fixed yet. I still have to use the -winxp command so I can use my full 8Gb RAM while using the RamDisk.

[tcp 10]

He's talking about PROPER projects building and plant low detail addons.

Whether any type of addon is allowed depends on the server. You can always request the signature be added to your favorite servers.

Regarding moving you stock PBO files from the base Addons folder to put on a ramdisk, the game doesn't know the difference if you create a junction/hardlink or load them as an addon, as long as you keep the BISIGN files alongside.

Although there work may be kept separate, is BI not the same company that has multiple government contracts to provide VBS for the US military? I wouldn't call them small so much as having their efforts divided.

[frequence 1]

I gave the RAMdisk a try...and what do i say....wow.

it gave me that pitch of performance to enjoy a smooth ArmA session.

Only used a 1.6GB RAMdisk for testing and i am thinking about upgrading from 4 to 8GB RAM instead of buying an SSD.

[Tankbuster 1744]

Here's my plan. Comments invited.

I'm running Xp32 on a motherboard that supports up to 8GB of RAM. The machine is due for a complete replacement internally in a year or so, so I'm going to move to 64b OS then. As I've already got all 4 slots populated (4 Gb total), I'm not getting any more RAM until upgrade day.

So, for now, I've gone for a IDE-CF card adapter, which I'm going to put in a 16GB CF card, the very fastest I can afford, probably something around the 30MB/s area and put the entire game directory on it.

Edited October 27, 2009 by Tankbuster

[EDcase 87]

Tankbuster, I'm affraid you will waste your money on that unless you want to use it for a camera as well.

I tested a x150 CF card with HD-Tach and the performance is much worse that my HDD.

I also tried a class 6 SDHC which was a bit better but still far slower than an HDD.

I have decided to try the OCZ Vertex 30GB and see if that helps.

Edited October 27, 2009 by EDcase

[Tankbuster 1744]

Even with the seek times being much quicker? I'm hoping that moving the game dir off the same drive as the swap file might help as well.

How was your card connected to the PC?

[evilfury 0]

Is this the right way to install armas pbo to ramdisk: simply copy pbos on ram disk and made shortcut with -mod=R:\Name of folder?

[Leon86 13]

Is this the right way to install armas pbo to ramdisk: simply copy pbos on ram disk and made shortcut with -mod=R:\Name of folder?

Arma 2 looks for folders named AddOns in whatever path you put behind -mod= , so copy them to a folder named AddOns on your ramdisk an put -mod=R:\ behind it in the shortcut.

[walker 0]

Hi all

Has any one considered that BIS has a long term strategy here?

Consider according to Moore's Law Ram sizes Double every year.

Most of us run between 4MB and 8MB at the moment next year we will be running between 8MB and 12 MB.

BIS is the only developer to have cracked terrain streaming technology. Lots of other developers claim to have cracked it but I have looked at them, they have not, they are just sticking the label on.

As the developer of the only engine with terrain streaming BIS have stolen a strategic march on every other developer.

The performance of the Real Virtuality Engine will increase as the amount of computer ram increases as the analysis of this thread proves. Operation Arrowhead will I think be BIS's first attempt to exploit that technological advantage.

BIS's next big bottle neck is net code and the need for server farm technology.

Kind Regards walker

Edited October 30, 2009 by walker

[EDcase 87]

Even with the seek times being much quicker? I'm hoping that moving the game dir off the same drive as the swap file might help as well.

How was your card connected to the PC?

Yes, the seek times are faster but the load times are much slower.

I used USB2 for the SDHC and built in connector for CF. The IDE card may be better but I doubt it will give much better results.

BTW I'm getting the SSD for work but I'm going to put ARMA on too ;)

Edited October 28, 2009 by EDcase

[hamis 0]

Quick help please!I tried with ramdisk plus 10 and vsuite ramdisk free edition and none of them could find more than 4GB of my 8GB.What's wrong?

[rekrul 7]

Intel just released a new firmware for their X-25 G2 and it looks like it can handle Arma2 now.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-x25-m-firmware,2461-4.html

[hamis 0]

Ignore my last post,now i have vsuite ramdisk server edition but how to make it load folders automatically?