ArmA 2 I/O analysis results

[froggyluv 2136]

Just got another 4 Gigabyte RAM for my 64Bit Win7. Now i got 8Gigs, to less for a RAM disc right?

To little for everything yes but you could still run a 4gb RamDisk with decent results if you wanted.

[BasileyOne 10]

Nvidia users can simply enable "LargeSystemCache" to "1" in registry to get old-skool agressive Microsoft FS caching. SuperFetch is WAY less agressive/handy, but helps Photoshop users or in some CAD appz.

on AMD GPU's this eventually[in case of both CPU stress and intensive memory/disk IO]to BSoD and severe FS corruption[you need OS repair or even full reinstall after :-/]

from generic things[work in both cases]

try raise/create "IOPageLockLimit" to something non-zero["3221225472"(Dec) in my case]

enabling [by set to "1"] "DisablePagingExecutive" also help a bit.

tweaking "SystemPages" wasn't safe too, but in my case, "4194304(Dec)proven to show noticeable effect w/o drabacks/errors.

Edited December 2, 2011 by BasileyOne

[maddogx 13]

Nvidia users can simply enable "LargeFileCache" to "1" in registry to get old-skool agressive Microsoft FS caching. SuperFetch is WAY less agressive/handy, but helps Photoshop users or in some CAD appz.

on AMD GPU's this eventually[in case of both CPU stress and intensive memory/disk IO]to BSoD and severe FS corruption[you need OS repair or even full reinstall after :-/]

from generic things[work in both cases]

try raise/create "IOPageLockLimit" to something non-zero["3221225472"(Dec) in my case]

enabling [by set to "1"] "DisablePagingExecutive" also help a bit.

tweaking "SystemPages" wasn't safe too, but in my case, "4194304(Dec)proven to show noticeable effect w/o drabacks/errors.

None of these tips are valid.

A "LargeFileCache" reg key does not exist - you mean "LargeSystemCache", and that setting is no longer used since before Windows Vista. And those users who are running older versions of Windows are absolutely not advised to use this setting, as it can cause huge problems.

As for DisablePagingExecutive and IOPageLockLimit, neither will have any effect unless you are still running Windows 2000 with a very small amount of RAM, in which case you most likely aren't an Arma player. Newer Windows versions simply don't read these values.

I can distinctly remember someone peddling these bullshit tips around here before... I guess that was you.

[BasileyOne 10]

None of these tips are valid.

A "LargeFileCache" reg key does not exist - you mean "LargeSystemCache", and that setting is no longer used since before Windows Vista. And those users who are running older versions of Windows are absolutely not advised to use this setting, as it can cause huge problems.

As for DisablePagingExecutive and IOPageLockLimit, neither will have any effect unless you are still running Windows 2000 with a very small amount of RAM, in which case you most likely aren't an Arma player. Newer Windows versions simply don't read these values.

I can distinctly remember someone peddling these bullshit tips around here before... I guess that was you.

you right ! "LargeSystemCache", right.

no, its used and very-well used in server-version of Windows, up to Win8 server and on by default on them.

it "can use huge" problem in some cases, but sadly, there is no other way to check "for sure" w/o trying. imagine servers users, frustration, when they found thats newbough RAID controller[or remote management device or ... anything]drivers break FS, with this key, leaved in peace/default :-/

yeah, calling anyone else words bullshit is best bullshit evAr, sure !

guess harder then. and w/o perfonal offense/violation of This resource 'terms of use', please.

p.s. fixed typo, thanks.

[maddogx 13]

LargeSystemCache

Just to clarify, the LargeSystemCache key has no effect on Windows 7...

Source.

Unfortunately, changing the settings had no visible effect on the machine’s behavior when reading large files from the server. (...) It’s possible that the LargeSystemCache value is no longer used.

Source.

WS2008: Upgrade Paths, Resource Limits & Registry Values

LargeSystemCache ... Not Used

Source.

DisablePagingExecutive

With a reasonable amount of RAM the setting will do essentially nothing.

Source.

Under all but the most extreme circumstances it does nothing.

Source.

IOPageLockLimit

Anyone who has done any kind of registry tweaking has seen IoPageLockLimit. (...) What if I told you that this registry entry does absolutely jack? In fact, it isn't even read by the OS, or any other function of the system. (...) In Windows 2000 RTM it was a real and valid setting. However, starting with W2000 SP1 and continuing with every subsequent release from 2K to XP to Server 2003 and everything in between, there is no reference to this registry value. In fact, in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the I/O Page Lock Limit is locked to 64mb.

Source.

[BasileyOne 10]

thats wasn't meaning. you put you bogus/internet-backed "knowledge" against by almightly real-world experience ? you FAIL then !!! hahahaha *Evil laugh*

note: some people can be right or can be wrong. but what is important they was DIFFERENT, as well as their opinions differ, sometimes.

as well as differ their reasons/experience/logic behind such opinions in absence of such.

so you can safely can have yours and im keep mine as well as im enjoy in REAL-life benefits of using of them. and [attempts of]sharing them.

[Dawks 10]

Well, RAM Disk is in place. I'll be looking for a list of files to pack it with tomorrow.

OS Managed Memory: total 3326 with 2840 "free" (Not truly free, of course.)

OS Invisible Memory: total 2812 with 2680 R:\ and 62 free.

Funny thing: I have 3 X 2 Gig DDR3, but OS manages 3326 of it. Seems a weird number.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Tremblay

[Tonci87 163]

Wasn´t there somewhere a turtorial for setting up a ramdisk?

[Leon86 13]

it's the same as starting a mod.

install a ramdisk prog (like dataram)

lets say the ramdisk is R

Create a folder called "AddOns" on R

Copy the OA shortcut and add -mod=R:\ to the shortcut path.

now it will load all the .pbo's in the AddOns folder to R, so just copy some there.

[Tonci87 163]

Definately will try this

[jiltedjock 10]

I've got Windows 7 64 bit and 16GB RAM. I've had good results using free Ramdisk to create a 4GB FAT32 partition and putting my swap file on it. Swap is disabled on all my physical disks. The Arma install is on an SSD.

The results seem good. Remember that a 32 bit app is not practically going to get more than about 1.7GB to 2GB RAM from Windows. This is true under 64 bit Windows as well as 32 bit apps run under a 32 bit Windows emulator. This means there is likely to be paging during your Arma session. I feel I get more benefit from a very fast page file in RAM - containing data from PBOs that Arma has already streamed and filed in memory - than very fast PBOs being streamed from RAM, particularly when those PBOs are on a SSD anyway.

JJ

Edited January 17, 2012 by jiltedjock

[Tankbuster 1747]

I've got Windows 7 64 bit and 16GB RAM. I've had good results using free Ramdisk to create a 4GB FAT32 partition and putting my swap file on it. Swap is disabled on all my physical disks. The Arma install is on an SSD.

JJ

This is very similar to my install. I tried to move swapfile to the ramdisk, but the system insisted an a restart when moving the swapfile, thus destroying the ram disk. How did you do it?

[jiltedjock 10]

I used Ramdisk http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

From memory it was simply a case of creating a 4GB partition - no specific formatting or anything, leave it as FAT32. In performance options change the swap file to be 4GB on the new partition. The partition is persistent across reboots, but the swap file is new on every boot.

The only problem I have ever had with it is when I had a device plugged into one of my USB ports that I don't normally use. This seemed to cause a conflict which led to the Ramdisk not being re-created after a reboot.

This has been one of the best things I've done with the PC, excellent for Skyrim etc as well.

[cjph 0]

I used Ramdisk http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

From memory it was simply a case of creating a 4GB partition - no specific formatting or anything, leave it as FAT32. In performance options change the swap file to be 4GB on the new partition. The partition is persistent across reboots, but the swap file is new on every boot.

The only problem I have ever had with it is when I had a device plugged into one of my USB ports that I don't normally use. This seemed to cause a conflict which led to the Ramdisk not being re-created after a reboot.

This has been one of the best things I've done with the PC, excellent for Skyrim etc as well.

I use DataRAM as well, but generate a new RAMDisk each time I log on, and have experienced problem likes Tankbuster. Do you find the auto-load option in the DataRAM tool sets up the RAMdisk prior to the system looking for the swapfile ? I think that was the issue I had before.

This may explain the 1 second freezes I have been getting which I had put down to the 2Gb VRAM limit on my GPU, but I suppose it could be related to slow swapfile access, and possibly fixed moving the swapfile on the RAMDisk ?

cj

[jiltedjock 10]

Do you find the auto-load option in the DataRAM tool sets up the RAMdisk prior to the system looking for the swapfile ?

Ramdisk is creating the drive before the OS creates the page file. So it is not a persistent drive / saved image, it is a new partition every time, which I think is the most basic set up. I vaguely recall that when I was first playing around with it I thought it would be best to make it more persistent. That didn't work, and would really not offer much of an advantage anyway unless I had been symlinking PBOs to it as well. I will check it when I get home tonight, I don't specifically recall what Autoload is set to. Edit: checked the settings -

4092MB FAT32

Windows Boot Sector

Load and Save - Nothing checked other than Disk Label. DO NOT CHECK LOAD DISK IMAGE AT STARTUP IF YOU ARE USING IT FOR PAGING. This is where you can get into difficulties as the partition will not be available to the OS in time for the page file.

Options - nothing set

Like I say, the only time it has not worked was when my USB was causing a delay in the Ramdrive creation.

A 12GB Ramdisk may be a litttle excessive out of 16GB - only leaves 4GB for your 32Bit WoW and also for the 64Bit OS. Also, is 2GB of vRam enough for 3 screens? Not so sure it is....

I have got a similar system to you - 2500k at 4.7 on air, 1*ssd, 1*hdd, 1*GTX580. To be honest the lack of CPU cycles is becoming more apparent than anything else.

Edited January 19, 2012 by jiltedjock

[Tankbuster 1747]

I can't make this work. :( I tried identical settings to JiltedJock and used the same software too.

The RAMDISK isn't persistent across reboots and it need to be because the system reboots when I move the pagefile.sys.

Also, after a reboot the system says it's made a pagefile.sys because of a problem. It's made a big 16GB pagefile on C drive, although performance options is set to have no pagefile on C.

It is happy to create the pagefile on the RAMDISK, though. I've now got two pagefiles! :)

[cjph 0]

I managed to get a single pagefile working on the RAMDisk using the DataRam tool, and it does re-create it each time it starts. The downside is that whether it is on a pagefile or SSD I still get the freezes no matter where the pbos reside, which I how put down to GPU VRAM as it is regularly hitting 1.95Gb+. Seems 2Gb is not enough for widescreen eyefinity setups without some trade off. :(

cj

[Tankbuster 1747]

Ah yes, after a couple of reboots and some "pursuading" C Drive it didn't have a swap file, now it's working. :) This is excellent, especially for SSD users. It should reduce the number of writes to the drive, which can only be good.

As for your stutters, CJ, are you using the latest drivers for your graphics card?

[cjph 0]

Hi m8

Yes, latest drivers, and I think it is more of a periodic freeze than stuttering. I put it down to the paging of graphics memory, and changing from the malloc4 to the Windows managed one helped a bit. Eyefinity seems to need over 2Gb for Arma2 (other games don't).

cj

[Tankbuster 1747]

Rarius says the latest drivers were causing problems, he rolled back to an older version to cure it, but eventually, he switched to nVidia. Mind you, I also get periodic freezes too since 1.60.

[cjph 0]

Yes, it does seem to be more pronounced for me since 1.6, though I want to try the other memory allocators again on maps I know cause the issue. Certainly reducing VD and all settings from high to medium did not help and the memory usage on a 2GB VRAM card still got to 1.9xGB. Hoped everything on a RAMDisk would help but it seems not. I mighr rolling back the drivers when am next online - thanks for the tip.

cj

[Leon86 13]

Why are you guys putting the pagefile on the ramdisk??

It takes up space on the ramdisk, if you would just make the ramdisk smaller the pagefile wouldn't be used at all because nothing would have to be paged.

[Tankbuster 1747]

Why are you guys putting the pagefile on the ramdisk??

It takes up space on the ramdisk, if you would just make the ramdisk smaller the pagefile wouldn't be used at all because nothing would have to be paged.

Because we know what we're talking about. You, on the other hand.....

[jiltedjock 10]

Why are you guys putting the pagefile on the ramdisk??

It takes up space on the ramdisk, if you would just make the ramdisk smaller the pagefile wouldn't be used at all because nothing would have to be paged.

Because Arma2 is a 32 bit application. That means it will only be allocated about 1.7 GB of RAM by the OS, whether that is 32Bit Windows or 64Bit Windows. That means it is going to page while it is running, especially if you play for a while. That means you are best to have your page file in RAM.

If you put your PBOs and other Arma2 data on a Ramdisk, then yes they will load quickly. They will be loaded into RAM. As the game runs on they will be swapped between RAM and page file.

If you have enough RAM then probably the best of both world is to have:

RAMDISK for page file

FancyCache with a Read only caching strategy caching the disk that the PBOs are on.

This is what I am doing. I've got 16GB RAM and Win64. 7GB for the OS, 4GB for RAMDISK with a 4GB page file on it, 5GBs for FancyCache caching my SSD (which has got Arma2, Skyrim etc on it).

---------- Post added at 13:22 ---------- Previous post was at 13:18 ----------

I can't make this work. :( I tried identical settings to JiltedJock and used the same software too.

The RAMDISK isn't persistent across reboots and it need to be because the system reboots when I move the pagefile.sys.

Also, after a reboot the system says it's made a pagefile.sys because of a problem. It's made a big 16GB pagefile on C drive, although performance options is set to have no pagefile on C.

It is happy to create the pagefile on the RAMDISK, though. I've now got two pagefiles! :)

This is what was happening to me when I had a device plugged into one of the USB ports - it seemed to be stopping the RAM from being allocated to Ramdisk prior to the OS creating the page file.

[domokun 515]

I run CO on an C2D overclocked to 4GHz, with 4890 and 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

As my E8400 runs off a P35 mobo, I'm stuck with DDR2.

Currently DDR2 is x2-x3 more expensive than DDR3 (8GB = €100 vs €40).

So I'm wondering what would be the most cost-efficient upgrade (highest "bang for buck")

a) 4x2GB of DDR2 => 12GB RAMdisk? for OA pbos?

b) 64GB SSD (Crucial M4?) for OS, OA + paging file?

c) a new mid-range (€200) gfx card (6950 or 560ti?)

Given that I game 1920x1200 (24" TFT) and I can't afford the ubiquitous 2500k/560ti/16GB-DDR3 combo.