Arma2 using only 2gb ram?

[eosteric 10]

According to this thread:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=97190&highlight=maxmem

This has to be wrong right? What the hell would be the reason to limit the amount of RAM usage to something so low, is that why performance is so poor?

[Cyborg11 10]

ArmA 2 is a 32bit application and 32 bit applications can only use 2 GB RAM.

[eosteric 10]

haha, lol, ok... my bad, I didn't know we were in the stone age still

xp had 64 bit version, vista, and now windows 7

Time to move with the times BIS, make a 64bit executable for Arma3, or better yet, make us one for Arma2, and definitely one for the expansion

[walker 0]

Hi eosteric

Having been programming computers for 35 years now; the one thing I have learned is that most early adopters are numpties.

Windows 7 did not exist when ArmA 2 was being developed. ;)

Also most people do not have windows 7 yet and 64 bit versions XP and vista are so horendous and missing so many drivers and so much functionality that only a numpty would use them and only about 2% even experimented with them, yes I did and do experiment with new systems, but I would never base a business on them.

Even today Windows 7 is only 10% market share.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10445776-56.html

You do not get rich by selling a game to only 10% of your potential customers.

Even today there are serious questions of the validity of moving to 64 bit operating systems. Most businesses are not expected to move to 64 bit systems until 2014.

I think BIS may well be considering a 64 bit for the next version of the Real Virtuality Engine (RVE) but I think console development is more important.

By the way I am still using XP32 bit for most of my computers here; gonna wait for a few service packs same as always, before I consider moving to Windows 7.

Kind Regards walker

Edited March 31, 2010 by walker

[eosteric 10]

uhm, 64 bit applications in 2010 is hardly early adopting

and OF COURSE you DON'T make ONLY 64bit exe, DUH! you make both, to support both user base, just like Crysis did, it's not that hard

btw: your percentages are wrong, they're not based on gamers, what you should check is steam's hardware surveys which shows a rapid increase in adopters of 64 bit systems

it shows 24.42% on windows 7 64bit, which is very good, and it's increasing at a rapid pace, also it shows 7.75% on vista 64bit, so add those up and that's 32% of steams users on 64bit systems

and like I said, you don't do only 64bit, you do both, it's no problem, you don't loose customers

steam surveys shows that windows 7 is being adopted fast and most going for the 64bit version

you choosing to stay on xp32 shows how much of a dinosaur you are though, when a clearly superior os exists (win7 64bit) , but stay on your system that barely handles multi-tasking, your choice.

btw: win7 dont need service packs to be highly useable, you'll find most win7 users are very happy, it's no doubt microsofts most succesfull os

Edited March 31, 2010 by eosteric

[ModeZt 0]

It's damn easy if you ask me. If a 64-bit executable will give a noticeable performance increase in ArmA2 players will go and install 64bit OS.

I remember 2 years ago Suma stated that compiling the program for the 64-bit OS does not provide extra FPS. That was the era of ArmA1. I guess it's time to check again whether a 64-bit exe will be more smooth in the reality of a huge intense world of arma2.

[eosteric 10]

well, performance don't come magically by converting a 32bit exe to 64bit

but with a 64 bit application they have the advantage of being able to use more ram, if they do that, make sure the game uses available ram for something useful then there would definitely be a performance increase and at least give a lot smoother experience

after all ram is faster than hdd

[[frl]myke 14]

To make a long Story short: name me 5 actual games that are 64bit apps.

[Zeron 10]

to be honest arma2 is not even using 2gig of ram for me, its using like 1.5GB the max. ;)

[jblackrupert 14]

To make a long Story short: name me 5 actual games that are 64bit apps.

Far cry (patched): http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/0,,30_2252_869_875%5E10543,00.html?redir=IEGFC01

Half life 2 (Valve/AMD hooked up and did it)

Crysis

Shadow ops

Unreal Tournament 2004 (patched)

World of Warcraft

Lost Coast

Colin McRae Rally 2005 (patched)

What do I win?

Edited April 1, 2010 by jblackrupert

[[frl]myke 14]

Nice list. Now remove those which weren't 64bit at release.

Rests:

Crysis

Shadow Ops.

All other were patched afterwards. And since Lost Coast relies on Half Life 2 i think naming it as separate game isn't fair.

Sorry, no win, but get in the kitchen and get yourself a cookie. :p

[Leon86 13]

If you were to convert the 32 to 64 bit you would have slightly lower performance but you could use more ram for the game, that would increase performance a bit. I think the problem is that bi doesn't want to make 2 executables with different memory management, arma2 used way more memory in v1.01 and 1.02 then it does now and it was a lot less stable, they finally have stability right so they dont want to "fix" that. -maxmem= doesn't do anything afaik, tried it at a whole range of sizes.

[Deadfast 43]

Nice list. Now remove those which weren't 64bit at release.

Rests:

Crysis

Shadow Ops.

The Warhead expansion for Crysis didn't have a 64bit executable either. Kinda gives you the insight as to what Crytek themselves thought.

[Leon86 13]

Crysis is so dependant on gpu power it really doesn't matter what you do with ram/processor.

[tonygrunt 10]

AFAIK Valve removed 64bit support for Half-Life 2 and Lost Coast. They are now only 32bit.

[Magnum0311 10]

Hi eosteric

Having been programming computers for 35 years now; the one thing I have learned is that most early adopters are numpties.

Windows 7 did not exist when ArmA 2 was being developed. ;)

Also most people do not have windows 7 yet and 64 bit versions XP and vista are so horendous and missing so many drivers and so much functionality that only a numpty would use them and only about 2% even experimented with them, yes I did and do experiment with new systems, but I would never base a business on them.

Even today Windows 7 is only 10% market share.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10445776-56.html

You do not get rich by selling a game to only 10% of your potential customers.

Even today there are serious questions of the validity of moving to 64 bit operating systems. Most businesses are not expected to move to 64 bit systems until 2014.

I think BIS may well be considering a 64 bit for the next version of the Real Virtuality Engine (RVE) but I think console development is more important.

By the way I am still using XP32 bit for most of my computers here; gonna wait for a few service packs same as always, before I consider moving to Windows 7.

Kind Regards walker

I'm an avid PC gamer and I have to let you know, that everything is ok, and that you are using an outdated, obsolete OS.

I used Windows XP 32 bit for a long long time. Then I decided to update to Vista 32 bit.

It was a nightmare, so I switched back to XP 32 bit.

One day I was playing a game maybe a year later, and people told me that they had fixed Vista for the most part.

So I said what the heck and re installed, and sure enough, I had none of the problems I was experiencing before.

Shortly after that I upgraded to a dual core 64 bit processors, so I ordered the Vista 64 bit upgrade CD.

It was amazing, the system speed was at least twice as fast. I did not know why I was using a 32 bit OS for so long.

So I used that until Windows 7 came out.

Even then I waited maybe 3 months and didn't give it any mind. But once again, a lot of friends were talking about how great Windows 7 was, so I went out and bout Windows 7 64 bit.

My friends, you have no fears. This is THE BEST OS that Windows has ever produced.

I have no glitches, and it runs flawlessley. It has a lot of options that no other windows OS has had, that you will love.

So basically I am just writing this to let anyone who is sitting on the fence about Windows 7 because of the Vista launch debacle, you have no fears.

[polecat.uk 11]

Ram is faster than hdd Eosteric as you say, and as far as i know, a ram drive can be used in arma2 and does indeed make the game run better from what i've read, i haven't needed to try it out myself as the game runs great on my 32bit system :) if your looking to use your extra ram though, it maybe worth looking up the thread about it.

[Dead3yez 0]

So basically I am just writing this to let anyone who is sitting on the fence about Windows 7 because of the Vista launch debacle, you have no fears.

Thanks, but:

ArmA 2 Performance:

XP32 > Win7 x64

BC2 performance ;) :

XP32 > Win7 x64

I'm staying with XP32 for now. However, I will probably update in the not too distant future. Maybe in the 4th quarter of this year sometime.

[walker 0]

Hi Magnum0311

Please do not get me wrong. I have a used vista, which like you I think a pile of doo doo and windows 7, which I agree is a vast improvement on Vista and indeed XP, though its hardware requirements are higher than XP.

I was talking precisely about adoption speed and business decisions. It costs money to develop for mutiple platforms; so there is an economic and business decision as to when you move to new technology. Many of the costs are not apparent to game players, hardware has to be beefed up, new versions of software have to be bought, staff have to be trained or more often train them selves and that is a cost in lost production time too, so it is double whamy.

To work out all the costs you have your tame bean counters shove it into a spread sheet or accounting software; better still you shove it into something like an enterprise resource plannning program. You measure the costs of doing nothing against you proposed plan to change the way your system works. You do some management acounts to do a cost benefit analysis or perhaps even a Pareto Optimisation and work out the Return on Investment; because all those costs are investment in the company.

Then you plan it all out ready to do it and retest all your decision making processes. If your company has a board it may even go to that level. With various involved parties arguing for now or latter to make the move. It depends what your legal set up is and what management systems and style are in place. As a manager or a board, you make the decision and bring all you experinece and the analysis to bear on that decision, for if you get it wrong you business can die and your friends and maybe family loose their jobs and perhaps part of their pensions.

For a game player to make the decision to switch OS and go 64 bit may at the worst cost them a few thousand euros or dollars. For a business even BIS's size the decision will cost hundreds of thousands.

Consider just the hardware costs:

New computers for all the development team 50 plus, mutiple servers, test machines in a range from top end to bottom end various graphic cards, sound cards, mother boards, probably attendant network upgrades.

Then you have all the software licenses have to be upgraded to 64 bit. Then there are the training costs. And do not forget administration costs! Every bit of hardware and software must be chosen, bought, delivered and tested. The whole decision process is a cost too.

At the very least all those cost has to be covered by returns in sales.

As I said I am not saying you do not do it, but the current market of only 10% in the declining market for PC games, will not cover the costs.

I think BIS will continue to upgrade RVE and a 64 bit version of the RVE for ArmA III is I think certain but BIS tend to follow RAD methodology, so I expect over time patches may will introduce aspects of 64 bit technology to ArmA II.

And as I pointed out the future is in consoles but BIS need a console that works for them. If this Unlimited Reality graphics engine works and could be placed in the Nintendo Wii that would be an awsome winner for BIS.

Kind Regards walker

Edited April 2, 2010 by walker

[node_runner 0]

I was talking precisely about adoption speed and business decisions. It costs money to develop for mutiple platforms; so there is an economic and business decision as to when you move to new technology. Many of the costs are not apparent to game players, hardware has to be beefed up, new versions of software have to be bought, staff have to be trained or more often train them selves and that is a cost in lost production time too, so it is double whamy.

I'm not trying to sound like a smart-a** here, but modifying the game to support 64-bit addressing really shouldn't be that difficult. If it is, then BIS is probably guilty of some bad code design.

Walker, as a developer of 30+ years, I'm sure you know that it's a common best-practice not to use built-in types to store pointers, but to use typedefs. Giving an application the ability to address 64-bit memory addresses is a really simple process of using 64-bit pointers instead of 32-bit. If the pointers that an app is using is properly being defined as a custom typedef instead of using a built-in integer to store the pointer, then it should be pretty simple to modify the typedef for all the pointers the app uses to enable 64-bit addressing.

Someone mentioned Crysis "not counting" because 64-bit compatibility was implemented later as a patch. This is kinda silly, because that example points out that it really isn't that hard to update a game for 64-bit compatibility. At least, it shouldn't be.

I don't want to pick on BIS because they might have some other reasons why it would be difficult, but in general it shouldn't be difficult at all. If it is, then that is probably because the underlying code wasn't designed according to best practices.

[Dead3yez 0]

Someone mentioned Crysis "not counting" because 64-bit compatibility was implemented later as a patch. This is kinda silly, because that example points out that it really isn't that hard to update a game for 64-bit compatibility. At least, it shouldn't be.

Or perhaps the devs earlier planned for the game to fully support 64-bit architecture and was left unfinished on release. Thus later came a patch, as this aspect required more work.

I highly doubt we will 64bit in ArmA2 as it probably doesn't bring much improvements, if any.

Edited April 3, 2010 by Dead3yez

[node_runner 0]

Or perhaps the devs earlier planned for the game to fully support 64-bit architecture and was left unfinished on release. Thus later came a patch, as this aspect required more work.

I highly doubt we will 64bit in ArmA2 as it probably doesn't bring much improvements, if any.

Like I said in my post, it is common practice for developers to build any application in a way that would make it easy to change it in order to support 64-bit architecture. It's a simple process and shouldn't need a lot of planning. If you don't believe me that it really isn't that hard, just Google it.

As far as performance improvements, it is harder to state empirically either way without knowing more about the game engine. I'm convinced that it would help me though. I have a very high-end system that runs the game just fine on max settings..that is until I'm in an area with lots of objects. It's clear from my CPU and GPU monitors that rendering the objects isn't overly straining my system, but my memory utilization hints that storing the high-res texture data for all these objects starts to cause swapping to/from disk. Load up a mission like "Manhattan" and walk around at the FOB Manhattan base, and you'll probably notice it the game getting slower, as well as noticing a lot more texture popping on the grass and other objects.

Besides, even if you are right and having a lot more memory available wouldn't do much to help, it couldn't hurt could it? Like I said earlier, I'm not here to insult or accuse BIS of bad programming because it's impossible for me to know how their engine works internally. I just notice some mistaken assertions that it is really time consuming, expensive, or difficult to add 64-bit support, when it really should be a trivial thing to implement. I could even demonstrate it in about 2-3 blocks of pseudo-code. If an app is designed with best practices in mind, the code should only need to be updated in one place in order to add 64-bit support, and that update should be pretty easy to make. If the code was designed properly, then adding 64-bit support would be much less work than fixing one of the many bugs that BIS has put effort into fixing since release.

I love ArmA, and I'm happy that BIS is in the business they are. I'm not complaining about the game at all, so try not to take it that way. I'm just pointing out that 64-bit support really isn't rocket science.

[Dwarden 1124]

this might gave ya some answers :

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1266877&postcount=14

[Placebo 28]

So we can consider this asked and answered.