Devs time for a 64BIT version???

[Hawk Firestorm 10]

Common devs how about porting out a 64 bit version of the game and server?

Many many of us have 64 bit os.

Personally I'm getting tired of the out of memory crashes.

I for one would like to see BI putting out 64bit versions of your software with every release.

32 bit should have died out years ago.

[Wolfstriked 11]

I second it.Its not fair that we have to dish out so much money to make game play normal.Mine still doesn't.

[Grizzle 0]

All in good time. I just read an article that 64bit OS's make up about 40% of the installed base or all PC users (thanks to Windows 7). It won't be long before 64 bit is the norm.

I wouldn't put too much faith in A2 or OA being re-written for 64 bit. It's something that really needs to start from the ground up.

[slimSpencer 10]

well, they at least introduced the Large Adress Aware flag now...

This should be a good compromise for the next years although i personally would prefer a 64-bit-exe too... :)

[Richey79 10]

Remember Crysis' seperate 64 bit .exe?

Most people gained between 1 and 4 fps using that, and some users reported that the experience felt smoother.

Sounds pretty similar to the gains we saw with the A2 .exe being made LAA; probably a bit less of a gain than when they threaded processes efficiently for 1.07.

I have a feeling that holding out for this (even more so demanding it) is a bit of a diversion from more practical measures that can be taken by the devs - but that will take time.

[Wolfstriked 11]

Crysis was ported to 64bit.I understand that it takes manpower so I suggested a DLC patch.A huge percentage of people would dish out money for this if performance rises significantly.I am not talking $39.99 but more a reasonable amount for the effort put into it.

[Nicholas 5]

Honestly, I have had ArmA II and Operation Arrowhead installed on my Windows 7 64-bit since they both came out. Neither of the games has ever crashed on me.

But it would be nice for native 64-bit support.

Edited July 11, 2010 by Nicholas

[Flash Thunder 10]

LOD handling within the engine I would deffinetly think would give more as of performance, if there were more LOD's for Buildings (which are tons of polys and tons of textures in a small space) and more efficient streaming of the LOD's then we would have probably no stutter in villages/cities etc.

Rendering efficiency within RV seems pretty crap, you can get the same performance in an empty desert then I can on Takistan unless this is some huge glitch that keeps my FPS locked at around 17-20fps and changes no matter what graphical settings are set, 64bit wont help at all.

Theres a monster bug/or script failure in Arma 2 that loves to keep my damn FPS at 20. No matter if you got a 9800gt like me or a god damn 5870.

[mrbinkels 10]

well, they at least introduced the Large Adress Aware flag now...

This should be a good compromise for the next years although i personally would prefer a 64-bit-exe too... :)

For others fyi......The LAA was put in patch 71900 ftp://downloads.bistudio.com/arma2.com/update/beta/ARMA2_OA_Build_71900.log

[Wolfstriked 11]

What is super weird is that I get terrible performance in Zargabad and yet my GPU is at %65 percent utilization.This is with 50 enemy soldiers in vicinity.And then I look at the CPU utilization and all cores seem to be running at %60 percent of their max also.

Now here is the weird part....I then back out and put myself at outer edge of map and its very smooth............and CPU utilization is at what appears around %90 percent utilization.

Why are my CPU and GPU under utilized in stutter towns?

[MavericK96 0]

I definitely agree with 64-bit support. The next version of Windows isn't even going to have a 32-bit version.

LAA is a step in the right direction and did help to lessen the out of memory crashes (for me, anyway) but, as currently implemented, it really does nothing to allow the usage of more than ~1.5 GB of RAM.

I also realize that not many other games have native 64-bit support, but ArmA2 is not like most games. It really, really needs that extra RAM for how much data streaming it does.

[jumpinghubert 49]

What is super weird is that I get terrible performance in Zargabad and yet my GPU is at %65 percent utilization.This is with 50 enemy soldiers in vicinity.And then I look at the CPU utilization and all cores seem to be running at %60 percent of their max also.

Now here is the weird part....I then back out and put myself at outer edge of map and its very smooth............and CPU utilization is at what appears around %90 percent utilization.

Why are my CPU and GPU under utilized in stutter towns?

its in Arma2 too. The more units the less the cpu utilization. Tested it with "perfmon". I think its since Arma...here is my thread related to this problem http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=74096&highlight=cpu&page=2

Edited July 11, 2010 by JumpingHubert

[Wolfstriked 11]

Wow,that makes no sense.So what is happening?Trying to grasp the reason for this and I it doesn't make sense.And from reading your thread it seems we will never know.

[suma 8]

I definitely agree with 64-bit support. The next version of Windows isn't even going to have a 32-bit version.

LAA is a step in the right direction and did help to lessen the out of memory crashes (for me, anyway) but, as currently implemented, it really does nothing to allow the usage of more than ~1.5 GB of RAM.

I also realize that not many other games have native 64-bit support, but ArmA2 is not like most games. It really, really needs that extra RAM for how much data streaming it does.

There is very little (if any) benefit in going 64b for ArmA 2.

If the games does not use more than 2 GB with LAA, it means it would not use more even with 64b and the whole effort would be basically wasted. Switching to 64b is not some magic which would in itself change application behaviour in any way, it is just removing the 4 GB barrier. As the game is not hitting the barrier even remotely yet, removing the barrier has currently no sense, especially when you consider it would requite quite a lot of efforts.

If the game is not using more than 1.5 GB for you, it probably means it does not need to use any more (there are no more useful data to store in the memory).

[Punisher5555 0]

There is very little (if any) benefit in going 64b for ArmA 2.

If the games does not use more than 2 GB with LAA, it means it would not use more even with 64b and the whole effort would be basically wasted. Switching to 64b is not some magic which would in itself change application behaviour in any way, it is just removing the 4 GB barrier. As the game is not hitting the barrier even remotely yet, removing the barrier has currently no sense, especially when you consider it would requite quite a lot of efforts.

If the game is not using more than 1.5 GB for you, it probably means it does not need to use any more (there are no more useful data to store in the memory).

Suma, can you give a quick example of how the engine uses the LAA for "file caching" instead of the hard drive? What does it take to go past the 1.5GB? You had a nice FPS test mission file you posted, anything for this LAA?

Thank you. I love the game and will continue to support BIS.

[suma 8]

LAA for "file caching"

File caching is not related to LAA, as the system we use for file caches is using memory with no virtual addresses at all, therefore the virtual address space does not apply here (see )Breaking the 32 bit Barrier.

What is different is the amount of various other objects which can be "cached" (not discarded when unused), like ground clutter status, AI path finding cost maps.

[b101_uk 10]

I am running my PC with “DisablePagingExecutive†set to 1 in the windows registry and pagefile disabled totally as I have been doing for the past >3 years with xp 32bit with PAE on (now on win7 64bit)

Under XP 32bit LAA 32bit applications would happily use RAM above 4gb though I cannot say if ArmA II was as I didn’t look.

Am now using win7 64bit and ArmA II is using up to ~2400mb directly on the larger campaign missions when playing them for a number of hours however it is also using and additional >2600mb indirectly over playing time as windows is using RAM as a cache rather than it typically would putting the used data into the pagefile (there is no HDD pagefile) and the Paging Executive is not unloading code/data from the RAM until ALL the RAM is in use which it then unloads the oldest last used data/code, so there are times when all of my 6GB of RAM is in use and 0mb is left free wile ArmA II is runing.

[InFireBaptize 0]

I am running my PC with “DisablePagingExecutive†set to 1 in the windows registry and pagefile disabled totally as I have been doing for the past >3 years with xp 32bit with PAE on (now on win7 64bit)

Under XP 32bit LAA 32bit applications would happily use RAM above 4gb though I cannot say if ArmA II was as I didn’t look.

Am now using win7 64bit and ArmA II is using up to ~2400mb directly on the larger campaign missions when playing them for a number of hours however it is also using and additional >2600mb indirectly over playing time as windows is using RAM as a cache rather than it typically would putting the used data into the pagefile (there is no HDD pagefile) and the Paging Executive is not unloading code/data from the RAM until ALL the RAM is in use which it then unloads the oldest last used data/code, so there are times when all of my 6GB of RAM is in use and 0mb is left free wile ArmA II is runing.

Is the 2400MB all used by Arma? or windows is using some of that too? I disabled paging but games continued to crash. What i did is, one hard drive for OS, RAID 0 for games and one external hard drive for paging. I will give DisablePagingExecutive a try.

[suma 8]

I am running my PC with “DisablePagingExecutive†set to 1 in the windows registry and pagefile disabled totally as I have been doing for the past >3 years with xp 32bit with PAE on (now on win7 64bit)

It is quite unlikely this entry has any effect on ArmA 2, and I am quite sure if there is any effect it is not significant. This entry affects only paging for a part of the kernel and drivers.

See Does the DisablePagingExecutive registry change have any actual effect? on Server Fault

[InFireBaptize 0]

It is quite unlikely this entry has any effect on ArmA 2, and I am quite sure if there is any effect it is not significant. This entry affects only paging for a part of the kernel and drivers.

See Does the DisablePagingExecutive registry change have any actual effect? on Server Fault

Suma,

I'm not an expert in game development but i always had this question in mind. Wouldn't it help a lot if those .pbo files were smaller in size? why some of those files are so large in size?

[b101_uk 10]

It is quite unlikely this entry has any effect on ArmA 2, and I am quite sure if there is any effect it is not significant. This entry affects only paging for a part of the kernel and drivers.

See Does the DisablePagingExecutive registry change have any actual effect? on Server Fault

I would for the most part agree, it dose nothing amassing lol ;)

Setting DisablePagingExecutive is mainly there because the HDD pagefile is totally disabled - thus its logical for the kernel/drivers to stay in the RAM ware they are rather than be move to another bit of RAM acting as “virtual memory AKA pagefile and it be paged back and forth within the RAM needlessly?

But with it there are subtle differences you can pick-up on over time and with it there is more likelihood of all RAM being in use even if ArmA II is the only thing that has been run on the PC since its start-up ware only 900MB of RAM is used initially.

With HDD pagefile disabled and RAM used in its place by windows/kernel/etc then an amount of “ArmA II†files/data will reside in there even after its exited (much like they would in the HDD page file), though ArmA II would release RAM directly used by its self.

[rundll.exe 12]

Suma,

I'm not an expert in game development but i always had this question in mind. Wouldn't it help a lot if those .pbo files were smaller in size? why some of those files are so large in size?

[assumption]

Since the contents of pbo files are simply archived, and unpacked when used (and stored in memory) it does not matter what size a pbo is in terms of performance, unless the unpacking algorithm performance is dependent on the total size, wich is unlikely

[/assumption]

[Punisher5555 0]

File caching is not related to LAA, as the system we use for file caches is using memory with no virtual addresses at all, therefore the virtual address space does not apply here (see )Breaking the 32 bit Barrier.

What is different is the amount of various other objects which can be "cached" (not discarded when unused), like ground clutter status, AI path finding cost maps.

Thank you for the info Suma.

So from users point of view the engine uses the LAA after some period of time. Say large, long, missions. The engine does not dump certain things.

Is it random what engine keeps?

If not, are you experimenting in your beta's on what to keep and how much to keep?

Thanks again for your answers. They are clearing up a lot of confusion/questions that people are having on this issue.

[MavericK96 0]

I would for the most part agree, it dose nothing amassing lol ;)

Setting DisablePagingExecutive is mainly there because the HDD pagefile is totally disabled - thus its logical for the kernel/drivers to stay in the RAM ware they are rather than be move to another bit of RAM acting as “virtual memory AKA pagefile and it be paged back and forth within the RAM needlessly?

But with it there are subtle differences you can pick-up on over time and with it there is more likelihood of all RAM being in use even if ArmA II is the only thing that has been run on the PC since its start-up ware only 900MB of RAM is used initially.

With HDD pagefile disabled and RAM used in its place by windows/kernel/etc then an amount of “ArmA II†files/data will reside in there even after its exited (much like they would in the HDD page file), though ArmA II would release RAM directly used by its self.

So by disabling the page file and disabling this PagingExecutive setting, you are able to play ArmA2 and other games stably without a page file? Because as soon as I disable mine I start to get Out of Memory errors in ArmA2.

Also, thanks for the clarification about 64-bit, Suma. I guess it feels to us like the game is not utilizing enough RAM because of all the LOD swapping and stutter issues. Maybe that is more VRAM related, though.

[LondonLad 13]

Not that it's going to change developement but thought I'd throw in an article on the install base for Win7 x32 & x64 systems...

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/windows-7-win7-64bit-32bit-windows7,news-33837.html