Devs time for a 64BIT version???

[Wolfstriked 11]

Confused again.The stutter we get is from harddrive access when memory is used up.My HD light at times becomes bright red.Why is it accessing HD when its not even using all of the allowed 3gig?Is the only way to remove stutter is a full game install into Ramdrive?

[Hawk Firestorm 10]

I can understand Suma's point however there are also problems for people using high end cards with lots of ram.

It's the prime reason I use 64 bit as indeed anyone should with cards with high ram on board.

I may be wrong suma but if your game try's to use more than the 2gig of ram available to it, it dies and it does often. (2gb left from the 4 available to 32 bit minus 2gb addressing used by my card).

At the moment the game tends to puke if you have lots of AI and try to operate large scale battles, or simply goes belly up after playing for a few hours.

Yes I know there's a memory leak but still.

So when you say it's not using that and I keep getting the ole popup saying out of memory what gives?

It says to me the 32 bit app has tried to exceed the 2GB available to it imposed by using 32 bit.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Hawk Firestorm

[b101_uk 10]

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.

The above has been the case for my P4 2ghz (1gb ram at the time) & P4 (550) 3.4ghz (2gb ram at the time - retired 16 months ago) both under win2kpro and xp 32bit, and with my I7 920 (6gb ram) both under xp 32bit with PAE on and now under Win7 64bit.

ArmA II has crashed once since I had it since the day it came out on steam but I put that down to the beta Nvidia driver I had just loaded, my PC’s seldom crash and can be up for days between restarts, however I don’t over-clock CPU etc and only go as far as to just tighten the RAM timings at default speeds.

I can say hand on hart I have had very few games crash over the years and when they have it has normally been traced to a beta driver error or a faulty bit of hardware like my last gtx260 which would heat up to much in 3d aps and lock up (forcing a higher fan speed would stop it but it shouldn’t do it in the first place!) though ironically ArmA II was the only game which it would work faultlessly on :rolleyes:

e.g. I played the ArmA II “badlands†and “dogs of war†campaign missions consecutively last night taking my time so if there was to be an “Out of Memory errors†it would have happened then given my free RAM was at 0mb after a wile (taskmgr is always running in the background as I can alt-tab to look at the history) and i was playing hours

[Dwarden 1125]

32bit application with LAA disabled, on any (32bit or 64bit) OS can address whole 2GB

* old state of previous builds but don't forget this is unrelated to how file cache is used (it's outside this boundary limit)

32bit application with LAA disabled or enabled, on 32bit OS default configuration can address whole 2GB

* default state on 32b OS but don't forget this is unrelated to how file cache is used (it's outside this boundary limit)

32bit application with LAA enabled, on 32bit OS with /3GB OS startup switch can address whole 3GB

* (this means forcing kernel to use only 1GB which has negative sideffects)

32bit application with LAA enabled, on 64bit OS can address whole 4GB

* actual state but don't forget this is unrelated to how file cache is used (it's outside this boundary limit)

64bit app+64bit APIs, on 64bit OS can address whole 8TB

* this mean full rewrite of the application and all it's components in first place

in short our engine can now address

up to 4GB itself and plus N GB via file cache solution

(see the breaking 32bit barrier blog entry mentioned above)

Edited July 13, 2010 by Suma
Clarified /3GB for 32b OS and some more

[Hawk Firestorm 10]

32bit application with LAA disabled, on 32bit OS can address whole 2GB

* old state of previous builds but don't forget this is unrelated to how file cache is used (it's outside this boundary limit)

32bit application with LAA enabled, on 32bit OS can address whole 3GB

* (this means forcing kernel to use only 1GB which has negative sideffects)

32bit application with LAA enagbled, on 64bit OS can address whole 4GB

* actual state but don't forget this is unrelated to how file cache is used (it's outside this boundary limit)

64bit app+64bit APIs, on 64bit OS can address whole 8TB

* this mean full rewrite of the application and all it's components in first place

in short our engine can now address

up to 4GB itself and plus N GB via file cache solution

(see the breaking 32bit barrier blog entry mentioned above)

Okie but on a 32 bit app as I've stated does the Video addressing space still come off that as if your running a 32 bit os if your running 64?

I'm thinking it does.

ie With my 2gig card the game can only see 2gig of address space to use.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Dwarden

[Dwarden 1125]

fixed the lil detail about the file cache in past 32bit mode w/o LAA ;)

huge VRAM addressing is ... question for Suma to answer:)

yet if i'm not mistaken ....

it should be addressed by WDDM (64bit drivers on 64bit OS)

this change happened around pre SP2 Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105/en-us

details here

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/WDDM_VA.mspx

it helps prevent most of reasons to run out of VA space

i'm pretty sure this was even futher improved for Windows 7 64bit for applications using DX9

p.s. more details for these who are interested are e.g. at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee418798.aspx

especially worth to notice there is what all could cause problems when going to native 64bit ...

Edited July 12, 2010 by Dwarden

[Flash Thunder 10]

Thanks for all the insight Suma and Dwarden much appreciated.

[suma 8]

I can understand Suma's point however there are also problems for people using high end cards with lots of ram.

It's the prime reason I use 64 bit as indeed anyone should with cards with high ram on board.

I may be wrong suma but if your game try's to use more than the 2gig of ram available to it, it dies and it does often. (2gb left from the 4 available to 32 bit minus 2gb addressing used by my card).

Even if you have a card with 1, 2 or more GB of VRAM, there is no reason why this VRAM would need to be mapped into the application virtual space, as the application is not accessing the texture content at all. The kernel space is basically "unlimited" when running on 64b OS, therefore it does not matter what the driver allocate there. In practice, with video card like this, the card drivers should eat about 500 MB-1 GB of virtual space. The 3 GB or more should be left for the game, which should be more then enough.

I have a Vista 64b system with 2 GB VRAM + 8 GB RAM for testing this, I was running many heavy missions as stress tests and I have never witnessed on out of memory error since LAA was introduced.

If you have some mission which shows regular our of memory errors for you on 64b systems, I would be very interested in testing it on my system, to see if there is perhaps something more which can be fixed in this area.

[Dwarden 1125]

To figure what amount, where and how memory is mapped by process?

then take look on excelent utility from SysInternals named VMmap

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd535533.aspx

VMMap is a process virtual and physical memory analysis utility.

It shows a breakdown of a process's committed virtual memory types

as well as the amount of physical memory (working set) assigned by the operating system to those types.

Besides graphical representations of memory usage,

VMMap also shows summary information and a detailed process memory map.

----

then take look on great utility which shows You how memory is managed by OS

RAMmap from SysInternals

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx

Use RAMMap to gain understanding of the way Windows manages memory,

to analyze application memory usage, or to answer specific questions about how RAM is being allocated.

RAMMap’s refresh feature enables you to update the display and it includes support for saving and loading memory snapshots.

ofcourse another useful tools like Process Explorer again from SysInternals :)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

are able give additional details :)

[Luomu 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.

BIS, can you add a "Placebo" checkbox? Enabling it might boost performance but actually it does absolutely nothing :D

[Richey79 10]

[Flash Thunder 10]

BIS, can you add a "Placebo" checkbox? Enabling it might boost performance but actually it does absolutely nothing :D

Brilliant I say.

Im going to try the wrap your computer in tin foil method. I heard you get over 9000 fps. lol

[INVICTUS 10]

I have not had out of memory crash since I enabled my page file. Every time I disable it, in memory intense applications I get the out of memory error. A change that someone makes to their own computer cannot be fixed by a game developer!

Edited July 14, 2010 by INVICTUS

[MavericK96 0]

I have not had out of memory crash since I enabled my page file. Every time I disable it, in memory intense applications I get the out of memory error. A change that someone makes to their own computer cannot be fixed by a game developer!

It may be because you have 4 GB of RAM versus my 6 GB, but after the latest OA betas and ArmA 1.07 I've been able to disable the page file with no ill effects. My guess is that enabling LAA has made the game more stable with no page file.

[INVICTUS 10]

My other system is a AMD 940 BE @3.8 with 8GB Partriot DDR2 pc8500 with dual GTX 275 SLI I disable page file and get a crash after so long some times it takes an hour but still happens. I was just pointing out an issue with Windows 7 and pagefile being disabled it causes crashes. Back in the day windows was a poor memory manager this is not the case with the newer OS.

[Punisher5555 0]

My other system is a AMD 940 BE @3.8 with 8GB Partriot DDR2 pc8500 with dual GTX 275 SLI I disable page file and get a crash after so long some times it takes an hour but still happens. I was just pointing out an issue with Windows 7 and pagefile being disabled it causes crashes. Back in the day windows was a poor memory manager this is not the case with the newer OS.

Your crash is not the pagefile. You don't need a pagefile with Win7/Vista 64bit and that 8GB RAM.

Most of these crashes are encountered with overclocking/SLI/bad memory/bad other chips/beta video drivers/etc...

Don't need the pagefile with x64.

[INVICTUS 10]

Here is a link to calculate page file size http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654

I get no crashes no stutter. After disabling the page file I get random crash occasionally while playing games like Crysis Wars, Arma2, etc... yeah it must be ram in my event log telling me the application ran out of memory and the windows messages about low virtual memory.

[Wolfstriked 11]

Whats crazy is I get much better gameplay with no page file setup.It was equally bad with pagefile on either the SSD or in Ramdrive.I turned it off and its actually smooth now.Why would this happen.....no idea.

[MavericK96 0]

Whats crazy is I get much better gameplay with no page file setup.It was equally bad with pagefile on either the SSD or in Ramdrive.I turned it off and its actually smooth now.Why would this happen.....no idea.

It makes sense...probably forcing the system to use more RAM rather than page file? I've also turned off my page file since the latest betas/1.07 and haven't gotten any sort of errors related to memory (driver crashes sometimes but that happened before I turned off the page file and is GPU-related anyway).

[volkov956 0]

I gonna have to test memory usage on my server and systems

Server 2008 32bit 8gb Server

Server 2008 32bit 8gb Game Workstation

Server 2008 32bit 4gb Workstation Laptop

All are using Windows Server 2008 Enterprise 8gb 32bit SP2 (Why not R2? R2 Does not work in 32bit mode properlly with over 4gb)

[Wolfstriked 11]

It makes sense...probably forcing the system to use more RAM rather than page file? I've also turned off my page file since the latest betas/1.07 and haven't gotten any sort of errors related to memory (driver crashes sometimes but that happened before I turned off the page file and is GPU-related anyway).

Pagefile was on Ramdrive and thats confusing.Should be same speed.As Suma pointed out though alot can change with your pc like restarting,turning down programs freeing up memory etc.It feels better though...Jeez I hope this is not in my head!:rolleyes:

[MavericK96 0]

With RAMdrive there may be some extra overhead involved, though.

Honestly, I don't know. But what I said before is what I'm guessing. :cool:

[Richey79 10]

I get this after about 15 mins of OA with page file disabled.

However, Windows (Win 7 Ultimate x64) has never actually closed OA.exe, and Arma 2 has only crashed on me once and given me the black 'receiving' screen once - first time I've seen it:rolleyes:. Looking at resource manager, the .exe isn't using any huge proportion of my 6 gigs RAM - it seems to be Windows' system of putting things in 'standby memory' that's to blame for the low memory warnings.

Performance seems considerably better than with a page file, though. Smoother with higher object quality - meaning no stuck low LODs.

[MavericK96 0]

Yeah, I got the same thing, actually. Game didn't crash but it was annoying that it alt-tabbed me out for the message.

[InFireBaptize 0]

[MG]http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6669/pagefile.jpg[/img]

I get this after about 15 mins of OA with page file disabled.

However, Windows (Win 7 Ultimate x64) has never actually closed OA.exe, and Arma 2 has only crashed on me once and given me the black 'receiving' screen once - first time I've seen it:rolleyes:. Looking at resource manager, the .exe isn't using any huge proportion of my 6 gigs RAM - it seems to be Windows' system of putting things in 'standby memory' that's to blame for the low memory warnings.

Performance seems considerably better than with a page file, though. Smoother with higher object quality - meaning no stuck low LODs.

try deleting the superfetch folder content or disabling superfetch all together.

Edited July 19, 2010 by Placebo