Periodic freezes

I'm not sure if this is an arma issue or my PC issue. I've noticed while playing multiplayer invade & annex for a length of time that my arma just locks up, grinding to a halt for a minute or two, then coming back. While its slow, it's impossible to do anything it's so laggy as hell. Thing is, when its resolved itself, I ask over VoIP and no one has experienced the same like when the mission spawns a load of units so its definitely my issue, not the servers. When I alt tab and bring up task manager, my hard drive is at 100% during the slow down.

I'm running a q6600, 8800gt and windows 8 with nothing but steam open. Is there something I can do in arma or windows to find out what is going on?

It's the HDD caching that's loading/unloading textures, other data.

I used to have the same, until the SSD upgrade.

Same thing happens to me and I have it installed on a SSD. I had the same exact problem in OA. In terms of ArmA 3, it only recently started happening after updating to a certain dev build. (I believe it was the one that included fixes from the OA beta patches). Framerate basically goes all the way down to 1 fps or slower for a good 10-15 seconds. Haven't checked SSD or CPU usage when it happens but I did have my GPU monitor on and it showed 0% usage during this time.

I asked my friends about it and they all know about this since they all get it.

It's related to unoptimized signature checking, not caching / loading. Game reads whole file / very large block at once. SSD is not solution or are you ready to buy SSD for all arma 3 players?

There's temporarily solution for players who have no SSD but have enough RAM: use RAM Disk until BIS will fix that (Arma 2 had same issue but was fixed).

Signature checking only occurs on connecting while in the lobby. AFAIK

Nope. It's automatic background regular scanning, old as world.

1. verifySigantures = 0; "fixes" that problem

2. use ProcMon by Sysinternals, it'll show what arma3.exe reads.

Additionally with A3, I have found that some times a server is running badly and I ALT TAB back to the Desktop and Steam is maximized. Minimizing it to the system tray has fixed similar problems for me.

Nope. It's automatic background regular scanning, old as world.

1. verifySigantures = 0; "fixes" that problem

2. use ProcMon by Sysinternals, it'll show what arma3.exe reads.

Thanks for the info. I have stopped playing multiplayer because of the periodic freezes with my regular hard drive. This would explain why I don't freeze on my server with checking disabled.

Would it be safe to say that multiplayer is not currently an option for people with hard drives? Or in other words, the periodic freezing is punishment for not updating to an SSD. This is despite the rest of the game running fine, but loading slow.

The strange thing about all of this is like my CPU, my hard drive is barely utilized ever!

Nope. It's automatic background regular scanning, old as world.

1. verifySigantures = 0; "fixes" that problem

2. use ProcMon by Sysinternals, it'll show what arma3.exe reads.

That would make sense... I only recently started using verifySignatures=2 on my server. Turned it off for now, those drops at times are unbearable. In ArmA 2 at least they were less frequent and less dramatic.