Here's how I got ARMA2 to perform smoothly using RAMDISK

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231307

This is good, CAS 7 and 1.5V

And $200. x4, that's $800 (£500). Five hundred quid, for the benefit of one game? I should coa-coa. :D

You don't need all files on the ram drive. Only those accessed often.

Which ramdisk is the best one to buy?

Also what files are the best to put into the ramdisk?

I know windows 7 needs memory so how much woul I have from 12GB to use for a ramdisk?

What about simply putting the paging file into a ram drive?

At 8gb of ram I don't have room for the entire program, and under XP I cannot hardlink from a ram drive to another volume so running some of the files in a ram drive does not work...maybe putting the paging file in a ram drive would help?

Okay... This is sick, people!

I'm reading this topic some time now and I'm shocked a bit. Most of you are crazy...

Arma 2 recommended system requirements:

Quad Core CPU or Dual Core CPU (Intel Core 2.8 GHz, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400 + or faster)

2 GB RAM

Nvidia Geforce 8800GT, ATI Radeon 4850 or faster (with Shader Model 3 and 512 MB VRAM)

Oh wait... I don't see no Ramdrives or 12GB or ram there. My system spec is almost TWICE more powerfull as recommended spec, but to be honest... I'm spending more time in troubleshooting forums than actually playing the game. Because I can't enjoy it. I love it, but I can't enjoy it. It's totaly unplayable on Vista. I get nice frames on Win7. If i'm in forest etc. But if there any AI or building on screen, fps drops more than 50%.

I really really hope that BIS after patch 1.05 will focus on performance patch. Because in 1.05 there is no performances fixes at all. At least i didn't notice any in Arma issue tracker...

Bono LV you are correct...but if I can spend a few hours tweaking to get a playable game now instead of waiting for BIS to arrive at the party ....its worth it....

sadly I did get the ram drive working as a junction to a mod folder...but no joy even with most of the files loaded into ram I still get slow terrain painting and stuttering ........bottleneck has to be somewhere else...

Brilliant post!! It has been a really exciting read. Thanks Qwertz! :) :)

As for USB sticks - forget it - the one posted earlier (1st in list) runs....

Speed Rating 15 MB/s (read) 9 MB/s (write)

And Qwertz already pointed out your HDD runs around 500mb/s.

Again - great post

While this option may work, it still seams crazy that you have to go to this extreme to play the game correctly, does anybody know what the specs of the BIS machines are?

The same ones that put out all the footage before the game was released, the game seamed to work well enough in the videos ?!?

well i just got back from taking a full-out flyover of chernarus w/ one ofthose mh-6s on my preferred settings, with fraps to really test the 4890 + ramdisk so i have some thoughts. (it was beautiful and smooth as ive seen it yet, actual frame rate #s were not fantastic [i dont really care as long as it looks good but its a data point], avg around 30 but no stuttering at all even when buzzing around chernagosk, of course this was in mission editor, gameplay is v playable as well, but some stuttering)

to the above poster, imo, the game is simply broken in this sense. maybe a patch will fix it, maybe it wont. the thing is, even when popup is eliminated or all but eliminated, if you have any settings turned on, the gpu still has to render the objects. so while they dont popup you still watch them get 'coated' before your eyes if you are f lying a chopper say at high speeds/low altitude. i assumed a 5870 could handle this but according to a poster here, no dice. now if the top GPU in the world right now cant run the game smoothly, nothing can. the loadtime of the objects themselves doesnt matter. ive eliminated 95% of popup and the popup i get is instantaneous, no more waiting 15 seconds for crap to load while already in game. thats great but a) shouldnt have to use ramdisk for it, no excuse for that b) the render issue still remains. it detracts from the realism, but fortunately it is a somewhat limited situational thing. it just really sucks that it happens to be one of the funnest things to do in arma 2.

the good news is, this game is still fun as hell and gorgeous as all get out. AAAND i dont think the requirements are as steep as people make out. people just have 'too high' (ha, i guess you could also say, 'reasonable') expectations. imo the guys at BIS should be working round the clock to get this texture pop-up/rendering issue solved, the map for arrowhead is going to be much more complex (its got an entire, actual city, remember) -- can u imagine that under the current conditions?

anyway, im not griping, but thats my take on the graphical issues of the game. i love it, i love the community here & the dev team for constantly trying to make it better. but for now you basically have to accept the flaws, you can try to paint over them with better hard drives, ram, gpus, whatever, but they are going to be there until or unless they are patched over for good at the source, which is the game itself pure and simple.

PLEASE CONTINUE THIS DISCUSSION IN THE NEW THREAD LINKED BELOW - THANKS, QWERTZ.

I have posted my findings in a new thread.

Please continue this discussion here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=88629

Maybe a MOD could lock this thread > thanks !

Hi my friend,i have follow your istruction,but when i do this step:

Right click and you have a new option "Pick link source", click on this option then go to the origonal Addons folder in the game directory and go inside to the remaining files.

but here is only the Cancel current Pick option...

Right click once in the folder and you get a new option "SymbolicLink", click it and this creates the links to all the files simultaneously

Why???

I have WinXP32bit,i have splitted my hdd in 3 partitions,and i have formatted all partitions in NTFS mode,include the ramdisk..

Please help

Dummies Guide, by a dummy.

Download this app for the symlinks, saves a lot of time and hassle for those like myself who really have not a clue.

Link Shell Extension

Go to the downloads section and get whatever one is for your OS/system.

Install as per the installation instructions on the page linked.

All the instructions for using are also on that page but I will guide you through it anyway.

Fist off create a new folder for putting the files you want separated from the main game folder.

The ones I moved were the following as they are most likely the main streamed ones, these are all located in the file called addons in the main game directory.

Cut and paste these files in your new folder and keep it somewhere as backup, you also need it to reload into the RAMdrive depending on how you use it.

buildings.pbo

buildings2.pbo

Buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo

Ca.pbo

chernarus.pbo

chernarus_Data.pbo

chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo

misc.pbo

misc2.pbo

misc3.pbo

plants2_Bush.pbo

plants2_Clutter.pbo

plants2_misc.pbo

plants2_Plant.pbo

plants2_Tree.pbo

Roads2.pbo

rocks2.pbo

signs2.pbo

structures.pbo

utes.pbo

water.pbp

water2.pbo

The above files totals at 3.21gb altogether so I went for a 4gb RAMdrive, you can chop and change to suit yourself or do some testing and see what ones really are used most. Don't bother moving the .bisign files, no point doing it really.

Ramdisk time:

I used RamDisk Plus but it only has a 15 day trial period, during which time I hope qwertz comes up with the best choice of software to use then I will switch to it. ;)

I created a 4096mb NTFS format disk within the RAM, easily done with RamDisk using the set-up wizard.

I then placed a copy, I repeat copy, of my new folder with the removed game files in the newly created RamDisk which I named R: just to make it easy for myself. Comes in handy to remember the drives name later in case you need to reinstall it.

Now I go inside this new folder and select all, make sure you installed that linked software first. ;)

Right click and you have a new option "Pick link source", click on this option then go to the origonal Addons folder in the game directory and go inside to the remaining files.

Right click once in the folder and you get a new option "SymbolicLink", click it and this creates the links to all the files simultaneously.

Important shit:

Bear in mind, don't disable pagingfile. Either create it on an unused drive or cheekily add it to the remaining memory in the RamDrive. The game will crash within a few minutes of loading and playing if you disable the pagefile altogether as I found out the hard way.

The symlink tool can be used in the same way for just splitting the game files over multiple drives, again make sure you have paging enabled or it also crashes. I tested on a second HDD before creating a RamDisk and found this out the hard way too.

For those with 8gb like myself who used msconfig to lower the Ram to get rid of the texture bug, re enable your full Ram again as you will need it. You can use the -winxp command to sort out the texture problem or either that have less Ram for the drive, it's up to you but I went for drive myself.

What next you ask?

Go play the game and enjoy the smoothness you fool.

---------- Post added at 06:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:41 PM ----------

Hi my friend,i have follow your istruction,but when i do this step:

Right click and you have a new option "Pick link source", click on this option then go to the origonal Addons folder in the game directory and go inside to the remaining files.

but here is only the Cancel current Pick option...

Right click once in the folder and you get a new option "SymbolicLink", click it and this creates the links to all the files simultaneously

Why???

I have WinXP32bit,i have splitted my hdd in 3 partitions,and i have formatted all partitions in NTFS mode,include the ramdisk..

Please help

Dummies Guide, by a dummy.

Download this app for the symlinks, saves a lot of time and hassle for those like myself who really have not a clue.

Link Shell Extension

Go to the downloads section and get whatever one is for your OS/system.

Install as per the installation instructions on the page linked.

All the instructions for using are also on that page but I will guide you through it anyway.

Fist off create a new folder for putting the files you want separated from the main game folder.

The ones I moved were the following as they are most likely the main streamed ones, these are all located in the file called addons in the main game directory.

Cut and paste these files in your new folder and keep it somewhere as backup, you also need it to reload into the RAMdrive depending on how you use it.

buildings.pbo

buildings2.pbo

Buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo

Ca.pbo

chernarus.pbo

chernarus_Data.pbo

chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo

misc.pbo

misc2.pbo

misc3.pbo

plants2_Bush.pbo

plants2_Clutter.pbo

plants2_misc.pbo

plants2_Plant.pbo

plants2_Tree.pbo

Roads2.pbo

rocks2.pbo

signs2.pbo

structures.pbo

utes.pbo

water.pbp

water2.pbo

The above files totals at 3.21gb altogether so I went for a 4gb RAMdrive, you can chop and change to suit yourself or do some testing and see what ones really are used most. Don't bother moving the .bisign files, no point doing it really.

Ramdisk time:

I used RamDisk Plus but it only has a 15 day trial period, during which time I hope qwertz comes up with the best choice of software to use then I will switch to it. ;)

I created a 4096mb NTFS format disk within the RAM, easily done with RamDisk using the set-up wizard.

I then placed a copy, I repeat copy, of my new folder with the removed game files in the newly created RamDisk which I named R: just to make it easy for myself. Comes in handy to remember the drives name later in case you need to reinstall it.

Now I go inside this new folder and select all, make sure you installed that linked software first. ;)

Right click and you have a new option "Pick link source", click on this option then go to the origonal Addons folder in the game directory and go inside to the remaining files.

Right click once in the folder and you get a new option "SymbolicLink", click it and this creates the links to all the files simultaneously.

Important shit:

Bear in mind, don't disable pagingfile. Either create it on an unused drive or cheekily add it to the remaining memory in the RamDrive. The game will crash within a few minutes of loading and playing if you disable the pagefile altogether as I found out the hard way.

The symlink tool can be used in the same way for just splitting the game files over multiple drives, again make sure you have paging enabled or it also crashes. I tested on a second HDD before creating a RamDisk and found this out the hard way too.

For those with 8gb like myself who used msconfig to lower the Ram to get rid of the texture bug, re enable your full Ram again as you will need it. You can use the -winxp command to sort out the texture problem or either that have less Ram for the drive, it's up to you but I went for drive myself.

What next you ask?

Go play the game and enjoy the smoothness you fool.

I chased my butt just like the rest of you trying to optimize this game. I have read about guys spending hundreds on new cpu's and gpu's only to cry some more. for $149 i fixed the game for me, now it runs as smooth as silk and looks beautiful with everything on high and 1920x1080. This game chews up your hdd, its not the cpu or gpu thats bottlenecking things. I bought a 64 gb solid state drive, put the os and this game on it and put everything else on my other hdd. Everything on my computer runs and loads sooo much faster. Yes ssd's are expensive per gb but I spen a lot less then most guys with this fix. Do youself a favor and turn off that frame counter and get the game running to where it looks and feels good to you. You framerate worriers will never be happy with this game.

specs; q6600,4 gb ddr2800,HD4670 crossfired, 64gb ssd

I have WinXP32bit,i have splitted my hdd in 3 partitions,and i have formatted all partitions in NTFS mode,include the ramdisk..

Please help

I think it is because you have XP, it works fine with Vista users but other XP users like yourself cant get it to work. It doesn't allow the linking between physical drives like Vista does.

Sorry bud. :(

liquidpinky, just wanna thank you real quick for that guide. so simple and its improved the game experience a lot for me.

Very interesting post, i too amd getting very annoyed about Arma 2 performs on my PC. Im trying to like and play Arma 2 ive waited months to let the patches settle but im still dissapointed in how the game runs. The game looks great at max detail and id love to be able to play at max detail but i really dont see or want to "Gamble" on another PC upgrade. And even seing the post with the ATI 5870 best card at the moment made me very surprised.

Im running Vista 64 SP2 and i have Windows 7 64 installed too. Im going to reinstall Xp 32 and see if the game is any better and ill try out the ram disk thing too. Im praying theres a new patch to make a huge difference on performance.

My specs are below in my sig, its quite clear that game is nowhere near optimised and hopefully it will although i have nmy doubts with BIS working on a standalone expansion, its kinda looks like Crysis and Crysis Warhead again.(Where the performance of the orig sucked and the expansion worked better).

Im running my OS from a different drive than Steam, both Drives are SATA 2 drives but im unsure if they are running at the right speed in the BIOS ive had a few problems with what "mode" they should be in the BIOS. (IDE/AHCI)

I tried to install the Ram disk program but it says it doesnt install on 64 bit windows.

Great thread will keep up with this stuff..need sleep now college in the morn...

i have a similar setup @ the moment and the game is very playable with AA normal, AF v high, PP high, all details v high (except terrain @ normal, cuz i dont really see any difference at v high). maybe its vista keeping you back? i dont get why it is playable on some systems and then others with similar or better specs, say the performance is awful.

Very interesting post, i too amd getting very annoyed about Arma 2 performs on my PC. Im trying to like and play Arma 2 ive waited months to let the patches settle but im still dissapointed in how the game runs. The game looks great at max detail and id love to be able to play at max detail but i really dont see or want to "Gamble" on another PC upgrade. And even seing the post with the ATI 5870 best card at the moment made me very surprised.

Im running Vista 64 SP2 and i have Windows 7 64 installed too. Im going to reinstall Xp 32 and see if the game is any better and ill try out the ram disk thing too. Im praying theres a new patch to make a huge difference on performance.

My specs are below in my sig, its quite clear that game is nowhere near optimised and hopefully it will although i have nmy doubts with BIS working on a standalone expansion, its kinda looks like Crysis and Crysis Warhead again.(Where the performance of the orig sucked and the expansion worked better).

Im running my OS from a different drive than Steam, both Drives are SATA 2 drives but im unsure if they are running at the right speed in the BIOS ive had a few problems with what "mode" they should be in the BIOS. (IDE/AHCI)

I tried to install the Ram disk program but it says it doesnt install on 64 bit windows.

Great thread will keep up with this stuff..need sleep now college in the morn...

You need to find a 64 bit version, I run Vista 64 too. ;)

Dummies Guide, by a dummy.

Download this app for the symlinks, saves a lot of time and hassle for those like myself who really have not a clue.

Link Shell Extension

Go to the downloads section and get whatever one is for your OS/system.

Install as per the installation instructions on the page linked.

All the instructions for using are also on that page but I will guide you through it anyway.

Fist off create a new folder for putting the files you want separated from the main game folder.

The ones I moved were the following as they are most likely the main streamed ones, these are all located in the file called addons in the main game directory.

Cut and paste these files in your new folder and keep it somewhere as backup, you also need it to reload into the RAMdrive depending on how you use it.

buildings.pbo

buildings2.pbo

Buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo

Ca.pbo

chernarus.pbo

chernarus_Data.pbo

chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo

misc.pbo

misc2.pbo

misc3.pbo

plants2_Bush.pbo

plants2_Clutter.pbo

plants2_misc.pbo

plants2_Plant.pbo

plants2_Tree.pbo

Roads2.pbo

rocks2.pbo

signs2.pbo

structures.pbo

utes.pbo

water.pbp

water2.pbo

The above files totals at 3.21gb altogether so I went for a 4gb RAMdrive, you can chop and change to suit yourself or do some testing and see what ones really are used most. Don't bother moving the .bisign files, no point doing it really.

Ramdisk time:

I used RamDisk Plus but it only has a 15 day trial period, during which time I hope qwertz comes up with the best choice of software to use then I will switch to it. ;)

I created a 4096mb NTFS format disk within the RAM, easily done with RamDisk using the set-up wizard.

I then placed a copy, I repeat copy, of my new folder with the removed game files in the newly created RamDisk which I named R: just to make it easy for myself. Comes in handy to remember the drives name later in case you need to reinstall it.

Now I go inside this new folder and select all, make sure you installed that linked software first. ;)

Right click and you have a new option "Pick link source", click on this option then go to the origonal Addons folder in the game directory and go inside to the remaining files.

Right click once in the folder and you get a new option "SymbolicLink", click it and this creates the links to all the files simultaneously.

Important shit:

Bear in mind, don't disable pagingfile. Either create it on an unused drive or cheekily add it to the remaining memory in the RamDrive. The game will crash within a few minutes of loading and playing if you disable the pagefile altogether as I found out the hard way.

The symlink tool can be used in the same way for just splitting the game files over multiple drives, again make sure you have paging enabled or it also crashes. I tested on a second HDD before creating a RamDisk and found this out the hard way too.

For those with 8gb like myself who used msconfig to lower the Ram to get rid of the texture bug, re enable your full Ram again as you will need it. You can use the -winxp command to sort out the texture problem or either that have less Ram for the drive, it's up to you but I went for drive myself.

What next you ask?

Go play the game and enjoy the smoothness you fool.

Excellent job on this helped me immensely, however I have something to add for XP users and for MP players:

XP cannot use the symbolic links, so as a work around you can create a mod folder in your ram drive like R:/@ramd/addons and put the files listed above in the ramdrive addons folder then use Link Shell to "Pick Link Source" and then go to your Arma 2 folder and right click on the ARMA 2 folder and select "drop as junction" after that you need to add this to your shortcut for Arma 2 : -mod=@ramd

The BISIGN files are actually the signature files for Arma 2, and LiquidPinky is right, you do not need these for single player...however for MP they are needed for playing on servers, otherwise your ram drive will look like an unsigned mod and you will not be able to use it on many MP servers.

Ok i think im gonna get a ram Disk since my Hard Drive is just 2 500gb Barracudas in raid 0. they arnt very fast and i get a lot of stutter even with a powerful rig.

Im currently using an i7 Proccessor with 6gb of Tri Channel ram (3x2g) on windows 7. So i have one free slot. Is it Possible Rather then use 2gb of my Current memory can i purchase another memory stick giving 8gb of memory and use that to create a ram disk and still keep the Tri Channel?? sort of like sticking in a little 2gb hard drive in a memory slot.

Or do i get a SSD and stick my Operating System PageFile and Arma 2 on it?

Ok i think im gonna get a ram Disk since my Hard Drive is just 2 500gb Barracudas in raid 0. they arnt very fast and i get a lot of stutter even with a powerful rig.

Im currently using an i7 Proccessor with 6gb of Tri Channel ram (3x2g) on windows 7. So i have one free slot. Is it Possible Rather then use 2gb of my Current memory can i purchase another memory stick giving 8gb of memory and use that to create a ram disk and still keep the Tri Channel?? sort of like sticking in a little 2gb hard drive in a memory slot.

Or do i get a SSD and stick my Operating System PageFile and Arma 2 on it?

Actually a ram drive is much faster than SSD. You really don't need more than 2gb more ram, if you follow the instructions above.

The lengths you have to go to get this game running properly is ridiculous, it is not worth it.

My game is running fine. Check specs. You dont HAVE to go to those lengths (get some more RAM... Oh damn!).

What about when Crysis came out? You needed a whole new computer to play it. Did it stop people?

All i did to get most of the stutter disappear was just changing the pagefile drive from OS drive C:\ to Arma2 drive D:\

My OS partition doesn't have pagefile at all now and Arma 2 runs much more smoother. Before the HDD crunched almost all the time now it's much more silent. It suppose it doesn't load so much shit from HDD now. Also after that i haven't had a single LOD problems like i used to have every game session.

Well i cant find any free trial ram disk software for 64bit Windows 7, so i guess im gonna have to get a SSD. Cos im not reformating to xp.

All i did to get most of the stutter disappear was just changing the pagefile drive from OS drive C:\ to Arma2 drive D:\

C and D on the same drive? You had the pagefile on partition C and moved it to partition D where you have ARMA2? Did i get that correct?

Or do you have ARMA2 on another physical drive?

I have 1 HDD with OS on C and ARMA2 on D, but the bloody pagefile on C wich prolly is dumb. I dont know...