Devs time for a 64BIT version???

[Hawk Firestorm]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Flash Thunder]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Wolfstriked]

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]

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]

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]

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 (http://www.bistudio.com/developers-blog/breaking-the-32-bit-barrier-2_en.html).

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]

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]

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]

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 (http://serverfault.com/questions/12150/does-the-disablepagingexecutive-registry-change-have-any-actual-effect/56175#56175)

[InFireBaptize]

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 (http://serverfault.com/questions/12150/does-the-disablepagingexecutive-registry-change-have-any-actual-effect/56175#56175)

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]

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 (http://serverfault.com/questions/12150/does-the-disablepagingexecutive-registry-change-have-any-actual-effect/56175#56175)

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]

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?


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

[Punisher5555]

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 (http://www.bistudio.com/developers-blog/breaking-the-32-bit-barrier-2_en.html).

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]

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]

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

[Wolfstriked]

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]

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.

[b101_uk]

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]

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 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124810%28EXCHG.65%29.aspx) 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)

[Hawk Firestorm]

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.

[Dwarden]

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 ...

[Flash Thunder]

Thanks for all the insight Suma and Dwarden much appreciated.

[Suma]

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]

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

http://i.technet.microsoft.com/dd535533.vmmapScreen(en-us,MSDN.10).jpg



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


http://i.technet.microsoft.com/ff700229.rammap_thumb(en-us,MSDN.10).jpg



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

http://i.technet.microsoft.com/bb896653.ProcessExplorer1(en-us,MSDN.10).jpg

are able give additional details :)

[Luomu]

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]

http://forums.bistudio.com/image.php?u=9860&dateline=1274473256&type=thumb http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:dYFXIX7dGidHWM:http://www.broxtowe.gov.uk/media/image/g/d/tickboxW.jpg

[Flash Thunder]

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]

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!

[MavericK96]

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]

My other system is a AMD 940 BE @<hidden> 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]

My other system is a AMD 940 BE @<hidden> 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6669/pagefile.jpg (http://img231.imageshack.us/i/pagefile.jpg/)

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]

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]

[MG]http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/6669/pagefile.jpg[/IMG] (http://img231.imageshack.us/i/pagefile.jpg/)

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.

[Richey79]

That clears up the problem, cheers.

[INVICTUS]

disable superfetch it is an evil program. I remember the first time using Vista x64 I was like what is using my hard drive the lights were blinking like crazy, it was superfetch. I have not tried page file off in Arma2 since last year I am buying 4Gb more ram I will try it again.

[Enforcer1975]

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.


How about a whole new engine instead of using the old one over and over, of course it's still capable and gives you lot's of freedom but also lots of limitations and imo it's already outdated 100 times.

[Dwarden]

How about a whole new engine instead of using the old one over and over, of course it's still capable and gives you lot's of freedom but also lots of limitations and imo it's already outdated 100 times.

how about wait another several years :D

[Nephris1]

How about a whole new engine instead of using the old one over and over, of course it's still capable and gives you lot's of freedom but also lots of limitations and imo it's already outdated 100 tim

Sounds ya not pleasured and satisfied with Arma2.
What 100 times are so outdated, that would justify an effort of a new engine.
Besides a new engine means a new game.
The game is selling the game is running.
And more than EA (e.g.) patches are released regulary....and the game is still supported, even 1 year after release ;)

[Flash Thunder]

how about wait another several years :D

Sir I have reports of incoming Arma games and Farma games!

hype-o-meter just went through the roof Dwarden. :yay:

how can my favorite military simulation game and favorite PC game get any better. :eek:

[slimSpencer]

well, i've got a question related to the LAA-flag:
Using vmmap, OA shows a total of ~2GB (column size, "Total" + "Free") - almost the same as every other 32bit app.
Shouldn't that be around 4GB as of the LAA-flag? Any true 64bit app states ~8TB, as it should be.

OA-Version is the official 1.52.71816. OS is Win7 x64 with 4GB RAM.

regards

Spencer

[PogMoThoin]

well, i've got a question related to the LAA-flag:
Using vmmap, OA shows a total of ~2GB (column size, "Total" + "Free") - almost the same as every other 32bit app.
Shouldn't that be around 4GB as of the LAA-flag? Any true 64bit app states ~8TB, as it should be.

OA-Version is the official 1.52.71816. OS is Win7 x64 with 4GB RAM.

regards

Spencer

The large address tweaks and multi-core optimisations Arma 2 got in 1.07 aren't in vanilla 1.52.71816, try the latest beta patch

[slimSpencer]

k... thx

[Suma]

well, i've got a question related to the LAA-flag:
Using vmmap, OA shows a total of ~2GB (column size, "Total" + "Free") - almost the same as every other 32bit app.
Shouldn't that be around 4GB as of the LAA-flag? Any true 64bit app states ~8TB, as it should be.

Moreover, be aware wmmap is not able to report anything about the file cache we use, as it reports only what virtual addresses are taken by what memory, but the file cache is using a physical memory, but not using any virtual addresses for it at all.

[Hawk Firestorm]

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.

Sadly I wish this was the case on my system out of memory errors are common place hence the thread.

I've been in IT all my life till I got MS, I'm aware of how 32 bit handles Vram and adressing on 32 bit systems however I wasn't sure if it was the same under 32 bit emulation on a 64 bit system.

[Punisher5555]

Moreover, be aware wmmap is not able to report anything about the file cache we use, as it reports only what virtual addresses are taken by what memory, but the file cache is using a physical memory, but not using any virtual addresses for it at all.

Suma, I take it you are running a Quadro card. If so what level of drivers are you running?

Are all the devs running Quadro's?

[PuFu]

I doubt any dev is running on Quadro tbh. The stress test PCs should be as close as possible to a game-rig.

[SWAT_BigBear]

This is Suma's pc specs from a year ago. Wonder what he has, if any, upgraded. Surely video?
http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1323722&postcount=7

[Grizzle]

This is quite the juicy thread. Thanks to Suma and DWarden for being so forthcoming with all these juicy tidbits!

[Punisher5555]

This is Suma's pc specs from a year ago. Wonder what he has, if any, upgraded. Surely video?
http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1323722&postcount=7

Yeah, I don't think there is a 2GB 8800.

[Synide]

Some reference reading for your information... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/08/22/218527.aspx (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/08/22/218527.aspx).

Not directly related, but, may give the reader some insight into where these sorts of issues originate from. Many of these sorts of discussions regarding Virtual Address Space, Virtual Memory, PageFiles, memory usage the why's, wherefores and why not's, 'inventive' use of CreateFileMapping & MapViewOfFile have been disccussed by people for numerous years. There's a plethora of websites and information out there regarding honing application architecture to interact with the resources available on a machine.

I'm sure when there's a 'need' to migrate to a 64bit architecture for Real Virtuality gaming engine that BIS will embark on that track as will many other gaming companies. Companies like Valve have already gone down that track but I don't think they'll really reap the reward of their 64bit arhitecture for a few more years yet.

[DeclaredEvol]

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).

yeah, i've been trying to tell people that it doesn't really make a difference...

[ProfTournesol]

yeah, i've been trying to tell people that it doesn't really make a difference...

And it took you 10 month to think about your reply :confused:

[Defunkt]

I expect he was prompted by the writhing mosh-pit of first-time posters making other pointless demands in the ArmA 3 forum (OMGZORZ!!!! ARMA3 MUST HAVE <Insert Demand>!!!). I want to punch every second poster.

[Das Attorney]

I want to punch every second poster.

http://eu.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/higyou/higyou0908/higyou090800094/5449092-metal-3d-mechanical-hand-abstract-isolated.jpg

:D

[Gazspain]

Well... in my opinion, due to ArMa is only for PC, instead of Xbox or PS3, why dont use more modern API's like Dx11(native, not patched) with future releases of Arma. I understand that a lot of companies are waiting for next gen consoles like ps4 or xbox720 before switching from dx9 to dx11. But Arma hasnt got that problem, and most of people have a dx11 capable card

[Alwarren]

most of people have a dx11 capable card

Er... no?

I would say from what I have seen most people have a DX10 card, and I don't see the benefit of using DX11 if you don't actually make use of DX11 features, which ARMA doesn't.

[NkEnNy]

Fact is most people still don't run a Dx10 capable OS! Which makes arma3's dx10 requirement so interesting.

Of course in one years time the vast majority will be running W7 or the equivalent.

-k

[Atkins]

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

until someone provides better and larger statistics...

[Derbysieger]

Fact is most people still don't run a Dx10 capable OS! Which makes arma3's dx10 requirement so interesting.

Of course in one years time the vast majority will be running W7 or the equivalent.

-k

Most people I know who are gamers run Win 7 and some run Vista. The last one changed from XP to Win 7 one year ago.

[megagoth1702]

As soon as they make the game 64bit - I want all the damn LODs of trees etc. loaded into my memory instead of having to wait for my HDD to put them into the game every single time I zoom in&out... This is horrible.

[ModeZt]

oh shiiiiii...
not this again.
ArmA2 is 64-bit aware since 1.07. It and can use all the memory on 64-bit operating systems.

[AnimalMother92]

oh shiiiiii...
not this again.
ArmA2 is 64-bit aware since 1.07. It and can use all the memory on 64-bit operating systems.

Hmm? I have 8gbs of RAM and Arma has never used anywhere near to that.

[Sickboy]

Not 64-bit aware, but LAA (large-address-aware) :)
http://www.monash.edu.au/policy/gp-laa.htm (http://www.monash.edu.au/policy/gp-laa.htm)
That means up to 4 GB on a 64-bit OS.

[Killakaze]

Anyone with black screens this might help.

I used to run out of memory all the time and also get black screens that eventually recover or needed a flush to recover, i always had the impression black screen and running out of memory were related. somehow the ram issue stopped acouple months ago cant remmeber what fixed that but i was still get black screens until One day i alt tabbed out of a black screen and noticed a little windows msg pop up over the clock in the toolbar for 2 seconds saying "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" i had never noticed the error before, its very easy to miss, i alt tabbed back in to arma 2 and it was working but abit more stutter until my system had been rebooted. realising the card was having some kind of trouble i started mucking around with evga precision overclocking my gpu & noticed as soon as i tried upping shader clocks and running arma id get "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered" i returned the setting back to default in evga precision then reduced shaders by a notch or two on the slider which is less than 20hz or whatever and i havnt had a black screen since, i can overclock memory core and the cpu core on the card without issue so now i run it overclocked with shader slightly under default and im getting better perfomance than ever without issue.


q9550 @<hidden> 3.7ghz, sparkle 285gtx 2gb, 8gb ram, ssd drive

[SVO]

Interesting Killakaze. I don't overclock usually, but am very aware of the display driver problem. I'll give it a go right now.

[Kridian]

..and noticed a little windows msg pop up over the clock in the toolbar for 2 seconds saying "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered"

I remember the days in ArmA 1 when I'd see this constantly with my 8800GTX, then I switched to an ATI/AMD vid card and have not seen it since.

I might go back to NVidia... one day.

[Killakaze]

How did you go with it SVO?
Kridian yeah i orginally had dual core and a 8800gts when i first got arma and i was getting black screens and receiving constantly it was unbearable

Btw when the drivers recover from not responding i remmeber reading something about the 3d mode of the card cannot run properly or something and the gpu reverts to some basic 2d mode or something whatever it was is why you need to reboot after a driver stops responding to get back to the right performance.

[=WFL= Sgt Bilko]

According to Steam HW survey (from April 2011):
- About 50% of the windows crowd are running a 64-bit OS (XP/Vista/W7)
- About 56% are running a gfx card with DX10 support on a matching OS
- And about 5.6% with DX11 support on a matching OS

Hard to tell what it'll be in a year from now.

[vfn4i83]

According to Steam HW survey (from April 2011):
- About 50% of the windows crowd are running a 64-bit OS (XP/Vista/W7)
- About 56% are running a gfx card with DX10 support on a matching OS
- And about 5.6% with DX11 support on a matching OS

Hard to tell what it'll be in a year from now.


Had another, but all practically the same. Either way, this one is broader than STEAM.

http://unity3d.com/webplayer/hardware-stats

[Brainbug]

Don't forget that the Steam user base is not necessarily the same as the Arma user base, because a lot of people that use Steam are just playing Counterstrike or various casual games or generally speaking games that don't require that much horsepower.

On the other hand, do you really want to play Arma2 on a Geforce 7000 series or a Radeon X1000 series (you may even think 7950GX2 or X1950XTX here)? I think noone wants, so I assume the vast majority of the current Arma2 userbase already has at least DX10 hardware (even if they are still running XP). And as you said, it's still a year to go.

[Steakslim]

Man that brought me back. My first video card I ever bought was a 7950gt.

[CameronMcDonald]

I remember the days in ArmA 1 when I'd see this constantly with my 8800GTX, then I switched to an ATI/AMD vid card and have not seen it since.

I might go back to NVidia... one day.

The initial 8800 series card drivers were fucking horrible. I persisted and they eventually solved it, after much heartache.

[seelix]

Will the 64Bit discussion start again some day ?

[Hellfire257]

As far as I'm concerned, it is settled.

[Dwarden]

i see no point it was explained multiple times,
that in many cases the 64bit version will increase memory usage (double) w/o any performance gain

the product is LAA aware, so it may (if needed) directly address 4GB of memory plus also already can use N GB indirectly ...

the native 64bit application is thus not on schedule of this year

[galzohar]

If file cache is separate from the address space so practically the game can use more than 4GB of ram (especially for stuff that are constantly being streamed from the hard drive), why do people with a lot of RAM need to do something silly like a ramdisk to make the game run smoothly?

Is there no way to just make it not have to constantly re-read stuff from the hard drive? And if there is no way, wouldn't going for 64-bit make it possible one way or another?

Currently people go and buy insane amounts of RAM to make ramdisks to make the game run smoothly, so I think they wouldn't mind running a 64-bit version that would take twice the memory, considering they already load many GBs of game files into their ram with their ramdisk software.

I really don't care if the game has a 64-bit version or not, but the constant FPS drops due to loading stuff from the hard drive, regardless of available RAM, is really annoying. Even the best machines seem to suffer from this, since even pricey SSDs aren't fast enough to keep up...

[Sickboy]

The bottleneck may lay elsewhere. Stutters don't have to be only caused by reading stuff from the harddrive, even though it is a bottleneck when slow harddrives are concerned.
Implementation might also be an issue.

Is there evidence that shows on the same system, that a fast SSD still causes stutters while RAMDRIVE does not?

In regards to Stutter Prevention by Caching, effectively it doesn't seem to matter much if you'd run a 64-bit version with increased file-cache, or cache yourself through RAMDRIVE.
While changing the engine to support 64-bit might require a lot of work, while the size of users who have more than 12 GB ram (you need even more to cache it all) is probably rather small still too.

An issue of the current cache implementation might be that it cannot predict everything that is going to be needed in the cache throughout the mission due to the dynamic nature of many (custom) missions.
Some of the missions spawn all the objects that could be randomly spawned later, caching it in the process and thus reduce / remove stutters when dynamically spawning objects throughout the mission, unless the cache has been overwritten already with more important data.

[MavericK96]

Honestly though, I don't see why it can't cache the entire island, whichever one you are playing anyway. I mean the entire island data files are what, less than 1 GB? Plus structures and stuff it can get up there but if it has access to at least 4 GB of RAM it should not be an issue.

Also, after switching to an SSD I've seen virtually zero stutter, so I think the main issue there was definitely HDD I/O swapping.

After I got another 6 GB of RAM I tried using a RAMDisk again, putting basically all of the standard OA files on it. I actually got worse stuttering than with the SSD for some reason. I haven't really played around with it enough to know why, but it definitely was not an improvement.

[Vipera]

MavericK96, how much memory do you use for Ramdisk? You need enough RAM for ARMA2 and Windows to see improovements while using Ramdisk. For example, if you have 12Gb memory and you leave 3Gb for RAM and rest 9Gb for Ramdisk you will get bad performance than if you make 5Gb for Ram and 7Gb for Ramdisk.

[MavericK96]

I believe I tried 4 GB RAMDisk first and then 6 GB. Both times I should have had plenty of RAM left over.

[Sickboy]

So unlike Galzohar claimed, buying an SSD seems a better choice than adding 16 or more GB of ram into your system and work with ramdrives, or a 64-bit game edition.
SSD is getting more and more common, and standard memory sizes are slowly growing as well, while 64-bit OS are also spreading.

Better use storage devices for storage and memory for actual memory purposes :P
Seems to make sense now that harddrive performance is moving forward a lot faster due to SSD, than with the magnetic drives we were stuck with for years.

[GossamerSolid]

SSDs are still expensive as shite to what they hold.

When SSDs get to holding 1TB for what a standard old drive does, then I'll get one. Until then, I'd rather spend my money on stuff like a processor/mobo.

[Dwarden]

you all forget the critical aspect of RAMdrive I/O tanking CPU ...

SSD is more feasible solution (be it SATA or PCIe)

also the content needed for island is way more than 1GB :)

[Sickboy]

SSDs are still expensive as shite to what they hold.

When SSDs get to holding 1TB for what a standard old drive does, then I'll get one. Until then, I'd rather spend my money on stuff like a processor/mobo.We were speaking about RAM and SSD.
32 GB SSD is generally cheaper than 32 GB RAM (also have to consider the mainboard/cpu you need for it) :)
(32 GB might not be enough, depending on mods)

[MavericK96]

SSDs are still expensive as shite to what they hold.

When SSDs get to holding 1TB for what a standard old drive does, then I'll get one. Until then, I'd rather spend my money on stuff like a processor/mobo.

Think what you will, but I think I spent ~$200 on an 80 GB Intel G2 SSD, and it was probably the single most worthwhile purchase for ArmA2 that I've made. Obviously if your CPU and GPU are shit then those would take priority, but going from fast HDD to SSD made the stuttering drop to virtually zero. Also, Windows boots in about 30 seconds. :D

Nowadays you can get even faster SSDs for even less money per GB.