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qwertz

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

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It's insane and brytal...:eek::eek::eek:

Hi Iena,

here's the HD Tune result:

6yfl6o.jpg

By no means is it useless to buy SSDs - you will be surprised how much they will speed up your system in general, and it certainly helps for ARMA2 compared to a standard mechanical hard disk. However, as you can see above, that's still a different animal compared to RAMdisk speeds.

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i was wondering about that when i read the intial post, why wouldnt it work or at least help? http://www.google.com/products?q=16+GB+USB+flash+drive&hl=en&aq=f looks like they go for 30-40 bucks, which is chump change for most here if it will drastically improve the experience.

I also picked up on this as a 16Gb flashdrive sounds a lot cheaper than chasing a new disk, CPU or GPU or improve things !

Has anyone tried it ?

Edited by cjph

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I also picked up on this, though it sounds as if the RAMdrive software is an additional cost as well; but the cost plus a 16Gb flashdrive sounds a lot cheaper than chasing a new disk, CPU or GPU or improve things !

Has anyone tried it ?

Got as far as choosing a nice USB stick, a Corsair Voyager GT 16GB before the missus said no on funding grounds :(

Now rummaging around the house to put some junk on eBay to pay for it.

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Guys, I don't think that a USB flash drive is helpful here - I mean, try it out, but last time I checked you will get 30MB/s transfer rate, which is 1/3 of a modern SATA hard drive. It is a little faster on access times, but we are talking about a LOT of streaming here (GBytes).

I moved to the RamDisk idea coming from 2 x Vertex 120GB in RAID 0 which deliver 500MB/s transfer with below 0.1ms latency, and I experienced a very noticable improvement.

I am not sure what all these USB stick or "pagefile on seperate HD" discussion really have to do with it ?

Edited by qwertz

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it doesn't make sense to create a virtual drive on your RAM! Windows uses pages file when it detects low RAM so now you're putting more burden on your RAM by using RamDisk! may as well disable your paging file all together.

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My older motherboard is limited to 8Gb RAM according to the manual, so a RAMdrive is out of the question for me (maybe 4x4GB stick might work, but is a high cost for a solution which does not work). But, a 16Gb flash drive is not too expensive, so you could copy the install folder to the USB 2.0 flash drive as a different solution. I remember reading that the texture 'pops' etc are caused by a lot of reads to the disk, so I wonder if the slower stream speed of a flash drive would be balanced out by the faster seek speed for these reads, so improving performance ? Sort of trying to emulate a RAMBoost function (I am running XP).

Perhaps I am just wishing for too much.

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it doesn't make sense to create a virtual drive on your RAM! Windows uses pages file when it detects low RAM so now you're putting more burden on your RAM by using RamDisk! may as well disable your paging file all together.

InFireBaptize, pls read the original post. I am using the address space above 4GB for the ramdisk, which Windows 32bit can't see, so it is 8GB of wasted ram without a Ramdisk.

Even on a 64bit system that can access all 12GB - how do you make sure that the ARMA2 textures and assets are remaining in RAM all the time and don't have to be read from disk? It's not like you have any influence on Window's memory management...

Edited by qwertz

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InFireBaptize, pls read the original post. I am using the address space above 4GB for the ramdisk, which Windows 32bit can't see, so it is 8GB of wasted ram without a Ramdisk.

Even on a 64bit system that can access all 12GB - how do you make sure that the ARMA2 textures and assets are remaining in RAM all the time and don't have to be read from disk? It's not like you have any influence on Window's memory management...

sorry posting from work and got distracted by phone calls. What program did you use to find out which files are being used the most instead of moving the whole arma2 directory?

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I used ProcMon from Sysinternals and set up a filter to just monitor mu ARMA2 directory.

Edited by qwertz

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With junctions and hardlinks you can split the arma2 pbo files, to HDD/SSD and RAM drive.

Or just absolute path in modfolders: -mod=c:\arma2\nonRamDriveFiles.

So far I am using an Intel M SSD 80 GB for XP32b plus a 5 GB RAM drive for swap file and

temp files.

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I used ProcMon from Sysinternals and set up a filter to just monitor mu ARMA2 directory.

thanks, have you tried moving pagefile to virtual drive as well? is it possible?

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thanks, have you tried moving pagefile to virtual drive as well? is it possible?

That would be ideal, but I only have 12GB ram and no space for my pagefile anymore on my 8.5GB ramdrive.

It is possible with Superspeed Ramdrive Plus and some other products, I don't know if there is a free ramdrive software supporting pagefiles.

Edited by qwertz

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With junctions and hardlinks you can split the arma2 pbo files, to HDD/SSD and RAM drive.

Or just absolute path in modfolders: -mod=c:\arma2\nonRamDriveFiles.

So far I am using an Intel M SSD 80 GB for XP32b plus a 5 GB RAM drive for swap file and

temp files.

I might actually give this method a go, I only have 8gb DDR3 Ram available but having raked through the ArmA 2 folder the majority of the map related files (not including mods) are around 3.21gb. Do you think it would be possible to split these up from the original folder and run separately as mods from a RAM drive without issues?

After all it is the map loading that is causing the stuttering, 90% of the time anyways.

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I've just fitted a third SATA into my rig, I'll see how it goes with the OS on the first, the pagefile on the second and the game on the third. The game already runs pretty well though, so I may not be able to see any difference.

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I might actually give this method a go, I only have 8gb DDR3 Ram available but having raked through the ArmA 2 folder the majority of the map related files (not including mods) are around 3.21gb. Do you think it would be possible to split these up from the original folder and run separately as mods from a RAM drive without issues?

After all it is the map loading that is causing the stuttering, 90% of the time anyways.

if you do this, can you post some kind of guide for dummies? id like to give it a try. i was doing the harvest red mission this morning & had to wait about 30 seconds -after- loading for all the textures to load up.

im also curious if anyone has tried to USB test, surely someone has a 16GB stick out there?

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I've just fitted a third SATA into my rig, I'll see how it goes with the OS on the first, the pagefile on the second and the game on the third. The game already runs pretty well though, so I may not be able to see any difference.

what have you done to us Bohemia!! :smash:

Install the game on the first hard drive because installing the game on the third drive with "OS" is like installing it on the first with "OS".

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if you do this, can you post some kind of guide for dummies? id like to give it a try. i was doing the harvest red mission this morning & had to wait about 30 seconds -after- loading for all the textures to load up.

im also curious if anyone has tried to USB test, surely someone has a 16GB stick out there?

Just stumbling through it myself but I will be sure to make a Dummies Guide from a dummies POV. ;)

I am just trying to move the files to my second HDD for now before I try putting them in RAM, just cutting into a separate folder and moving them while adding the new destination as a mod in the exe command is a phail though.

Looking into symlink creation now as that is the answer I believe.

Even the splitting of the game over 2 HDDs will smooth it out, splitting between 2 HDDs and RAMdisk will really improve it. Not as much as a pure RAMdisk install but some of us don't have that option.

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Oh well, no real difference that I can see. Maybe stuff isn't popping up like it did before, one particular skyscraper was immediately visible when I panned around suddenly, whereas before it popped into view. More extensive playing is needed I think, which I'll be doing tonight.

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moving pagefile to a separate hard disk is not a big of a difference, i'm more curious of installing virtual drive "RAMDISK" and putting my page file and some arma2 files in that virtual drive!

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moving pagefile which is used often away from OS drive while keeping other used data on another drive was always effective and does make difference ...

yet no matter what HDD was always the slowest component in fast system (if you ignore I/O like USB or LAN)

SSD and RamDrives are atm ultimate solutions as long as you have $ and equipment to hold them...

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Hi Iena,

here's the HD Tune result:

6yfl6o.jpg

By no means is it useless to buy SSDs - you will be surprised how much they will speed up your system in general, and it certainly helps for ARMA2 compared to a standard mechanical hard disk. However, as you can see above, that's still a different animal compared to RAMdisk speeds.

:eek::)

That was my idea, few months ago. Finaly someone done that, and prove i had pint:yay:

But point isnt 5GB/s transfer of big files. It is IOPS and random disk iops.

You can raid 24 SSD but you wil never get IOPS of ramdrive, and that is what makes biggest performance impact.

--------------------------------------------

Anyway why turn off your PC anyway???

I use sleep, i have genuine windows 7 profesional x64 (from MSDNAA) and i rearly restart or turn off my pc. Even then u can with some programs create images of ramdisk, and make automaticaly saving images when you turn off your pc.

Ramdisk is amazing, not only for gaming but for IT professionals (databases), photo and video editing. Enginering and and science (im engineering student and use matlab, and circut/network design software).

And ram is so cheap. U can get 1x4GB ddr3 1333 for 120$.

http://www.pricewatch.com/browse/system_memory/ddr3-1333_4gb

for 480$ u can get 16GB of ram, and that is enough for most programs and games, and for that money u cant get 2 good SSDs.

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And ram is so cheap. U can get 1x4GB ddr3 1333 for 120$.

http://www.pricewatch.com/browse/system_memory/ddr3-1333_4gb

for 480$ u can get 16GB of ram, and that is enough for most programs and games, and for that money u cant get 2 good SSDs.

Yep, but the problem is that you only find ECC/buffered server memory 4GB modules that cheap. AFAIK, the cheapest non-ECC/buffered 4GB DDR3 DIMMs are still around $200 a pop, so $1200 for 24GB. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231310)

Wait a minute - that would be 20GB of ramdisk for Games/Pagefile - I am tempted to hit the button....:yay:

Edited by qwertz

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