ArmA 2 I/O analysis results

[Leon86]

Have you tried smaller pagefiles, like 3GB or something? Or do some applications use it a lot?

[griffz]

Wrong. Normally Windows 32 Bit will allow 32Bit apps to address 2GB. When you load the 32 Bit OS with a /3GB switch, you allow apps to address 3GB - but only if they are LLA.

Yes in theory 32 Bit apps could address up to 4GB but Windows 32 Bit does not make 4GB of address space available to them. With a /3GB switch 1GB is reserved to the OS kernel. Without it, it reserves 2GB. So LLA allows a 32Bit application running on a 32 Bit version of Windows to address 3GB of RAM, if the OS is /3GB switched.

For a 32Bit app running on a 64Bit OS, WOW64 operates in much the same way. Although MS say that 32Bit apps can use up to 4GB in Win64, industry experience has shown that WOW64 does not work like that in actuality.



Wrong again. Using RAM like this is standard practice on the servers that I build for work (high volume web transactions), and the hybrid approach to using spare RAM for paging or as a Level 2 cache is becoming increasingly common as the price of RAM falls. Try running a Ramdisk as a Level 2 cache for an SSD and tell me you can't see a difference in performance. Or try running Skyrim for a few hours with your swap file on a Ramdisk and tell me it isn't much quicker. I agree that Arma does not page as much as some apps.

I'll give you an example - real world, not your bedroom laboratory. Say you are running a 10GB database in 32Bit SQL server, on Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition 32Bit. You've got 8GB of RAM on board. Under what circumstances would it be "useless" to have the paged data going into a swap file residing in the component with the fastest access time ie RAM when that RAM cannot be addressed by either the OS or the application because it is > 4GB ?

Or what about if you were running 2003 Server Web Edition that only supports 2GB?

you said it : free ram is useless ram.

[Dystopian1]

qwertz
Thank you for your threads.

In fact if it is enough for you to use numbers for analyzing (without diagrams) you can use ProcMon built-in feature "Tools - File Summary...". You can sort pbo's by reads count or read bytes and find most "popular" files.

[BasileyOne]

as long as RAM is also used[aside storing OS body and vital services/appz] for IO caching and for storing GART/IOMMU testures for you GPU, i think 4Gb is slightly small
usually 5-7Gb is safer[depend appz you use].

p.s.
GPU's with BIGGER onboard memory - helps TOO
6Gb AMD and 4Gb Nvidia cards meant basically :-)

[MavericK96]

I paid for the full version of RAMDISK and now give half of my 16GB Ram over to the ramdisk and filled it up with pagefile.

I've freed up a load of space on my SSD. This, is nothing else is the big benefit for me.

I have 12 GB and have the page file turned completely off. Never had any problems.