Use a RAM drive to reduce stuttering

[Space Communist]

Very interesting, I will be curious to see how this turns out.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Space Communist

Very interesting, I will be curious to see how this turns out.

Precisely my thoughts when I read Ataros' post. Please let us know how you go.

It might have made a difference over land , it still runs pretty choppy though. If you have a dedicated SSD I think this could make a big improvement .

[jimbop]

For this to make any difference the bottleneck would have to be the HDD I would think. I doubt it will help framerate in general but could reduce stuttering.

[Stanger]

Originally Posted by machoo

It might have made a difference over land , it still runs pretty choppy though. If you have a dedicated SSD I think this could make a big improvement .

I have a SSD for c:drive (Operating system) and a SSD for Drive (Games)

Still get choppy with 40 fps.

[Ataros]

You can find lots of info on ramdrive usage from this forum as ArmA2 has high visibility distances and thus many objects loading from hard drive to video memory at the same time and this is the reason for stuttering (but only sometimes for low fps).

I use this program to create a ramdrive http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk so far but will probably try a RAMDisk Enterprise when I have more RAM.

Out of 4GB RAM my ramdisk takes 1600 MB and this completely removes stutters for me having these 4 files placed there:

bob_buildings.SFS
bob_plane.SFS
bob_update.SFS
bob_update01.SFS

One of developers mentioned that bob_update.SFS and bob_update01.SFS are worth putting into RAM.

People at Sukhoi forums report that the most frequently accessed files are bob_plane.sfs, bob_update01.sfs, bob_maps.sfs .

I hope this helps.

ps. My specs: i7-860@3.8, 4GB, ATI4890 2GB. Run mid settings at 1680x1050 at about only 25-30 fps low over land with about 30-40 planes due to slow video card but smooth and without any stutters.

Do not forget to exclude the ramdisk and il-2 steam folder from antivirus shields. And use Gamebooster to unload unnecessary programs from memory and defragment the game folder.

[Wynthorpe]

Will give it a try thanks!

[moggel]

I couldn't get ImDisk to work so I tried RamDisk (http://memory.dataram.com/products-a...ftware/ramdisk) instead. Unfortunately the game wouldn't even start. Not sure i I made anything wrong but I did follow the instructions to the letter (except for the selected ram disk solution).

Seems most of you who tried it did see reduction of stutters, which is reallt the biggest problem with this game. To my surprise I have seen little change in FPS with different settings. I'm not even sure what FPS I have (is there a way to get that info on screen?) but the stutters kills the game for me.

Let's hope for that patch to come along soon.

Cheers

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Ataros

Out of 4GB RAM my ramdisk takes 1600 MB and this completely removes stutters for me having these 4 files placed there:

bob_buildings.SFS
bob_plane.SFS
bob_update.SFS
bob_update01.SFS

One of developers mentioned that bob_update.SFS and bob_update01.SFS are worth putting into RAM.

People at Sukhoi forums report that the most frequently accessed files are bob_plane.sfs, bob_update01.sfs, bob_maps.sfs.

Thanks for this. With the above files I can report an average FPS of 61 without stutter (except for the first few seconds after mission start) in free flight over land. My specs are in the signature and I am running a Windows Basic display profile during the game. Antivirus is excluded from the steamapps folder and the RAM drive.

Video settings are:

1600*900
Full screen
Anti-Aliasing = 8x
Anti-Epilepsy = Off
Model Detail = High
Buildings Detail = Very Low
Land Detail = Low
Forest = Off
Visual Effects = Medium
Damage Decals = High (but haven't taken any hits so not relevant yet)
Buildings Amount = Low
Land Shading = Low
Grass = Off
Shadows = Off
Roads = Off

However, being a scientist (back off man!) I am compelled to admit that I haven't done side-by-side comparisons with HDD vs. RAM drive. Don't really care, though, since I am getting reasonable results now. Can't wait for the patch so I can hopefully turn some settings up.

[jimbop]

Originally Posted by Stanger

I have a SSD for c:drive (Operating system) and a SSD for Drive (Games)

Still get choppy with 40 fps.

Please correct my if I'm wrong but my understanding is that DDR3 bandwidth is much higher than any SSD due to the different interfaces. I'm out of my depth here so feel free so shoot me down (nice mixed analogies, hey?) but I thought DD3 transfer rates were thousands of MB/s vs. SSD which are hundreds of MB/s.