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SSD & Arma 2

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  • 13-03-2010 10:27am
    #1
    Maximilian
    Legal Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 5,400 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    I just finally got Arma 2 installed on my new Corsair 120gb SSD. I'm really quite impressed with it.

    Load times are down quite a bit but the object/texture pop-in is way down.

    I just tried joining the server there but it looks like ACE got updated again, so it's on an older version but when I quit out it did it's thing of jumping to random scenes of the island on the menu screen. Whereas before it might take a few seconds for objects or textures to load, now it happens either instantly or within perhaps a third or a half a second. I'm thinking when actually playing, where you're not jumping from one part of the island to the next as in the demo, it will be completely unnoticeable.

    Windows and everything generally just flies now. I can't recommend these things enough.


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    #2
    PogMoThoin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    Server is running v1.0 of Ace, but Yoma is giving further updates
    b316Hotfix = v1.0
    You need to do a direct download of all the v1.0 Ace mods and downgrade.............which is why I told Ye in the thread the other day to update and stay there, Ace development still goes on with updates twice a week.
    http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=8601

    Which ssd You buy and how much? link pls. Its my next move.

    BTW. I don't have that texture popping since I started using a ramdisk


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    #3
    PogMoThoin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    LIGHTNING wrote: »
    But they are silly money to buy and considering that your HDD is the biggest bottleneck in a system by a country mile I dont think its worth it. But each to their own!

    I don't understand, a SSD is a fast HDD, eliminating the bottleneck. It does much more for Arma than a gpu upgrade and the whole OS benefits from it


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    #4
    PogMoThoin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    But the game won't use any more ram or make any use of a faster gpu, its completely bound by cpu and hd. He's already got a quad, 4Gb ram and a Gtx280 (iirc). Its not just quicker loading times, this game thrashes the hd, is constantly reading. I upgraded to 8Gb ram just so I could have a 4Gb ramdisk for the some of the game .pbo's and maps and it makes a huge difference, his mobo won't take any more than 4Gb ram.

    SSD's transfer rates are 200-300MB/s, a 1TB Samsung F1 gives 90-100MB/s


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    #5
    PogMoThoin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    LIGHTNING wrote: »
    If your HD is constantly being accesed it could do with a defrag, my HDD is fine when playing.I think it SSDs are a silly upgrade considering the cost issue not to mention they have limited on the number of writes before they fail. If you look at benchmarks they arent a quantum leap in terms of performance jumps. I have the same view on those silly gaming network cards.

    Nonsence, my hd is constantly defragged. The thread is about ssd's and Arma 2, tests have proven that the game is constantly accessing the hard drive over and over, the game doesn't cache the info, try it yourself
    http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=88388
    http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=88629
    LIGHTNING wrote: »
    But your point was that a SSD upgrade is more benefical than a GPU, if you have a old 6800 or 7800 nvidia card a SSD hard disk wont make any difference where as a upgrade to a modern GPU would make a huge difference. As I said each to their own!

    If You have a 6800 or 7800 gpu then You shouldn't be even attempting to play the game, its well below minimum requirements, of course a gpu would be more beneficial to You. Most of us already have a high end cpu/gpu/ram, the next logical step is ssd. The ssd may be slow when comparing it to ram speeds, but its more than twice the speed of hd's with no seek times which benefits this game much more than any other.

    Max, can You run hdtune on that ssd and post the results


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    #6
    PogMoThoin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,874 ✭✭✭✭PogMoThoin


    But who wants to play at minimum detail? I play it maxed at 1920x1200 with 6000 viewdistance and it gets much easier on higher detail. My Young fella plays on medium settings at 1280x1024 with 1600 vd and its just so much harder, You get shot at and not know where from. Seeing the whole island makes flying much easier. Being able to quickly zoom without stutter makes a difference also. Thats why there's lots of threads here and elsewhere of people trying to optimise the game as much as possible, a ssd goes a long way to solving this. I won't be happy till I can play at 10000 vd on max detail, I'm not looking for 200fps, 30 fps is fine as long as its constant and not dropping


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    #7
    Maximilian
    Legal Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 5,400 Mod ✭✭✭✭Maximilian


    I got a SSD because my mobo can only take a max of 4gb. One I got is a Corsair Reactor 120.

    It's supposed to able to read at 250mb/s and write at 170. My mobo is SATA II but using that benchmark utility I can only get a max of 203mb/s (average of 192)for some reason, which is something I'm scratching my head about. That utility wouldn't let me run a write test for some reason.

    Another benchmark program, ATTO, shows a max of about 235mb/s and max write speed of 144.

    I haven't installed any SATA drivers, just whatever Win 7 came with (does it even need drivers?)

    Even still, the transfer rate is about double what it was and access speed is a fraction of what it was. They're expensive but I'm very happy with it. My whole system is just so much more responsive than before.


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