Ramdisk vs. SSD

[Lag (DayZ) 17]

i have a pretty dated machine now and i like tweaking things to get the ultimate potential performance out of games... maybe a little too much.

2x 5150 xeon processors that total to 4 cores @ 2.66GHz

6gb of ram [around 800MHz speed]

radeon 4870

SATA2 SSD

i run the game off an SSD now and with pretty modest settings i get 60fps in the forest and open areas, but cherno and elektro are pretty bad. maybe 20-30. i also notice a lot of texture jumbling with the LOD. buildings in the distance seem to be switching from super low res textures to higher res and back again at will. the higher res textures usually take a second to show up after i zoom in with a scope.

just wanted to know if running a few of the big .pbo files, like structures, off a ramdisk would help at all?

also i wanted to know which addons folder the game actually uses while playing dayz so i know which one to move files from to the ramdisk if i did try it. i've seen mention in past ramdisk threads of some files that aren't even in my OA addons folder, but regular arma II instead and there's seemingly two addon folders to choose from each for arma II and operation arrowhead.

would it even be worth it though? i've read that the game is a lot better on hard drives now, so it might not even be needed if i have the SSD already.

Edited August 31, 2012 by Lag

[Zeppa 562]

Does not help... its the game that does that "nothing" you can do about it like. If you are running from ssd now its all good, better than regular hdd. I use ssd only for my OS and some apps, dayz is running from regular hdd and does the same. Its the game that is "bad".

And your setup sounds more like a server.

ps. and when you game starts it load the necessary files to your RAM, so only loading times are reduced when using SSD. not the overall performance of the game is changed much at least in arma. Games that reguire frequent loadings run "faster" from SSD.

Edited August 31, 2012 by Zeppa

[mikeambrose3 53]

It's the game not the PC. Also that CPU sucks, and the RAM speed sucks.

[jblackrupert 308]

Running from RAM or SSD does not increase FPS. it speeds up load times.

+ You're RAM is pretty damn slow and xeon processors are designed for server applications not games.

Cherno and Elektro will cause performance issues on all systems regardles of how tricked out they are.

There are threads on the offical Arma 2 forums for using RAMdisks and SSD's, give those a read.

[Faceman Peck 93]

SSD 4tw everytime

bai

[Lag (DayZ) 17]

Running from RAM or SSD does not increase FPS. it speeds up load times.

+ You're RAM is pretty damn slow and xeon processors are designed for server applications not games.

Cherno and Elektro will cause performance issues on all systems regardles of how tricked out they are.

There are threads on the offical Arma 2 forums for using RAMdisks and SSD's, give those a read.

i did give them a read and it looks like you haven't as people reported fps gains because of the fact that this game streams files from your hard drive instead of using any kind of cache. what there isn't a lot of recent info on is whether using a ramdisk is worth using over an SSD. thanks for telling me stuff i already know.

[MGreenwald 49]

i must be lucky, i use an amd x6 3.2ghz with 2 gtx 460's sli and i have NO issues anywhere in dayz

[jblackrupert 308]

i did give them a read and it looks like you haven't as people reported fps gains because of the fact that this game streams files from your hard drive instead of using any kind of cache. what there isn't a lot of recent info on is whether using a ramdisk is worth using over an SSD. thanks for telling me stuff i already know.

SSD's and RAM do not increase FPS. It may reduce stuttering but thats a totally different thing.

SSD's and RAMdrives descrease loading times, nothing more.

Those people reporting FPS increases are wrong and got corrected many times on the forum.

[=DiG= Zgraphz 84]

I do not get that, how can you say ram disk dose not change the game effect of dayz? ramdisk changes the gaming graphics and it's preformance not just with dayz but arma 2 +OA aswell. have you actually used a ramdisk properly? i play on a PoS dell insprion dual core with some crapy radeon hd 6570 g-card with a processor at 3.1ghz with 8gb of RAM maxed and my computer plays better than my friend with some crazy as 12gb but it's16gb maxed computer that blows my computer away on every single game but arma2 and dayz the only difference is i use ram disk, so i wouldn't knock on ramdisk so much, and yes it would increase load and startup time if you couldn't take the extra 15 secs to cut the folder out and place it into a folder on your desktop when you are doing playing the game either for the rest of the day/night. your suppost to shut it down before you turn off your computer without ever clicking the load and save settings tab....