Use a RAM drive to reduce stuttering
 

Acknowledgments first: here (JG52Krupi) and here (Ataros, post #37).

This is a method to create a virtual RAM drive which can be used to store some of the more accessed game files. I don't know how RAM speed compares with SSD speed? But many of us don't have SSDs yet. You will need some spare RAM that is not being used while the game is running.

The below test seems to reduce stuttering (no effect on FPS) during a quick free flight over Dover. I don't have time to continue testing just now but more later. Please let us know how you get on if you try it.

1. Download ImDisk from here: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk

2. Install ImDisk then open ImDisk from Control Panel

3. Mount Image. All you need to do is click on Gigabytes under Size of virtual disk and enter 1 in the text box. This will create a 1Gb virtual RAM drive with the drive letter F
Edit 335th_GRAthos notes: You need to have turned UAC (User Access Control) off to make this happen, otherwise you may get message "permission denied" (after the creation I turned UAC on and the system was working without problems).

4. Format the new drive in My Computer as NTFS

5. *Copy* whichever files you want over to the new RAM drive (I copied bob_3do.SFS, bob_buildings.SFS and bob_ground.SFS in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover\parts\bob)
Edit 335th_GRAthos notes: When finished copying all the files you want, unmount the drive and REMOUNT ticking the option LOAD IMAGE TO RAM. This will make now everything stay in the RAM of your PC (without this option ticked, the image is loaded from your hard disk, which make no difference in performance). You can check if this worked as expected by watching the memory usage in your Task-Manager window.

6. Rename the HDD versions of the files with an -OLD extension (or whatever you want - don't delete them but you will need to rename or move them)

7. Download Link Shell Extension and the necessary runtime DLLs from this site: http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinks...kshellext.html

8. Open your new RAM drive (F: for me) in My Computer, right-click the file you want to create a link to and click Pick Link Source

9. Open the original steamapps CoD folder where the files are usually located, right click and click Drop Symbolic Link

10. Play the game

11. Let us know if it makes a difference or even if it doesn't, thanks.

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 .

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.

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

Still get choppy with 40 fps.

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.

Will give it a try thanks!

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

What was the problem with ImDisk?

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.

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.

The problem was that when I tried to mount a disk I got an error message sayong something like: "Failed when loading ImDisk virtual disk driver: Access denied".

I couldn't find a way to run as admin (although my "normal" account is in the admin group) and I'm reluctant to kill UAC as I'm using the same account to do work stuff.

Well I probably can't help there. Try googling for a non-UAC workaround but I know I am running as Admin with UAC disabled (home machine, sure wouldn't do it on my work machine even though it has 16GB RAM!)

Maybe right-click ImDisk exe and Run as Admin?

Did not seem to do any real difference on my rig at least... Used the RAMDisk tool instead and mounted a 2Gb image which i filled up with:

bob_buildings.SFS
bob_ground.SFS
bob_plane.SFS
bob_update.SFS
bob_update01.SFS
bob_update02.SFS

No joy like I said (on a 6Gb Windows 7 x64 system with a Core 2 Duo E8400@3.3 and a GTX275 GPU - weak I know!). Still stutters over land (when seeing buildings at least!) but OK over the channel.

What's your system out of interest?

With a ram disk what happens when you turn the machine off?

It disappears of course! See OP, I already mentioned this is not an optimal solution but I'm using it until the patch at least. It really doesn't take long to set up when you are used to it.

Made it worse for me, lol.

I'm not sure if I misunderstand you, but Dataram RAMDisk has the option to save the data on the RAM-device to disk, both at shutdown and continuously at your own interval while running. Would be rather boring to get in a corrupt/inconsistent state if Steam updates the game and patches the RAMDrive files that gets nuked on reboot ;)

Yes, you can sync back before shutting down.

No you were right about the memory is much faster. My awnser was to some one who suggested that SSD drive would stop stutters. I was saying not so.


quote: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 .
unquote

my settings with no lagg or stutters.

resolution 1680x1050
Full screen
Anti-Aliasing = 8x
Anti-Epilepsy = Off
Model Detail = High
Buildings Detail = Low
Land Detail = medium
Forest = very low
Visual Effects = high
Damage Decals = High
Buildings Amount = Low
Grass = Off
Shadows = on
Roads =on

running on:

Windows 7 ultimate 64bit
ie8
msi geforce gtx 460 hawk"talon attack"1024mb
asus m4n82 deluxe nforce980a sli
Amd phenom II quad core 955 black edition @3.2 ghz(not overclocked, YET!!!!)
corsair XMS2 4gb ddr2 pc2-8500c5
Akasa venom cpu cooler
Inwin Ironclad full tower case
WD 500gb hdd
---------------
As i said my game runs perfect. i havent been able to get any ideas on the frame rates yet as ive not managed to get the bloody command console to open yet :rolleyes: but i`ll keep you updated if you want.

Sorry dude, i don`t believe, that you have no stutters with this settings and your midrange video card and amd cpu!

I even have stutters with 2500K @ 4.9GHz and 6970 and your settings!

Hit SHIFT TAB Then type the fps START SHOW and hit enter... then hit SHIFT TAB again.. that should open the console and set the fps meter to ON.

How much RAM and are you trying the RAM drive? I also am getting no stutter in free flight over land and an average FPS of 60. Still don't know if it's due to the RAM drive or not since I've spent most of the day mapping controls and then figuring out how to start a Hurricane!

There are stutters over London where the CPU is seemingly struggling, same when there are loads of planes. At least I can do small dogfights and learn how to fly fullreal until the next patch...

Do you think it makes any difference which Ram disk tool I use?

Wouldn't think so...

I tried the ram disk solution, but I'm afraid it won't help CoD. I've checked and even made a 4 Gb ram disk and placed the entire 'parts' dir. on it, but stuttering was still there. The stutters are therefore not caused by slow and/or frequent hard disk access. It's the game and render engine that produce these stutters and is not related to hard disk access.

Rgs,
FP

How was you hd, im pretty sure it used it because allways when i got stutter, my hd light is blinking. When it is smooth my hd doesen't do anything.

why would i lie? i dont get stutters nor would i lie about.And my card isnt mid range. Its faster than most 460s and some higher cards.:-P

Sorry but probably not.
I changed my install from a HDD to a 120gb PCIe SSD and it made no difference to the choppyness at all.

When I had the ram drive enabled (I tried 2 and 4 Gb for sfs file), no disk access was going on, but I still had the stutters. I did not see any improvement, although it's quite a nifty and smart thing to do. I guess CoD still has a long way to go and will need several big core patches before it's a smooth over land as over sea.

Rgs.
FP

Ps. I'm using a RAID1 disk config so read ops., if any, should still be fast.

It do not work
 

Hello,

I have tried every thing, Ramdisk, the config.ini modifications (both of them), to empty the memory. It does not work after one and a half day of testing.

I hope the patch shall work better. Waitting...

Have a nice day.

Win7 64b
I7 975 3.7ghz
12 Gb memory
Geforce gtx 295 1.5Gb
Trackir5
Saitek X52
;)

I think it is perfectly clear at this point that all of the stuttering problems are caused by overflowing vram. Get the settings adjusted so that you aren't running out and the game will run fine.

Hopefully further patching will allow more details on a smaller vram footprint. But I think the number one thing the game needs is estimation of vram use in the setup screen so that you can tweak settings to keep it under your limit.

Is there any vram usage statistics on the forums?

Can anyone advise a program to monitor vram usage on an ATI card?

In my opinion this software is not hardware limited at all (either CPU or GPU) but code limited.

I'm sure Luthier himself would acknowledge that. This software was rushed out of the door with very little, if any at all code optimisation and I would caution anybody from running out and buying the latest and greatest hardware to try and get this game running smoothly over land.

The best thing to do is wait until all the core patches have been released and then take stock on wether any hardware upgrades are needed.


Bryan.

Crap! I've tried this a couple of times now but when I try starting the sim I just see that "crosshair" icon (with a plane outlined inside) for half a second and then it goes away. The som never starts. If I restore the files all works (as poorly) as before.

Any ideas?

I don't think there's a quick solution right now (even 2 or 4 Gb GPU will not fix this baby) and nothing will really help unless they fix the game code. I have a very fast system and lot's of ram and a fast gpu and still it stutters. I cannot imagine my system will not be enough to run this game (come on, an i7-2600 and 8 Gb ddr3-1600..).

The game engine seems to be the root cause and we can only wait. It has potential, but in its current state it's very bad....

Rgs,
FP

edit: added 'not'...;-)

To check VRAM usag use GPU Z

It does not show vram usage for ATI.

Any other program?

Try AIDA64, there's a 30-day demo available.

Both... As Komrad says I think it is, in a practical sense, code-limited. I still get occasional stutters either over fast, low flight in London or when there are multiple planes in sight. On these occasions the GPU use drops from 99% to 50% (memory not full) but the CPU spikes. See posts on this page for discussion.

I think we just have to wait for the patch...

This helped a lot. I am concerned about managing updates. But I see a marked improvement.

Hallo jimbop,

Thank you (and everybody else) for the interesting contribution!

I did have fun with these two tools (which I did not know they even exist) and spent some time trying to understand how they work (despite your invaluable explanations on how to set things up). I think IQ-tests became obsolete now that we have things like that... :D

One thing you may need to add to your explanations (if I got it to work right),

After having:
You need to have turned UAC (User Access Control) off to make this happen, otherwise you may get message "permission denied"
(after the creation I turned UAC on and the system was working without problems)
When finished copying all the files you want, unmount the drive and REMOUNT ticking the option LOAD IMAGE TO RAM
This will make now everything stay in the RAM of your PC (without this option ticked, the image is loaded from your hard disk, which make no difference in performance).
You can check if this worked as expected by watching the memory usage in your Task-Manager window.

This program is great because the ramdisk-image is ready on your hdd and with one commands it loads it on your RAM, great job, I had no idea that somebody had done such a good job!

----------------------
Also during installation of the Link Shell Extension, if you have problems, you may have to disable your Antivirus for a moment (it solved my installation problem).


Now, coming to the juicy part, no it did not make any difference to my performance :(
On second thought, I think I never had stutters...
But the accumulated experience and knowledge was great :)


~S~

Thanks 335th_GRAthos, I've updated the OP. Doesn't make any difference for me now that I have upgraded either! It did seem to make a difference in stutter on my previous system but there was no difference in average FPS even then.

Certainly a fun learning process though! A good set of applications as you say.

Nothing happens here too.

850MB RAMDISK (bob_3do.SFS, bob_buildings.SFS and bob_ground.SFS)

4GB total RAM memory, Phenom X4 3.4GHz, ATI HD 4050 512MB.

Makes me wonder about the point of SSDs apart from loading time?

What makes me wonder is this question:

- Devs are so stupid that don't put into their softwares checks for amout of RAM available in each hardware?

I don't think so. I believe IL-2 COD check the RAM available and load all the data possible to avoid loading stutters, and what we see now is simple lack of optimization/bugs, don't solved by this solution.

In ArmAII all this "voodoo" is placebo too.

If I understand your words correctly this would mean that on a 3Gb RAM system CoD would use the available (let's say) 2Gb of RAM wehreas on a 6Gb RAM system it would use 5Gb (2Gb as per previous + 3Gb new RAM)? No it does not.

Mind also that a lot of limitations arise from loading/ unloading a lot of graphics details from the hard disk on to the RAM and, the Video RAM (as the plane flies over large distances).


So there is something to be won.

Now, it all depends by the speed of your hard disk (ms, cache, NCQ, transfer rate, fragmantation) and yes, you may get serious stutters.

Since a lot of us bit the bullet and spent a lot of money on new HW and new hard disks, I believe most of us have very optimised hardware (thus no stutters).
But for some people it may be of help.

I believe a RAMDRIVE is better than a SSD because (hopefully) the transfer rate should be much faster (the SSD has to go through the SATA channel after all).

Anyway, I increased my RAM by 6Gb to 12GB because I was curious yesterday.
Created a 6Gb RAMDISK and loaded the whole CoD on it.
I can not say I noticed any substantial difference (on the other side, I do not think I ever had stutters either).
I run SLI GTX570 and my problem is that over land the GPU utilisation drops at 50%-60% against 99% over sea and wanted to see if the RAMDISK would solve some of this.
It did not really although I noticed at times that my GPUs went to 70%-80% above land.
On the other side, I was flying yesterday on the REPKA server for about 1,5hrs at nice 50fps and no stutter at all and very smooth game (it looks to me more like a placebo effect).


~S~

The problem is optimization and VRAM loading, maybe, not RAM usage or disk access at all. Because of that, all the RAMDISK route don't do substantial improvement, as in ArmAII. ArmAII problems arise in early versions because all LOD loading and texture streaming don't priorize right.

You don't understand my words, because my english sucks... That's no need to IL-2 COD use more RAM than it uses now. That's not the problem. We can have smooth gameplay sometimes, and in other flight in the same conditions, stutters. And we can't see consistent improvement using RAMDISK.

So, conclusions are easy.

Ah, OK.


I must admit now, I have been playing online during the past 2 days.

I have been fying exclusively the Hurricane (Rotol).
The first thing I must do is to switch off the mirror.

After that I enjoy constant 55-65fps at all moments, no stutters at all, my GPUs are constant on the 85% utlisation and I am very happy.
I needed to install a second fan inside my chassis to bring more cold air inside in order to have the GPU temperature dropping from 92°C down to 85°C but that was all.

I now need to find the courage to test without ramdrive in order to make an objective comparison. :)

I stopped using ramdrive 2 official patches ago. Bad stutters over land where removed then.

Yes, same here. No need for this any more but it was an interesting exercise.

No Joy for me I still get micro stutters which are only really visible if I look hard enough.

AS you say I think it is down to the rendering....maybe my GTX460M isn't quite up to the job. I know it's a stretch to play COD on a laptop.

Check out a link #5 in my sig as it can be antivirus or power-management, etc.

Well, this is one of the best explanations, I have the same problem when I run Black Death.
When I play online I do not notice it.
It is defintively the limit of the GPUs today (ok, ok, in combination with "less than perfectly optimised" programming + incrediobly complicated options) which probably will be solved two or three generations later...

I have noticed this as well because my friends fly CoD in much smaller GPU systems than mine and they experience this in situations where my rig runs smoothly.

Yes blackdeath is where i notice it most....I am a bit OCD about such things even though my game runs pretty well....as soon as I see something I dont like even in a fairly pointless benchmark like black death I have to fix it :D It was the same in IL2 when the made the perfect water....my game ran great but I had to have it.....never did get perfect water without micro stutters :p

I am going through some of the other suggestions in the previous posters sig...there are a lot :)

Well, there is an easy way to test it...


Make your screen window 1024x768 and check whether the problem still exist (I bet it will not).

Install a SW lke GPU-Z or NV monitor (I forgot the name :() and watch how the VRAM usage is reaching the maximum memory installed in your card. I bet your problems start when your available VRAM is reaching its full capacity.
Subsequently, you know how to fix it... ;)

Personally I say, 2-3 generations of GPU cards we need to wait before we can see real improvement happening....

~S~

Yes I have a gaming laptop so I didn't ever expect it to run half as well as it does. My graphics card has 1.5 GB of VRAM though but maybe its just not powerful enough.

Anyway I'm not moaning just a fiddler at heart and can happily fly certain missions with TIR and will be buying a real computer soon although I am hanging on till I hear of people having success with triple monitors.

Turn off mirror? How?

Hmmm... usually you press the M key and it works

Otherwise you have to go in the options menu, controls, under KEYS (not AXES) at the top, search for the mirror command in the wood of possible keystrokes and define it yourself to a key of your preference.

~S~

Thanks. My M is Map. Think it came that way not sure but I will look to see if I see mirror in there. Thanks

Ataros, just finished flying a couple of hours at the REPKA #3 server! Great fun!

Without RAMDRIVE, I noticed significant difference in performance:
I got some 0,5sec stutters, happened at the most critical moment every time, dogfighting, mostly when a Bf109 was coming from high above at high speed and I turned my head to the sky to track it. I presume it is the speed that the system needs to load the textures of the new object.

So definitively I will stick to my RAMDRIVE (especialy since I have a slow (normal) hard disk and no SSD).
Personally, after this experience, I consider the money to add another 6Gb RAM (and make RAMDRIVE) better invested than money spent on an SSD.

My 2cts

~S~

Those of you who experience this 1sec stutters when online, if you have some RAM to spare, it is worthwhile to experiment with it.

When I use RAMDRIVE, I never had any stutter.
When I do not (I can load the RAMDRIVE file but run it from the HDD instead from RAM), I do ;)

Just in case...

~S~

Well guys here is my take. I have a gtx 570, an i7-920 cpu at 3.6ghz, and 12gb ram running at 1440mhz and 9-9-9-24 timings. I made a ramdisk of 3gb and put in all updates, maps, planes, ground, buildings and 3dfo. It has made the gameplay somewhat smoother, especially on loadout and during combat. When flying over cities I can get smooth framerates till I fall to about 30 meters, at which point it starts to stutter no matter what my visual settings are. I usually run about medium and that works well, I've tried low and high but the effect is really little more than a loss or gain of about 15fps, and the stutter dosent go away. This game is in dire need of a few more patches. I'm not sure if a second gtx 570 would improve the graphics and framerate/stuttering significantly or not. Any opinions?

No it will not.

A GTX580 with 3Gb VRAM will.... ;)

Because the moment your fps halves is most probably the moment when the 1,3Gb VRAM of your GTX570 is full (and the card starts unloading/loading cycles). So only a GPU with VRAM above 1.5Gb will do the work.


~S~

The true is that this game REALLY need to be optimized for multicore and use much more RAM than it uses now. We don't really need +2GB VRAM vgas, we need to use more RAM. It's much more cheap...

I think you are confusing DDR2 apples with DDR5 peaches....

If you want to understand why this game needs 3Gb VRAM, download Tuckie's video in HD (it is 350Mb) watch it and you understand.
here: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=24093

~S~

The game don't "need" 3GB VRAM DDR5. The game in actual build use less RAM than could and have detailed textures with gigantic size. No need at all to 3GB VRAM, only some more optimization in textures size/amout/logic of loading into VRAM.

People need to calm down a little and wait for further optimization. More of 1GB of VRAM just to load textures? In ArmA2 we have lots of texture loading and now - with all optimizations - near zero stutters in 1GB VRAM cards. CloD isn't so much more detailed, just need hard work in optimization.

3GB VRAM is only needed in MASSIVE resolutions, and now in CloD it only minimize a flaw in graphics engine. I doubt will be needed all this VRAM in near future to fluid gameplay with high quality textures.

from your mouth to God's ear...


I would never disagree to what you said. It is just that I become more "religious" (believing in divine intervention) that "rational" with this game :(


~S~
PS. And my 580GTX 3Gb SLI is for sure under the Xmas tree in December ;)

Let's pray! ;)

ATTENTION ATTENTION This maymake you play more...
 

OK i confirm that the first posted method works and is BAD ASS, I repeat BAD ASS and a must try. it took my 20 min just to make sure i was not screwign up my computer but its streight forward fallow the directions. and its like BUTTER. ok for the system specs. Dont Drool but it is nice.

Evga 780I yea 1 step back 4 gig 1066 Ram
intell core2 Extreme X9650 3GHz Cuz it was on special
EVGA GTX 580 3gig version
OS Drive: Dual Raptors 10K 120gig part
Spec from Blackmagic drive test Write: 93.8 Read: 99.3
SSD Drive for Ram: Enterprise Server edition for faster writes and reads
Spec from Blackmagic drive test Write: 194 Read: 235

Disk Speed Makes a difference. Oh next im going to try and run all the files in parts dir in ram. will post with results.


all i can say is i am now trying this with ARMA2's addons folder. Good luck folks.



Jimmy OUT!!! Good Job:cool:

There is a big thread on BIS forums about it listing most frequently used files. Search for ramdrive or ram-disk.

Ataros Snap your the best, I tried the addons folders for CO and yea 13 gig my sys did not like. BUT i did put all the BOB .sfs files in the mem ram drive thing and the game runs like its all in mem i like and i'm not going to change it.

Jimmy OUT!!!

Point 6, doc.

didnt work for me:( but i only get stutters at the begining of each mission
Plus im getting 50+ fps anyway, over land:grin:

Yes, it stopped making a difference for me after an upgrade. Interesting exercise though and seems to help some.

Yes glad it has helped some, nice tips
And it was worth a shot

Hmhm, again, which files should be stored there? And how can one assure, the Image ist rewritten to HDD when shutting down your computer?

Greetz, Allons!

Depends on the RAM drive software you use - some synchronize before shutdown and automatically load it on startup but others require manual synchronisation.

My recommendation is to load on the RAMDRIVE only the files which are not changed while playing the game.
Then, you do not need to rewritte the image.
RAMDRIVE actually notifies you whether you want to save the changed image on the hard disk (awesome! this is so much better than my last ramdive experience; in the MS-DOS 4.0 days! :O). I never saved the image and never had problems.

As far as which files should be loaded, Jimbob mentions them in the first post. Then Ataros a few posts later (first page of this thread). Please remember that thse are the original files so, as patches become availble, there will be other files with similar names which will be added in you game directory and these would also be worthwhile to be added in the RAMDRIVE.




@Doc_uk
Doc, probably you have an SSD or a very ast HDD already. Then it would not make a difference...
My point was that it was better for me (value for money) to add another 6Gb on my rig and make a 6Gb RAMDRIVE than adding an SSD drive on my PC.


~S~

OK all you lurkers out there waiting for a hint wether this works with actual patches and wether this setting is easy to setup and doing you some good....
I´m out to get me some more RAM - i´ve got an idea concerning ground_SFS because on the the ground there are trees and trees mean a lot for me....

Solo, Allons!

P.S. Kallimera & thx GRAthos, i wil post my system specs and findings later on - in short its a AMD X4-955 BE with 6 GB Ram and a NV GTX 460 1Gig and even Win7 grumbles on my HDD´s speed

Oh nooo, :( another ecology freak! :D

A word of caution (since you do not have your hardware specs posted on your signature):
The RAMDRIVE will help against the big stutters resulting from the game loading big amounts of code from the hard disk.
There are also other stutters which are the result of the limited VRAM your Graphics card has. "Limited" means that CoD needs more than 1,5Gb RAM on the GPU to run very well.
If your card has less than 1,3Gb RAM, it will be very quicky overfilled and the game will start swapping data up and down the VRAM of your GPU thus, your bottlenek will be there (your fps wil probably be half than before) and RAMDRIVE will be of no value.

~S~ and hapy shopping!

Yep doesn't help with the micro stutters.

With textures in ORIGINAL in a fast 1GB VRAM card I still have microstutters even with RAMDISK. With textures in HIGH, no microstutters with or without RAMDISK, and same FPS.

I have placed all the .SFS files in the ram drive except for maps. i tried it with it and with out it and it seams to work better with out it. for me at least. every so often i do get shutters but usually that's when engaging in a dog fight. with some one with a very big ping diff like 200 vr's my own.


Jimmy OUT!!!:-o

On the matter of using a SSD for the game, it seemed to make some improvement for me.

I used the mklink /J function to move my CloD folder from my C: (10,000 rpm raptor HD) to my E: (OCZ Vertex 2 SSD). I've done the same with ArmA2.

Seems to work well. Loading times at least are reduced :P

Wow, Nice observation! I just changed that and I think I am able to report the same. I was flying around for about 10 minutes of testing and couldn't really notice any stuttering at all anymore.....so appears to be gone...possibly even a fps improvement over cities. No RAMdisk attempt here yet either

i7-2600K
2 x 460s SLI 1GBea w/280.19beta
8GB
+vsync on

30-45fps

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...LFrix0PDvRlEpy

This may be a really stupid question but I thought the game gets loaded into memory anyway so why would u want portions of it loaded into a RamDisc ?

Yes. And more info:

- I change my old AM2+ motherboard for a decent AM3 one, and from 4GB DRR2 800 I jump to 8GB DR3 1333.

No other tweaks and changes in W7, VM, "Desktop Composition", just Aero disabled and Indexing.

Much better FPS and no more "abnormal" stutters at all. And after I tested with VM off, Desktop composition off, using RAMDISK... all the same.

I believe this issue is much less "HD related" than people think. More and faster RAM will do the trick if you don't have 3GB VRAM VGA until more work in high resolution texture streaming in CloD.

I'm really happy now with performance, just waiting for the new soud engine. :-P

I found this thread, and the idea of a RAM drive, very interesting. After some thought I don't think I would use it as posted BUT I have a question. After creating a RAM drive, is it possible to dedicate its use to that of additional VRAM?

I have a 1GB GTX 285 and thought, if 2GB+ cards were better for the game, wouldn't it be great if I could add virtual VRAM. I tried to Google it but mainly what I received back was how to make a RAM drive out of video memory.

If this was even possible I have no idea if it would help run the game any better but I'm willing to give it a shot.

Haven't done a RAM drive since my old Apple IIe days.

Sorry I don't have an answer to your question. But it is quite interesting actually!
Anyway is the Ram Drive still an option to reduce stuttering after the last patch? I recently got a middle class GPU (Radeon 6870) which runs the game quite well. But allthough I'm barely under 30fps with mostly maximum settings I get the freakin' stutters.

you would be better off just buying a small SSD and loading you OS and most demanding games on it. 40GB $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233177

You do not need to do this because your GPU is actually doing this for you: What is not inside the available VRAM, it will be loaded from the RAM or if not there, from the hard disk.
If something is loaded from the hard disk, there is risk of experiencing a mini stutter.

If (very common CoD situation) your VRAM is full, your GPU starts unloading things from the VRAM in order to mae free space and load the additional things.
If this is a constant situation then you will notice that easily, your fps will usually drop to 50% of what you usually have.
The reason for the drop is that loading data from the RAM (or even worse the hard disk) has to go through the motherboard circuits (your PCI Express) and it is much much slower than the ultra high speed VRAM (nowadays GDDR5 class).

In short: Your idea is clever but unworkable as it will not deliver the performance you hope for.


On the other side, if your problem is on the data handling from your hard disk to the VRAM, creating a 5-6Gb RAMDISK and loading most game files there, will solve your problems.
You need to have 12-16Gb RAM on your PC in order to do things like that...

~S~

Thx GRAthos. Foiled again... :)

This is becoming a very viable solution. Note, though, that there is still >10x access speed difference between RAM and SSD.

I do not use it any more since summer I think. Just reduce settings if you still have stutters, e.g. texture quality and lighting-related are very important to get rid of stutters. Also reduce settings in the video driver. Check out the last link in my sig.

Anti-virus real-time file and network monitoring makes stutters too.

If you are stuck at 30 fps than probably you have vsync ON without triple buffering.

Thanks Ataros.

I checked out your thread. I turned down Textures to Medium and this helped. I believe I am currently at a flyable mp state.

I also tried this:
7. In video drivers put mip-map levels and texture quality to performance or high performance to save vram (especially 1gb card owners).

Very strange, in nVidia, going from Quality to Performance actually gave me fewer fps and higher stutter. I'll have to try High Performance. Just strange how things that by common sense should improve things, don't. And that they work on one system and not another.

"High" is actually lower than "Original". You can also try "High".

I have it on Quality instead of High Quality.

Also try emptying the cache folder in Documents/1C... after changing settings.