ARMA 2: OA beta build 82407

[pauliesss 2]

http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

No changes in log, but for example this problem with CTD should be fixed:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1970175&postcount=68

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1970271&postcount=70

Edited June 30, 2011 by Pauliesss

[rundll.exe 12]

Is it still usefull to test the malloc with this build?

[Kristian 47]

Maybe they hid something in this beta and soon begin to hint us on how to reveal it. :D

[manzilla 1]

No changes in log, but for example this problem with CTD should be fixed:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1970175&postcount=68

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1970271&postcount=70

It's seems to be fixed but now I get a stuttering every few seconds. I'm playing the Harvest Red campaign again and it's occuring in the first combat mission. It happens when trying the campaign with ACE2 but it chops a little more often.

I haven't had any CTDs at the end of missions yet which is excellent.

EDIT:

I also notice the stutter in the main menu sequence. The flyby is choppy. Every half second or so it's like a slight snag. It happens while running in the campaign too.

Edited June 30, 2011 by Manzilla

[gnear 0]

It's seems to be fixed but now I get a stuttering every few seconds. I'm playing the Harvest Red campaign again and it's occuring in the first combat mission. It happens when trying the campaign with ACE2 but it chops a little more often.

I haven't had any CTDs at the end of missions yet which is excellent.

EDIT:

I also notice the stutter in the main menu sequence. The flyby is choppy. Every half second or so it's like a slight snag. It happens while running in the campaign too.

I was getting stuttering, until I turned off HT ;o seems the virtual core split makes a lot of skipping for me (this is on a i7-2600K @ 4.6)

[manzilla 1]

I was getting stuttering, until I turned off HT ;o seems the virtual core split makes a lot of skipping for me (this is on a i7-2600K @ 4.6)

Do I do that in the A2OA config file?

[Baron von Beer 0]

Hyperthreading is a hardware setting. You would disable it through your BIOS (Del key when booting, whatever submenu it happens to be under for your particular BIOS/Motherboard.)

That said, not all CPU's have hyperthreading. ;) If you have an I7 though, it does.

*Some programs that have issues with HT allow you to cheat via process affinity settings, but only some, others will get the jitters until it is physically disabled

[manzilla 1]

I got an i7. This is the first time I've ever seen it. With this patch and replaying the first mission.

EDIT:

I'm trying it right now.

EDIT 2:

Wow that really works great! It's taken me a year to find out about this. :)

Edited June 30, 2011 by Manzilla

[grillob3 11]

malloc?

[stk2008 14]

malloc?

No I think he means disabling Hyperthreading.

[Beagle 684]

This build give me the most abysmal fps I ever had in Multiplayer (Warfare BE)...the problem is mostly in multiplayer and after 10-15 minutes.

I use .exe without any parameters.

The problem does not occur when I rejoin the game with official 1.59 patch.

Performance with this build is worst on Chernarus.

In singleplayer the problem is not that pronounced, but benschmark gives lower FPS as in 1.59.

Edited June 30, 2011 by Beagle

[manzilla 1]

No I think he means disabling Hyperthreading.

Yes. This is what I mean.

[OMAC 254]

Testing with no allocator:

Several of the "complex" cutscenes ran perfectly (second-to-last one, #3). I aborted out of them while playing. Then I played cutscene #1, and it flickered. After that, all of the complex cutscenes flickered.

Quit, started A2/CO again.

Even cutscene #1 played fine. Aborted out of it, played cutscene #3. It flickered.

It seems that aborting out of a cutscene causes instability. I didn't see this when malloc=3 was in the command line, but that requires more testing to confirm.

I get the same behavior with flickering PMC cutscenes in this beta, using no allocator in the command line.

I also get 46/49 fps in bench e08, the worst I've seen in quite a while, but results are variable, as is the PMC vid flickering.

And what's all this about disabling HT? Does BIS recommend that everyone with an i7 do that to play A2 CO?

Edited July 1, 2011 by OMAC

[.kju 3245]

-cpuCount should disable HT AFAIK

in addition it should detect the right value and get set automatically, if not specified yourself

however maybe in that case it does not disable HT?

[Dwarden 1125]

best case is simply disable HT in BIOS and observe

if you have clearly better game behavior than with it enabled then switch HT off ...

[Beagle 684]

Good morning Bohemia

After a long night on XR serverds I noticed that the Laser marker is missalined in this build and also in the lest two earlier builds.

Example 1.59

this is how it looks like in 1.59 beta

Is easily reproducable offline in editor. Does only affect the handheld Laser Marker not the mounted ones.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Beagle

[Brainbug 10]

best case is simply disable HT in BIOS and observe

if you have clearly better game behavior than with it enabled then switch HT off ...

That is not only valid for Arma, but also for other games or generally speaking for all programs.

Just to explain what HT does: CPUs are working as a pipeline, in stages, where instructions are being prepared, then computed and the result put out. Ideally, as soon as something is shoved in, the next one can be put in on top of it while the first one still runs down through the CPU like through a mill. But when processing a program, the CPU is sometimes underutilized, e.g. if it has to compute a+b=c and after it c+d=e, then it can't start the computing of the second task before finishing the first, because it obviously needs the result of the first for the second one. So in that time parts of the CPU are empty and could do more if there were other tasks. Thats why Intel came up with the idea of feeding two program threads into one CPU core.

The result is that under certain circumstances, HT provides a speed up, because the CPUs are better filled with tasks and thus doing more work overall (i.e. doing two threads simultaneously is faster than doing one after another). But on the other hand (and that's our problem) if just one thread needs to be processed as fast as possible, then it is better to not have a second thread interfering and stealing resources here and there.

So it really comes down to the type of program that you are running to decide whether HT is an improvement or makes it worse. E.g. video encoding often gains a lot, games however often don't like it.

[Alwarren 2767]

I don't know 100% if this is an issue with the betas or with specific missions, but recently I noticed (in the last few betas) that sometimes, after you changed your equipment in the briefing of a multiplayer mission, the client players will start the game with standard equipment anyway instead of the stuff you chose.

For example, we played one of Sander's BAF coop missions. I picked a L82A2 with ACOG and grenade launcher, but when the mission started I was back at the SUSAT without GL.

Anyone else seen this?

[Alex72 1]

Like mentioned you can disable HT in ARMA2 by adding: -CpuCount=4

I did this before in ARMA2 (long time ago before BIS fixed things) and it removed the horrible stutter i got from all "8" cores running. But the stutter coming from HT back then was not a little here and there. It was brutal stutter all the time. But test.

Since BIS updated the game my i7930 runs ARMA2 very well with HT on.

[sickboy 13]

Afaik limiting the cpuCount by software still could put the threads (and other programs) on virtual cores sharing the same physical core, so although seeing an improvement, it should be further improvable, by fully disabling HT in the bios.

Alternatively you can set the cpu affinity to lock to physical cores, but still other applications and services will still interfeir.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Sickboy

[suma 8]

Afaik limiting the cpuCount by software still could put the threads (and other programs) on virtual cores sharing the same physical core, so although seeing an improvement, it should be further improvable, by fully disabling HT in the bios.

In a typical situation this should not happen often. OS is well aware of the nature of HT cores and prefers to schedule threads on a cores which do not have the other "HT half" busy. Still, in some situations this may not be possible, like when there are some background tasks running, and in such situations disabling HT completely may help.

[Hanzu 10]

I don't know 100% if this is an issue with the betas or with specific missions, but recently I noticed (in the last few betas) that sometimes, after you changed your equipment in the briefing of a multiplayer mission, the client players will start the game with standard equipment anyway instead of the stuff you chose.

For example, we played one of Sander's BAF coop missions. I picked a L82A2 with ACOG and grenade launcher, but when the mission started I was back at the SUSAT without GL.

Anyone else seen this?

Sounds like this issue that has been there since 1.57.76815 atleast. Those ones who are bothered by this can always vote for it to get fixed:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16421

[rundll.exe 12]

I don't know 100% if this is an issue with the betas or with specific missions, but recently I noticed (in the last few betas) that sometimes, after you changed your equipment in the briefing of a multiplayer mission, the client players will start the game with standard equipment anyway instead of the stuff you chose.

For example, we played one of Sander's BAF coop missions. I picked a L82A2 with ACOG and grenade launcher, but when the mission started I was back at the SUSAT without GL.

Anyone else seen this?

This is a known old OFP bug: http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16421

Workaround is to have the clients NOT click "continue" in the briefing. If the admin starts the game, it will work magically.

Time for a fix after 10 years?

edit: I posted a reliable repro in the CIS some time ago

Edited July 1, 2011 by rundll.exe

[Alex72 1]

Agreed Sickboy. It worked for me at the time to give smooth gameplay while the system could still have HT enabled.

Anyone experience constant stutter in the game can try both solutions. CpuCount or HT off in BIOS.

[ast65 10]

Performance with this build is worst on Chernarus.

confirmed