Can your PC max out ArmA 2?

[domokun 515]

He may also want to try Game Booster 3

It's free!

You can tweak it for even better performance by letting it shut down anything you don't use while gaming.

I get 22% boost, but then again I don't have that much to shut off, it's mainly from closing themes, windows aero, ect.

It's really easy to setup and use.

Good advice. You'll find that and many others in the settings linked above.

[HazJ 1289]

What about this thread ?

[TedStryker 1]

Yes it would make a significant difference

Try these settings and let us know how you get on

Great link thx,

E08 Benchmark scenario again...

I did "Edit OA's config file (something like My Documents\ArmA2\Arma2OA.cfg), find AToC=7 and change it to AToC=0"

Made sure my browser was closed this time but still had 1GB running background (plan on trying the Game Booster, thx for the link)

Vis: 5000

Res (both interface and 3D): 1366x768

Tex: High

Vid Mem: Default

AF: Normal

AA: Disabled

Terrain, Objects, Shadow: High

HDR: Normal

Post Process: Very Low

43 FPS

Everything looked nice too. Although I do get some flickering when bushes and trees seem to be "loading". Any known reason for that? I like this starting point though a bit of tweeking and i think i'll find my optimal settings. Not sure what had the biggest impact on increased frame rate though. Any thoughts off hand? Thanks for the help

[no use for a name 0]

Everything looked nice too. Although I do get some flickering when bushes and trees seem to be "loading". Any known reason for that? I like this starting point though a bit of tweeking and i think i'll find my optimal settings. Not sure what had the biggest impact on increased frame rate though. Any thoughts off hand? Thanks for the help

Sounds like that maybe you're talking about the different LOD's for vegetation loading/flickering? If so then it could be a HDD issue (as in bandwidth). Arma streams a lot of data from the HDD as you move, and most mechanical drives don't have the data output/seek times fast enough. To 'cure' the problem you can either use an SSD; or like myself, use a RAMDrive and put the vegetation .pbo files on it. (this is assuming that you don't already have an SSD ;) )

More than likely AToC was the main setting that impacted performance. AToC=7 was the biggest performance killer for me (zooming in with a scope on grass dropped my frames to single digits). I've since changed my setting to 6 so that it only renders the trees, as they didn't seem to have near the performance impact. Setting it to zero definitely gives a boost too; but it's still playable and looks better IMO, and still avg. ~40 FPS in an empty map.

Edited February 12, 2012 by No Use For A Name

[NeuroFunker 11]

I can play ArmA 2 with 30-45 FPS everything on very high 1920x1080 res (no AA) and 5000km view distance. In my understanding maxed out means: vis distance to 10km, 3D res to 200% (No AA needed with 200% unless ur crazy). So no, i can't play arma maxed out. In arrowhead i have to lower post process to high, ambient occlusion is a good fps killer also no vsync. All else is identical to Arma 2 on Takistanc map.

[TedStryker 1]

Sounds like that maybe you're talking about the different LOD's for vegetation loading/flickering? If so then it could be a HDD issue (as in bandwidth). Arma streams a lot of data from the HDD as you move, and most mechanical drives don't have the data output/seek times fast enough. To 'cure' the problem you can either use an SSD; or like myself, use a RAMDrive and put the vegetation .pbo files on it. (this is assuming that you don't already have an SSD ;) )

Ahh yep you nailed it, my hard drive is the one thing I went really cheap on. Very helpful for me, thanks!

[rangerpl 13]

Phenom II 960T @ 3.85GHz

8GB DDR2-800 @ 960MHz

GTX460 768MB

This setup was pretty cheap to build and gets me 30-50 FPS on Chernarus with 3k-4k view distance. Resolution is 1920x1080, no antialiasing, AF set to maximum, terrain detail set to low, textures to medium. It does the job and rarely gets unplayable. I don't get much LOD switching even though my HDD is about 20% slower than when I bought it (according to my benchmark records).

I am, however, planning an i5 Sandy Bridge build with 16GB RAM (for RAMdisking), a top-of-the-line GFX card (going to wait for Nvidia 6xx series), an SSD for OS/ARMA, a WD Velociraptor for general programs and a Caviar Black for general storage.

Edited February 13, 2012 by RangerPL

[NeuroFunker 11]

Phenom II 960T @ 3.85GHz

8GB DDR2-800 @ 960MHz

GTX460 768MB

This setup was pretty cheap to build and gets me 30-50 FPS on Chernarus with 3k-4k view distance. Resolution is 1920x1080, no antialiasing, AF set to maximum, terrain detail set to low, textures to medium. It does the job and rarely gets unplayable. I don't get much LOD switching even though my HDD is about 20% slower than when I bought it (according to my benchmark records).

I am, however, planning an i5 Sandy Bridge build with 16GB RAM (for RAMdisking), a top-of-the-line GFX card (going to wait for Nvidia 6xx series), an SSD for OS/ARMA, a WD Velociraptor for general programs and a Caviar Black for general storage.

why did you set textures to medium? Game never uses more then 720mb VRAM for me at very high detail and vram setting.

[rangerpl 13]

I didn't see much difference from High settings anyway, and at 1920x1080 I find that memory usage gets dangerously close to 100% at times. Setting them to Medium gives me some headroom.

And the game still looks pretty good.

[vSpooKy 1]

I can play with everything set to the highest besides AA, i have that set at low my view distance is set to 3600k. I get 60 fps most of the time.

System Specs:

1100T @ 3.8

8Gb of Corsair Vengeance @1600Mhz

2 GTX 560 in SLI

Asus Saberthooth 990FX

[Droikka 1]

why did you set textures to medium? Game never uses more then 720mb VRAM for me at very high detail and vram setting.

Because the higher the textures, the more parallax occlusion that can be very demanding in most situations.

[no use for a name 0]

Ahh yep you nailed it, my hard drive is the one thing I went really cheap on. Very helpful for me, thanks!

Well assuming that is in fact the problem, I definitely noticed less LOD-popping after upgrading from a basic 160GB Maxtor to a 2TB WD Caviar Black, which has a higher cache and lower seek times (very important for this case). Even then I was still getting micro-stutters and some LOD-popping (although not nearly as bad); so I went the RAMDisk route and it was like night and day. You can even just put the vegetation files and/or texture files in RAM and probably notice a difference; no texture/LOD popping and very smooth gameplay (provided the rest of your system doesn't somehow "interfere").

However you probably won't see any significant increase in frames; as that's more CPU/GPU dependent. Once I get in an AI-saturated map, FPS drops due to my CPU bottlenecking; but still remains smooth and manageable IMO.

Arma is a very picky affair lol, you really can't just "plug-and-play" to get the best results. If it wasn't for this series I probably wouldn't know near the detailed info about PC's as I do now haha

[NeuroFunker 11]

btw how did you manage to clock ur cpu to 3,9ghz? No matter what i do - unstable at 3,9 for me, only at 3,8ghz. Water cooler perhaps?

[kremator 1065]

NGTX570 TwinFrozrIII Power Edition (OCd to 840MHz) I play at 10k VD, everything on VHigh, but PP on low (1680x1050 res, 3D 1900x1200)

I'm happy with it :)

[mach2infinity 12]

Maxed everything easy - I have a good job so I have a good system - waiting for arma 3 :)

Care to share to specs please?

Should vsync be on or off?

My answer is no I can't. I've been playing around with Icebreakr's Isla Duala and I get 60FPS just on my own which seems good.

My settings are as follows:

Visibility: 2000

Texture detail: very high

Video memory: default

Antisotropic filtering: very high

Antialiasing: low

Terrain detail: normal

Objects detail: normal

Shadow detail: very high

HDR quality: normal

Postprocess effects: disabled

Vsync: enabled

Resolution is 1280x1024

My ArmA2OA.cfg file has these settings:

language="English";
adapter=-1;
3D_Performance=93750;
Resolution_Bpp=32;
Windowed=0;
Resolution_W=1280;
Resolution_H=1024;
refresh=60;
winX=16;
winY=32;
winW=800;
winH=600;
winDefW=800;
winDefH=600;
Render_W=1280;
Render_H=1024;
FSAA=1;
postFX=0;
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;
HDRPrecision=8;
lastDeviceId="";
localVRAM=911605760;
nonlocalVRAM=2147483647;
vsync=1;
AToC=0;

Edited February 21, 2012 by Mach2Infinity

[Mr_Tea 0]

My last update, from an GTX550 TI 1GB VRAM to an GTX560 SC 2GB VRAM, gave me enough power to play in 1920x1080 with view-distance set depending on what fillrate i use.

With 150% fillrate i can play with ~5k view-distance. I think the amount of available RAM and VRAM plays a big part on what can be archived.

That Hardware together with Patch 1.6 works great.:)

[TedStryker 1]

Well assuming that is in fact the problem, I definitely noticed less LOD-popping after upgrading from a basic 160GB Maxtor to a 2TB WD Caviar Black, which has a higher cache and lower seek times (very important for this case). Even then I was still getting micro-stutters and some LOD-popping (although not nearly as bad); so I went the RAMDisk route and it was like night and day. You can even just put the vegetation files and/or texture files in RAM and probably notice a difference; no texture/LOD popping and very smooth gameplay (provided the rest of your system doesn't somehow "interfere").

However you probably won't see any significant increase in frames; as that's more CPU/GPU dependent. Once I get in an AI-saturated map, FPS drops due to my CPU bottlenecking; but still remains smooth and manageable IMO.

Arma is a very picky affair lol, you really can't just "plug-and-play" to get the best results. If it wasn't for this series I probably wouldn't know near the detailed info about PC's as I do now haha

So if i understand you correctly, before i go out spending money on a new drive for the sole reason of getting rid of the "problem", i should try the RAMDisk first. I did mess with it a bit but when i looked at my RAM usage after a reboot something scared me so i uninstalled it (think it didnt leave me enough for everything else..maybe, dont remember. got 4gb). I'll pay more attention when installing and do a bit more research if i try it again. Your "like day and night" comment has peaked my interest again. Thanks man.

[no use for a name 0]

So if i understand you correctly, before i go out spending money on a new drive for the sole reason of getting rid of the "problem", i should try the RAMDisk first. I did mess with it a bit but when i looked at my RAM usage after a reboot something scared me so i uninstalled it (think it didnt leave me enough for everything else..maybe, dont remember. got 4gb). I'll pay more attention when installing and do a bit more research if i try it again. Your "like day and night" comment has peaked my interest again. Thanks man.

It wouldn't hurt just to be sure; but the 4GB will hinder you somewhat. Just experiment with the files that Arma2 accesses regularly (for me it's mostly vegetation and texture files) on a smaller RAMdrive.

So if for example when I run just a basic mission (I like to use the benchmark01 mission); my pc regularly accesses the plants' .pbo files (there's several) and buildings.pbo file in my Arma2/Addons folder. If you want to stop vegetation from LOD-popping, put all of the plants .pbo files on a RAMDisk (it's ~500MB on my install); or if your buildings keep 'swapping LOD's (lol...); try putting the buildings.pbo on a small RAMdrive. Results may vary since every system is different and reacts different; but you'll probably notice it

Either way, if that solves your problems, then I would definitely look to invest in a good, reliable SSD as more then likely your HDD is the bottleneck. Also there's a couple threads that go into more detail about how to set up a RAMdrive if you have any concerns

[xx_fr0st-w0lf_xx 10]

My pc can run arma 2 at a stable 25 fps on everything set to around normal.

the graphics and fps is the only reason I don't only play this game.

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

I run it fine maxed out at 1920x1080 with ~4KM (I find I never need any more) view distance.

-8GB DDR3

-GTX 570 Classified Edition [1280MB]

-Phenom II X4 955 Deneb 45nm

-MSI 870A-G54

[oldbear 390]

I am using a 128GB Crucial SSD as dedicated Arma2 disk and the result is quite good !

[domokun 515]

I am using a 128GB Crucial SSD as dedicated Arma2 disk and the result is quite good !

Does "dedicated" that mean that you have only A2 on your SSD, i.e. nothing else?

Or do you have Windows installed on your SSD as well?

[NeuroFunker 11]

not having windows installed on an SSD is not a clever decision-

[domokun 515]

Precisely

[Joseph Archer 10]

1920x1600 24" monitor with an I7 2.67 quad paired with a ATI 5980 duel GPU card.

Framerates on high settings with CPU @ 2.67 are 20-50 cherno in mission

With a 4.0ghz overclock framerates are 30-70 cherno in mission