rscarrab 10 Posted June 8, 2012 When i got SSD drives and loaded ARMA2 into one of them (one for the OS) it felt much better and the performance went "up"......they have dropped a lot in price and you only need a small one... I agree completely, a small one should do fine. I have a 60GB Vertex 2 SSD myself. I also agree that its important for those looking for more performance to explore the possibility of getting more RAM/SSD, if all other options have been exhausted. Before i played Arma2 i wasnt too bothered about what type of HDD i threw into my PC, as long it was at least 7,200rpm. After all the rigmarole, which i didnt fucking sign up for btw :p, the last place i found myself looking was at the HDD. I had covered everywhere else. Dont know much about harddrives, but i do know how to lurk the shit of the BI forums... so i knew what i needed. No, not more RAM. :D IO activity is pretty fucking gnarly, as pointed out earlier. I also heard this while shopping around for a server. Asked the admin quite a few questions cause i was pushing for something with a high clock speed, as opposed to what as offered. Ended up learning that the HDD is under constant stress too. SSD will definitely give a smoother experience. As per one of the side discussions, cross platform games from the same genre are a terrible benchmark for performance. A rig with an unstable overclock and a failing GPU can run and sustain one of those worthless multi-platform 'blockbuster' titles. The same way a bottlenecked low performance CPU in an SLi rig wouldnt cough up 'microstutter'. Unfortunately, in my case, those are both true stories. I guess thats why some of us go through that love/hate relationship phase with Arma (and possibly BI). Especially as the initial optimisations for Arma2 were being released. I found it hard to differentiate between it being the developers fault or my own lack of understanding, or both. When the game was regarded as playable, or optimised to an acceptable degree i guess it would have been then that i tried to fully understand what was causing the problems. Took me a while, mind you. Its taken me the best part of 3 years and 2 rigs. One thing i will say is that --now-- i dont have a problem optimising a new machine for Arma. If anything its a good litmus test for the machine itself. ;) About OPs 2nd concern. 'Fluency' in this context.... Sounds to me more like Animation Transitions, which im guessing shouldnt be a problem. Alternatively, if OP is reaching further; it is perfectly acceptable and logical to expect there to be an area inbetween the current state of Arma's fluidity in the movements department -and its real-life counterpart. An easily dilutable argument given the fact that someone can just say, "this isnt BF3/COD". A lot less so when shown clips of some of the funnier aspects of Arma. Im glad to see from another community member that this is regarded as flogging a dead horse. I believe there is a middleground, still with room for improvement and immersive features. Im heavily banking on the fact that this will come to fruition. Fingers and toes crossed.:) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sapped 10 Posted June 8, 2012 Hear that guys? You all need a SSD or RamDisk in order to run ArmA smoothly, so please stop complaining when ur game is running like a slideshow. It's because u haven't bought a SSD!!! It's now absolutely essential for running ArmA!!!!!!!! The Devs aren't gonna answer any more of ur questions about performance and optimisations since the solution is clearly presented to you!!! There's no need for any of those any longer!!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
alx 20 Posted June 8, 2012 As on old one returning to Arma2 (based on the interest surrounding Arma3), is there a source of information on how to best set up Arma2? I remember there being a lot of flag options (setting it to multiple cores, etc.) Are these still valid or does it "self-optimise" itself to your system? I'm itching to try again it on my new Ivy Bridge system. Also, this reminds me of the complexity of Microsoft Flight Simulator X (PC-only, large world, complex background calculations, AI routines, etc.). It was similarly a system hog. Part of this could be blamed on the dev team not "optimizing" it sufficiently (blame that on M$ project resource management), but mainly I suspect it's just the inexorable limit of PC hardware and such vast programs. There is no magic bullet. However, from what I've seen of Arma3 at E3, the fps and system specs reported, it looks like it is a significantly better performer than Arma2, and this at only an alpha stage. It's really very impressive to think of what computers can do. Lastly, the concept of "optimisation" of course goes further than fps, texture popping and stuttering. As the OP mentioned, optimisation also includes gameplay optimisation. Anyone remember not being able to move once you started reloading, for instance? I hope BIS have learned a lot in this regard over the years. I don't care how many fps I get with Arma 3, if I keep clipping the side of buildings, see the AI's feet sticking through walls, can't move while I'm reloading, can't walk over a small rock, have to plod my way down a ladder under fire, etc., them I'll bin the game. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rscarrab 10 Posted June 8, 2012 (edited) Hear that guys? You all need a SSD or RamDisk in order to run ArmA smoothly,so please stop complaining when ur game is running like a slideshow. It's because u haven't bought a SSD!!! It's now absolutely essential for running ArmA!!!!!!!! The Devs aren't gonna answer any more of ur questions about performance and optimisations since the solution is clearly presented to you!!! There's no need for any of those any longer!!! :j: Noones asking you to stop complaining. Unless of course its tone matches the same sarcastic drivel that you wrote above. In which case; yes, shutup and stop complaining. Edited June 8, 2012 by rscarrab Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sapped 10 Posted June 9, 2012 :j:Noones asking you to stop complaining. Unless of course its tone matches the same sarcastic drivel that you wrote above. In which case; yes, shutup and stop complaining. Yes, this makes so much sense... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rscarrab 10 Posted June 9, 2012 Let me break it down for you: so please stop complaining when ur game is running like a slideshow... There's your context. The rest is up to you. Good luck, im sure you'll be fine. :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
