Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[AussieStig 10]

20 pages, and still no BI post on the terrible optimization? I want to enjoy the game so much, but this is just almost completely ruining it for me. What's making it worse is that there hasn't been a single post, or response anywhere from anyone who works at BI to say that they are looking into it.

One of the devs said that FPS should improve on dedicated servers. I played on Matt Lightfoot's extremely overpowered dedicated server last night, and still got shit frame rates. There is more to the terrible multiplayer optimization than just 'dedicated servers'.

[Maj. Gastovski 7]

20 pages, and still no BI post on the terrible optimization?

Dwarden posted on page 18 of this very thread. You even mentioned it yourself in the same exact post in which you claim this thread had no developer replies.

I'm sure it will see improvements, we all want better performance and I'm almost sure BIS are well aware of that.

Edited March 8, 2013 by MysteriousStranger

[SPC.Spets 21]

20 pages, and still no BI post on the terrible optimization? I want to enjoy the game so much, but this is just almost completely ruining it for me. What's making it worse is that there hasn't been a single post, or response anywhere from anyone who works at BI to say that they are looking into it.

One of the devs said that FPS should improve on dedicated servers. I played on Matt Lightfoot's extremely overpowered dedicated server last night, and still got shit frame rates. There is more to the terrible multiplayer optimization than just 'dedicated servers'.

You are a complete idiot, and have clearly only been her to complain and complain and cry and cry as if it gonna help to something. Im sure they are working on it right now. And btw, I played COD4 at 40 fps and at 120+ fps in a new computer, and didn't even notice the difference, I dont pay attention to that when Im playing the game, it doesn't even help me to get k/d from 40-1 100-20 at 40 fps to 300-1 1000-20 at 120+ fps so why even bother.... whatever don't even answer me, I know what you gonna say, kind of typical Internet character...

[AussieStig 10]

Dwarden posted on page 18 of this very thread. You even mentioned it yourself in the same exact post in which you claim this thread had no developer replies.

I'm sure it will see improvements, we all want better performance and I'm almost sure BIS are well aware of that.

Sorry, my point was that they hadn't actually addressed the terrible optimization, there hasn't been a post from them saying that they are looking into it, not even an indication that they are looking into it. I'm not here to shit up the thread or tell them that the game is crap, but Arma 2 was the exact same, they didn't care about optimization, and I feel like it's going to happen again. I want some reassurance that they will actually try to do something about it, instead of just ignoring it like in Arma 2.

You are a complete idiot, and have clearly only been her to complain and complain and cry and cry as if it gonna help to something. Im sure they are working on it right now. And btw, I played COD4 at 40 fps and at 120+ fps in a new computer, and didn't even notice the difference, I dont pay attention to that when Im playing the game, it doesn't even help me to get k/d from 40-1 100-20 at 40 fps to 300-1 1000-20 at 120+ fps so why even bother.... whatever don't even answer me, I know what you gonna say, kind of typical Internet character...

I'm complaining because as I said above, this same shit happened in Arma 2, and I don't want it to happen to Arma 3. I'm here because I want a good game, and I'm sorry that I'm not here to defend it to my death, much like yourself. Aside from the optimization issues, the game is great, it's excellent, game of the year. But no one can enjoy a great game when it runs like shit. Yet no one from bohemia seems to want to address it. That's all I'm asking, someone from bohemia to step up and say that they are looking into why the game is running so badly for half of us.

You've got shit eyes then mate, because anyone who actually knows what they are talking about, knows that there is no limit to the amount of FPS you can see in videos/games. Go ask any pro FPS player what they play at, and how big of a difference there is between playing at 30fps and 120fps. It's the difference between winning and losing. There's a reason why people get 120hz monitors, and extremely expensive graphics cards.

By the way, I think you're the typical internet character. You simply cannot lose an argument, accepting that you're wrong is far too hard for you, isn't it? That's typical.

[minimalaco 30]

buy an i7 3770 3,6ghz, 8 gb ram, ssd 240 gb and gtx 690 and my fps is horrible. 25-50 in SP, in MP 25-35 :S

unfortunately for me, just play ArmA2 and arma3, nothing more.

BIS fix this please!

Edited March 8, 2013 by Minimalaco

[byrgesen 1]

Hello :) thought id share my experience so far.

I am running arma 3 on Lenovo g780 laptop with theese specs:

I3-3110m @ 2.4Ghz

8gb ddr3 1800-Mhz

Nvidia GT635m @ 2gb ddr3 1800-Mhz

I must say it runs like a charm. I got 40-50 fps, only slight drops when in dence foliage. Most of my settings are on low, but it still looks better then arma 2. I found a huge problem with multithreading, since ive got a dual core with it, i tryed to run with -cpucount=4 and -exthreads=7 and it started up at 12 fps. I then changed it to 2 and 3 and now i get 40-50 fps. Basicly it doesnt like multithreaded dual cores, but runs perfectly on 2 cores.

This is my start parameter in SIX:

"-cpucount=2" "-maxmem=6144" "-maxvram=2048" "-exthreads=3" "-nosplash"

So who ever says they cant run it on an i7 with a mofo graphics card, must have set it up wrong. The start parameters makes a world of a difference.

Remember this is a game where you need to tweak it to fit your system, coz the default settings suck bad a** :) Dont flame BI for your poor setup, yes theres bugs and performance issues atm, but its very doable and playable.

If i can play it on a crappy laptop, please stop bitching :) I couldnt even do that with arma II, if it had to look somewhat desend.

And please remember this is day 3......... They need to gather information before any kind of optimization can begin, and 3 days is far from enough. I have no doubt they know its an issue, but give them a chance lol.

Edited March 8, 2013 by Byrgesen

[white 1]

You are a complete idiot, and have clearly only been her to complain and complain and cry and cry as if it gonna help to something. Im sure they are working on it right now. And btw, I played COD4 at 40 fps and at 120+ fps in a new computer, and didn't even notice the difference, I dont pay attention to that when Im playing the game, it doesn't even help me to get k/d from 40-1 100-20 at 40 fps to 300-1 1000-20 at 120+ fps so why even bother.... whatever don't even answer me, I know what you gonna say, kind of typical Internet character...

if we all had 40 fps we would be fine. but were getting as low as 10fps on mid-high, high end machines which is unplayable. "theyre working on it" how can you be sure? this issue remained for years on arma 2 and its still there, and so far they havent even recognized it. to be fair they did, but in arma 2 they said it was inherent of the engine and couldnt be changed. but hey, this in an alpha, anything can happen.

are you a professional gamer? because 40-1 k/d in pubs doesnt mean anything other than that the other players were bad, i used to do 30-1/40-1 on counter strike in pubs against bad players but ive never considered myself on a professional level, playing against great players i was lucky to get 2/1. and btw, pro players use 120hz monitors and guess what, they need 120fps to make use of it, ask them how 120fps works for them.

So who ever says they cant run it on an i7 with a mofo graphics card, must have set it up wrong.

please show us a screenshot flying on the heli leaving the main base with your fps showing, or in a multiplayer game in the spawn near 10+ players, i wanna see those 50fps.

Edited March 8, 2013 by white

[byrgesen 1]

please show us a screenshot flying on the heli leaving the main base with your fps showing, or in a multiplayer game in the spawn near 10+ players, i wanna see those 50fps.

I will try and get one later, im omw to school atm so it will be some hours.

I was on a server yesterday, actually fying a chopper and yes, there was fps drops, but it level out again with no issues and we flew on.

With theese settings i get 60+ fps in showcases, np. Very smooth.

And to clarify, i said 40-50 as in its far from 50 all the time, It runs very smooth and does only drop when i look at dense foilage, doesnt drop when im with 5-10 players, unless its really intense combat.

But all im trying to say is, fiddle with the start parameters. They gave me an insan amount of fps after a few days of changing settings around :) And dont forget i said everything is on low, most people might not be satisfied with that tbh.

[white 1]

I will try and get one later, im omw to school atm so it will be some hours.

I was on a server yesterday, actually fying a chopper and yes, there was fps drops, but it level out again with no issues and we flew on.

With theese settings i get 60+ fps in showcases, np. Very smooth.

And to clarify, i said 40-50 as in its far from 50 all the time, It runs very smooth and does only drop when i look at dense foilage, doesnt drop when im with 5-10 players, unless its really intense combat.

But all im trying to say is, fiddle with the start parameters. They gave me an insan amount of fps after a few days of changing settings around :) And dont forget i said everything is on low, most people might not be satisfied with that tbh.

its ok, it can be on low with 1024x for that matter, but please gives us screenshots on those especifics scenarios i mentioned if you can, in order to sustain your affirmations. on single player in the woods everyone has higher fps.

few pages back you can see my screenshots on 1024x showing my fps on the heli scenario. to me with a 660ti oc on ultra and fullhd changes nothing fps-wise, clearly showing how cpu bound it is, and as i keep stating, the game does only use 2 cores, and btw, amd doesnt have hyperthreading on phenons 2´s, all 6 are true cores.

Edited March 8, 2013 by white

[JuggernautOfWar 1]

I guess this is a good place to post my experience. I will not even delve into how much I was anticipating testing this alpha. The idea of providing feedback to BIS before launch and at a discount makes me excited! Hopefully with these ideas we can avoid a launch like ArmA2 or more recently SimCity 2013 (the horror).

I get 15%-25% CPU usage and average 18fps in game. This is so unusable I cannot even test anything! How are we expected to test the game in alpha if our multiple core 64-bit CPUs are completely useless? I do not want to come here and just complain to BIS to fix the optimization, as I know what an alpha is about and what to expect. The alpha should not however be this horribly optimized for a fairly high end computer.

The ArmA2 launch was very rocky, and ArmA1 not much better. I am seriously hoping ArmA3 does not suffer from a similarly terrible launch, but now I am beginning to question this. Why should any demanding software so modern it is not even released yet be so primitive and hard to use? I love BIS so much and I have been here since the beginning, but dammit I just want to test the alpha! It is not so much to ask.

My rant is over, sorry for the immaturity. Sometimes it is so frustrating when nothing is working properly (SimCity and ArmA3 Alpha). Please sound off and let me know what you think.

Edited March 9, 2013 by JuggernautOfWar

[AussieStig 10]

I guess this is a good place to post my experience. I will not even delve into how much I was anticipating testing this alpha. The idea of providing feedback to BIS before launch and at a discount makes me excited! Hopefully with these ideas we can avoid a launch like ArmA2 or more recently SimCity 2013 (the horror).

I get 15%-25% CPU usage and average 18fps in game. This is so unusable I cannot even test anything! How are we expected to test the game in alpha if our multiple core 64-bit CPUs are completely useless? I do not want to come here and just complain to BIS to fix the optimization, as I know what an alpha is about and what to expect. The alpha should not however be this horribly optimized for a fairly high end computer.

The ArmA2 launch was very rocky, and ArmA1 not much better. I am seriously hoping ArmA3 does not suffer from a similarly terrible launch, but now I am beginning to question this. Why should any demanding software so modern it is not even released yet be so primitive and hard to use? I love BIS so much and I have been here since the beginning, but dammit I just want to test the alpha! It is not so much to ask.

My rant is over, sorry for the immaturity. Sometimes it is so frustrating when nothing is working properly (SimCity and ArmA3 Alpha). Please sound off and let me know what you think.

Phenom II X4 955 45 nm

12 GB Dual-Channel DDR3

GeForce GTX 570 Classified

M4 Solid State Drive

While I've probably voiced my concerns a little more angrily, I agree with you 100%.

I'm angry not because I can't play the game at a decent frame rate now, I'm angry because I'm scared that when the full release comes, it's going to be the same stuff. I just feel like BIS has never really cared about optimization for a range of hardware, and it's going to be the same old crap with Arma 3.

Before someone says "It's alpha, give them time", I know it's alpha, but their history shows that they probably won't do anything. They care too much about positive feedback, and too little about everything else. Take a look at SITREP #00001, no mention of the horrible optimization for a lot of the community, but they are very happy that it's optimized for a few people.

[Azimov 1]

I guess this is a good place to post my experience. I will not even delve into how much I was anticipating testing this alpha. The idea of providing feedback to BIS before launch and at a discount makes me excited! Hopefully with these ideas we can avoid a launch like ArmA2 or more recently SimCity 2013 (the horror).

I get 15%-25% CPU usage and average 18fps in game. This is so unusable I cannot even test anything! How are we expected to test the game in alpha if our multiple core 64-bit CPUs are completely useless? I do not want to come here and just complain to BIS to fix the optimization, as I know what an alpha is about and what to expect. The alpha should not however be this horribly optimized for a fairly high end computer.

The ArmA2 launch was very rocky, and ArmA1 not much better. I am seriously hoping ArmA3 does not suffer from a similarly terrible launch, but now I am beginning to question this. Why should any demanding software so modern it is not even released yet be so primitive and hard to use? I love BIS so much and I have been here since the beginning, but dammit I just want to test the alpha! It is not so much to ask.

My rant is over, sorry for the immaturity. Sometimes it is so frustrating when nothing is working properly (SimCity and ArmA3 Alpha). Please sound off and let me know what you think.

It would make me happy if they would at least recognise the problem is there. Dwarden's post seemed abit dismissive.

[root 1]

these who always expect theirs multicore CPU maxxed out by games fail to realize that there is always overhead by syncing or minimal timeframe needed to finish operation on actual primary thread ,

there is also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law and much more problems in multithreaded coding (there are whole books about it)

so 99+% utilization of both CPU / GPU or just all multiple CPU/GPU in complex gaming is yet to be seen , they not benchmarks and specialized tasks ...

we will work on improving multithreaded capability of the Arma 3 engine,

yet this feature is in Arma 2 engine since 2009 http://www.bistudio.com/english/company/developers-blog/91-real-virtuality-going-multicore

ironically the last paragraph from the article still does apply

I hope it will improve. When I see my gpu's being used on 25 - 30 % I wanna cry. The engine is too much CPU bounded.

[Millor 1]

Was going to start my own thread but I figured there's already tons of related threads, so I'll use this one.

Some people are saying they are running just as good, or better that they did with arma 2. Either they're doing something I'm not, or they're lying. In arma 2 with near highest settings, I probably got around the lowest of 40 FPS in the more hectic moments, 60+ easily when just roaming the country side in calm moments. Obviously the frame rate would get worse as more bodies piled up and the mission went on longer, but my point is that it ran pretty decent discounting that 1 problem the game had. Now for arma 3, I have better than the recommended specs for the game, while it recommends a i5-2300 and a GTX560, I have an i5-2500k and a GTX560Ti. To me, I believe getting a stable 60~ on the preset video option one step higher than standard is what you should at least be getting, meeting the exact recommended specs.

On high, in single player on the helicopter showcase, I get 25-35 frames just in the base before I get into the helicopter, then 20-30 in the air. In multiplayer, I need to set my game down to the low preset to stay above the head ache inducing low 20's, I usually range from 28-45. Obviously from the singleplayer AI is the biggest hit to frames, and in multiplayer, It's what? dependent on how good the host is? That's what I've heard at least.

So I'm wondering how people with similar GPU/CPU are running, and if anyone is actually able to play multiplayer with decent frames on settings higher than low. Is there any magic trick to increasing my frames right now or is it pretty much just dependent on the fact that there's no dedicated servers, and that the game is really unoptomized. This game is already amazing with how it all controls, looks and feels, but the optimization is really breaking my heart here.

[Zyromkiru 10]

I see my gpu get ramped up to 99% usage but my cpu I believe has probably only gone to 40%-50% or so.

I have a 660 (non-ti) and an i5-3570k and I believe this game favors certain parts FAR more than others and my parts seem to be liked more than others except when I'm in multiplayer...

[Azimov 1]

Another weird thing I noticed is that when I'm on a server with bad weather my CPU and GPU usage goes up tremendously and I get decent fps on ultra settings. (40 to 55 fps)

[Luke159 1]

I believe some settings can be toggled (not sure which ones) but changing them from say medium to high will move them from been processed by the CPU to the GPU. I could be wrong but it was in the offical video on youtube. TYhis could be something that will be in an update and isn't currently active in the alpha. Only time will tell, i hope though this is been looked into and can be improved so that we have all the information on what settings effect CPU and what effects the GPU and which settings to use to reduce the GPU usage and increase the CPU usage (if we wish to do that).

[JaFuzz 1]

Can run the game in high > ultra in editor and the showcases without any issue, But when i enter multiplier games on a dedicated or local hosted I get around 5-15 frames and my graphics card over heats within a couple of minutes... Would this be a memory leak? ( have also tried to game in low settings in mp and the same thing if not worse)

[SneakyDuck 1]

What I noticed is that the lower my FPS the lower my GPU usage is. I can look at the sky and get 120+ fps and get 60-80% GPU usage but once I look in front of me everything bogs down to about 40 fps with just 30-40% GPU usage. When looking at my CPU usage it never goes over 50%, RAM usage stays around 40%. Now, when looking further into this I noticed ArmA 3 doesn't even 'trigger' the boost clock on my GPU, it'll keep running at 1202mhz core clock and not even use the extra 50mhz or so that I added by overclocking it a bit. It does seem to all point towards the CPU bottlenecking even though it's barely using 50% of it's capability. When looking at other games, like Battlefield 3, they all utilize my hardware perfectly fine, both CPU and GPU hit high 90s and it runs smooth as silk. But that's just Battlefield, you don't need all that power to run it, ArmA does. Ironically the game that needs the power decides to not use it.

i5 2500k @4.7ghz

gtx680 @1202/3420

8gb 1333mhz ram

win7 64bit

running OS and game from 256gb SSD

[wasabi 1]

Would this be a memory leak? ( have also tried to game in low settings in mp and the same thing if not worse)

Definitely, same as in arma 2/OA and even ARMA 1 ....Im pretty sure the Retail will be no difference, but who knows... Same with ARMA 2, looks like sh**, performs even worse.. And till Today, nothing has been done about it.. I just cant believe they can fix something that is written bad from the beginning... Prove me different....

EDIT: And im not saying the Game itself isnt good (Gameplay Wise)....

Edited March 8, 2013 by wasabi

[white 1]

Game running with 6 cores VS 2 cores (4 turned off in affinity so unavaiable for windows to spread the core usage)

EXACT SAME THING. (i move the chopper slightly to the left trying to get the mouse out of the window (forgot i needed to alt tab first, not used to windowed mode).

also tried it out with and without cpucount, exthreads, maxmem, no difference at all.

Edited March 8, 2013 by white

[WalkerDown 1]

Single 570: 75fps in the main menu, around 25fps in mp.

Two 570 SLI: 140fps in the main menu, around 25fps in mp.

In both case the CPU and the GPU(s) are used at around 35%.

Again, the problem is not about the resources, the frames rendering is heavily delayed by something else, so no matter how powerful our systems are, the FPS won't go up until they fix/optimize the issue.

[v8_laudi 1]

Single 570: 75fps in the main menu, around 25fps in mp.

Two 570 SLI: 140fps in the main menu, around 25fps in mp.

In both case the CPU and the GPU(s) are used at around 35%.

Again, the problem is not about the resources, the frames rendering is heavily delayed by something else, so no matter how powerful our systems are, the FPS won't go up until they fix/optimize the issue.

Res + what settings are you on?

I'm getting 45 fps on ULTRA at any res with twin GTX680s in SLI

[KeyCat 131]

20 pages, and still no BI post on the terrible optimization? I want to enjoy the game so much, but this is just almost completely ruining it for me. What's making it worse is that there hasn't been a single post, or response anywhere from anyone who works at BI to say that they are looking into it.

One of the devs said that FPS should improve on dedicated servers. I played on Matt Lightfoot's extremely overpowered dedicated server last night, and still got shit frame rates. There is more to the terrible multiplayer optimization than just 'dedicated servers'.

No offence but did you miss the five letter word splashed all over the screen when buying (or playing) it?

/KC

[MikeForce 1]

Same problem here, I was playing escape from stratis with a friend last night and got 18-25 FPS consistently

I have an i7 3770k @ 4.6GHZ, 16GB RAM @ 2400Mhz 2x GTX 660TI SLI and two SSDs in RAID 0

CPU utilization was around 20-25%

not using any startup parameters.