Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[sparayno1 1]

I am new to ARMA, but so far I am having low FPS performance, which hinders the experience. I am begging, please make optimization your top priority. Playing the game at 15-25 FPS regardless of the video settings is saddening. Only 50% gpu usage, while all my other games can reach 99% usage.

i7 920 OC to 4.0 ghz

gtx 670 OC

256 gb SSD

6 gb RAM

[k3lt 3]

Wrong thread, delete sorry. :p

[JuggernautOfWar 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

From reading that article in the link it seems ideally we should all have extremely fast single or dual core CPUs. Is this even possible? Every CPU I see out on the market is a quad or even hex core.

If I am understanding everything, I should see a very noticeable performance boost if I were to overclock my CPU. What do you think about this? My CPU (in signature) is at stock speeds and I honestly do not really know anything about overclocking CPUs. I have only ever overclocked GPUs.

Edited March 9, 2013 by JuggernautOfWar

[MavericK96 0]

From reading that article in the link it seems ideally we should all have extremely fast single or dual core CPUs. Is this even possible? Every CPU I see out on the market is a quad or even hex core.

No, because the market is going towards more cores and multi-threading. Which is why we need better optimization in this department for ArmA 3.

[Millor 1]

my answer was related to these expecting unrealistic results ... of course we are aware of the issues and get them fixed ...

I appreciate the acknowledgement, I just like to emphasize how important this is too so many of us. This is easily my biggest problem with the game right now is the bad frame rates, everything about this game is so excellent so far, and that's why it makes me so sad, because I can't play it properly! Excluding the optimization, I say the alpha almost feels like release quality for most games, it's pretty much just a few minor bugs here and there. So I'm just hoping you'll really put some high priority on this problem, I don't expect a miracle, I don't expect it to run on a microwave, but good optimization is always a great thing to have.

It's an alpha, I know, I just want the game to be as good as possible, for me, for everyone, for BIS. So far I am impressed and happy about everything this is here currently.

Edited March 9, 2013 by Millor

[white 1]

im very hopefull because the issue was recognized and that theres now a promess to try to fix it, but i would like it even more if the issue was stated here, since after all it is a critical one:

http://alpha.arma3.com/known-issues

[PRiME 1]

+1 to OP

[Blaaarg 10]

Again, the exact same issues are in ArmA 2 and have been for years. People just want to make the issue well-known in the Alpha stage of ArmA 3 to hopefully avoid the same problems.

The devs have already acknowledged the issue, so that's all we really need to hear for now.

Agree. ArmA2 had this problem and ArmA3 deal with the same issue atm.

I understand that core utilisation % is only the tip of the iceberg (and that i'm far from being an expert in multithread coding) but... when i disable one core i almost lose no fps, this game basically run on 2+1 core, like ArmA2 did.

Don't get me wrong, this Alpha is great and perfs are pretty good at this stage but we could get better perf by using these available core.

[AussieStig 10]

my answer was related to these expecting unrealistic results ... of course we are aware of the issues and get them fixed ...

Thank you, this is all I've wanted to hear for the past 3 days.

[ssithlord23 1]

Im having horrid frames after like 10 min of playing. I start at 40 fps on high thn 10 min layter 10-20 on lowest possible [very bad]. hope this can be fixed b4 release ty.

CPU: AMD FX 4100 [oc] 4.05ghz

GPU: AMD Radeon 6950

MB: MSI 990FXA-GD80V2

16g G-Skill Ripjaws RAM

Western Digital 500g HD

750w Raidmax PSU

[EmirSc 10]

awesome frames in editor mode and 99% gpu usage

multiplayer terrible fps and 50% gpu usage

[Chronos 1]

same here

specs are : i5-3570k @ 4.8 | hd 7950 @ 1150/1450 | 16 gb Crucial ballistix sports vlp ddr3 @ 1866 | 1080p | SSD/RAMdisk/Low-Ultra no difference..there are some places where its "smooth" but some areas..in my eyes..most of the map is kinda unplayable for me..with wasteland mod its the worst..like arma 2 :-/

even tried 1280x10xx..not playable near the airfield :(

[Rhork 10]

i7 3770k @ 4.8

16GB Dominator @ 2133

GTX Titan

Installed on an Intel 520S SSD

2560x1600

Runs shit at highest, have to run it at just over medium settings with no AA/AF to get over 50fps, then it turns to shit and I get about 20-30 max after half hour. hmph

[AussieStig 10]

i7 3770k @ 4.8

16GB Dominator @ 2133

GTX Titan

Installed on an Intel 520S SSD

2560x1600

Runs shit at highest, have to run it at just over medium settings with no AA/AF to get over 50fps, then it turns to shit and I get about 20-30 max after half hour. hmph

That's a beast of a computer, shame it runs like ass for you.

What view distance are you running it at? It's easily the biggest FPS killer.

[Rhork 10]

That's a beast of a computer, shame it runs like ass for you.

What view distance are you running it at? It's easily the biggest FPS killer.

Initially I had it at max, but I experimented by dropping the shadow and view distance slider by over 50%, got a mild increase at first, but like before after about 25 minutes it seems to become extremely laggy (fps) almost as if it were maxing my VRAM or system memory, weird

[Alienfreak 0]

awesome frames in editor mode and 99% gpu usage

multiplayer terrible fps and 50% gpu usage

True for me too.

I optimized my settings so that I can play with 40+ frames at any time (strafing behind trees etc pp). Yet as soon as I connect to a MP Server (for this instance it was Wastelands 1.05) my frames are stuck at 20fps at any time!

The monitoring of CPU and GPU utilization shows that my GPU is around 40% and my Core 0 is at 50-70%. Yet my frames are REALLY low.

Does anyone know a fix for this?

[Raklodder 1]

im very hopefull because the issue was recognized and that theres now a promess to try to fix it, but i would like it even more if the issue was stated here, since after all it is a critical one:

http://alpha.arma3.com/known-issues

Indeed. What's all this fuzz about? Are they hiding something? If they truly are supportive. They should add it to that list as soon as humanly possible.

[B4LL4RD 1]

Hi guys just wanted to know if anything is being looked into on the low fps issue i run anywhere between 7-35 fps with cpu @ 50-60%.

My specs are:

Phenom II x 4 965 BE @3.4ghz

GTX 680 2gb Signature edition

650w Corsair enthusiast psu

24gb Corsair vengeance Ram @1600mhz

Not sure why im getting low fps and it does kinda ruin the game, i know its alpha im not silly, but got better fps on Arma 2 (only slightly)

Is anything being done to look into this?

[sparayno1 1]

Yea that is concerning that this huge problem is not on the list of known issues. It is clearly the biggest issue I have with this game. If this is not fixed, ill just take the loss and never buy a product from this company again.

[Surmav 1]

This is so weird, it seems to me like time to time A3 starts lagging more and more, it's like the more you play the more performance drops. First day when i got A3, everything was so smooth, i played in 40-50 player wasteland servers with no problems, everything was just so smooth fps at least 50 or so i even recorded some videos and while recording still everything was so smooth fps stayed at ~50. After while suddenly performance dropped, getting around 30-40 fps, and next day it dropped to 20-30, very poor... It's like it's collecting up some shit that drops performance, all my temps are fine too so that's not the issue.

Specs:

I5 3570k @ 4,2Ghz

HD6950 2gb

4gb Ram

[here2peer 1]

SPECS:

CPU: AMD Phenom II x6 1090T six-core@3.4ghz

GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6870 1005mhz edition

Ram: 8 gig ram 1333mhz

MOBO: Asrock extreme 4 (socket am3)

FPS in game (highest without AA): 15

FPS in game (lowest without AA): 15

Hmm something doesn't seems to be right here? :/

[doveman 7]

sadly bohemia games will always run much worse on AMD cpu's, i remember playing dayz with a friend, he had pretty much the same rig with the exception of having an i7. he had 15-20 fps more, which is plain ridiculous, its a slightly better CPU than mine, so i wouldnt mind 5 fps increase, or 10 in extreme situations, but 15-20 just means that the virtual reality engine is not only extremely unoptimized ( always has been ) but also generally strongly in favor of INTEL solutions.

which is why this will never change, don't blame it on the game being alpha, because you are going to be very disappointed, this a core problem. this will change when they code a new engine from the ground up that will include some serious optimizations. and i don't see that happening anytime soon. which is also why dayz standalone is going to disappoint alot of people, its not even running on the arma 3 engine which atleast has a minimal amounts of few optimizations compared to the arma 2 and arma 2.5 engine, let alone the gameplay enhancements.

and let it be known that when a game runs @ 60 fps in the editor ( which it does ) it shouldn't run bad on an online server. if there is alot of ai activity SOMEWHERE on the map it should not matter. AI calculations should only affect the server, it really seems at times that this load is shared or that your performance will always equal the servers performance. which is stone-age optimization. the only load on my PC should be physics calculations and everything that has to be rendered, but ofc only things that are on my screen, and not some units on the other side of the map that i cant see.

Yeah, so disappointing. I thought that Arma3 would be using a new optimised engine that didn't have the same problems I have with Arma2OA https://dev-heaven.net/issues/59932#note-17 but it doesn't look like much has changed. :(

Yeah it's an alpha and yeah I'm sure it will be tweaked but the fact that the engine seems to suffer the same problems as the A2OA one isn't promising and if they haven't been able to sort this out throughout the life of A2 and in pre-alpha-development of A3, I don't see any reason to believe it will get much better.

Although offloading the AI to the server wouldn't help with singleplayer with AI/scripts, which is a big problem, it would at least allow for the possibility of server operators using multiple machines to handle the AI whilst the players could just use their single PC and get decent framerates.

[ast65 10]

ArmA3 is an ancient beast from dark times when no multicore was known and only raw power could beat it :P

[white 1]

Yeah, so disappointing. I thought that Arma3 would be using a new optimised engine that didn't have the same problems I have with Arma2OA https://dev-heaven.net/issues/59932#note-17 but it doesn't look like much has changed. :(

Yeah it's an alpha and yeah I'm sure it will be tweaked but the fact that the engine seems to suffer the same problems as the A2OA one isn't promising and if they haven't been able to sort this out throughout the life of A2 and in pre-alpha-development of A3, I don't see any reason to believe it will get much better.

Although offloading the AI to the server wouldn't help with singleplayer with AI/scripts, which is a big problem, it would at least allow for the possibility of server operators using multiple machines to handle the AI whilst the players could just use their single PC and get decent framerates.

being an alpha, this should be the perfect time to sort out this problem, and with people voicing their opinions about it there should be enough interest for them to do so. i hope. would be even cooler if they figured an easy way around it and ported the fix to arma 2 aswell, since that will still be played for a while.

in your link BIS guy says there that vegetation affects performance which isnt true, thats easily provable on a high end machine, changes nothing. i can understand how syncing everything thats going on for everyone can affect performance though, hell, i guess that would sync everyone to the slowest machine on the server also (which includes the server). but that wouldnt explain why its also terrible offline in single player. ia being heavy cpuwise wouldnt by itself explain low gpu usage because cpu has low usage aswell to begin with. not truly supporting more than 2 cores whislt the game being very cpu demanding and only having higher per core performance shows any gain explains everything.

i proved on my screenshots a few pages back that the game does have high cpu usage when only 2 cores are avaiable (screenshot clearly shows it above 80%), so it has nothing to do with usage alone, going against some statements about games not having high cpu usage. so that leaves the multicore thing. im all ears to hearing better arguments about why this happens and how it could be fixed, because im curious about it, but i dont really care has long as it is fixed.

And i trust that BIS will fix this, i wont allow myself to believe that hey will let this issue get into the full game, otherwise people will only get good frames in a few years with 6ghz+ cpus, having more cores simply wont accomplish anything for performance (alienating amd user for the most part), which is a path even intel is starting to get into.

Edited March 9, 2013 by white

[raymix 1]

Hey guys. Each one of us has unique system specs and configuration.

The best thing you can do to pinpoint FPS sweet spot for your system is by using an overlay

I am using MSI Afterburner + HWinfo64.

Launch your Afterburner and go to settings > Monitoring Tab. And check Framerate down below. This will launch OSD server, you will notice new icon in your system tray.

Launch HWinfo "sensors only", disable unnecessary sensors to keep your CPU clean, then navigate to config. Over here you can tell HWinfo what sensor data to push to MSI OSD server, it will appear in OSD DX overlay in your game. All you need to do is enable Riva OSD option for it and configure number of line or column to show it in.

I have basic background in game development, so decided to mock up video trying my best to explain each Video setting in general. Before you jump in hating and disliking video, yes, it is by no means accurate, but it should give general idea what hardware each setting utilizes for those who are completely lost.

Use these applications to force your game to use your hardware more by playing around sliders in-game.

HWinfo settings: CPU temps and utilization for each core, GPU temps, utilization and memory usage for each GPU in SLI, RAM usage.

Please lets keep this community friendly and mature. And thanks you for your time reading this and watching this video.

Regards,

Raimonds