Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[MavericK96 0]

Believe me when I say: I managed an 4, 5 and +5GHz overclock with my 2600k, and the results were only minor frames-per-second improvement (mostly ~3 or ~5) and note that the main issue remains, the utilization remains bad.

And even if 5+ GHz overclocks did help...that's simply not realistic for most gamers to have in the world we live in. CPUs have more or less hit a practical ceiling at around 5 GHz, which is why the industry is moving towards ~4 GHz processors with multiple cores. I don't think we are going to see much over 5 GHz overclocks any time soon, if ever. Developers need to focus on maximizing multi-core, multi-threaded optimization. That's simply where the industry is headed. New consoles are going to have 8 cores...

[tet5uo 4]

I'm getting depressed thinking about never being able to play Arma3 at the same high framerates I enjoy in any other modern game.

It really sucks having a monster PC, being used to getting high FPS in any game played and then have to suffer through this game's variable performance.

[Raklodder 1]

And even if 5+ GHz overclocks did help...that's simply not realistic for most gamers to have in the world we live in. CPUs have more or less hit a practical ceiling at around 5 GHz, which is why the industry is moving towards ~4 GHz processors with multiple cores. I don't think we are going to see much over 5 GHz overclocks any time soon, if ever. Developers need to focus on maximizing multi-core, multi-threaded optimization. That's simply where the industry is headed. New consoles are going to have 8 cores...

Indeed. That's my point, sir.

[daze23 1]

then you found a memory leak...

something I noticed lastnight playing with the settings in the editor. I found a corner that was giving me particularly bad fps (20's) (I'll also mention that I had a whopping 4 AI in the editor with me, so I'm not gonna blame them for much). so i figure that corner would be a good place to adjust the settings. anyway I was turning everything up down and all around, but when I got back to my original settings, I had picked up like 10+ fps. kinda weird, and like I 'reset' something along the line that helped out

[tamernator 1]

I know its noobish quastion guys but where can i get that new patch for Alpha ? Steam does not say anything, or maybe steam did download it automatically while i was away from PC, if so how can i check if i got that aptch alredy ?

[tet5uo 4]

I know its noobish quastion guys but where can i get that new patch for Alpha ? Steam does not say anything, or maybe steam did download it automatically while i was away from PC, if so how can i check if i got that aptch alredy ?

If you right-click the game in steam, then go to the properties, you can opt into the "beta" section in there to have steam update with the latest builds.

[daze23 1]

I know its noobish quastion guys but where can i get that new patch for Alpha ? Steam does not say anything, or maybe steam did download it automatically while i was away from PC, if so how can i check if i got that aptch alredy ?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?149411-How-to-change-between-stable-Arma-3-Alpha-versions-amp-release-candidates-STEAM-client

[doveman 7]

So i tested a bit again after the patch and - for me - it was better.

Still, i wasn´t satisfied so i went to the editor (you don´t get killed there^^) and tried every single setting until i found the 2 settings that were killing my FPS.

Object Quality

Terrain Quality

Setting these 2 to only high instead of very high/ultra doubled my FPS from about 20-25 to 45-50 or more with just a minor impact on visuals.

Most other settings are still very high/ultra (like eg. texture quality is on ultra, which is about the most eye candy setting anyway), view range is at 2600, object range same and so on.

Really glad i found those 2 killers - for me.

Try it out, maybe it will help some others as well.

That may well help but, as with A2, if Object Quality is set lower than V.High then trees have this strange and very distracting thin-out/fill-in effect as you change your view and you really don't want things changing like this in the corner of your FOV when you're trying to spot tiny enemy infantry!

I think this was the thread for the issue in A2. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?137726-LOD-switching-issue-since-1-62&p=2195918&viewfull=1#post2195918 I recall that Object Quality on V.High was a cludge to stop the problem temporarily (or a reversion to previous behaviour, I'm not sure) whilst they looked at a better solution, so perhaps they're still working on that for the release of A3. I've seen some flickering of textures in building windows in A3 as well but I'm not sure if that's the same LOD switching issue or not.

Edited March 12, 2013 by doveman

[schemerzot 1]

Hello,

I'm really worried about my FPS lag in Arma 3.

I alway's have the same on Arma 2, smaller maps did better, like utes, wasteland.

My FPS drops to 23 FPS just like the topic starter.

It depends @ where i'm looking at.

My Specs:

Mobo: MSI X58 Platinum

CPU: I7 920

GPU: HD 6970 MSI lightning Edition

RAM: 6GB Kingston @ 1600MHz DDR3

HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1000GB

Power: Cooler Master GX 550W

Please please!

I did everything to play Arma 2 @ decent FPS but failed!

Showing the map in Arma 2 was even worse!

This is also the reason i didn't buy Arma III yet.

But tested it via a other way.

Same lag same problems.

Please let it be Alpha problems!

[white 1]

I'm getting depressed thinking about never being able to play Arma3 at the same high framerates I enjoy in any other modern game.

It really sucks having a monster PC, being used to getting high FPS in any game played and then have to suffer through this game's variable performance.

i feel you bro.

[joe1989 10]

Same story here. On a non-dev build

Specs are

Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz LGA1155 8MB 95W

Corsair Memory 8GB (2 x 4GB) Vengeance DDR3 1866MHz DIMM 240-pin CL9 Red (x2 16gb Total)

Corsair Memory 120GB Force Series 3 SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive (Read 550MB/s, Write 510MB/s) - Pluged into Sata 6 port (Game runs off this)

OCZ Technology 60GB Agility 3 SSD Series SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive (OS Drive)

Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA 6Gb/s 64MB 7200RPM Hard Drive

Corsair 850W Enthusiast Series TX850 Modular Power Supply

Antec 900 Nine Hundred Ultimate Gamer Case (Black)

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores 797MHz 1280MB PCI-Express HDMI - SLI

EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores 797MHz 1280MB PCI-Express HDMI - SLI

Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 LGA1155 Intel Z68 DDR3 ATX

Windows 7 64bit

Its not bad on normal maps. However on the GITS evloution map, the FPS is pritty teriable at spawn.

[Reuben5150 2]

With my i7 2600 overall cpu usage never goes over 30% and the app never uses more than 2 gb system memory.

There are some serious issues here and nothing to do with my system.

[MavericK96 0]

Indeed. That's my point, sir.

Yep, I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was just using your post as a talking point. :)

[StormCorpsFinest 1]

I've noticed that I lag mostly when I turn my view to heavy brush or trees. I'm not exactly sure what causes this, I can only assume the GPU can't draw the textures fast enough or something.

Regardless, everywhere else (in open fields, and not in heavy brush) I get some pretty flawless 40 - 50 fps at standard to high graphic settings.

[Rousseau 1]

So i have the problem also,

I got 20-25 fps max with all low setting. I don't know wgat to do my pc is not old is a recent one with nice composant.

What I have to do for incresed my FPS and also will they optimize the game ?

My rig:

Processor: Intel® Core i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz

RAM: 8,00***Go DDR3 1866GHz

Video Card: Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660Ti

SSD: 120GO Crucial M4

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H

Will I be able to play Arma 3 final edition without lag ?

Edited March 12, 2013 by Rousseau

[Raklodder 1]

So i have the problem also,

I got 20-25 fps max with all low setting. I don't know wgat to do my pc is not old is a recent one with nice composant.

What I have to do for incresed my FPS and also will they optimize the game ?

My rig:

Processor: Intel® Core i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz

RAM: 8,00***Go DDR3 1866GHz

Video Card: Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660Ti

SSD: 120GO Crucial M4

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H

Will I be able to play Arma 3 final edition without lag ?

In short: no, not unless they solve their ongoing utilization issue.

[stk2008 14]

LOL its mad it really is starting the game before entering uses more CPU resources than playing in any mission try it you will laugh ya ass off :(

In any mission press ESC and watch your GPU usage go up more than when ya was running around the map try it you will laugh :(

So yeah thats enough lauging now please fix it.

[doveman 7]

I don't know about CPU but I found in A2 the GPU goes up to 99% on the menu even though it might only be 30% in-game. I wouldn't care except I imagine that's going to heat up my GPU and so if I leave it idle/paused on the menu for a long time it's not great for it, so it would be better I think if it didn't do that.

[stk2008 14]

Yes but I am saying why does it do that I mean this is one odd engine for the menu to use more GPU than the actual game itself?

I am going to say it now so listen uo LOL

I have got a lot of settings on high etc etc

I get 15fps in heli showcase my CPU and GPU are

CPU usage 50% max

GPU usage 30% max

Now here it is IF they get this engine to utilise more cores and more GPU usage just imagine how much FPS we could get with all the graphics maxed out :O.

I love BIS and have done since OFP but I am very surprised they let the game go with out multi core support......I know I know its alpha but I am sorry thats no ascuse.

In ARMA2 it had the same issue not using all the cores now I could live with that as the game was released way befor multi core CPU`s where mainstream.

They said they could not 100% fix this as its not possible due to the ARMA 2 engine ok thats fine.

They release ARMA 3 and now what we have the same issue? thats not good I am hopeing they can fix it this time and hope they did not just ignore it even though they where aware of it from ARMA 2.

Any ways like I keep saying lets sit back relax see what they come up with.

It would be nice to hear from a dev though as to wether it can be fixed or if they have not borthered to code multi CPU support or even if its possbile with out an engine recode :(

[white 1]

It would be nice to hear from a dev though as to wether it can be fixed or if they have not borthered to code multi CPU support or even if its possbile with out an engine recode :(

so far their reply is that this game is in fact multicore and that multicore usage in games are low. and i call it bullshit because i can prove otherwise, as others already did.

[stk2008 14]

They have said its multicore? where they say that?.

If so then it just needs optimising?.

So what about the lack of GPU usage whats that down to then even more so when the pause menu uses more GPU resources than the actual in game play LOL

[tremanarch 6]

they could just add some prime calculations on the other cors that ppl are silent about it :)

CPUs are more complicate than that you cant say that a process can work on 4 cores everyone at 100%..

you cant cook a cake with 100 chiefs in 1 second...

[white 1]

They have said its multicore? where they say that?.

If so then it just needs optimising?.

So what about the lack of GPU usage whats that down to then even more so when the pause menu uses more GPU resources than the actual in game play LOL

there you go, post #179

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

ive quoted him right after and argued but got no clear response. api monitors show the game having mainly 1 major thread on 1 bottlenecked core (but lots of physix and cloud threads), and i can easily find a multicore running bf3 on a 64 multiplayer map having 75%+ usage on all cores. so there you go.

Edited March 12, 2013 by white

[froggyluv 2136]

then you found a memory leak, because the engine is limited at 2gb videoram.

bistudio wiki:

-maxVRAM=<number> Defines Video Memory allocation limit to number (in MegaBytes). Use to resolve e.g. Windows problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2026022/en-us?p=1

128 is hard-coded minimum (anything lower falls backs to 128). 2047 is soft-coded maximum , any value over 2GB might result into unforseen consequences!

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters

yet to hear a dev saying anything about it being higher now, i would like to though, i would appreciate if it was.

Yes, could a Dev please shed a little light on this -my 680 2gb literally sits at the 2gb ceiling with my settings and Im curious whether a better Vram'ed card would help or if it's ceilinged.

[k3lt 3]

there you go, post #179

What about this:

http://i.imgur.com/K0sJc1i.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/NIAoa5i.jpg

I can easily stress all 4 cores up to 95%, 99% usage on GPU can be achieved pretty much in every game.

And no, it's not benchmark nor specialized task, it's a GAME.

To put this in perspective, in A3 i'm getting about 50-70% on 1 core and about 20-30% on the rest, gpu usage rarely goes over 50%. Average fps around 20 at times spiking below 10.

Edited March 12, 2013 by k3lt