Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[prod1gy 1]

I just found server where I can set view distance. I set it to minimum, wchich was 250. Nothing really happened to my FPS. Still bad. I tried singleplayer on current settings, and it works fine, no problem. In multiplayer I also tried RP server (Stratis life) and same - unplayable. I get low FPS on most servers. The only one server, where I had about 30 FPS was Insurgency ( just normal play ) that's all. I have no idea why it works so bad. Other games work really fine. You guys think BI will repair it untill release?

[simjedi 10]

I just found server where I can set view distance. I set it to minimum, wchich was 250. Nothing really happened to my FPS. Still bad. I tried singleplayer on current settings, and it works fine, no problem. In multiplayer I also tried RP server (Stratis life) and same - unplayable. I get low FPS on most servers. The only one server, where I had about 30 FPS was Insurgency ( just normal play ) that's all. I have no idea why it works so bad. Other games work really fine. You guys think BI will repair it untill release?

I really don't expect that until the later stages of the Beta process. Once BiS releases the server files and mod makers get a good grasp on the new system will the fps start to go up.

If anyone is interested in the RAM-Drive method I made a list by watching Process Explorer the most accessed PBO's in order of most read. This doesn't include any type of vehicles but should give a good representation of the core files for the current Alpha.

You will see no fps increases but you do get way better load times, LOD fill in and a smoother experience.

First Run, Battle:

1. weapons_f.pbo

2. characters_f.pbo

3. sounds_f.pbo

4. dubbing_radio_f_data.pbo

5. structures_f.pbo

6. structures_f_data.pbo

7. map_stratis.pbo

8. sounds_f_weapons.pbo

9. anims_f_data.pbo

10. structures_f_ind.pbo

11. plants_f.pbo

12. structures_f_mil.pbo

13. data_f.pbo

14. rocks_f.pbo

15. map_data.pbo

16. roads_f.pbo

17. map_stratis_data_layers.pbo

18. structures_f_wrecks.pbo

19. ui_f_data.pbo

ETA: Did some more running around on the island and the list looks different now. Guess it just depends on what you are doing.

Second Run, Battle/Exploring:

1. structures_f_wrecks.pbo

2. structures_f_data.pbo

3. structures_f.pbo

4. structures_f_households.pbo

5. structures_f_ind.pbo

6. signs_f.pbo

7. plants_f.pbo

8. sounds_f.pbo

9. sounds_f_weapons.pbo

10. structures_f_mil.pbo

11. map_stratis_data_layers.pbo

12. data_f.pbo

13. map_stratis.pbo

14. anims_f_data.pbo

15. characters_f.pbo

16. weapons_f.pbo

17. dubbing_radio_f_data.pbo

Edited April 3, 2013 by SIMJEDI

[prod1gy 1]

Ok, thank you for answer. But how about my pc? It shouldn't run like this, even on low according to my specs, right?

[white 1]

Ok, thank you for answer. But how about my pc? It shouldn't run like this, even on low according to my specs, right?

even on low the game needs 2 high clocked cores to become somewhat playable 25~ fps

theres 3 options in my opinion, overclock your cpu to higher than 3ghz, change the cpu, or wait for bohemia to fix the engine. (spaghetti monster knows when)

[NeMeSiS 11]

One of the things you have to take into consideration is that since the RV engine streams from the HDD, you're subject to HDD latencies.

Typical HDD latencies are between 4-16 ms depending on RPM speed and distance between sectors of data. Typical SSD latencies are like .08-.16 ms. Then you have all the inherent latency from buffer to southbridge to northbridge to CPU cache.

With RAM you have a latency of, (CAS / Frequency (MHz)) × 1000 = X ns , so for instance DDR3-1333 with a CAS latency of 7 would be (7/667) x 1000 = 10.49475 ns and since most northbridge memory controllers are on die now, you have little latency from RAM to on die cache.

That's quite a large difference in latency, especially when you consider that when you stream from a SSD/HDD, you're just basically tacking on all the extra latency because the data still has to pass through RAM before it gets to your CPU cache. Now it's not a big issue when you're loading a program for instance because it's not a time sensitive operation. When you are streaming content on demand to your processing threads though, which is a very time sensitive operation, very small increases of latency can have a large effect on overall thread performance.

I suspect it's not an issue of bandwidth but of latency. Very small transfers that take too much time to get from point A to point B and cause the threads to stall and wait for the data to arrive. This is why I believe that the RV engine needs to go 64 bit. I don't think it will cure all the problems, but it would definitely cure the problem of needing to stream data from disk. No matter how you look at it, streaming data from a disk is not a solution but a problem in this situation.

Something that kind of explains the issue. Even though they are talking about it from a perspective of the PCI-E/Hypertransport interconnect between each die, the quote kind of highlights what I'm talking about. In our case, instead of interconnected cores, the chip to chip link would span from HDD/SSD to Southbridge to Northbridge to Ram to on-die Cache. From http://www.hypertransport.org/docs/wp/Latency_Comparison_HyperTransport_PCIe_in_Communications_Systems.pdf

In the case of loads of AI running about, there shouldn't be anything to stream from the HD. That's just when moving about on the island.

AI should be mostly calculations, I cant think of a reason why every AI unit should access the HD all the time, and I doubt it is actually doing that.

Still, why CPU % would go down with loads of them moving about puzzles me.

[Pshybysz 1]

Hello, i think this is appropriate topic to write about it:

As main topic says, i have like other people damn FPS problems but i really dont know why.

I was talking to people in game, and they had similiar PC rigs to mine, and they can play high settings+ and HD, but me, i can only play low on 1280x720

I've closed all unnecessary processes, set priority on high, made launch setup even if it doesnt really help, made this thing in config from 1000 to 1

and everything i can achieve is this:

Game FPS & settings

In Game1

In Game2

In Game3

In Game4

In Game5

PC: Graphic card has 1gb vram

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/9929/osigikompa.jpg (643 kB)

memory - 8gb

In editor i have on these settings 70-80 fps

In showcases i have 50-60

disabling shadows gives me + 3-5 fps

as you can see, on nearly empty screen i can reach barely 20 fps on multi, and i dont know why, i dont expect that i would be able to play on ultra high in hd of course, but also my pc rig is not weak to play on lows i think ;|

please help

Edited April 2, 2013 by Pshybysz

[Insanatrix 0]

In the case of loads of AI running about, there shouldn't be anything to stream from the HD. That's just when moving about on the island.

AI should be mostly calculations, I cant think of a reason why every AI unit should access the HD all the time, and I doubt it is actually doing that.

Still, why CPU % would go down with loads of them moving about puzzles me.

In short, FSM files and associated data for every AI calculation that happens. Imagine it like this:

AI wants to do something.

Engine streams FSM.

FSM loaded into memory to be referenced.

FSM is unloaded and sent back to paged memory to make room for something else.

Rinse and repeat this hundreds possibly thousands of times a second per AI depending on the AI FSM's in use as well as AI update frequency. That's why I found the quote about comparing latency to a slalom course so appropriate. Having multiple Millisecond latency in a Nanosecond real time operating environment is just plain bad for performance.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Insanatrix

[NeMeSiS 11]

In short, FSM files and associated data for every AI calculation that happens. Imagine it like this:

AI wants to do something.

Engine streams FSM.

FSM loaded into memory to be referenced.

FSM is unloaded and sent back to paged memory to make room for something else.

Rinse and repeat this hundreds possibly thousands of times a second per AI depending on the AI FSM's in use as well as AI update frequency. That's why I found the quote about comparing latency to a slalom course so appropriate. Having multiple Millisecond latency in a Nanosecond real time operating environment is just plain bad for performance.

I doubt that is currently happening, the FSMs are accessed way too frequently to end up on the pagefile, they are not constantly being loaded in and out of the memory.

[Insanatrix 0]

I doubt that is currently happening, the FSMs are accessed way too frequently to end up on the pagefile, they are not constantly being loaded in and out of the memory.

It entirely depends on how they are cached. I mean something is going on and it's not a calculations bottleneck, it has something to do with I/O operations. Depending on how often the AI switches FSM states, whether FSM states are instanced or shared between entities, There could be a ton of different reasons. Who knows if there are even rules for priority to determine what gets paged and what doesn't or if it's just a FIFO system. There's way too many variables to define the cause of the problem other than that it's something to do with I/O operations without internal knowledge of how memory is addressed and how caching is done.

All I know is that trying to mimic low latency ram with a comparatively higher latency storage device in order to circumvent 32 bit addressing because your program has exhausted the addressing because you don't want to rewrite for a larger addressing space is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot in an ER because operating would just take too much time.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Insanatrix

[Leon86 13]

FSM is unloaded and sent back to paged memory to make room for something else.

It rarely goes to the page file though, unless there is no ram left.

Performance scales with cpu clockspeed. It's probably not memory holding it back (although it would be interesting to test) and certainly not the harddrive, otherwise people with ssd's would have much better performance than those with normal harddrives. which is clearly not the case.

Performance is not as good as your average game because arma calculates everything and does a lot of work in a single thread, which means it doesnt take full advantage of quadcore cpu's (although there def. is a decent advantage to a quad over a dualcore) and scales poorly above quads. There is no need to get the harddrive involved to explain low framerates.

Everybody wants scaling and performance to increase, but if you take a look at the rare bf3 multiplayer tests you can see it doesn't really scale that well to sixcores either. in bf3 it's not much of a problem because an ivy bridge gets you over 60 minimum fps in multiplayer at max settings. multithreading games and getting something out of it is hard.

[white 1]

Hello, i think this is appropriate topic to write about it:

As main topic says, i have like other people damn FPS problems but i really dont know why.

I was talking to people in game, and they had similiar PC rigs to mine, and they can play high settings+ and HD, but me, i can only play low on 1280x720

to me the q6600 is the culprit. what cpu do your friends use?

also, server performance and the mission impacts a lot in your fps, your friends were on the same server when you were chekcing your fps´s?

[calin_banc 19]

if you take a look at the rare bf3 multiplayer tests you can see it doesn't really scale that well to sixcores either. in bf3 it's not much of a problem because an ivy bridge gets you over 60 minimum fps in multiplayer at max settings. multithreading games and getting something out of it is hard.

It does help especially for the minimum FPS. It may not be global, but on certain maps/area of the maps in 64 man servers, it makes a difference; more if the user has two high end GPUs.

[prod1gy 1]

Hi guys,

As I wrote on my previous posts with low FPS, i tried to overclock my cpu. Now it has 2.88GHz from 2.40 I can't do more with it, because temperature reaches now almost 75 C. And what's weird: about 15FPS on low, about 20-25 on High, Very High. I really don't know what's going on here guys, but I think bohemia should really do something with this. ( And for me about 2-3 FPS depend on server )

[kklownboy 43]

When on High+ you will use more GPU. Low uses the CPU.Ultra can even give better frames.

Your system is a lowend system. I would say your CPU and subsystem is holding you back. But your GPU is really slow and barley a DX11 card. A 275GTX is faster(tho not even DX10.1).

MP can be really demanding on the CPU. You cant do anything about CPU usage on MP. You will have to get a new CPU/Platform.So basically you setup your GPU in the editor (check each setting) and see what combo works for you.

Bis will improve the performance overtime. It is not really likely you will get any better performance till after the Official release(Aug?).More like December or next year. Sooo with that said, Its time to save your cash and buy a modern system.

Game runs good; 4.2ghz, 7970, Ultra, 8aa ,VD is under 2K(1900?).

PS; Question; Have you set up your Nvidia CP correctly?

Edited April 3, 2013 by kklownboy

[dnk 13]

It rarely goes to the page file though, unless there is no ram left.

I'm not sure if this would show up in Process Monitor's files, but I don't think FSMs were even on the list of files being read (from HDD, I believe) during play. I assume they get placed on RAM, if not a CPU cache, during initial loadup. That would certainly make sense anyways.

The likely cause, as has been mentioned before in here, is that some thread is getting held up regularly when the AI are in combat, likely waiting on other threads. It may very well be that any given AI's routines need to wait on the other AIs' routines before stepping the scenario up to the next "frame". Clearly this is happening just with pathfinding (likely due to subordinates needing to check not only on the squad leader's commands but also the relative positioning of all other subordinates, though I haven't checked this with solo squads yet, which would make for a quick confirmation test - I'll do that as soon as I can). There's probably some other inter-AI referencing going on when in combat. This isn't an I/O issue or RAM latency issue or whatever, but rather just coding a lot of interconnectedness in that hard-caps the simulation speed by the AI amount, effectively CPU-binding the system.

It would be nice to go through the FSMs and remove parts to see if anything specific is the cause, but then what are devs for if not these things?

[dnk 13]

Not definitively, but this is looking very likely.

My rig:

i5 3350P 3.3GHz x4 6M L2

GTS 250 1GB (POS GPU)

OCZ 2x2GB 1066 CL7 DC

WD 1TB 7200RPM (new)

Win7

1600x900

Note that this should be highly GPU-bound, as the CPU is fairly decent for A3's needs, but the GPU sucks even on A2. The rest of the system is up to spec, with moderate RAM latency, and as much RAM as the game can handle, plus a moderate speed HDD with plenty of space and a newer 64-bit OS.

Test scenario 1:

40v40 AI, ungrouped, unarmed

each start and are given a waypoint in open country

all begin moving to waypoints without seeing opposing forces

Results:

GPU usage quickly raises to 99%, FPS steady in upper 30s, CPU usage between 40-50%

http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr181/davidk594/openground_zps6a7a7ade.jpg (107 kB)

Test Scenario 2:

40v40 AI, ungrouped, unarmed

each start and are given a waypoint in Agia Marina

all begin moving to waypoints without seeing opposing forces until late in test run

Results:

A very stable version of the poor performance seen in combat. AI seen bunching up on edge of a bridge and doing other stupid things.

GPU usage around 70%, as in prior combat scenarios I've done (see earlier in thread)

CPU usage more erratic, yet higher overall

FPS around 24 throughout (very similar to that seen in combat)

Test Scenario 3:

From last week - using it for comparison

Similar amount AI in combat situation in Agia Marina, typical squads used with basic "Seek and Destroy" WPs

Longer than above 2

Results:

Obviously, was a bit more complicated, and I've already discussed it in full before - note that these are moving averages and not raw data in the picture

FPS around 24 throughout, GPU around 70%, CPU usage higher than Scenario 1 but similar to Scenario 2.

Conclusions:

Pretty much looks like AI pathfinding is a culprit. When in open ground, it isn't such an issue, especially for a single WP, but when the terrain gets more complex, it is clearly both causing seriously reduced performance and GPU underutilization.

The big question remains: why is this causing such a reduction in simulation speed without fully utilizing the CPU. Why is pathfinding forcing the CPU to regularly sit around and "wait" for information/threads to complete? Is it a simple matter of all AI routines being on one thread? But then why isn't at least that one core getting heavily used? All cores are roughly equal at ~50% use in my tests.

FEEDBACK TICKET

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=6782

Edited April 5, 2013 by DNK

[Guest]

Might also be worth playing with the "-cpuCount=#" launch parameter.

It's on by default in the latest patches. No need for it.

[XenoN585 1]

Hey guys if someone could please help me what would be great...

im currently running arma 3 on low fps (20 FPS) everything on low !

Specs..

CPU-Intel Quad Core Q8200 2.33 GHZ overclocked 5% to 2.55GHZ

GPU-GTX 460SE 1GB DDR5

RAM-4GB RAM

WINDOWS 7 Ultimate 64 BIT

I have everything set to low and im still only getting 20 fps its very laggy and barely playable with my friends.. any help on getting my fps increased would be appriciated

[[frl]myke 14]

Hey guys if someone could please help me what would be great...

im currently running arma 3 on low fps (20 FPS) everything on low !

Specs..

CPU-Intel Quad Core Q8200 2.33 GHZ overclocked 5% to 2.55GHZ

GPU-GTX 460SE 1GB DDR5

RAM-4GB RAM

WINDOWS 7 Ultimate 64 BIT

I have everything set to low and im still only getting 20 fps its very laggy and barely playable with my friends.. any help on getting my fps increased would be appriciated

Again the wrong thread (i admit that the other guy shouldn't have sent you here). This is the correct thread you're looking for.

[pawelkpl 29]

to me the q6600 is the culprit. what cpu do your friends use?

also, server performance and the mission impacts a lot in your fps, your friends were on the same server when you were chekcing your fps´s?

Hi;

Server performance does not have impact on client fps, maybe minor - 1-2 fps. I do have dedicated server and if server fps is 5 fps my game as a client runs 60 fps, same if server fps is 50fps my game runs 60fps. I agree mission has big impact but only if client sees 10 AIs or 100AIs.

[cNINEcl 1]

I hope BI can fix all CPU & GPU issues, cause this is my first Arma and i don´t want than this to be a bad experience.

My PC specs, Phenom II x4 965 @4.0Ghz, MSI Twin Frzr GTX560ti, 8GB RAM.

SP: 45-60 fps

MP: 15-25 fps.

Trust on you BI.

[almanzo 144]

People need to calm down.

There is no use in the language used on either side of this debate, however, I will mainly adress the people who are angry or dissappointed in performence, on how to be most effective when pointing out flaws, in addition to debunking some arguments and pointing out what to expect.

First of all, I'd like to point out that the game runs more than decently on my computer.

look at my sig, I have a new video card now though, AMD Radeon 7970

I run on very high settings, with post prosess set to off, I even run with AA and FXAA on full with both. Draw distance is set to 1600, and I bump it up when flying.

My computer, exept my video card, is 4 years old. I run the game consistantly with around 45 fps avarage. I did spend some time fiddling with the settings.

ARMA II i run quite happily with everything maxed and even having draw distance set to 6 - 7000 meters at same framerates.

I expected A III to run much worse on my computer. I was pleasantly suprised by performance when it launched.

Now, that being said, let's adress my main issue with this thread.

There are a few things that needs to be considered. I will first adress the fact that BI is a small studio, and the fact that Ivan and Martin, both in key positions, was jailed for several months. My guess is that DayZ and the sales it generated is much responsible for even having ARMA III. Bohemia Interactive is NOT EA, and operates on much lower budgets with much smaller margins than EA and other big companies doess. Comparing ARMA, who is, remember, an indiegame to BF 3 doesn't make sense. In addition, it's also much easier to optimize a game like Battlefield 3, because it's much more limited in what it can do.

Small maps, linear single player and scripted AI, the draw distance is set by the developers, and alot of stuff is handled by the main server. And BF3 have had issues as well with performance, but not FPS wize. I remember being unable to play the game for at least a week, long after release, because my characters constantly spawned without weapons. Why? Because gear is issued as you spawn in by the server, networking problems caused me to be killed before high latency with sentral server spawned me my gear. I would argue that this is a pretty clear example of bad design as well, no?

The point is, most regular games can benefit from optimizing their games towards the limitations within the game itself. BF 3 doesn't need to reserve resources for AI subrutines, and the amount of resources needed for terrain is hard coded in the engine. Draw distance isn't customizable, and thus makes it much easier for them to work on different areas for optimizing their performance. In addition, BF devs know what limits they set on their engine, and has much more room to optimize within those boundaries. They know that there won't be more than a set numbers of players on a server at any given time, and that there will be no AI on the server at the same time. ARMA needs to take much more into account, and actually prioritizes their users ability to fiddle around and tweek, opening up for different tastes. Pilots can crank their view distance up at expence of everything else, and people who focus on infantry can reduce view distance in favour of everything else. They also empowers their users to make custom missions, giving us the tools to have COOP missions with 60 players and hundreds of AI. Yesterday, I played COOP on my communities public server, alongside 60 players, and over 150 AI around the island. No other game has to account for things like this, ever. Oh, and I would also like to add that optimisation isn't the most important thing in a game, I can name one game in particular, that is very poorly optimized, yet a very good and popular game. Minecraft... It's written in Java, nuff said.

It is a trade off, I know. At the same time, I know BI will adress this, and I can promise you that it will be better. How much better I don't know, but they WILL try their best. Wich leads me to my next issue. People who bash BI studios for not caring for their costumers, people making statements such as "is this what the gaming industry has come to?" and other nonesense like this. One person even had the balls to call Ivan and Martin stupid for being arrested. Sorry, foks, but this doesn't help at all. If you honestly think insulting the developers will get you anywhere, you are wrong. You are NOT contributing.

And this annoys me so much, because BI is the developer I know who cares most for it's community. BI has a track record of being the most community friendly developer out there for years. since OFP, the support they give for their games have been splendid, with frequent patching, adressing issues in them pointed out by the community, having their own issue tracker being maintained and superviced constantly while at the same time as they have given us as costumers the trust needed to tweak, mod and then tweak their game some more as we please. At the same time, companies like EA is making statements about their games saying that players are to stupid to understand how it works, and giving that as an explaination to why they don't allow mods. The few who do mod despite this, are viewed as hackers and have their accounts banned.

Oh, and while other games make artificial limitations on things in their games, requireing their players to either grind to unlock them, or even pay extra to unlock content they've allready payed for, Bohemia gives away light versions of their DLC's, making sure that people who don't want to buy them are able to play with those who have.

Some say they hate this developers, well, I love them. They have allways been there for us, and they allways care about what we say. They have contributed to the forums as equals of everybody else, and they spend quite alot of time commenting on, encouraging and guiding modders in their work. Their track record as a company who values their costumers, and who makes games they themselves care for, is outstanding.

Then there is the alpha issue. Most people who are new to ARMA, or have come from DayZ doesn't know this, and I do forgive you for that. But BI have made it quite clear the whole time that the community alpha was comming to make sure that the game was better optimized than ARMA II was at release! That has been the whole point of bringing us in! They do want our feedback, they do want to know who struggles with frame rates and who doesn't, they do want our feedback, but have been clear about the fact that they need to prioritize. The thing is, they have been blatantly open about what to expect, making clear time after time that the community alpha will be work in progress, and that they are bringing us in because they need help with optimizing. Nothing makes me more angry than people who join the forums just to complain, expecting their game to perform as a full release, AAA game with a huge budget. The community alpha is the result of a developer who have done what you are telling them to do, learned from past experiences. The ARMA II release was a buggy and low performing release, and compared to the ARMA II release, A III alpha is performing much, much better than A II did at official release.

A II's release did hurt BI, and they wan't to avoid that happening again, so they opened up their game in advance and in addition made sure to have more funds available. But mind this, they are asking us to test their game, helping them out with their release. To show gratitude, all of you who have bought A III alpha have payed 50% of retail price! When A III is comming out, the asking price will be twice what me and you have payed. Learn to appriciate the fact, this is not a marketing scheme, they've been open about it mounths prior to release, and have stated time and again that this alpha is a move to make sure they have a better performing game at release. And people have the nerve to state that the devs are A: not aware of their performance issue, or B: do not care to fix it... sorry foks, you are dead wrong. The main reason we have the alpha is due to the fact that BI recognizes this and want's to do something about it.

BI has limited resources, so the alpha was an attemt to make the best out of what they have, so to make sure their release is stable, as performing as possible and playable for as many as possible. Of course they care.

Now, EA again. Do you think EA cares about Sim city, their costumers or money? How was their release? Did they respect their costumer base? What did they offer to make it up to them? Just a reminder, BI gave us a very cool yet short campaign for ARMA II (the best stock ARMA campaign I've played since OFP mind you) as a way of asking for forgiveness of their messy launch of ARMA II. EA lets you pick and choose from their back catalogue, yay!

Oh, and just to adress multiplayer. Keep in mind that there is no stand alone dedicated server yet. This will increase performance significantly multiplayer-wize.

[dnk 13]

What he said.

[daze23 1]

First of all, I'd like to point out that the game runs more than decently on my computer.

then why are you posting in a thread in the 'troubleshooting' sub-forum?

113 pages, 124,000+ views, and you want to explain the politics of the situation? it's just a long winded self-serving post, that really does nothing for those that are frustrated with the performance

[almanzo 144]

then why are you posting in a thread in the 'troubleshooting' sub-forum?

113 pages, 124,000+ views, and you want to explain the politics of the situation? it's just a long winded self-serving post, that really does nothing for those that are frustrated with the performance

Since you ask, I'll might as well reply. Because the current approuch from people experiencing problems are not very productive, nor constructive with what they want to achieve. It's quite obvious now that some people experience performance issues, and it's also quite obvious that the expectations of some of those people will never be fulfilled due to the nature of a game like ARMA. It's not possible to compare optimizing of a game like ARMA, and a game like BF3. However, the game has potential to be better optimized, but it doesn't help the Developers to resolve this issue when the people who are experiencing such issues are raging rather than contributing.

Of course, I do not expect players to fix the issues them selves, but proper reporting is the least you can expect. Continuous arguments doesn't help, and most certainly not intentionally insult both the developers and people With different opinions. The way people have spoken to eachother in this thread is outragous, and that's why I posted. I also tried to point out a few key points to understand about a game this scale and how much it is to control for, and the fact that BI simply doesn't have the resources that other big publishers or developers have, and aren't able to spend as much money on optimization as others are.

I am as interested as anybody else to solve these issues, as I want more people to be able to enjoy the game as I do. The way this thread has taken is simply not helping. That's why I am posting in the trouble shooting sub-forum, to point out that the current route this thread is taking isn't a contribution, but rather is making it harder to do something about it. That, an pointing out simple flaws and untrue statements made in this very thread.