Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[jurrasstoil 10]

I actually had some issues too, with my system (I5 OC, 7970Ghz 6GBVRam) and i found the following guide:

Link

some settings when turned to ultra or high actually shift load from CPU to GPU. Also moving up the sample rate helped a lot.

Hope it helps

Tons and tons of snake oil should help as well.

_______

Regarding the Phenom II:

I had a Phenom II X4 945 myself till 2 weeks ago. It ran A3 and A2 horribly. Switched to a Xeon 1230v3 and now it runs pretty well. However, the performance the Xeon provides should be what the Phenom should be capable of in A3 and the Xeon should perform way better than it does. I could play all the games that have been released recently perfectly fine on the Phenom. Only A2 and A3 ran like complete ****. Your hardware really isn't the problem, rather how it is utilized.

[jumpinghubert 49]

Tons and tons of snake oil should help as well.

do you have tried the tweaks Jagdtiger suggested? In combination they are able to unload cpu-usage a lot. Multiplayer is another thing.

[doveman 7]

you said sp missions give you 40 fps. My screenshot shows the helicopter sp scenario giving me 30 fps. Unfortunately the 30 fps are a max value for me, usually I am between 15 and 25-30 :-(

I must say I believe our rigs (especially the phenom) are outdated for arma's requierments but as long as my system is not utilized to it's max I refuse to upgrade my hardware ;)

I'm pretty sure I did see some missions up to 40fps but that was before the latest update. The last SP mission I tried was Op. Magic Carpet, which gave me below 10fps.

All servers I've tried I get 8-15fps, so if you're getting 15-30fps you're doing a lot better than me ;)

If our CPU's are outdated for ArmA 3 then the minimum requirements should start with something more powerful, not AMD Dual-Core Athlon 2.5 GHz (or have as recommended AMD Phenom II X4 940, which implies a good experience with that CPU).

As you can see, I'm hardly using Ultra settings. Clearly the CPU is the bottleneck if my GPU is only being used 25% but maybe the servers are just poorly optimised at the moment (or the netcode needs fixing) and some of the Workshop missions are as well.

I wonder if there's another Vsync setting outside of ArmA (maybe in CCC or RadeonPro if you use that) that's limiting you to 30fps.

[jurrasstoil 10]

do you have tried the tweaks Jagdtiger suggested? In combination they are able to unload cpu-usage a lot. Multiplayer is another thing.

All of them when I still had my Phenom II.

[doveman 7]

OK, I somehow reverted to the non-dev build accidentally and not knowing, played some missions and got better results. However I also changed a few other things.

Added -nolog to the commandline

Put 6.9GB of the addons files on a RAMDisk (I could probably get away with putting them all on a bigger RAMDisk but the one I'd already created was too small for that, so I just selected what are probably the most important files, maps, structures, roads, etc)

Went through the tips here http://day0.com.au/forum/arma/355-arma-3-beta-performance-tweaks-and-settings-guide I don't think I needed to change much, maybe the Texture, Object and Terrain all to High and DoF off, but you can compare my config with the previous one I posted to see for sure.

language="English";

forcedAdapterId=-1;

detectedAdapterId=0;

detectedAdapterVendorId=4098;

detectedAdapterDeviceId=26393;

detectedAdapterSubSysId=587667335;

detectedAdapterRevision=0;

detectedAdapterBenchmark=92;

displayMode=0;

winX=16;

winY=32;

winWidth=1024;

winHeight=768;

winDefWidth=1024;

winDefHeight=768;

fullScreenWidth=1920;

fullScreenHeight=1200;

refresh=60;

renderWidth=1920;

renderHeight=1200;

multiSampleCount=4;

multiSampleQuality=0;

particlesQuality=2;

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;

HDRPrecision=8;

vsync=0;

AToC=0;

cloudsQuality=0;

pipQuality=0;

dynamicLightsQuality=2;

PPAA=4;

ppSSAO=0;

ppCaustics=0;

tripleBuffering=0;

ppBloom=0.9973262;

ppRotBlur=0;

ppRadialBlur=0;

ppDOF=0;

anisoFilter=12;

textureQuality=2;

shadowQuality=3;

sceneComplexity=500000;

shadowZDistance=100;

viewDistance=1552.0331;

preferredObjectViewDistance=801.4892;

terrainGrid=25;

Anyway, the result was that the mission Op. Magic Carpet that was giving me under 10fps before was now more like 25-30fps, as you can see, although CPU and GPU usage was still rather low. The last three screenshots are from a different mission, Ghosthawk Down I think it's called. The first screenshot is at the start of the mission, where the GPU usage is higher but the CPU much the same and it's around 60fps. The next shot is later in the mission, near some buildings where the fps has dropped to around 30fps, CPU is around 70% and GPU 99%. In the last shot, I reduced the Shadows from Ultra (as recommended in that guide) back to High which is what I normally use and also changed ATOC from All Trees to disabled and it lowered the GPU from around 99% to 85%, although it tended to go back up when I zoomed in. CPU is around 60% and it's still only around 30fps, despite neither the CPU or GPU being bottlenecked.

I was going to test MP but obviously couldn't connect to the DEV servers that I normally use as I didn't have the DEV build anymore, so Steam is just re-downloading that.

[doveman 7]

Well testing with the Dev build again after it re-installed and it seems a lot better now, both SP and MP was around 20-30fps., so something I did must have helped. I wasn't paying much attention to the CPU/GPU usage I'm afraid, was just glad to be getting over 10fps ;)

[k3lt 3]

You just joined less populated server probably.

[froggyluv 2136]

Added -nolog to the commandline

Should be -nologs

[doveman 7]

You just joined less populated server probably.

Yes, because that would explain why I got better fps from SP missions wouldn't it :rolleyes:

---------- Post added at 18:37 ---------- Previous post was at 18:24 ----------

Should be -nologs

Thanks for the catch. I think I just mistyped it here and had it right in PwS as it doesn't seem to have created any RPTs last night but I'll double-check.

[verstand3n 13]

I had a Phenom II X4 945 myself till 2 weeks ago. It ran A3 and A2 horribly. Switched to a Xeon 1230v3 and now it runs pretty well.

Did I not see a screenshot (yours?) from an eight core cpu here in the forums where only one core was heavily used, three others mildly and the other four not at all? Since the Xeonv3 (and i7) are quadcores with hyperthreading wouldn't that basically mean the power per core gets cut in half?

Wouldn't arma run better of an i5 without ht?

just wondering. maybe I am wrong :confused:

/edit

found the thread. guess my questions have been answered. if in doubt buy the highest clocked i5 without k and z87 ;)

Edited September 9, 2013 by MissVerstanden

[jurrasstoil 10]

Yeah, a high clocked i5 would be better, but i didn't buy the xeon for arma. I'm using it mainly for rendering, where HT is quite useful and it was a cheaper option than a 4670k (which i would have to get up to 4.5 to make up for the lack of HT) with a (more expensive) Z board and a (more expensive) good cooler.

An i5 at 3.5ghz will give the same performance as a Xeon (of the same generation of course) at 3.5ghz in Arma tho. Performance isn't cut in half, Arma just doesn't use the extra computational power that HT could provide.

Haswell provides about twice the singlecore performance compared to the Phenom II.

[SnoFox 0]

"that is measured across ALL your cores, go into task manager while the game is running and set affinity to core 0 and 1 then you will see the real usage."

I set affinity to 0 and 1 my game in SP went down to under 10 fps. I go back and click all cores, it jumps back to its 75+ in SP, what's that tell ya?

[tvamvarg 0]

32-bit + Altis is currently causing issues for most people so don't worry about there being anything wrong with your computer.

Glad to report that it's now again eminently playable, on the latest dev branch.

[verstand3n 13]

@ jurrasstoil: thx for the explanation

I did some testing yesterday and actually posted my results here but today I must see that for some reasons my post was not created... weird

Anyway. I changed my resolution to 720 instead of my monitor's 1920x1080. Besides that I changed to the preset "Standard" but disabled vsync and blur effects.

That gave me a decent jump in fps towards 30-60 (depending what is going on on my screen). I believe some ppl already said it. There seems to be a huge difference performance wise between BIS content and community content. The BIS infantry scenario, which I used for benchmarking, gave me those more or less smooth fps. I then started up an armory from steamworkts and got back my good old 15-30 fps. But I also found some workshop elements (played a heli parcours yesterday) that were playable with decent fps.

I guess AI and scripting intense user-made "scenarios" are not playable (on my system). But then again there is probably also some scripting and AI movement in the SP scenarios. Hard to say where the problem might be.

Anyway my system is a Phenom X4 BE 3,4 Ghz, 8GB Ram, HD6950 (6970 shaders unlocked). Maybe my graphics settings help someone.

Next I will start overclocking my CPU+GPU. Not sure if it will help alot. But since I can, I will! :D

Edited September 10, 2013 by MissVerstanden

[k3lt 3]

From latest sitrep:

To ensure your system is well-prepared for the full game, please do a file integrity check via the Steam client after all data has downloaded. If you are using non-SSD storage, please defragment your drives after downloading. This can significantly increase performance.

So i guess this is the "performance fix" they figured out after a year? :icon_lol:

And still no single word about the blog mentioned like half year ago?

Nothing about abyssmal cpu/gpu utilization or terrible performance in mp?

So i guess after 3 years this is still actual:

One would expect wrong. This is not how MP works in our engine. While path-planning and some decisions are done owner-side only (which is server side for most AI), the simulation itself needs to be performed everywhere (the only optimization done is that simulation of far away units is done much less frequently).

I am sorry to disappoint you, but some things are really too hard and we are not willing to spend the time on them.

ps.

It was already tested and proved that HDD wont get you a single fps, there were numerous people that ran the game from RAMDISK's which are MUCH faster than SSD's. At best it will improve loading times and decrease "micro-stuttering" compared to low-end 5400rpm HDD's.

I dont even know why am i talking to myself since this thread is on devs ignore list, just as the whole issue including feedback tracker.

Anyway as expected.

Edited September 10, 2013 by k3lt

[Leon86 13]

and decrease "micro-stuttering"

Nothing micro about those stutters.

[Vigil Vindex 64]

Release is two days away, and there has been little progress on these issues. I suspect the months after release will be a scramble to get the campaign out. I sincerely hope that the performance, ai and mp problems get fixed otherwise I think the campaign will be a fairly limited affair...

[mobile_medic 43]

If you are using non-SSD storage, please defragment your drives after downloading. This can significantly increase performance.

typical...

[TSAndrey 1]

I don't understand why BI didn't prioritize this issue during the development before Alpha. I can't believe they left such a big issue for "later".

[nikiforos 450]

Lol, excellent advice BIS:j:. Im sure most performance problems are solved now .

[jurrasstoil 10]

I think the last time "Defrag your harddrive" was legitimate advice to gain more performance was in the days of Windows 98 SE...

[nikiforos 450]

Well before it was like defrag your HDD or get an SSD. Now most of us have done both things and the problems still is there.

What next?

[WalkerDown 1]

Well before it was like defrag your HDD or get an SSD. Now most of us have done both things and the problems still is there.

What next?

Right click on the A3 icon and change the path to AA3 exe. Problem solved! :)

[mobile_medic 43]

To fix this issue, get a dual core clocked at 7ghz or more... </sarcasm>

[k3lt 3]

BIS should sell Arma 3 with LN2 carnisters.