Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[haleks 8212]

Could it be that the Engine is just crap?

I dunno, isn't VBS based on it? It must be possible to turn it into something good...:rolleyes:

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

Well, seems to be possible, the Animations looks same as other Arma games. But i think this will never change, Arma games seems to have a copyright for "Low-fps" gaming. And that is real sad.

[bigsyke 10]

Well, seems to be possible, the Animations looks same as other Arma games. But i think this will never change, Arma games seems to have a copyright for "Low-fps" gaming. And that is real sad.

I wonder why BI hasn't yet caught on to people saying "Oh sweet, a new texture for this magazine, but I still can't play this crappy game". It has gotten pathetic. I do not care about ATM machines or a new awesome hand signal. DayZ is the same thing. New matchbox textures but zombies still wont die, run through walls, etc. If they can fix the issue of what I think is actually a "Message" issue, the game would be incredible.

I've been playing since OFP, I have logged countless hours in Arma3, done my own server testing with multiple servers, etc. It seems the game is heavily dependent on message intervals. I could have 100+fps with 1 AI connected to a dedicated LAN server, and the second I create a network congestion on the Server side, the FPS tanks to 10fps because it seems like it is linear and directly related to network bandwidth, not CPU. The client side is similar, but not as dramatic. Youtube isn't really a CPU intensive application when you have an i7 with 32GB of ram. I personally believe the low CPU usage is related to Message intervals. I'm probably 100% wrong, but logging network traffic and messages seems to point in this direction.

[Spudgunner 10]

The game is probably hobbled intentionally because of their main product, VBS 3.x. Its possible as a low programming level such as machine or assembly code to add clock dividers to slow execution of the cores. usually they are used to prevent overheating and in the old days to stop games from running too fast.

Is there a way to measure per core clock rate? Either that, or the code is so old that it can only run on one core. I would have thought a modern compiler would sort this problem. Whatever the reason, it not an acceptable situation, particular if we have to pay for stuff that should be there in the first place.

Hardly surprising as the BI logo is almost identical to the symbol of Mammon (Demon of greed) :butbut:

Edited August 17, 2014 by Spudgunner
improve clarity

[haleks 8212]

The game is probably hobbled intentionally because of their main product, VBS 3.x.

That's the most absurd statement I read in a long time.:rolleyes:

[SissiSaatana 1]

I had big wishes for arma 3 considering the performance (all the extra money from dayz mod etc.) but NO, and what really destroys my faith for future improvements is the fact that these are ages old bugs/flaws within the engine... This really pains me hard as I love arma series ...

[jumpinghubert 49]

That's the most absurd statement I read in a long time.:rolleyes:

no, its the first useful statement related to the longtime-issues I read in a long time here.

[zaira 10]

I have i5 4690 blck overclocked 3% (3,6 GHz base, 4GHz turbo), and for me arma 2 is playable (no dips into sub 30 fps, with viewdistance 1600m). Finaly playeble after all this years. I stoped playing it 2 years ago becouse at the time there wasnt cpu good enough for me to enjoy the game without frustration. I have like 2000 game hours playing, and hundrets of hours of testing it and maniacly tuning it to work (without sucsess ofcourse, becouse shitty code....you know it alll...).

I have all expancions and DLCs, but never finshid any campaign cos of stuttering.

I have z97 motherboard and i was thinking of buying i7k broadwell and hopefuly overclocking it past 5 GHz.

Do you think that CPU could play the game without stuttering (sub 30 fps dips).

I just dont want to buy the game and then wait for years for cpus to be powerful enough to play it (arma 2 is only playeble with overclocked haswell i5ws and i7s)

Ty

[miketim 20]

Yeah dude.. Your CPU is good compared to mine.

I have amd phenom x6 at 2.9 ghz, and I can run the game, but did alotof tweaking on cfgs

Also stuttering sounds like a diff problem. What is your video card?

[haleks 8212]

Also stuttering sounds like a diff problem.

For me, setting GPU_MaxFramesAhead in Arma.cfg to 1 (like it is suggested in almost all tweaking guides) was causing constant audio stuttering.

I recently tried to set it to 100 (instead of the default 1000) and problem's gone!

Hope this can help.

(By the way, I have a Core2Duo @ 2.66... T^T)

[Dwarden 1125]

using value higher than 5 makes no sense, cause you technically extremely increasing delay between I/O

btw. both NVIDA, AMD and INTEL driver default is 3

[haleks 8212]

Thanks for the info Dwarden, wasn't aware of that.

(But how come that it is set to 1000 by default in arma3.cfg?:confused:)

[zaira 10]

Yeah dude.. Your CPU is good compared to mine.

I have amd phenom x6 at 2.9 ghz, and I can run the game, but did alotof tweaking on cfgs

Also stuttering sounds like a diff problem. What is your video card?

Now i have r7 260x (sapphire oc version). But video card never was a problem in the series.

If details are 2 high you just lower it. But if you are CPU bound you cant realy do anything (except overclock) to avoid frame dips.

Ofcourse i watched youtube videos of people having haswell i5s and i7s overclocked to extreme and gameplay of this game (and good fps), but from videos you cant realy tell about performance in big firefights in towns.

And that is the reason im not posting in http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147391-Will-my-PC-run-Arma3-What-CPU-GPU-to-get-What-settings-What-System-Specifications .

Im into the series to long, so i know engine limitations (for example extreme situation of cpu limitation can still be seen in benchmark 2 of arma 2, where i get 20fps...but i dont expect scenarios to have such ai number....little less and im satisfyed).

I just want confirmation of some expirienced players, playing multy with normal number of ai (scripted mission with clanmembers....) with i5 and i7 overclocked haswels, that game is playable without sub 30 fps.

I realy like the series, but i still think cpus are not powerfull enough to run this game without frustration, and hoping that intels next gen, overclocked to extreme can play it without stuttering in normal multy situations.

ty

[jiltedjock 10]

Now i have r7 260x (sapphire oc version). But video card never was a problem in the series.

If details are 2 high you just lower it. But if you are CPU bound you cant realy do anything (except overclock) to avoid frame dips.

Ofcourse i watched youtube videos of people having haswell i5s and i7s overclocked to extreme and gameplay of this game (and good fps), but from videos you cant realy tell about performance in big firefights in towns.

And that is the reason im not posting in http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147391-Will-my-PC-run-Arma3-What-CPU-GPU-to-get-What-settings-What-System-Specifications .

Im into the series to long, so i know engine limitations (for example extreme situation of cpu limitation can still be seen in benchmark 2 of arma 2, where i get 20fps...but i dont expect scenarios to have such ai number....little less and im satisfyed).

I just want confirmation of some expirienced players, playing multy with normal number of ai (scripted mission with clanmembers....) with i5 and i7 overclocked haswels, that game is playable without sub 30 fps.

I realy like the series, but i still think cpus are not powerfull enough to run this game without frustration, and hoping that intels next gen, overclocked to extreme can play it without stuttering in normal multy situations.

ty

There is nothing in Haswell that will make it run better than on Sandybridge.

[JimmyHustler 10]

The game is amazing but the engine is abysmal and that is what is going to make people leave or stop playing. There is only so much you can tolerate when online play drops to 20fps and you have a rig that is decent enough that you should be guaranteed 30fps with any game. There is no way I'll buy any future DLC or expansions if the performance of the game stays like this with no improvement. It's not a buy I regret but it's a reoccurring theme these days with PC gaming that games are unfinished and unpolished and rushed out. I've been a solid PC gamer for 10 years now and I'm seriously considering buying a console and just being done with it, I won't miss the broken and buggy mod community as much as they try the vast majority of user made content isn't even worth touching and has always been this way.

My specs for any that are interested to know are:

i5 2500k 4.0GHz

GTX 660

8 GIG RAM

Before someone jumps down my throat and tells me my PC isn't great I know that and never expected to run Arma 3 on max settings but running everything on standard with everything else on low/disabled is a kick in the teeth. Sure single player runs.. better.. but not by much and is still plagued by the same performance issues. I care about this game enough to sign up here to tell the devs that I really hope they can fix this but after reading through previous posts and seeing that there has been no mention from them about addressing these issues I know exactly what that means, I've been PC gaming too long to know not to ever hold your breath and I wont. No way will upgrade to an i7 just for Arma either especially when I see from others that performance is still just as bad or maybe a couple of frames better and the PC community shouldn't feel forced to do that either. Fix your game please.

[Gryzlov 10]

I hope I wont have such a problems.

[Furret 0]

I hope I wont have such a problems.

Its a game issue, so you will.

Sorry.

[nikiforos 450]

Regardless of CPU you will go below 40 FPS sometime during battle. Talking about Single PLayer.

[DuhKev 10]

I am 8GB Ram, AMD 8350 8 Core, AMD 7850 graphics card.

I have V-Sync turn off and on, I still get 25-30 Fps on High, Very High.

This is getting really hard to play, I don't wanna play on low or Standard, why do I get so low fps with good specs?

[James111333 10]

I'm sure it keeps getting swept under the carpet in this thread, in a lot of cases, you shouldn't be worrying about the CPU as much as the frequency of the RAM, I have 2000Mhz Dominator GT CL8 and after a bios reset, it was running at 1600MHz, I didn't bother to change it back at the time as it makes no conceivable difference for browsing etc. Then I read that the Arma engine has a problem with transferring to and from the RAM ( or something along those lines) I clocked my RAM back up to 2000MHz and got 10-12fps for 400MHz I spend most of my time flying so really hate it every time I fly over a town but the RAM increase has made a massive difference to my minimum FPS, I only wish I could try 3000MHz. I'm really keen to hear some feedback from folks on high frequency DDR4 as that may be a game changer when they eventually start hitting 4000MHz :)

I have 100s of hours on the same few flying missions and have easily replicate-able (sp) scenarios to test FPS, not to mention the gains in the benchmark etc.

For reference,

4770K

8GB Dominator GT 2000MHz CL8

R9 290X

Water cooled

All settings on Ultra

Overall visibility 3540

Objects 1900

Disabling 2 cores and overclocking my 4770K to 5.5GHz sees no real gain, maybe 3-4 FPS

All cores clocked at 4.8 sees about 5 FPS

Overclocking my GPU or crossfiring them sees no FPS increase.

[zaira 10]

No real gains from haswell refresh to haswell E (stock, and overclocked)

http://www.purepc.pl/procesory/intel_core_i75960x_test_haswelle_czyli_8_rdzeni_x99_i_ddr4?page=0,20 .... and ddr4 :(

So, as most of players know ARMAs engine cant benefit from multy core CPUs....this link just confirms it

Arma 3 Bottleneck Explanation 101 and Counting....

Arma 3 Bottleneck Threshold

So i wait for broadwell 1150 , hopefuly with 5% IPC gains and 5% better clock (5GHz+), and maybe with dx 12 support i will buy the game and the expansion in late 2015 (and i was so close to buy it today, with 50 % discount....but i just wont frustrate myself again like i did with arma 2)

BIS start learning DX12 API

[sgtsev3n 12]

guys, do not waste your money on new computers, CPU, GPU etc just for arma. it wont help, deal with it.

better tell BI they should fix the engine before buying new cpu, gpu or a new computer for arma 3.

[James111333 10]

guys, do not waste your money on new computers, CPU, GPU etc just for arma. it wont help, deal with it.

better tell BI they should fix the engine before buying new cpu, gpu or a new computer for arma 3.

I disagree completely (in a non aggressive way I might add (too much bitching has gone on in this thread!))

The benchmarks linked by Zaira show huge gains from upgrading. 965BE to 4790k (or overclocked 4770k) nets double the frame rates 19 FPS vs 38 FPS. There is no doubt that it should be ~90FPS if the game was fixed but an upgrade from the IPC of a 965, 1090T or even 8350 to what could be considered a modestly priced 4690k sends you into totally playable territory. I'm not arguing that the game is not broken but just hoping that people will still be able to enjoy it as much as me.

I loved my 965 and my 1090T but I consider my 4770k and huge game changing upgrade for playing Arma.

[windies 11]

I disagree completely (in a non aggressive way I might add (too much bitching has gone on in this thread!))

The benchmarks linked by Zaira show huge gains from upgrading. 965BE to 4790k (or overclocked 4770k) nets double the frame rates 19 FPS vs 38 FPS. There is no doubt that it should be ~90FPS if the game was fixed but an upgrade from the IPC of a 965, 1090T or even 8350 to what could be considered a modestly priced 4690k sends you into totally playable territory. I'm not arguing that the game is not broken but just hoping that people will still be able to enjoy it as much as me.

I loved my 965 and my 1090T but I consider my 4770k and huge game changing upgrade for playing Arma.

It's still unplayable even with a 4690K, for example I went from a 965 to a 3570K and in the same scenario's where I had problems before, Multiplayer and single player with high player counts or a mediocre amount of AI units, I had problems with the 3570K. I'm not arguing the results of his benchmark but benchmarks, especially in the case of ArmA, are very subject to their content. If There's a bunch of AI standing around doing nothing versus a battle going on for example, the results are going to vary wildly. The amount of AI in the battle are going to skew the results. My point being unless you use the very same benchmark across all test machines as well as use a benchmark that targets problem area's like AI counts and lots of "action" going on, then the results are pretty moot.

I mean I see a huge 40 fps boost on the title screen between my 965 and 3570K but play a normal mission or play multiplayer and the performance is exactly the same. This says that the engine doesn't scale compared to it's workload as well as the hardware it's running on. Meaning this is an engine problem and while you can create a smoke screen for it by saying hardware upgrade makes a world of difference, it's ultimately just hiding the real problem which is the engine.

I went from a 965 @ 3.5ghz to a 3570K @ 4.4ghz and a GTX 480 to an R9 280X to finally "two" R9 280x's in crossfireX and in the same scenarios I see a difference of 10 FPS. I can hop on a multiplayer server and get below 25 fps and I can pretty much guarantee you that same result across almost every multiplayer server out there and that's about 10 FPS higher than the 10-15 FPS I used to get with the 965 and GTX 480. I can load up a multitude of Single Player missions out there and show you about a 5-10 fps difference going from same hardware. The only place I see huge differences in performance is on an empty map with nothing going on, and then I might, might, see about a 20-30 FPS increase over the 965 and GTX 480. It's not about bitching, honestly at this point I'm tired of seeing the issue's get swept under the rug time and time again by some modders or developers wet dream implementation being prioritized over fixing the actual game because you know the community won't be happy until that hat sits perfectly right on a units head or that new scripting command that 5 people might use is introduced, meanwhile the game still barely functions in most useable scenario's :rolleyes:.

Sarcasm aside though that pretty much sums up the problem, project management and project goals and directions. They're focused on DLC content, new additions and pleasing the modders rather than fixing whats already there. All the while we're told "Hey we're working on it" for the past like year an a half now with hostile communication from *redacted* developers an even the head honcho himself telling us BF and similar games make better use of hardware because they secretly run prime95 in the background to spike up usage :rolleyes:. How can you trust or take anything seriously when the "CEO" tries to use that as a scapegoat?

Edited September 1, 2014 by Windies

[das attorney 858]

Sarcasm aside though that pretty much sums up the problem, project management and project goals and directions. They're focused on DLC content, new additions and pleasing the modders rather than fixing whats already there.

Hi Windies,

Although I agree in general that the game needs performance improvement, I don't think it is fair comment to say that they are focused on pleasing the modders. Some nice new scripting commands are all well and good, but many mods depend on good game performance (like Jarheads JSRS for example) so it would also benefit the modders just as well as the next guy to have a well running engine. Nothing would please me more than to have rock-solid performance (60FPS all the time) for one of the mods I'm writing. Timing critical stuff goes to shit at low FPS and it's a real pain to try and workaround.

I'm of the opinion that they will add in the new content and only then look at fixing up the engine. Looking at all previous platforms and their patch history, I would imagine that the performance patches will be towards the end of A3's life (or a bit further along from now anyway).