Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[Vasily.B 529]

If you have i7 7700K you have hypethreading. I bet its not case of your PC, but how game runs in single player?
Try this config in launcher :
Platform 64 bits, CPU cores count 4, all 3 options under "exthreads", ENABLE HYPERTHREADING (using cpu count is overriding enableHT), enable huge pages,  set your VIDEO memory limit to 1GB less than you have (reserved for system and apps in background - even steam), enable filepatching. For faster game startup check "use static menu background" on top of parameters list.

Now in the game;
Try HD instead FHD resolution, disable or lower PIP settings (best try disable them for test), set clouds to low, textures to medium, disable antialiasing, and all post process effects. Quit game, head into My Documents/Arma 3 and open arma3.cfg (via notepad), search :
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;
and in place of 1000 and 3 put 1, so in the end it will look like this :
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;
Launch game in SINGLE PLAYER, start some resource consuming mission (some benchmark) and write resoults here.

[SergentOwen 2]

51 minutes ago, Vasily.B said:

If you have i7 7700K you have hypethreading. I bet its not case of your PC, but how game runs in single player?
Try this config in launcher :
Platform 64 bits, CPU cores count 4, all 3 options under "exthreads", ENABLE HYPERTHREADING (using cpu count is overriding enableHT), enable huge pages,  set your VIDEO memory limit to 1GB less than you have (reserved for system and apps in background - even steam), enable filepatching. For faster game startup check "use static menu background" on top of parameters list.

Now in the game;
Try HD instead FHD resolution, disable or lower PIP settings (best try disable them for test), set clouds to low, textures to medium, disable antialiasing, and all post process effects. Quit game, head into My Documents/Arma 3 and open arma3.cfg (via notepad), search :
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;
and in place of 1000 and 3 put 1, so in the end it will look like this :
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;
Launch game in SINGLE PLAYER, start some resource consuming mission (some benchmark) and write resoults here.

 

Tried out on the Showcase "firing from helicopter" : i got around 20 fps lowering to 15 when firing HMG  (like 10 units involved plus two helicopters flying over fields and forest)

view distance was set at 800m / objects at 800m/ Shadows at 100m.

[lex__1 422]

5 hours ago, SergentOwen said:

I also tried a bunch of settings in the "advanced" options, like hyper trading and all that (specifying the numbers of core etc, srry but my menu is not in english and i'm not sure how to translate all the options i have tried.

There are different languages in launcher settings

[Vasily.B 529]

On 2.02.2018 at 7:31 PM, SergentOwen said:

 

Tried out on the Showcase "firing from helicopter" : i got around 20 fps lowering to 15 when firing HMG  (like 10 units involved plus two helicopters flying over fields and forest)

view distance was set at 800m / objects at 800m/ Shadows at 100m.

Damm thats very bad, and definetly should not happen on Your PC. I had it once, and someone sayed to try disable hyperthreading in BIOS. May be its worth to try, you loss nothing, if it will not help you can re-enable it. 
There is something definetly wrong if you have that resoult in single player. Are you using some profile for Arma in Nvidia control panel?
It looks like (when you fire HMG) there is problem with particles OR.....
SOUNDS. On desktop right click on speaker icon > playback devices > choose your speakers > Advanced tab and choose lowest sound quality. I know there was some post published to help people with low FPS, it was this solution. Try it first before disabling hyperthreading. Also make sure noting will change sound quality back (relatek panel, Nahimic or any other third party software). In game settings head to audio, decrease max samples quantity and try.

[SergentOwen 2]

On 03/02/2018 at 8:07 PM, Vasily.B said:

Damm thats very bad, and definetly should not happen on Your PC. I had it once, and someone sayed to try disable hyperthreading in BIOS. May be its worth to try, you loss nothing, if it will not help you can re-enable it. 
There is something definetly wrong if you have that resoult in single player. Are you using some profile for Arma in Nvidia control panel?
It looks like (when you fire HMG) there is problem with particles OR.....
SOUNDS. On desktop right click on speaker icon > playback devices > choose your speakers > Advanced tab and choose lowest sound quality. I know there was some post published to help people with low FPS, it was this solution. Try it first before disabling hyperthreading. Also make sure noting will change sound quality back (relatek panel, Nahimic or any other third party software). In game settings head to audio, decrease max samples quantity and try.

Hi. Thanks for the reply and trying to help me. As i was quite upset i tried to reinstall W10 and it work. Now the game is running at 60fps on Multiplayer with graphics setted at "high" quality. Question is for how long ? I'll see. Im suspecting an Altis life server to be the origin of my troubles (see my first post). Im going to try to reproduce the trouble to provide some hints since i really do not know what caused the bug as i did nothing special to have this trouble except login in a very scripted server that caused me some strange graphics problems... Not very sure its tehe reason but if i can rely those two things it might be interresting for the community to know it.

Best Regards.

Owen

[R0adki11 3949]

11 minutes ago, SergentOwen said:

Hi. Thanks for the reply and trying to help me. As i was quite upset i tried to reinstall W10 and it work. Now the game is running at 60fps on Multiplayer with graphics setted at "high" quality. Question is for how long ? I'll see. Im suspecting an Altis life server to be the origin of my troubles (see my first post). Im going to try to reproduce the trouble to provide some hints since i really do not know what caused the bug as i did nothing special to have this trouble except login in a very scripted server that caused me some strange graphics problems... Not very sure its tehe reason but if i can rely those two things it might be interresting for the community to know it.

Best Regards.

Owen

 

Heavily scripted servers can cause issues with FPS, as this is normally due to poorly written scripts. Which in turn will cause performance hits for servers and players. Have you tried playing on a non life server and seen what your FPS is? Also please note FPS can be affected by other factors, such as the server spec, your PC spec, the servers network connection, your network connection and also what other players are doing on the server etc.

[SergentOwen 2]

33 minutes ago, R0adki11 said:

 

Heavily scripted servers can cause issues with FPS, as this is normally due to poorly written scripts. Which in turn will cause performance hits for servers and players. Have you tried playing on a non life server and seen what your FPS is? Also please note FPS can be affected by other factors, such as the server spec, your PC spec, the servers network connection, your network connection and also what other players are doing on the server etc.

yeah i know that, my question is : is it possible for a life server i played on to downgrade my fps definitly on other MP servers like KOTH ?  Because the only thing that happens on my PC between good fps and bad fps issue was a 1 hour game on a heavily bad scripted Life server that caused me severe graphic bugs i had never experienced before. After that i never managed to got Arma working properly without reinstalling the OS... 

[R0adki11 3949]

1 minute ago, SergentOwen said:

yeah i know that, my question is : is it possible for a life server i played on to downgrade my fps definitly on other MP servers like KOTH ?  Because the only thing that happens on my PC between good fps and bad fps issue was a 1 hour game on a heavily bad scripted Life server that caused me severe graphic bugs i had never experienced before. After that i never managed to got Arma working properly without reinstalling the OS... 

 

Did you play on the life server then go play KOTH straight away without restarting Arma3?

[SergentOwen 2]

1 hour ago, R0adki11 said:

 

Did you play on the life server then go play KOTH straight away without restarting Arma3?

The game was restarted, the day after i was unable to play my usuals KOTH serv

[SergentOwen 2]

Hello, three days playing A3 without any problem so far. Even on very scripted and usually slow server "Life" with 120 players i have very good fps rate. 

 

I dont know yet what was exactly my problem. Im suspecting an instalation of Intel Chipset Drivers of the motherboard badly done.

Just wanna thank you guys for taking time trying to help me out.

Best Regards.

Owen

[TotallyNotMace 0]

Some short backstory: I have been playing Arma 3 for some time now (started in early 2017). I have had the same exact computer setup (all hardware identical) for the entire time I've played Arma 3.

Approximately 5-6 months ago, when I would play, I had no issues with FPS drops or freezing or anything like that, regardless of mods. I didn't play Arma for some time starting in approximately September 2017 and resumed in early January of this year. Suddenly I'm having all sorts of problems. The biggest issue is that regardless of game mode, mods, or anything else - I always start to see degradation of FPS and playability after some time in-game. It sometimes happens 20 minutes after I start, sometimes 45 minutes after I start. I don't know if mods exacerbate the issue, as I do not have time to devote to doing A-B testing multiple times at ~20-30 minutes per attempt to figure this out.

Essentially, the game will start to hitch at some point, with sharp FPS drops (from a stable 30-40-50 to 3-5 FPS, and then back up to 30). MSI Afterburner shows that CPU and GPU usage during these FPS drops falls off to 0%. These start to get worse and worse and overall performance even when it's not happening also tends to decrease, so instead of 45 FPS with drops to 5, I get 25 FPS with drops to 0, and every drop takes longer and longer to resolve itself. Eventually the game will simply freeze up. The HDD usage light will also start going nuts until it's fully on all the time. CPU and GPU temperatures never go above 55 degrees C, usage never peaks over 40% from what I've seen, so it's not an issue of overheating or anything. I eventually have to force-quit the process, when you do this it gives me an "UNABLE TO INIT DXGI" error message.

I will say again that this did not happen previously regardless of what mods I had installed/enabled, etc. Now it happens even on the vanilla version of the game, playing offline singleplayer.

Things that could have changed:

- Video card drivers
- Chipset drivers
- Windows update

- BIOS firmware updated

- Maybe I'm missing something else?

What I've tried:

- Completely deleting and re-installing Arma (2-3 times, no effect besides making me want to kill myself as I re-download 80 gigs worth of files).
- Tweaking startup parameters in all sorts of ways. Overall performance might have been improved but the FPS drops still happen like clockwork.

- Running the game in x86 mode as opposed to x64. Honestly it felt like it ran better that way, but I cannot say anything for sure.
- Rolling back to older GPU drivers. No real effect (though I did not try rolling back to 6 month old drivers).
- Complete driver uninstall and re-install via DDU. No real effect.

PC Specs:

- Win 8.1
- GTX 1060 6GB, stock clocks
- MSI Z170A-G43 motherboard
- Intel i7 6700K, stock clocks
- 16gb HyperX RAM
- Western Digital Caviar Black 7200rpm 1TB HDD (ARMA and all related things are installed on this drive).

Drive is OK per SMART and benchmarking, defragmented (regular + freespace defrag).

The worst thing is that none of my friends have this same issue when we play.

Video of my last play session with this issue happening:

 

[swtx 42]

ARMA is a very processor intensive game.  The first thing I would do is upgrade your HD to an SSD drive.  That in its self will most likely fix the issue.  You need to follow this guide for tweaking your video setting in-game and your A3.cfg file.

 

I'm only running a 2.5ghz processor with GTX 860m video card with 4 gig memory and I'm getting 60 - 80 FPS in-game with these settings.  

 

Please follow the steps in the video below it is by far the best tut on the web for getting the most outa A3. Be sure to watch the followup in the description as well. 

 

Priority #1 should be upgrading to an SSD though.

 

Scott Out!

 

https://youtu.be/3bfJO4zBGtA 

[Tankbuster 1746]

I'm going to suggest a dying hard disk. If not that, faulty RAM.

[TotallyNotMace 0]

22 hours ago, swtx said:

ARMA is a very processor intensive game.

 

Yeah, yeah, we've all heard this stuff before.

 

21 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

I'm going to suggest a dying hard disk. If not that, faulty RAM.

 

Sat down and did some benchmarking of my two HDD's and for some reason the system drive (the one Arma is also installed on) is performing much worse despite being a "better" drive (WD Black 7200RPM vs WD Blue 5400 RPM). I'm running a complete diagnostic on it right now to look for bad sectors. It would be a big shame if the hard drive was just dying because it's maybe 15-16 months old at this point and isn't sitting in an always-on server farm.

 

[goko-- 147]

 new sata cables can be really bad and cause read/write errors as well. Some of them is really low quality plastic, can't even stay connected to slot.

I'd change sata cable and test hard drive again to make sure if it is failing or not.

 

[Sgt Smash 34]

My video memory usage slowly keeps going up untill it hits the full 8gb after about a hour and then starts to stutter forcing me to have to retsart my game or run 32bit, happens to my friends also, No matter if we run mods or not and even just in the editor.

 

Any help would be great

[GandalfTheHippy 0]

So about 3 months ago I could play Arma 3 multiplayer no problem with 50/60 fps with no problem, I recently just installed it again and now I got a solid 15fps on the static main menu on low settings, I noticed from my task manager on my other monitor that Arma was using 100% of my GPU  when I was tabbed into the game but what I tab out it goes back down to 5% usage, the CPU sits on a normal rate of 30/40% usage.

 

My specs are - 

i7 - 7700K

Dual SLI setup with GTX 970's

250GB SSD  

16GB of RAM 

 

I play on 1080p as well, anything else you need to know about my specs just ask.

 

Ive tired verifying the game files 

Ive reinstalled it

Ive changed things in the Arma 3.cfg file

 

I have no idea what else to do, if there is a thread already for this sorry I never saw it.

[Gunter Severloh 4056]

Hello, Welcome to Bis forums!

Sorry to read about your troubles, i would highly recommend posting your issues here on the following thread

Ask for Old Bear, Tankbuster, theres a few others there too that know their computers and Arma 3, i would help you but ideally your questions

and your answers will be found on that thread.

Hope you get it sorted, Cheers.  :)

 

 

[TotallyNotMace 0]

I found my 512GB SSD and slapped it into my PC, transferred Steam over to it.

The problem seemingly has went away. I believe it is a problem with my HDD because my previous ARMA drive was giving me some very strange benchmark results and was performing quite poorly.

[swtx 42]

Arma has a tendency to outrun a mechanical HD.

 

Please, follow the guide above in my previous post to maximize your FPS.

 

 

[Pandemic4444 20]

On 2/10/2018 at 4:30 PM, TotallyNotMace said:

Some short backstory: I have been playing Arma 3 for some time now (started in early 2017). I have had the same exact computer setup (all hardware identical) for the entire time I've played Arma 3.

Approximately 5-6 months ago, when I would play, I had no issues with FPS drops or freezing or anything like that, regardless of mods. I didn't play Arma for some time starting in approximately September 2017 and resumed in early January of this year. Suddenly I'm having all sorts of problems. The biggest issue is that regardless of game mode, mods, or anything else - I always start to see degradation of FPS and playability after some time in-game. It sometimes happens 20 minutes after I start, sometimes 45 minutes after I start. I don't know if mods exacerbate the issue, as I do not have time to devote to doing A-B testing multiple times at ~20-30 minutes per attempt to figure this out.

Essentially, the game will start to hitch at some point, with sharp FPS drops (from a stable 30-40-50 to 3-5 FPS, and then back up to 30). MSI Afterburner shows that CPU and GPU usage during these FPS drops falls off to 0%. These start to get worse and worse and overall performance even when it's not happening also tends to decrease, so instead of 45 FPS with drops to 5, I get 25 FPS with drops to 0, and every drop takes longer and longer to resolve itself. Eventually the game will simply freeze up. The HDD usage light will also start going nuts until it's fully on all the time. CPU and GPU temperatures never go above 55 degrees C, usage never peaks over 40% from what I've seen, so it's not an issue of overheating or anything. I eventually have to force-quit the process, when you do this it gives me an "UNABLE TO INIT DXGI" error message.

I will say again that this did not happen previously regardless of what mods I had installed/enabled, etc. Now it happens even on the vanilla version of the game, playing offline singleplayer.

Things that could have changed:

- Video card drivers
- Chipset drivers
- Windows update

- BIOS firmware updated

- Maybe I'm missing something else?

What I've tried:

- Completely deleting and re-installing Arma (2-3 times, no effect besides making me want to kill myself as I re-download 80 gigs worth of files).
- Tweaking startup parameters in all sorts of ways. Overall performance might have been improved but the FPS drops still happen like clockwork.

- Running the game in x86 mode as opposed to x64. Honestly it felt like it ran better that way, but I cannot say anything for sure.
- Rolling back to older GPU drivers. No real effect (though I did not try rolling back to 6 month old drivers).
- Complete driver uninstall and re-install via DDU. No real effect.

PC Specs:

- Win 8.1
- GTX 1060 6GB, stock clocks
- MSI Z170A-G43 motherboard
- Intel i7 6700K, stock clocks
- 16gb HyperX RAM
- Western Digital Caviar Black 7200rpm 1TB HDD (ARMA and all related things are installed on this drive).

Drive is OK per SMART and benchmarking, defragmented (regular + freespace defrag).

The worst thing is that none of my friends have this same issue when we play.

Video of my last play session with this issue happening:

 

Im suffering from a similar issue. Ive got a high end system and im used to anywhere from around 75 to 120 fps right? well every so often i get such a massive fps drop that it makes it microstutter/lag for a split second which has been driving me up the wall for a while. After the jets update but before the tanks update is when it started. i have quite literally tried EVERYTHING and i cant seem to solve it. Plus it doesnt matter whether its on a HDD or an SSD, it still happens. Iv'e even upgraded from the 4790k too and its still going on. 

[Gunter Severloh 4056]

@Pandemic4444 in your sig you have 32GB G.Skill Aegis DDR4 2400 RAM

review this page----> https://techreport.com/review/31179/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-cpu-reviewed/11

 

 

[kibyde 64]

I had similar problems. although i have a good system I got a lot of stuttering and fps drops. Disabling Battleye fixed it. Battleye is interfering with some component (hardware or software) and causes a lot of issues.

[Drift_91 33]

On 2018-05-19 at 11:49 AM, Gunter Severloh said:

@Pandemic4444 in your sig you have 32GB G.Skill Aegis DDR4 2400 RAM

review this page----> https://techreport.com/review/31179/intel-core-i7-7700k-kaby-lake-cpu-reviewed/11

Dear god, I've wanted to see that benchmarked for years now. I have 1333Mhz DDR3 and everyone's been telling me that memory speed doesn't mean squat for gaming. I was almost certain it was my memory speed as my GPU and CPU never get anywhere near maxed out. I have an i7-2600s on a H61 chipset motherboard and a GTX660. I think I've been told at least twice on this forum that my GTX660 is horridly underpowered compared to my i7, yet it sits at like 50% to 70% usage most of the time.

[Diveyez 12]

You can try using the performance binary from dwarden instead? I get little to no performance increase in Arma3 by changing anything other than shadows. That seems to be the only thing increasing FPS.
I'm running an i7 and a 1080ti so I should not be having performance issues at all ANYWHERE.
Arma is just a horribly out of date and non-optimized piece of software and needs to be replaced by its next version ASAP.

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/forum/153-arma-3-troubleshooting/