Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[stk2008 14]

How do you limit FPS?

Thanks

[Leon86 13]

MSI afterburner has a frame limiter I think.

If you have an nvidia card you can limit frames with nvidia inspector

there's also a recording tool called bandicam that allows to limit fps without recording, last time I checked fraps could only limit when recording, but that was ages ago.

I'd really like an ingame frame limiter, dont have it yet afaik.

[stk2008 14]

Thanks Leon will check it out.

So limiting FPS gives us smoother gameplay? or am I missing some thing here LOL

[Leon86 13]

If you limit fps to 31 or something it roughly matches with your screen refresh rate, assuming it's a 60hz screen. Should be enough for arma. I wouldn't recommend 30, that way the tearline is always in the same place which can be very distracting.

If you always run 30 you get used to it, meaning you can still be effective in a massive firefight that causes low fps. 63 is also a number that seems to work well for frame limiting, I used to do this in battlefield 3. In arma you'll probably be under 60 often so 30 something might work best. You could experiment of course.

I'd really like an ingame frame limiter, those seem to work best.

[simjedi 10]

My last test session and I'm done as I want to play....lol

Since the graphs showed the CPU's stalling out I went into my BIOS and turned the down clocking Off. I also turned "Threaded Optimization" in NVIDIA Inspector to On and put the "Frames Read Ahead" to 4 in both NI and the ArmA3Alpha.cfg file. It used a little more of Core #0 and smoothed out the usage for 1-3 and gave me a higher FPS.

My conclusion. Did it give me more FPS? Yes and No, as soon as I had objects on screen I lost some.....lol But it was smoother overall I think.

Final picture:

ETA: Whoops, looks like I remembered wrong what map I created. The test map I was using had 200 A.I. instead....lol

Oh well looks like I'm prepared for the worst now....haha

I also turned "Frames Read Ahead" back down to 1 because the mouse lag was horrible.

ETA #2: Changed all picture titles to 200 and added a true 100 A.I. test.

Edited March 30, 2013 by SIMJEDI

[MavericK96 0]

Says the latest dev build has some sort of performance increase due to object instancing. Anyone notice a difference?

[sparayno1 1]

Still the same poor cpu usage and performance, particularly in the heli showcase mission and multiplayer.

[Planetside 1]

The game is multithreaded. Quit spreading lies because you're angry over your exotic hardware not functioning properly.

Hahaha "stop spreading lies". 6 Core CPU is hardly exotic.

[Leon86 13]

Hahaha "stop spreading lies". 6 Core CPU is hardly exotic.

as long as the game is using over 17% of your cpu it's multithreaded.

and generally a sixcore is a bad choice for gaming, unless the per-core speed is up there with the best of them, but those intels are ridiculously expensive.

[PuFu 4591]

as long as the game is using over 17% of your cpu it's multithreaded.

and generally a sixcore is a bad choice for gaming, unless the per-core speed is up there with the best of them, but those intels are ridiculously expensive.

Hm, while money worth those 6c/12t CPUs might not be the best bang/buck when gaming is concerned, some (just like myself) prefer those for other reasons, and i find it stupid to buy a second rig (in my case a third) just for playing games.

My overall cpu usage is about 20% on those 12 threads.

[dnk 13]

Yup, "other reasons" is the only reason to buy >4c CPUs at this point. Gaming isn't, and it's fairly ignorant to buy them for that, especially if you're going out of the big budget mainstream games with these chips, where engine support and coding are going to be far less. It is unfortunate for people who buy them for "other reasons" and also want to use them for gaming, I agree.

Hahaha "stop spreading lies". 6 Core CPU is hardly exotic.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

(2.46% of all users right now, 8-core being about 0.5%, compared to 2- and 4-cores, which are about 45% each)

Something that's:

1. higher technical complexity

2. more expensive

3. rarely seen in use

That's "exotic" for me.

[Leon86 13]

Hm, while money worth those 6c/12t CPUs might not be the best bang/buck when gaming is concerned, some (just like myself) prefer those for other reasons, and i find it stupid to buy a second rig (in my case a third) just for playing games.

My overall cpu usage is about 20% on those 12 threads.

Well, you're not getting worse performance compared to the quad, just not much better either. Hyperthreading makes the overall use seem half of what it is. 20% would actually mean arma uses 2.4 of your 6 cores, pretty decent imo.

[tet5uo 4]

So deluded are the hardcore fans they've even now convinced themselves that it's the user's fault for trying to use a CPU that's too good? LOL.

[Leon86 13]

I'm not blaming anyone for running a sixcore, It's just not realistic to expect them to run 3x as good as a similar dualcore or 1.5x as good as a quadcore.

your post is nothing but flamebait. then agian this thread is a mess anyway, only reason it's open is to have an easily ignored place for people to complain about performance.

Edited March 30, 2013 by Leon86

[white 1]

Yup, "other reasons" is the only reason to buy >4c CPUs at this point. Gaming isn't, and it's fairly ignorant to buy them for that, especially if you're going out of the big budget mainstream games with these chips, where engine support and coding are going to be far less. It is unfortunate for people who buy them for "other reasons" and also want to use them for gaming, I agree.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

(2.46% of all users right now, 8-core being about 0.5%, compared to 2- and 4-cores, which are about 45% each)

Something that's:

1. higher technical complexity

2. more expensive

3. rarely seen in use

That's "exotic" for me.

and thats about to end, since both major consoles that will launch this year will be 8 core with similar to pc architecture. 8 core is now the standard for game development. but i forgot, developers should work based on previous old generations and about to be dead architectures and not the trend/future of the entire industry.

hell even my cellphone is quadcore.

and i dont expect my six core to run better than a quad core (\altought i shoudl, it does in games like bf3), but i would be fine if the game used 4 cores (my previous post has a screenshot with running mostly just 1 core in the 8 core cpu, and that russian review also complains about the game not using more than 2 cores), but i expect it to run better than a dual core. do i really have to post for the third time the screenshots that prove my statement?

Edited March 30, 2013 by white

[simjedi 10]

And another test run to show that I don't get almost 300fps while during regular game play.....lmao I just walked at a casual pace in 3rd person view along the way points I set up. I'm lucky I didn't get shot as it was close a couple of times....lol

ETA: Forgot to post my setting used as this one was for a regular game play test.

If anyone would like to try out this mission here is the code from the "mission.sqm" file. I don't have any uploading accounts so this is the best I can offer. Just create a empty text file then paste in the code and save as "mission.sqm". Create a folder named "100_AI_Test.Stratis" and place it in there inside the "My Documents\ArmA3 Alpha\Missions" folder then open it up in the editor. It's a 10 minute walk-thru so a good gauge can be measured. Just follow the way points and don't get shot....hehe

Pastebin Link

[Rant]

To the Nay Sayers:

YES ArmA is multi-threaded and it matters how much A.I. is working to how much it is used. People saying that their CPU's are not utilized 100 percent 100 percent of the time need to realize that if this was the case there would be no percentage left for anything else.. Once A.I. show up what do think is actually going to happen?? Your CPU is gonna start farting out magical CPU cycles?? Dwarden himself said the focus needs to be on efficiency not utilization. Just look at the usage between 100 AI and 200 AI that I posted earlier in this thread, and that wasn't even taking into account the graphics side. Just pure CPU usage.

Do I think it could be optimized more? Sure I do! As far as I can tell the majority of the complainers in here can't see the "Forrest for the Trees" and are missing the open potential that the ArmA series offers.

[/Rant]

Edited March 31, 2013 by SIMJEDI

[MavericK96 0]

YES ArmA is multi-threaded and it matters how much A.I. is working to how much it is used. People saying that their CPU's are not utilized 100 percent 100 percent of the time need to realize that if this was the case there would be no percentage left for anything else.. Once A.I. show up what do think is actually going to happen??

The issue is that your CPU becomes even LESS utilized when AI appears. Does that not seem backwards to you?

[simjedi 10]

The issue is that your CPU becomes even LESS utilized when AI appears. Does that not seem backwards to you?

I does until a certain point. 100 AI shows about 30-40 percent with 200 coming in at about 40-60 percent.

ETA: That's why I suggested using a Frame Rate Limiter earlier in this thread because when graphics start getting taken into account the CPU usage starts to decline because of the bottle neck that is happening.

Edited March 31, 2013 by SIMJEDI

[Planetside 1]

Yup, "other reasons" is the only reason to buy >4c CPUs at this point. Gaming isn't, and it's fairly ignorant to buy them for that, especially if you're going out of the big budget mainstream games with these chips, where engine support and coding are going to be far less. It is unfortunate for people who buy them for "other reasons" and also want to use them for gaming, I agree.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

(2.46% of all users right now, 8-core being about 0.5%, compared to 2- and 4-cores, which are about 45% each)

Something that's:

1. higher technical complexity

2. more expensive

3. rarely seen in use

That's "exotic" for me.

Steam survey isn't relevant because the majority of users couldn't even play ArmA3.

Edited March 31, 2013 by Planetside

[MavericK96 0]

I does until a certain point. 100 AI shows about 30-40 percent with 200 coming in at about 40-60 percent.

ETA: That's why I suggested using a Frame Rate Limiter earlier in this thread because when graphics start getting taken into account the CPU usage starts to decline because of the bottle neck that is happening.

I typically use a frame limiter anyway...can't say it's made a huge difference.

[simjedi 10]

I typically use a frame limiter anyway...can't say it's made a huge difference.

So do I. What I find funny is if I have it at say 40fps the GPU usage is at 40%, 35fps @35% and so on. Look at the graph above, GPU usage scales almost exactly with the fps. Does not compute...

Around 30-35fps limited though does seem to bring up the core usage it looks like making me think that ArmA is hard coded for 30fps.

[dnk 13]

and thats about to end

And I'm sure A4 (perhaps an A3 expansion) will support these architectures far better when it ends. It may support them better by release - that's quite a ways away still.

Steam survey isn't relevant because the majority of users couldn't even play ArmA3.

Technically, I can't play A3. I still do, though, with better overall graphics and similar framerates to A2. Hardware requirements are pretty flexible things, and many people make do with less than them, suffering low framerates until they can upgrade, which many will by launch (and likely some will get 6 and 8 core CPUs, which is why it might be that BIS starts focusing on them more while polishing things up for the release).

[white 1]

And I'm sure A4 (perhaps an A3 expansion) will support these architectures far better when it ends. It may support them better by release - that's quite a ways away still.

noone can be sure, but theres a chance, i agree. afaik they can remain with this engine and how it works for as long theres a fan base big enough defending what they do no matter what, and buying everything despite running it with terrible fps (and ive seen a lot of those "25 fps for arma is enough"). but i guess how the game fares on launch might persuade even those if its not good enough. and im sure that since the game is now mainstream reviewers wont be so forgiving if it does not perform with an a acceptable playability. even so, it will remain a step behind the industry, since games for 8 core consoles are already being developed and will start to be released late this year alongside arma 3.

people compare a lot the cpu usage between arma 3 and bf3, but come to think of it, should be compared to bf4 since both will launch around the same time.

Edited March 31, 2013 by white

[ProfTournesol 956]

I do not choose a game by looking at the FPS.

[asd123 1]

what mission?

heli showcase

had about 30-45