Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[NeMeSiS 11]

I think its a matter of taste if 37 FPS is smooth for someone or not.

This. Back in the day (as a true budget gamer :p ) i aimed for stable 25FPS because i knew my eyes/brain would adjust to it, and after a few minutes i wouldnt even notice it anymore. This only works as long as it is stable, if you go up to 40FPS all the time you will need to get used to 25 again after that. The threshold for being able to get used to it was somewhere between 20 and 25 FPS for me, though it depends on the person, background lighting, tiredness etc.

I play ArmA3 at about 45-60FPS, but i dont check it anymore since i feel like it is enough.

[ratszo 17]

I think its a matter of taste if 37 FPS is smooth for someone or not. Personally everything above 45 is smooth for me. When my FPS drops below that I notice the difference quite clearly.

Sure Nik, i agree with you. If you can acheve say, 57.5 frames steady, no need to limit frames lower.

Tho my point is, if you're fluctuating from 60 to 40 back to 60fps all the time, limiting to 40 frames will be smoother.

---------- Post added at 11:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:29 AM ----------

Also, i forgot to mention the benifits of "Triple Buffering".

Here's a very good article explaining t-buff:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2794

Cheers!

[Instynct 1]

You'd think they would take that €500,000 and put it into the engine, not content. Content is nothing without stable performance.

Btw if you think 37 fps is smooth, you've probably been playing on an outdated rig your entire life or playing nothing but bohemia's games.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Instynct

[mobile_medic 43]

When so many people are reporting the same issues for what months now you still think it's system related?

It's like a doctor telling a patient with cancer to take some pepto bismol.

It's almost insulting you would insinuate that half the community for this game are computer illiterate.

Yes, I agree. Yet another attempt (whether intentional or just misguided, I will not speculate) to divert attention away from the root of the issue, which is all too common. I mean, with all due respect, seriously? The problem with this game is that the devs couldn't test every possible hardware combination? First of all, the challenge of accommodating the variety of pc hardware out there is nothing new, and it most certainly is not the solution to the problem that people have been trying to get addressed for years now..

So many excuses, no real dev input (I've seen people infracted/warned for less inflammatory posts than some of the ones made by a particular dev in this thread), lots of diversions talking about things that (while they have validity in other areas of discussion and should be among the first things that users troubleshoot) have little to nothing to do with the root issue that this thread (and those before it) has spawned from. None of the excuses or diversions hold water at the end of the day. Not with regards to this issue. This is a fundamental issue that (in my opinion) smart, forward-looking business thinking would have seen as crucial to invest in finally addressing in a meaningful way before ever attempting to build another game on top of it that it is not capable of handling. Or, investing in a 500k Euro prize pool, for that matter. They either don't know how, or are unwilling. They'd have something more meaningful to say otherwise. Their behavior with regards to this issue is out of character when contrasted to the way they interact about other issues.

Folks can provide cover, and can ignore, and allow for silly diversions/cover all they want. Stay in the echo chamber. Trying to eek out a playable experience of a massive game on an outdated engine incapable of handling it. I think the customers and perhaps the devs as well, grossly underestimate the potential of the customer base (without requiring a dumb-ing down of the game).

Competition is coming, and (in my opinion) Bohemia will be ill-positioned to handle it when it does if this continues to be the status quo.

[oldbear 390]

@ Instynct : I enjoy playing smoothly Arma3 over 30 FPS with my main rig [i7 3770/GTX670OC] and find it not playable under 15 FPS with my 2nd rig [Athlon II x2 250/GTS 450] ... believing it is hardware related.

For your own information, I have played hundred of games since Pong on various computers [Z81, Amstrad, Apple II, MO5, Atari St 1024, MacIntosh LC & 6100...], and still playing Civilization, Rome Total War and War of Warplanes.

[ratszo 17]

You'd think they would take that €500,000 and put it into the engine, not content. Content is nothing without stable performance.

Btw if you think 37 fps is smooth, you've probably been playing on an outdated rig your entire life or playing nothing but bohemia's games.

At the end of the day, It's about playing and enjoying the game.

Today i played a long mp session with a group of guys i go back acouple years with, good frames on a steady connection.

--hell of a fine way to spend a sunday afternoon.

Must suk not to get to play this game and enjoy it. Sad really.

[ratszo 17]

Console games must make your eyes bleed at 30fps.

May want to see a doctor 'bout that.

[snoozer87 10]

Hi all,

For me it's not so much about the performance optimization or lack thereof because I love playing the game. I worry most of the fact that I should get a bit more 'ouhmpf' out of my rig, this being said I would like to if scoring 37 fps on ultra on the Arma3Bench is normal using the following rig:

Core I7 3770k @ 4.7Ghz

8GB Gskil 1600Mhz DDR3 (2x4GB)

2x Radeon HD7970 (Crossfire)

256GB Samung 840 pro SSD

Asus Maximus V Formula

I also noticed that during the benchmark my graphics cards only get used for 50% each (using MSI afterburner), so I'm guessing more CPU power is needed and that's where the bottleneck lies.

Best regards

[Veberman 10]

Yes, I agree. Yet another attempt (whether intentional or just misguided, I will not speculate) to divert attention away from the root of the issue, which is all too common. I mean, with all due respect, seriously? The problem with this game is that the devs couldn't test every possible hardware combination? First of all, the challenge of accommodating the variety of pc hardware out there is nothing new, and it most certainly is not the solution to the problem that people have been trying to get addressed for years now..

Arma 3 lagging on ALL AMD PCs. I got FX-8320 running on 4.2GHz with radeon 7950 that runs BF4 on ultra settings 50-100 fps. And arma 3 runs 15-35 fps on LOW/ultra settings. i tried all launch commands, but all CPU cores working on 20-30% and 40% GPU. They could not test their game on the second CPU vendor for home PC? Same thing with arma 2, but there fps between 30-70fps (pretty playable). Friend with i5-3470 got 40-100 fps.. seems this game intel exclusive.. I cant play wasteland because of 15FPS, I cant play any daylight mission because of 22 fps (IN SHOOTER GAME), I cant play singleplayer because of 25fps..

I would play this game this game 24/7 if they fix lags, but it will never happen.. I already paid for it. seems that's enough for Bohemia..

Medium recommended PC specs are FX-8350.. medium - 15 fps? thats a LIE. Arma 3 NOT WORKING ON AMD CPUs.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Veberman

[nicolasroger 11]

Arma 3 lagging on ALL AMD PCs.

Well thats totaly false. I just loaded Stratis in the editor and I got 90 FPS. I have a old amd cpu. Try launching once the editor to record your FPS.

Multipayer FPS and single player FPS are too different thing. Multiplayer FPS degrade over time for an unknown reason.

GPU: GeForce GTX 650 ti 2 Gb

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 at 3.0 GHz

Mobo: MSI k9n2 platinum

Memory: 4 Gb

Hard drive: SSD 120 Gb

Windows 7 64 bit

I play in window mode at 1440x900

[James111333 10]

Arma 3 lagging on ALL AMD PCs.

As an AMD fan but 4770k owner I don't think it is the fact that it is AMD that is the problem, it is the per core performance. If this game can only use 30-50% of one core on a cpu, on piledriver, it will be significantly slower than the same 30-50% useage of one core on Haswell.

Piledriver will be great for cross-platform AAA games now that the consoles support x86 multi core but BI decided to annoy the world by releasing a £40 title that doesn't even use 100% of one core, let alone 8 :(

I wonder if there are any 3rd party developers that could write a 'middleman' program that shares the load across multiple threads... A new take on the magic Arma fix we all crave maybe :P

[oldbear 390]

@ nicolasroger : In fact it seems you are both more or less right. Arma3 works on a nice average level on old Phenom II but the only CPU having enough juice among all the A-8/10 and FX afterwards seems to be the FX-8350. I am getting too many complaints from French players on Arma3 forums about this not to think there is a major flaw -Arma3 wise- in last produced AMD CPUs.

It's now well known that APU from AMD are working not so bad on heavily multi threaded software, just the thing Arma3 is not.

It's now well known that all AMD APU are not so good while gaming, but it seems that's also the case with FX CPU.

As an example, look at the AMD Athlon X4 750K on socket FM2, it seems great when you are on a budget because it's to be found at 80$ / 72€, on paper it seems quite fine : 4 cores-3,40 GHz/4 GHzTurbo, but in game it's not working on the awaited level, being more or less on par with a 2 cores i3-3100 @ 3.1 GHz.

Source : http://www.cpu-world.com/benchmarks/AMD/Athlon_X4_750K.html

So back to FX-8350, it's not so cheap for the CPU is to be found around 200$ / 185€ and the 990 AM3+ MoBo around 120-150$ / 100-120€ [on the same budget you can get an i5 4440 and a 1150 Mobo]. The performance Arma* wise are just a bit better than an old Phenom II in SP and not so good in MP.

Let's again have a look at the bench results I had post some time ago on the same topic.It's a chart from an AMD FX 4350 et FX 6350 test on French Hardware.fr site.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Of course, it's all about Arma2: OA, but I think that the CPU hierarchy is still the same on Arma3.

@ Veberman

You can play and enjoy Arma 3 with a FX-8350 at a correct 30 FPS rate with tweaked "Visibility" in Single-Player, the fact is that you don't have too much room to overcome the problems/issues in game while playing Multi-Players.

We all are impacted by the low FPS issues while playing in MP and it's BIS job to do something about it for all the issues related to the game itself.

BIS can't be held accountable for the low FPS issues related to ill managed crappy home hosted servers playing makeshift missions, that is our own responsibility.

BIS can't be held as responsible for faulty design -game wise- in AMD APU and misleading commercial communication about AMD products.

[St. Jimmy 272]

You've to remember with AMD that even 8350 is pretty cheap compared to many of those Intel CPUs so AMD really doesn't lack too much. In the end I think it lacks only little.

[jumpinghubert 48]

You've to remember with AMD that even 8350 is pretty cheap compared to many of those Intel CPUs so AMD really doesn't lack too much. In the end I think it lacks only little.

9 euro difference between FX 8350 and 3570k :p

http://geizhals.de/eu/amd-fx-8350-a852993.html

http://geizhals.de/eu/?cat=cpu1155&asd=on&asuch=3570k

[St. Jimmy 272]

9 euro difference between FX 8350 and 3570k :p

http://geizhals.de/eu/amd-fx-8350-a852993.html

http://geizhals.de/eu/?cat=cpu1155&asd=on&asuch=3570k

Hmm Intel has come down recently then.

[nicolasroger 11]

@ nicolasroger : In fact it seems you are both more or less right. Arma3 works on a nice average level on old Phenom II but the only CPU having enough juice among all the A-8/10 and FX afterwards seems to be the FX-8350.

wow I didn't realize that I was lucky to have this particular cpu. I was indeed expecting a way better difference between old and new amd cpu.

I stand corrected.

[Veberman 10]

9 euro difference between FX 8350 and 3570k :p

http://geizhals.de/eu/amd-fx-8350-a852993.html

http://geizhals.de/eu/?cat=cpu1155&asd=on&asuch=3570k

8350 overpriced. 8350 - is overclocked 8320, that much cheaper. 2 clicks, and 8320 turns in 8350.

@OldBear

Just funny how people crying "Cant play on ULTRA HIGH settings on my 2000$ PC. only 37 fps!! thats extremely low!!1111" :mad:

http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-ARMA_III-test-a3_proz_u.jpg (110 kB)

got pwned by 2 core i3 at 3.1GHz. no, its not intel exclusive..

and problem is here:

http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-ARMA_III-test-a3_2560_amd.jpg (103 kB)

Bigger cores better that # of cores. to fix this Bohemia need a lot of work on tweaking engine, imo. It's expensive.. But then I saw PR contest with 500000 euro prize pool, my brain blew up... they could hire DICE programmers on this money, for example, to instant fix game engine. :< And finally my brain got damaged then i saw failed X rebirth, that got 7 patches in 2 weeks with 7-20 fixes in each update, and arma 3 that got 1 gui fix patch and SP mission update.

@ nicolasroger

My friend got fx8320 and 7970 radeon. same fps story for him. around 20 fps.

second friend got fx8350 with 2x470gtx SLI. same fps.

on other hand I5 3570 and I7 4770 show smooth framerate.

cant tell bout old amd CPUs, but current gen FX not working in this game.

And to be honest i got 90-150 fps on night stealth mission from workshop.. maybe light render problem?

I really hope, they will make some perfomance fixes after SP release..

Edited December 11, 2013 by Veberman

[oldbear 390]

@ Veberman : I don't clearly understand why BIS will have to tweak their engine due to the fact AMD APU/FX design is faulty and will stand faulty until AM3+ disappears next year and Mantle (if ...) brings in fresh air this side. AMD seems to have give up this race, even after getting a $500 Million loan.

Arma* games were on single core until BIS add a bit of multi-core usage with Arma II, Arma 3 need a powerfull CPU with the highest performances/boost on one core.

ATM the only processors having these distinctive features -Arma wise- are i5/i7 Intel CPU.

All that are not good news for us as consumers, gamers and ... AMD fans.

[tonschuh 3]

Even AMD is giving up on themself:

AMD updated their official roadmap last month, and announced "Kaveri", "Beema" and "Mullins" desktop and mobile processors coming next year. A bit more information about AMD desktop plans for the next two years emerged in a leaked roadmap slide, posted in Hardforum.com. According to the slide, AMD prepares to launch Kaveri and Beema APUs in 2014. Also in 2014, AMD will introduce "Kabini" processors for socket FS1b. A successor to Kaveri, codenamed "Carrizo", will be available in 2015.

AMD Kaveri APUs are expected to have "SteamrollerB" CPU cores, and Next generation Radeon graphics unit. Standard features of these chips will be 65 Watt and 95 Watt power options, and support for configurable TDP. The processors will work with DDR3 memory, and will come with PCI-e 3.0 interface. Kaveri parts will be compatible with forthcoming socket FM2+ motherboards, built around A78 or A88X chipsets. In 2015, Kaveri APUs will be replaced by Carrizo products, featuring "Excavator" CPU cores and lower 65 Watt TDP. Carrizo microprocessors will be produced in the same package as Kaveri chips, and should be compatible with socket FM2+.

The slide does not contain any new details about "Beema" desktop systems on a chip. As was already reported in November, Beema APUs will be based on "Puma+" CPU cores and the next generation AMD graphics. The chips will integrate FCH logic, and will be produced in the FT3 BGA package.

Based on the slide, AMD FX "Vishera" CPUs will be available up until the end of 2015. The roadmap shows that AMD does not plan Steamroller- or Excavator-based high performance socket AM3+ processors in 2014 / 2015, which means that current FX-9000 CPUs could be the last released models for this platform.

Source: Click

It's time to jump the sinking AMD-"High"-Performance-Ship.

That's sad, but true ...

:)

[snoozer87 10]

8350 overpriced. 8350 - is overclocked 8320, that much cheaper. 2 clicks, and 8320 turns in 8350.

@OldBear

Just funny how people crying "Cant play on ULTRA HIGH settings on my 2000$ PC. only 37 fps!! thats extremely low!!1111" :mad:

http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-ARMA_III-test-a3_proz_u.jpg (110 kB)

got pwned by 2 core i3 at 3.1GHz. no, its not intel exclusive..

and problem is here:

http://gamegpu.ru/images/remote/http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-Action-ARMA_III-test-a3_2560_amd.jpg (103 kB)

Bigger cores better that # of cores. to fix this Bohemia need a lot of work on tweaking engine, imo. It's expensive.. But then I saw PR contest with 500000 euro prize pool, my brain blew up... they could hire DICE programmers on this money, for example, to instant fix game engine. :< And finally my brain got damaged then i saw failed X rebirth, that got 7 patches in 2 weeks with 7-20 fixes in each update, and arma 3 that got 1 gui fix patch and SP mission update.

@ nicolasroger

My friend got fx8320 and 7970 radeon. same fps story for him. around 20 fps.

second friend got fx8350 with 2x470gtx SLI. same fps.

on other hand I5 3570 and I7 4770 show smooth framerate.

cant tell bout old amd CPUs, but current gen FX not working in this game.

And to be honest i got 90-150 fps on night stealth mission from workshop.. maybe light render problem?

I really hope, they will make some perfomance fixes after SP release..

I feel like this is a direct stab at me :), I just asked if those numbers were normal, I did not say anything about being unhappy with them. I would only be unhappy if this wasn't normal, but as I can deduct from your post, I should be lucky to get 37 fps on ultra.

Still the fix seems straightforward, but maybe not easy to implement. BI has to make sure all cores get used and maybe offload some calculations that GPU could handle instead (and probably better).

Best regards

[Veberman 10]

I feel like this is a direct stab at me :)

Best regards

I didn't mean your post exactly. I've read many forums and posts with same content. 37 fps is only number I remembered for example :) sorry.

@OldBear:

FX not so good, thats why arma 3 use only 2 cores? So... 2 cores use for 2013 game is a feature, not a fault?

I know, that FX slower than I5/I7 in single core usage. I dont asking arma 3 running near 100fps. I want it to be playable. Why DICE/Crytek made their games playable on FX (and some runs better than on I7)? Is that hard? To call AMD tech support to get a help with AMD-spiecific commands and functions?

Just think, we got next-gen consoles, that require multicore usage, we got DX11 in arma 3, which can use multiple cores? and in finall we get a PC exclusive that use only 2 cores, and 40% of GPU power. is that a unique game feature?

[mobile_medic 43]

I don't understand why people are talking about it like this is only an issue for AMD users. I have seen many others with fast i7's report the same problems. I am also someone with an i7 clocked just shy of 4ghz, and have the same problems.

[mamasan8 11]

I feel like this is a direct stab at me :), I just asked if those numbers were normal, I did not say anything about being unhappy with them. I would only be unhappy if this wasn't normal, but as I can deduct from your post, I should be lucky to get 37 fps on ultra.

Still the fix seems straightforward, but maybe not easy to implement. BI has to make sure all cores get used and maybe offload some calculations that GPU could handle instead (and probably better).

Best regards

Arma 3 does use all my 8 cores but all the performance gain seems to be in that 1 Main thread. The one that uses 80% of one core. Which happens to be Intels forte, singlecore performance. So if the engine instead sliced that main thread into parts and actually scaled to hardware, there shouldn't be a performance problem. With the command cpuexthreads=8 I notice no difference at all in terms of FPS.

There might be 2-5 fps difference but the problem is that the difference should be 50-100%, not 10% at most. If the engine actually scaled to hardware/cores. Performance should be similar to Intels dual/quadcores.

Amd is great at anything that uses more than 4 cores.

Arma 3 feels like a retexture of Arma 2 (20% of the content) with slapped on DX11.

@Mobile_medic

Reason is it is so obviously bad on AMDs. Of course Intel suffers as well but not as badly.

[mobile_medic 43]

I have a friend with an AMD, and another with an Intel. All 3 of us bottleneck in the same places, and when it happens, all 3 of us record fps (anywhere from 12-23 at the worst of it, with pretty much any setting/rez) and GPU usage that is within a few digits of each other.

It basically goes like this with my cpu and a gtx780 sc

Rural areas are great when empty, and great to playable under small to mid-size infantry encounters.

Urban areas are mostly playable when empty, and unplayable to complete trash, for the most part, in any other situation beyond that.

Flying ranges from playable to complete dog shit.

Pretty much any encounters that are moderate and beyond (let's say, 20 infantry and a few vehicles) ranges from barely playable to sub-20 crap.

All of that is in the context of single player. And, using various Bohemia made missions/showcases as well as an empty editor as benchmarks, just to make sure no one can blame it on "bad scripting".

I've barely messed around with MP, b/c of how bad it is. I can coop with my 2 friends on the same level as what I listed above for the most part, but 80%+ of the (limited) time I've spent on a server from the server browser is a sub-30 and sub-20, hitchy, laggy, unplayable mess.

There are just too many things that cause the game to bottleneck our performance to a point where no user adjustment can help correct it. Outside of an empty editor, 40-60 becomes 15-30 in pretty much anything beyond the scale of encounter that doesn't even begin to approach something on the bottom end of the giant "sandbox" world that Arma and its massive land area is supposed to be. Once you go beyond small scale infantry encounters (a few enemies at a time) in rural areas, the oh so frustrating, GPU usage crapping bottleneck of the game hitting its 2 core limit begins to creep in rapidly. Of course, I'm preaching to the choir, b/c anyone with this issue, who is paying attention knows that already. Except, maybe, Bohemia.

[nikiforos 450]

What a joke!! Even worse performance with the latest patch :mad:

I get 2 or 3 less FPS , thank you BIS for optimizing the game:j: