Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[windies 11]

it makes sense to help people with performance issues IF they have wrong settings, configuration, hardware combinations, driver issues etc. To repeat in megamaxima pathetic modus to every one with performance issues "ITS THE GAME!!!!!" helps nothing.

Except in the case where all reasonable methods of singling out the users PC as the defacto cause for performance issue's have been exhausted at which point it becomes a problem of "IT'S THE GAME!!!!!", or the engine in this case that runs the game.

[jumpinghubert 48]

Except in the case where all reasonable methods of singling out the users PC as the defacto cause for performance issue's have been exhausted at which point it becomes a problem of "IT'S THE GAME!!!!!", or the engine in this case that runs the game.

exactly. But the procedure is for every new person with performance issues the same: first pointing out all the things and if it not helps......its in THIS CASE TOO the game....a little bit difficult to express with my crap english.

[mobile_medic 43]

The low CPU utilization issue that this thread is supposed to be about, *is* the game/engine. User-related performance issues (i.e. the standard list of troubleshooting, settings, tweaks, and suggestions that anyone new to Arma with performance issues should be directed to *first*) is a separate issue.

Clouding the two things isn't going to help anyone really. Not that it matters, that is what this thread has become as the mods and bohemia have ultimately used it as a place to try to corral the daily stream of never-ending performance related questions. Half the reason this thread is a bloody mess is b/c Bohemia doesn't participate in it in any meaningful way (like they do in dedicated threads for other issues).

But, this issue is not news. Even Bohemia has acknowledged as much. Sadly, Arma 2 ended with a dev saying they weren't willing to spend the time on it.

This thread is telling as to what I believe we should(n't) expect. Here you have a years-old, well-established, and well-known issue. Other long-standing issues have their own thread, and receive active feedback and guidance from devs.

This thread? I can't remember the last time a dev asked for any kind of direct feedback, or requested us to test anything regarding this issue. They've never attempted to isolate this issue from other performance related issues. In fact, they and the mods have actively done the opposite... turning this thread into a catch all. Wouldn't you think it wise to isolate user-related performance issues from game/engine related issues if you were indeed trying to fix it? A.I issue, for example, got it's own dedicated dev thread several months ago. It is actively monitored and participated in. There is even a separate daily changelog thread specifically for that issue. This issue? They have never tried to establish any sort of protocol for testing and replicating this issue. They've never said one word of any real detail about it. Is that supposed to make me optimistic? It smacks of someone who isn't planning on doing much and doesn't want to talk about it. I'd love to be shown to be wrong on that. The bug tracker report on this issue is similarly neglected like a red-headed step child.

After the years of this issue that preceded and this 250 pages (and hundreds of pages worth of closed threads, etc) all we know from this thread is the following:

They say they know there is a problem (but won't talk about it).

They claim they will get it fixed.

There will be a blog about it

There won't be a blog about it, b/c they are too busy fixing it.

Forgive me for not jumping up and down over that completely vague lack of meaningful information. Especially, when contrasted with years of non-progress, and a thread that has been virtually ignored by devs and has more posts from them that are sarcastic and condescending in nature (in my opinion) than anything that actually provides us with info, or requests specific info to help them troubleshoot.

At this point, I just want them to either tell us what they think the problem is, what their plan is, how much improvement we should expect (roughly), and what their rough timeline is for dealing with this issue.... Either that, or come out and tell us that they won't be fixing it for whatever reason (sooner, rather than later). At least we would have something more concrete to go on at that point.

[maddogx 13]

I don't know about you, but to me the feedback in this thread looks promising.

They certainly don't seem to be ignoring the engine-related performance issues completely. ;)

[Leon86 13]

Is that the headless client thingy?

[windies 11]

I don't know about you, but to me the feedback in this thread looks promising.

They certainly don't seem to be ignoring the engine-related performance issues completely. ;)

Hopefully it is very true and we see it staged after the holidays soon.

[ruhtraeel 1]

I really hope something is done with the performance soon. IMO it and accessibility (make moving cancel actions please!) are the two biggest issues right now facing ARMA 3, and should be focused on the most.

I was playing through one of the showcases (the one with the large scale warfare). Upon reaching the town, I got around 15-20 FPS. I went over to check my GPU usage, and it was hovering at around 40%.

When my GPU usage is above 90%, I usually get 50-60+ FPS.

[jumpinghubert 48]

today I compared stable and dev in a editor (sp) firefight 48 vs 48 soldiers in open field. Stable: 40 min fps, dev: 27fp min fps. Not good :p

[Furret 0]

today I compared stable and dev in a editor (sp) firefight 48 vs 48 soldiers in open field. Stable: 40 min fps, dev: 27fp min fps. Not good :p

I believe the dev version available has lots of debugging enabled which lowers fps significantly.

[jumpinghubert 48]

thanks for the info, good to know :)

[Frankntooth88 10]

Why release a game... with so many optimization faults? I have been upgrading my PC, for the soul purpose to play Arma 2 and OA to play DayZ, now Arma 3 was out. So I upgraded a little further. I played the Alpha without lag or anything playing on Medium settings even though should be playing higher. Still that was fine for me. Then they went to Beta, which ruined it for me... Multiplayer lags so ridiculously, and no matter what my settings are, I get the same fps. This has continued through to the final release. This being so has made me so excruciatingly pissed off that they released a game with so many bugs, optimization issues, etc. All I want, is to play the game. That is it, and is that to hard to ask for? I am tired of all these games being released before they are finished. I only pray for this game to work soon, otherwise... I will cry myself to sleep everynight furthermore as I have been doing since it went into beta. FIX THIS NOW!!!!!

[Furret 0]

I only pray for this game to work soon, otherwise... I will cry myself to sleep everynight furthermore as I have been doing since it went into beta.

Really hope this is sarcasm.

[oldbear 390]

Let's go back to Mobile_Medic concern. The initial intend in this thread is to speak about "Low CPU utilization & Low FPS" in Single Player.

MP is an other story.

I still don't clearly understand where is the problem in SP. So in order to get a better understanding about what "Low CPU utilization & Low FPS" means I will start with an example taken from my own experience in-game with late updated version. As it seems that the "Helicopter" showcase was one where the effect was the most visible, I have played it and replayed it many times.

I am not getting the same experience that the initial author of the thread. The FPS rate is a bit low as the mission start around 25 FPS, but afterward it goes up and down from 30 to 60 FPS. CPU usage on one core stay in the 95/70 % area, on the 3 other cores CPU usage goes from 15% to 30%.

GPU usage is going from 40% to 100%. On the pic, highest GPU usage during attack on mortars near Kamino and the 0% usage is an effect due of auto-save.

Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Large pic

Does these pics show "Low CPU utilization & Low FPS" ?

Tests being made on "i7 3770/GTX 670 OC/ 8 Go RAM/SSD System 240Go+ SSD Arma* 128Go"

Video settings "Ultra", "Visibility" = 2 000m, AA&PP "Bloom&Blurs:disabled"+HardOcp combo = "FXAA Ultra + 2X/4X ou FSAA 8x"

Played on Iiyama Prolite B2206WS @ 1680*1050

Using : -cpuCount=4 -exThreads=7 and ParkControl 64bit.

[mobile_medic 43]

A small example (not one that shows the full severity of the problem, but one that is less open to accusations of bad mission scripting, etc), and does help illustrate the problem. I'll house it in spoiler tags as (like many of my posts) it is lengthy :)

"Gunships" Showcase.

Auto-Detect puts me fully maxed out on settings @ my native 2560x1600 rez with 3800k view distance and 3km object view.

I just tested a small part of this mission again with 3 different settings. All below what auto-detect recommends.

On 8 threads @ 3.9ghz, sc gtx 780, 12 gig ram, etc, etc.

@ 2560x1600

All maxed except the following

4x aa

SSAO off

PiP off

3km view distance

2km object view

6km from the first objective in the helicopter. In the configuration menu, paused. 55 fps. 99% GPU usage

Resume game. 30-32 fps. GPU usage instantly drops to half.

2.5km from the first objective. 22-25fps. Stutter/hitching begins to be introduced. GPU usage now in the 30's.

In town of first objective. 10-22fps. Full-on stuttering hitching issues with freezes up to a half a second in length. GPU usage in the single digits, teens and 20's.

--

@ 1920x1200

Settings the same as above, except for the following further reductions:

2km view distance. 1500 object view distance

terrain, objects, and textures @ very high.

6km from the first objective in the helicopter. In the configuration menu, paused. 80fps. 60% GPU usage.

Resume game. 45 fps. 34-38% gpu usage.

2.5km from first objective. no noticeable difference compared to 6km

In town. 22-24fps. moderate to severe stutter. GPU usage in the teens and 20's %

--

@ 1280 x 800

All settings turned to their absolute minimum/off. vd and ovd at 500. The equivalent of not being able to see your hand in front of your face in a helicopter, and playstation 1 graphics for the win!

6km from first objective. in configuration menu. paused. 152 fps (I didn't bother with gpu usage considering the given that my GPU is not being used very much at these settings :) )

Resume game. 80-90 fps.

@ 2km 80fps. mild stutter.

in town. 40-45 fps. mild to moderate stutter.

--

Back at the original 2560x1600 settings for a re-flyover of Stratis Air Base and Agia Marina (which I haven't done in a while).

Again, all full maxed, except 3k/2k view distances, 4x aa, PiP off, SSAO disabled.

Facing water. Hovering over runway. Configuration Menu. Paused. 80fps. 99% GPU usage.

Resume game. (still facing water). Still 99% GPU usage. 75 fps (notice how much more closely in game performance and utilization resembles that of the configuration menu in non-bottlenecking areas of the game).

Turn to face agia marina. 50fps. 70% gpu usage.

Approach to agia marina, gradual decline in fps, and introduction of mild to moderate stutter.

Over agia marina. moderate to severe stutter. 30 fps. 40-50% gpu usage (which is actually better than the last time I tested it over a month ago)

On the stutter. These days, it is mostly a product of being in a helicopter, and is exacerbated when the fps begin to drop. I didn't have the stuttering issue until the transition from alpha to beta (when it was at its worst). It is better these days, but still there, as you can see.

--

All of the above are very basic scenarios, and don't even begin to scratch the surface. But, they do help to illustrate the point. Imagine what happens when I attempt to actually play a real mission where there is more than one thing going on. I am not alone. I've played repeatedly with 2 other friends, with 2 very different rigs, and we all experience the same issues in the same places. And, I've seen numerous reports from others that parallel my own. I (and others) experienced very similar in Arma 2.

From all of my testing (as I've posted previously in this thread) objects seem to be the main culprit (or, at least the settings that you can adjust that actually show noticeable impact during these situations. Object quality, and Object view distance. The problem is, 90% of the content displayed on the screen is an "object"... basically anything that is not water, clouds, or 2d terrain. All rocks, buildings, etc, etc, etc are objects.

And, it's too easy to reach whatever that bottleneck is. Even @ 500m object view distance, urban areas begin to show the symptoms of hitting the apparent 2 thread total usage limit of what the game will use of the CPU. And, if it is, indeed, not a low CPU usage issue, and the game is capable of functioning fine within the 2 thread limit, then there is a severe (years-old) bug in their code that is preventing tasks from being performed efficiently somehow. Either way, this is an issue that can only be addressed by Bohemia. It is not an end-user issue.

On the flip side, hang around the coast, run around in rural areas with only small infantry groups (stay out of helicopters, and urban areas, and avoid having other vehicles on the map, etc, etc, etc)... I can roll maxed out with 3k/2k view anywhere from 50-80fps @ 90-100% GPU usage. Hardly seems worthy of such a "big" game with such a massive and highly detailed map. Nor does cell phone quality on a rig exceeding the recommended specs in order to stay above 30 in actual missions with things going on.

Also interesting to note how the amount of fps drop parallels the amount of gpu usage drop pretty predictably when this issue is present.

[oldbear 390]

Still you have not answered my question about my own experiment.

Is it the fact that only one core is used at a high level - 95/70 %- that makes you stand on the "Low CPU utilization" point and/or the fact that FPS rate ranges from 25 to 60 FPS ?

It looks like BIS has adopted a rather conservative and cautious way as they went multi-cores for Arm2 trying to balance what they can master the best, scheduling on one core and some benefit from having specialized threads for some processes.

Nevertheless with my main rig, I haven't get any "bottleneck" issue such as you describe while playing on SP and on MP as well.

The story is quite different with 2nd PC based upon Athlon II. CPU usage is over 80% on 2 cores and on heavy load such as playing a huge IA battle on Altis or playing MP, the bottleneck effect is showing. After having done some test with HD6870 and HD 6970, I can say, the better the GPU, the fastest the "bottleneck" issue is showing.

[mobile_medic 43]

I couldn't care less if it used 10% of my available CPU or 100%. I just care if it is using what it needs (especially, when it has more available if it needs it). It seems to me, that it clearly is not. When the game's CPU limit is reached, it causes GPU utilization to drop (which causes fps to drop accordingly), presumably b/c it is waiting for the CPU. This is a classic symptom of either a CPU hardware bottleneck, or a game/engine based limitation on CPU utilization.

I, personally, have observed this issue with a gtx 295 and a gtx 580 in Arma 2, and a gtx 580 and gtx 780 sc in Arma 3. My observation with regards to GPU has been that a better gpu will give you a higher baseline in non-bottlenecking areas of the game, but it does little to improve performance in bottle-necking areas of the game (which, for me, starts in urban environments in an empty editor, and gets worse from there).

If my issue were not having enough hardware to handle the game, the issue would not present itself as it does. As an example, it would be more along the lines of having lower gpu usage when looking at the water, but still maintaining a higher fps (b/c looking at water is less demanding). Then, in areas that were more demanding (if I didn't have enough hardware to handle it) one would more reasonably expect hardware usage to peak, but fps to still drop, b/c my hardware would be insufficient to handle the demands the game is placing on it.

That would be indicative of a hardware bottleneck. In my case (and the case of others), however, GPU usage is higher (as is fps) in non-demanding/bottlenecking areas of the game (i.e. looking at water, and rural areas). Then, in more demanding areas, GPU usage begins to drop (rather than rise with increased demand), which causes fps to drop. That is indicative of a software/game/engine bottleneck. If my CPU were being utilized more fully, then this could still be considered an end-user CPU bottleneck. But, the game appears to hit that limit of approximately 2 threads worth of total usage (spread across all 8 of my threads, but still 2 threads worth of cumulative usage) and the GPU ends up having to wait for the CPU. Meanwhile, there are 6 threads worth of cumulative processing power on the CPU that are going unused.

It seems pretty clear to me that one of two things are happening. Either the game is built on what is essentially a dual-core engine, but actually needs more than that in order to avoid performance killing bottlenecks. OR, the game is built on a dual-core engine, and *is* capable of running efficiently with 2 cores/threads worth of CPU (without requiring a non-existent 7ghz dual core CPU), but something on the software/coding/engine/bug side of things is preventing it from doing so. Given that this issue has persisted across multiple releases and years, that would require this "flaw" having gone uncorrected/unnoticed for all of that time... which leads me to believe that the former, is probably the more likely culprit than the latter. Unless it were an issue that was already recognized by Bohemia, but deemed to require changes to the foundation that were not "worth it" for them to undertake.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Mobile_Medic
typo

[MavericK96 0]

Yeah, the problem is that the game will go to 100% utilization when it's not doing anything, and you get high framerate. When there is something going on, it drops in both utilization AND framerate.

[windies 11]

Yeah, the problem is that the game will go to 100% utilization when it's not doing anything, and you get high framerate. When there is something going on, it drops in both utilization AND framerate.

Yeah exactly. It's not about achieving 100% utilization all the time which is a pipe dream, but it's about the correlation between utilization and performance, which is something I don't think the developers grasp from the feedback. They seem to think that people are just saying "Zomg why is my 8 core not at 100% utilization across all cores!!111!1!?1>??".

[ratszo 17]

If i had 100% utilizations across my cores..., i'd be crashing apps. Every single one.

Try running a3.exe on 'real-time'' affinity.

You will see 100% utilization..., until the 'puter hard-locks.

---------- Post added at 06:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:52 PM ----------

My advice is to tweak setting under load.

Staring at the sky @100 frips is not the place to find the sweet spot for your system.

Tweak settings where it matters.

Find the place where you're getting 15fps --tweak there.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Ratszo
..., until the 'puter hard-locks.

[windies 11]

If i had 100% utilizations across my cores..., i'd be crashing apps. Every single one.

Try running a3.exe on 'real-time'' affinity.

You will see 100% utilization..., until the 'puter hard-locks.

Prime example of what I mean. Talking about utilization drops in association with performance drops and still gets mistaken for "ZOMG NEED 100% UTILIZATION NAO!!!!!".

[tonschuh 3]

If i had 100% utilizations across my cores..., i'd be crashing apps. Every single one.

Try running a3.exe on 'real-time'' affinity.

You will see 100% utilization..., until the 'puter hard-locks.

---------- Post added at 06:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:52 PM ----------

My advice is to tweak setting under load.

Staring at the sky @100 frips is not the place to find the sweet spot for your system.

Tweak settings where it matters.

Find the place where you're getting 15fps --tweak there.

You never ran Prime95 or a proper burn-in test, or ?

If your sys is crashing under full-load, then there is something seriously wrong with it.

:j:

---------- Post added at 14:40 ---------- Previous post was at 14:28 ----------

Yeah exactly. It's not about achieving 100% utilization all the time which is a pipe dream, but it's about the correlation between utilization and performance, which is something I don't think the developers grasp from the feedback. They seem to think that people are just saying "Zomg why is my 8 core not at 100% utilization across all cores!!111!1!?1>??".

If someone is only getting ~75% CPU-Utilization and 99% GPU-Utilization and a playable amount of fps, then I assume that that person would not complain. Someone would think that the dev's understand the problem.

:rolleyes:

Maybe the dev's should implement profile-options to dumb the AI down, as it seems that the AI-Parameter-Calculation's are the main-issue for the bad performance.

Just play for another few years against some "Homer Simpsons"-AI and give the AI some brain back, when we get faster CPU's later on down the track.

:bounce3:

[MavericK96 0]

If i had 100% utilizations across my cores..., i'd be crashing apps. Every single one.

Try running a3.exe on 'real-time'' affinity.

You will see 100% utilization..., until the 'puter hard-locks.

Are you kidding? I can play something like BF3 and get 90-100% utilization on all cores nearly 100% of the time. 100% utilization is not a pipe dream and it's not going to crash your machine, unless you have cooling problems or are overclocking too much.

[oldbear 390]

Quad core 100% utilization like here ?

http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/458/images/Core_i7_2600K.png

[MavericK96 0]

I know for a fact mine was using more than that, but I have since uninstalled BF3 so I can't really test. I'll have to check out some other games and see if it's the same.

[windies 11]

You never ran Prime95 or a proper burn-in test, or ?

If your sys is crashing under full-load, then there is something seriously wrong with it.

:j:

---------- Post added at 14:40 ---------- Previous post was at 14:28 ----------

If someone is only getting ~75% CPU-Utilization and 99% GPU-Utilization and a playable amount of fps, then I assume that that person would not complain. Someone would think that the dev's understand the problem.

:rolleyes:

Maybe the dev's should implement profile-options to dumb the AI down, as it seems that the AI-Parameter-Calculation's are the main-issue for the bad performance.

Just play for another few years against some "Homer Simpsons"-AI and give the AI some brain back, when we get faster CPU's later on down the track.

:bounce3:

And you still misunderstand the issue still. It's not about some magical or mythical "problem solving" utilization number. It's about the fact that when the engine is doing things that put hardware under load be it render load, physics load, AI load or whatever, utilization DROPS. That in itself is symbolic of a problem within the engine, not with the hardware or the hardware not being powerful or fast enough to run the software/engine.

It would be like flooring the accelerator and watching the RPM gauge slowly or all at once drop and getting little to no power output. It's a symptom of a problem.

Obviously people are having problems, otherwise this thread wouldn't exist would it?