Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[nikiforos 450]

Lol, you can't do much JumpingHubert. You have already overclocked your machine a lot and you have a great GPU. You can't do much and you should avoid to overclock further. Now it's up to God ooo sorry BIS to do something but I personally lost my faith.

[arotished 10]

OS: Windows 8.1 x64

PCU: Intel i7 4770K 3.9GHz @ 4,5Ghz

GPU: Geforce GTX 780Ti SLI @ 1150Mhz/7500Mhz

RAM: corsair dominator platinum 4x8GB 2133Mhz CL9

PSU: Corsair 1200i Watt

HD: 2x Samsung 840 PRO 512GB

And with 3000 View Distance and 2200 Object, (the rest of the settings is a variation of High/Very High, no settings are put on max) I get barely 30 FPS on Atlis and massive drops...

[nikiforos 450]

Just try to lower the object distance to 1500 or something it helps alot. But try to lower your settings overall, I understand that it sounds weird with your computer specs but we are talking about Arma .

[arotished 10]

Just try to lower the object distance to 1500 or something it helps alot. But try to lower your settings overall, I understand that it sounds weird with your computer specs but we are talking about Arma .

I have posted the videosettings before but dont harm to post them again.

Sampling: 100%

Texture: Very High

Objects: Very High

Terrain: Very High

Shadows: Standard

Particle Quality: Very High

Cloud Quality: Standard

PIP: High

HDR Quality: Standard

Dynamic Lights: Very High

PPAA: SMAA High

Dynamic Lights: Ultra

Overall View Distance: 3000

Object Draw Distance: 2000

Shadow View Distance: 100

Post-Processing: Bloom/Radial&RotationBlur/Depth Of Field = 0

SSAO: High

FSAA: 4x

ATOC: All Tree+Grass

PPAA: FXAA - Very High

Anisotropic Filtering: Very High

V-Sync - Disabled.

I know the FAN-BOYS have no problem playing ARMA3 on lowest settings because its the best compate simulator ever (guess they havent tried Project Reality) but I think its very sad that in 2014 we need to lower the graphics so much just to be able to play the game (meaning getting over 60FPS) with a "top-end" computer. I started playing ARMA3 in Alpha with my laptop (i7@3.8Ghz, 16GB 1600Mhz ram, SSD and GTX 680M SLi with was kinda happy with the performance because it was a Alpha BUT, to be honest....the performance didn't increase much when I tried the release version with my new stationary computer.

I was always talking good about BIS because they were listening to the community but kinda loosing faith in them now, almost 1 years after Alpha release the performance still sucks and if we look at how badly ARMA2 was during its hole lifespan, I dont think BIS will be able to suddently pull a rabbit out of the hat now.

[nikiforos 450]

My suggestions:

Sampling: 100%

Texture: Very High

Objects: Very High - to high

Terrain: Very High

Shadows: Standard - to high

Particle Quality: Very High

Cloud Quality: Standard - change to high

PIP: High - to standard

HDR Quality: Standard

Dynamic Lights: Very High

PPAA: SMAA High - try HDAO might give you better performance

Dynamic Lights: Ultra

Overall View Distance: 3000 - 2500

Object Draw Distance: 2000 - 1500 it's enough but you can change it if are flying

Shadow View Distance: 100

Post-Processing: Bloom/Radial&RotationBlur/Depth Of Field = 0

SSAO: High

FSAA: 4x

ATOC: All Tree+Grass - disable

PPAA: FXAA - Very High

Anisotropic Filtering: Very High

V-Sync - Disabled.

[stk2008 14]

TBH i knew this was going to happen.

We had same problem with arma 2 devs said they could not optimize it due to engine limitations arma3 suffers same fate I guess.

And I said from the start ARMA3 was a cash cow for Dayz seeing as DayZ is getting more love at the moment I assume I was right.

Well BIS I am gutted just bloody say if this will ever be optimized if not let us move on please :(

[TheBigOne_014 16]

...play the game (meaning getting over 60FPS) with a "top-end" computer....

Why do you need 60FPS???? I play with almoust the same configurations as you and i have 30-47 FPS,... and recording with FRAPS! Do i need more!? NOPS,... if i was playing a FAST PACE FPS like COD or BF4,... ok i might agree with you.

I'm not saing you are not right, it's strange not being able to have more FPS on a new game/engine, but it's OK, for me, bacause it's dose not take away the fun i have when playing A3.

By the way i have a i5 2300 stock, and an GTX 560, and 8GB Ram @ 1600Mhz. ;)

[Dwarden 1124]

i noticed you use SSAO ... my suggestion use HDAO ...

(SSAO setting is now named AO and eac SSAO ad HDAO got 3 levels of quality)

HDAO is faster (more fps) and looks better

[arotished 10]

Why do you need 60FPS???? I play with almoust the same configurations as you and i have 30-47 FPS,... and recording with FRAPS! Do i need more!? NOPS,.

Wow....I bet you (not saying you are but just betting) are one of the people that think "ARMA IS BE BEST GAME IS THE WHOLE WORLD, DONT NEED ANY OTHER GAME" and "YOU DONT NEED GRAPHIC TO PLAY THIS GAME BECAUSE ITS NOT ABOUT GRAPHIC BUT ABOUT THE REALISTIC COMBAT SIMULATION"....hey, thats okey because you can have whatever opinion you want :)

Anyway, for those who needs a refresh... http://boallen.com/fps-compare.html

---------- Post added at 13:49 ---------- Previous post was at 13:44 ----------

Or even better...

http://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

I wonder if ARMA4 is also gonna be poorly optimized due to engine limitation?

---------- Post added at 15:20 ---------- Previous post was at 13:49 ----------

My suggestions:

Sampling: 100%

Texture: Very High

Objects: Very High - to high

Terrain: Very High

Shadows: Standard - to high

Particle Quality: Very High

Cloud Quality: Standard - change to high

PIP: High - to standard

HDR Quality: Standard

Dynamic Lights: Very High

PPAA: SMAA High - try HDAO might give you better performance

Dynamic Lights: Ultra

Overall View Distance: 3000 - 2500

Object Draw Distance: 2000 - 1500 it's enough but you can change it if are flying

Shadow View Distance: 100

Post-Processing: Bloom/Radial&RotationBlur/Depth Of Field = 0

SSAO: High

FSAA: 4x

ATOC: All Tree+Grass - disable

PPAA: FXAA - Very High

Anisotropic Filtering: Very High

V-Sync - Disabled.

Thanks, tried these settings now on a custom mission on Altis and my avarage FPS running around on the ground on hill is 40-45 FPS with these settings. Not impressed..

[stk2008 14]

TBH arma/OFP was my favorite game and BIS was the best game dev.

I have been a fan boy of BIS since OFP so to speak but tbh now they seem to be forgetting there roots and leaving arma fans to pee in the wind.

DayZ seems to have taken the spotlight now.

So yeah I cant see them fixing this issue ever but it would be nice for a dev to at least grow a pair and admit it to us :(

[daze23 1]

DayZ suffers from many of the same issues. hopefully all the money and customers that game brings in will lead to some solutions

unfortunately, although it's obviously a similar engine with similar issues, most criticism is still being met with the old "IT'S ALPHA!" line (that I'm sure many people remember from this thread)

[arotished 10]

DayZ suffers from many of the same issues

Yeah, don't get me started on the horrible FPS in DayZ. Down in the major towns, I barely get 30FPS on Very High settings and every rendering and AA disabled/low.

And yes, their excise is that.....Engine Limitation...bullshit....

[Llano 11]

Have the devs mentioned what exactly these "engine limitation" is?

[Leon86 13]

Have the devs mentioned what exactly these "engine limitation" is?

Being deterministic would be my guess.

[jumpinghubert 48]

Lol, you can't do much JumpingHubert. You have already overclocked your machine a lot and you have a great GPU. You can't do much and you should avoid to overclock further. Now it's up to God ooo sorry BIS to do something but I personally lost my faith.

yep, no room at all for overclocking, my cpu reaches its limits with 4.9ghz @ 1.49volts :p

I hope its possible for me to play sp custom missions with 40fps minimum like in the past. Will test it.

[duffbeeer 10]

Im also totally lost what BI made think this would be a good step to increase CPU demand further. Yeah its surely nice to have some better AI pathfinding but for crippling half of your playersbase by making the CPU even more stressed? Im not even getting barely 20 fps in warfare now, i used to have playable/stable 30 on average. Seems like you guys have made a deal with Intel to get us poor souls away from AMD. Hey anyone got a spare I5 laying around? seriously this is bullshit :/

[arotished 10]

Have the devs mentioned what exactly these "engine limitation" is?

Knowlegde, nothing els.... :)

[LowFlyZone 10]

Ok I'm slightly pissed off right now. I decided to install MSI Afterburner for the OSD Server and then HWiNFO64 to monitor my ram usage, cpu clock and usage on each core as well as graphics card usage and clocks, even my HDD usage.

My main specs are:

Intel Core i5 4570 @ 3.2Ghz (turbo's to ~3.4/3.5) in game.

AMD Radeon 7870 2GB PowerColor OC Edition

8GB G.Skill memory

I put myself in the editor on Stratis and my GPU usage goes sky high almost max and atleast 75-80% at times, CPU usage is around 60 - 35 - 55 - 50 (numbers like that across the 4 cores, one core always atleast 10-15% higher and another core very low with 2 in the middle). My FPS was hovering around 40-50.

Go on Altis and do the Altis benchmark and play a mission off steam workshop and in both cases my GPU usage is around 50-60% and my CPU the same as above, the benchmark gives me an average FPS of 39-40 but actually playing I get around 15-30 fps, sometimes it spikes to 40 in some directions with little details nearby and/or combined with zoom.

I can't tell if I have a bottleneck or not and it feels like my GPU stretches itself more on Stratis. Also, as it is now, my RAM usage is at 2GB, play the game, such as the short SP mission or the benchmark and it's at 4 - 4.1 GB, so that's 2GB memory usage but I guess over time this will increase.

It's the first time I've actually done tests, I just put up with the stutters before but it felt like the game was running ok I guess, expected worse before I got the game. I was also dumb enough to believe the FPS in the Video options menu without realising the game is paused so my FPS would be inflated to around 40 even in bad areas of a mission/map. :pet6:

Also changing most graphics options makes little to no difference to my fps in these bottlenecked situations. Even when things are smooth because the map is empty I get little benefit from lets say turning AA off instead of 2x with Atoc. Biggest difference is view distance and currently I play at 4km with 2km object distance. I refuse to go lower and dont even see the point because it makes almost no difference when my fps is at 15-30. Going higher than 5km for sure negatively affects the game for me.

I think I need to pull out my game backup from before the new patch and run the same tests for interest sake.

This game is really like a damn baby that refuses to eat and just spits out it's porridge. (resource utilization-wise)

Edited January 23, 2014 by LowFlyZone

[mamasan8 11]

LowFlyZone, I would suggest a Visual distance of 3km max and object distance of 1.5km. Unless you fly something. Then your figures are pretty much spot on.

Also, VSYNC on introduces stutter and lower FPS for me. Might want to check that out if it applies to you.

[duffbeeer 10]

Well if CPU load hovers around 20 -30 % you cant tell me its my system. changing settings doesnt change anything, i can play 50% sampling or 100%. There is literaly no difference in FPS. I just dont get why BI chooses to fix this said AI bug BEFORE they have any solution for that occuring FPS issue. Way to piss of your customers. GG.

Edited January 23, 2014 by duffbeeer

[LowFlyZone 10]

LowFlyZone, I would suggest a Visual distance of 3km max and object distance of 1.5km. Unless you fly something. Then your figures are pretty much spot on.

Also, VSYNC on introduces stutter and lower FPS for me. Might want to check that out if it applies to you.

It's not helping during these missions on Altis, actually just tried it. I know Statis is a much smaller map so it runs much faster but I don't get why my average CPU & GPU usage is lower on Altis but only my memory usage is higher??? On Stratis my average CPU usage seems around 10-15% higher (based on overall CPU usage value out of the 4 cores) and my GPU is maxing out, on Altis my GPU will not easily go higher than 70%.

It's completely backwards and seems to be the reason why I'm struggling more with those missions on Altis, without that much AI or that much going on, if anything at all, similar results in the editor with Altis empty.

I always play with vsync off, if I could I would even remove it out of the source code of any drivers and the game! ;)

In a nutshell, all I can conclude is that higher RAM usage (Altis) = lower CPU & especially GPU usage = lower FPS

---------- Post added at 18:08 ---------- Previous post was at 18:05 ----------

I actually feel like making a video with my overlays showing so people can see it, it makes no sense to me. Only thing holding me back is the effects of the recording on FPS as well as my stone-age internet.

[Furret 0]

Altis has a higher object count, objects are CPU bound. Stratis has much fewer objects due to being a small island.

Lowering the view distance/object quality will help alleviate the problem. (or make core 0 of your CPU process more through overclocking/ buying a better CPU).

I doubt higher RAM usage is making your FPS drop.

---------- Post added at 19:31 ---------- Previous post was at 19:28 ----------

[/color]I actually feel like making a video with my overlays showing so people can see it, it makes no sense to me. Only thing holding me back is the effects of the recording on FPS as well as my stone-age internet.

Low utilisation of resource have been a problem since at least arma2s release in 2009, its a well known issue and has no simple solution.

---------- Post added at 19:33 ---------- Previous post was at 19:31 ----------

VSYNC on introduces stutter and lower FPS for me.

Try looking into enabling triple buffering in the arma config file. That should help with the stutter.

I think arma3 has double buffering or some variant of it by default.

[stk2008 14]

it has no solution according the devs they could not fix it due to engine limitations

Why the hell they used the same engine with more stuff strapped to it I will never know well I have my hunches but meh they are ignoreing this issue like they did in arma2 and then finally a dev said they could not fix it

[bigsyke 10]

I just built a new system strictly for Arma3.

Fx8350

16gb 1866 ram

HD6850.

3x SSD

I average 26fps in multiplayer. Everything is on Very low/disabled. No AA, nothing. CPU utilization is ~20%. Even tried the intel memory allocation. Every tweak in the book... Essentially, this is an unplayable game?

[duffbeeer 10]

I just built a new system strictly for Arma3.

Fx8350

16gb 1866 ram

HD6850.

3x SSD

I average 26fps in multiplayer. Everything is on Very low/disabled. No AA, nothing. CPU utilization is ~20%. Even tried the intel memory allocation. Every tweak in the book... Essentially, this is an unplayable game?

Try setting everything to ultra and you will have 0 difference in FPS.