Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

[doveman 7]

I don't think ArmA3 runs on one specific core though does it? I was discussing X-Plane with someone, which is single-threaded and so benefits from Intel processors with their better single-threaded performance just like Arma. They explained why I couldn't expect to see a single core fully (or nearly) loaded, as the scheduler pauses threads and then can resume them on a different core and because the monitoring software measures over a fixed period of time, the thread might only run for 300ms out of 1s on a particular core, so that core would be shown as only 30% loaded, even if it was 100% loaded for that 300ms before the thread jumped to a different core.

So what I'm trying to say is that ArmA's thread will move around the cores, so if you only overclock one of them you're not doing yourself any favours.

[ruhtraeel 1]

I don't think ArmA3 runs on one specific core though does it? I was discussing X-Plane with someone, which is single-threaded and so benefits from Intel processors with their better single-threaded performance just like Arma. They explained why I couldn't expect to see a single core fully (or nearly) loaded, as the scheduler pauses threads and then can resume them on a different core and because the monitoring software measures over a fixed period of time, the thread might only run for 300ms out of 1s on a particular core, so that core would be shown as only 30% loaded, even if it was 100% loaded for that 300ms before the thread jumped to a different core.

So what I'm trying to say is that ArmA's thread will move around the cores, so if you only overclock one of them you're not doing yourself any favours.

What we've concluded to, unless proven horribly wrong, is that ARMA is memory bottlenecked. Overclocking your CPU/GPU won't help much (at least it doesn't for me), regardless of what core it runs on. Overclocking a core would just mean that the program sends requests to malloc/reference memory faster. It won't change how fast these requests are completed.

Because there's so much stuff loaded in the game, pointers to memory are used frequently; this causes your CPU/GPU utilization to drop when looking at a town with a lot of objects, for example. This is also why Fred's malloc fix helps, and someone discovered that overclocking your RAM helps as well (don't forget the thread name).

I'm not sure if the OP reads this thread anymore, but he should post clearly that the biggest reason behind slowdowns is that this game is not well optimized for memory. This should avoid any further confusion/speculation. So, OC your RAM, etc.

Edited June 30, 2014 by ruhtraeel

[bigsyke 10]

What we've concluded to, unless proven horribly wrong, is that ARMA is memory bottlenecked. Overclocking your CPU/GPU won't help much (at least it doesn't for me), regardless of what core it runs on. Overclocking a core would just mean that the program sends requests to malloc/reference memory faster. It won't change how fast these requests are completed.

Because there's so much stuff loaded in the game, pointers to memory are used frequently; this causes your CPU/GPU utilization to drop when looking at a town with a lot of objects, for example. This is also why Fred's malloc fix helps, and someone discovered that overclocking your RAM helps as well (don't forget the thread name).

I'm not sure if the OP reads this thread anymore, but he should post clearly that the biggest reason behind slowdowns is that this game is not well optimized for memory. This should avoid any further confusion/speculation. So, OC your RAM, etc.

I've posted earlier the biggest gain I've gotten was from overclocking the RAM/NB. Overclocking my fx8350 to 4.6ghz didn't do much..

[doveman 7]

What we've concluded to, unless proven horribly wrong, is that ARMA is memory bottlenecked. Overclocking your CPU/GPU won't help much (at least it doesn't for me), regardless of what core it runs on. Overclocking a core would just mean that the program sends requests to malloc/reference memory faster. It won't change how fast these requests are completed.

Interesting, thanks for the info. I recall when benchmarking my RAM and comparing to other people's results, that Intel users got much higher MB/s (even at the same RAM speeds I think), so I guess that would explain why Intel users get better performance out of ArmA then, rather than because Intel CPUs have better single-threaded performance.

[Greenfist 1863]

I ran my simple AI heavy benchmark mission multiple times on two memory speeds, the default 1600 and 1800. Results were quite conclusive as fas as I can tell.

@1600: 30-32 avg. fps

@1800: 34-36 avg. fps

The gain in fps was nearly linearly related to memory speed. It was the easiest tweak ever, just one click in bios. :) (Your mileage may vary)

Setup: 70 AI fighting in a town within 200m area. The first 60 seconds recorded.

i5-3450@3.6GHz, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz (PC3-12800) CL9 9-9-9-24

[doveman 7]

It would also be good to benchmark your RAM @1600, @1800 with the CPU at stock clocks and again with the CPU overclocked, as then we might see that overclocking the CPU does increase the RAM benchmark and that might be responsible for any improvements in ArmA rather than the actual CPU speed. http://www.maxxpi.net/pages/downloads/maxxmemsup2---preview.php

Having said that, I'm new to Intel but maybe it's like AMD and you'll need to overclock the NB, not the CPU as such, to improve the RAM benchmarks so you could try that (with and without the CPU overclocked) to see what makes the most difference to the RAM speed and then check if that correlates to improvements in ArmA.

[Cormega 0]

I've mentioned this before and got ridiculed, but I thought you can't easily change\update the game engine?!?! Since Arma3 is using a 10 year old OFP engine, why not change it? Seems thats what dayz is doing. Hmm, wonder why they are just sticking with the old engine and waiting patiently for more optimizing fixes, like we have to with A3?

[Greenfist 1863]

I've mentioned this before and got ridiculed, but I thought you can't easily change\update the game engine?!?! Since Arma3 is using a 10 year old OFP engine, why not change it? Seems thats what dayz is doing. Hmm, wonder why they are just sticking with the old engine and waiting patiently for more optimizing fixes, like we have to with A3?

I don't think the age is an issue. They still make lots of games with Unreal engine and that's over 16 years old!

[windies 11]

I don't think the age is an issue. They still make lots of games with Unreal engine and that's over 16 years old!

It boils down to how much of the core is really there between revisions. How much of UE1 is in UE2 and UE3 and UE4 etc... How similar is RV4 to RV1 for example. Do things get rewritten if they need it? Do they just get spruced up with some tacked on code/features? It's like comparing a 2014 Mustang to a 1969 Mustang. Would you want a 2014 Mustang with the same tech, engine and powertrain as a 1969 Mustang?

I honestly would assume that UE gets much more work done on it than RV most likely. I'm sure the only reason that the focus in DayZ development is the engine is simply because the engine can't cope or handle with what they want to do in DayZ, therefor it's born out of necessity. If they want to impress and not just be another WarZ CF with tons of raging early access backers, they need to actually produce something functioning and complete. Makes sense that they would have to put work into the engine then.

On the flipside, ArmA works and is fully functioning to a standard but debatable degree. Work on the engine in key area's would be good, but not a necessity. There's always a "fix" so to speak with performance issue's and bug issue's in ArmA. Performance issue's? Keep dropping settings and lowering AI counts until you're the only one on an empty map with no objects. Bug issue's? Report them on the tracker, they will eventually get fixed, except for the bugs that have been on there since the Alpha that honestly have more of an impact than some of the other bugs that have been fixed before them.

ArmA's community enables this whereas DayZ community can't really enable it because the DayZ community is "new" in a sense without a fully functioning product for a franchise to enable. Bug that's persisted through 4 engine iterations? Support them by buying every game because you figure by the $Nth it will be fixed. Performance issue's? Same thing. There's no proven track record of this with DayZ, so obviously the unknown and new contender is going to get more work put into it. I don't think that ArmA isn't supported, I just don't think it's supported very well and I think it's a reflection of what the community itself tolerates and allows and has a proven track record of doing whereas DayZ has no track record which is why you see this kind of public out pour of supposed development on key problems area's, where with ArmA you kind of get generic "We're working on it" responses and little bits and pieces here and there.

* And when I say that UE gets more work done on it than RV I mean work to improve the flaws of the engine and fix whats already there, not add more stuff on top of already broken stuff. *

Edited July 5, 2014 by Windies

[NeMeSiS 11]

I've mentioned this before and got ridiculed, but I thought you can't easily change\update the game engine?!?! Since Arma3 is using a 10 year old OFP engine, why not change it? Seems thats what dayz is doing. Hmm, wonder why they are just sticking with the old engine and waiting patiently for more optimizing fixes, like we have to with A3?

It has been changed since OFP. Thats why ArmA3 is not an exact replica of OFP with just the models/islands replaced. :rolleyes:

[redswirl 10]

Has unparking CPU cores already been discussed here?

Also, what's performance usually like on multiplayer vs singleplayer? I've only been playing singleplayer so far so I'm not sure if the fixes discussed here would help more or less.

i5-4670k @3.4GHz 8GB GDDR3 RAM W764bit GTX-460 2GB

[nikiforos 450]

Unparking CPU cores had no effect on my computer.

[ruhtraeel 1]

OC your RAM for the biggest difference.

EDIT: Just read Dean Hall's DayZ"infusion" engine interview. Something that may be of interest, and may confirm exactly what we speculated:

What's the status of internal testing 64-bit servers?

It’s done. It’s tested and I think the test is totally successful.

Q: How much does that help you add entities to the world?

It is kind of like breaking through to another level. It allows us options for future architecture. If we didn’t do it there is a lot we can’t do. We’re stuck within the RAM boundaries that we have. We were hitting those when we started introducing physical terrain, started introducing navmesh, increasing the number of items, things like that. We’re pretty much bound at the moment in terms of performance, with some RAM boundaries. 64 Bit does really necessary help us with performance. It opens the doors for once we deal with the performance issues we can then triple the number of loot spawns, triple the number of zombies and animals.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/27uf74/rgames_rdayz_ama_with_rocket_dayz_is_moving_to_a/

Edited July 10, 2014 by ruhtraeel

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

I couldnt measure any signficant difference between 1600Mhz and 2200Mhz on my Ram. There was difference, 2-3FPS maybe. And for me 2-3 FPS is not an improvement, its a overall System swaying when 2-3 fps were measured. Game/Engine needs optimization, otherwise every given suggestion "how to increase fps" is a bad placebo.

[Greenfist 1863]

RAM overclocking obviously doesn't improve everyone's performance in every situation.

I can only speak for my system, of course, but I'm able to reproduce the improvement with 100% certainty at least in one scenario. And that's enough for me.

12% increase in memory speed resulted in 12% (±5%) better fps.

Edited July 10, 2014 by Greenfist

[doveman 7]

RAM overclocking obviously doesn't improve everyone's performance in every situation.

I can only speak for my system, of course, but I'm able to reproduce the improvement with 100% certainty at least in one scenario. And that's enough for me.

12% increase in memory speed resulted in 12% (±5%) better fps.

If you could benchmark you RAM as I suggested here http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147533-Low-CPU-utilization-amp-Low-FPS&p=2721176&viewfull=1#post2721176 to show what it achieves at stock and overclock, I'd find that interesting as well.

[Furret 0]

I asked on twitter if these sorts of changes were coming to the branch of the engine arma3 uses and didn't really receive the response i was hoping for.

I'm guessing it comes down to the cost of implementation, would making radical changes to the core engine create more sales/revenue? probably not. Thus, little incentive for the company to make those changes.

I just hope that at least some of the 'hand-me-downs' make their way to us.

[Greenfist 1863]

If you could benchmark you RAM as I suggested here http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147533-Low-CPU-utilization-amp-Low-FPS&p=2721176&viewfull=1#post2721176 to show what it achieves at stock and overclock, I'd find that interesting as well.

I can't do that unfortunately. My CPU is locked. :(

[ruhtraeel 1]

I couldnt measure any signficant difference between 1600Mhz and 2200Mhz on my Ram. There was difference, 2-3FPS maybe. And for me 2-3 FPS is not an improvement, its a overall System swaying when 2-3 fps were measured. Game/Engine needs optimization, otherwise every given suggestion "how to increase fps" is a bad placebo.

The game engine obviously needs optimization, but we're almost completely sure as to what needs to be optimized.

The suggestions given are based on this knowledge, and it seems to help many users. Sure, it won't cover up for the engine's shortcomings entirely, but it's the best we can do at this point aside from just being angry and calling things "bad".

[doveman 7]

I can't do that unfortunately. My CPU is locked. :(

Err, you just said you've overclocked your RAM :confused:

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

The game engine obviously needs optimization, but we're almost completely sure as to what needs to be optimized.

The suggestions given are based on this knowledge, and it seems to help many users. Sure, it won't cover up for the engine's shortcomings entirely, but it's the best we can do at this point aside from just being angry and calling things "bad".

I would be the last who would say it´s bad. I dont know if the "Playtimecounter" of Steam works correctly, but it says i passed 3000hours of Arma3 ^^ Correct, users should use parameters which they want to, as long they belive in startparameter crap and other things which they assume more fps i am okay with this... I´ll overclock since over 10years and i like to benchmark stuff, at random days i´ll go into my basement and carry my good old Mach2GT Compressorcooling Unit and plug it onto my CPU which easy reaches over 5Ghz then, with -7°C and 200W Mach2GT. I was suprised how low Arma reacts to "more Power PC", even as i´ve build for a customer a new rig with Hexacore Intel and 3xR290X TriCrossfire SSD @ Raid0, i can only say it´s sad (and which Frames i saw there) that was so confusing and ridiculous at the same time...

Meanwhile i´ve gived up on hoping for constant over 50 Frames on a full server or complex Scenario, on of last hopes was the NV 337.50 PerfDriver (we remember: BF4 42% more fps, BF3 39% more fps, and many Games more which has double digit improvement in frames. Except Arma3, 0%

And till today nothing happened to the performance, it makes me sad that such a great game is struggeling with this prehistorical Engine which seems uneditable (or whatever leads to decision not to optimize it) for the devs.

[doveman 7]

Just as a quick example of the different RAM performance, here's my Phenom II X4 955 running 16GB DDR3-1600@9-9-9-24:

and here's my I5 4670k running 4GB DDR3-1333@9-9-9-24 (it's actually rated for 1600 at those timings but I haven't got it booting at that yet):

As you can see, copy and read speeds are about double, whilst write is about triple. So if ArmA is as dependent on RAM performance as people have said, clearly it's going to perform better with Intel CPUs.

[Greenfist 1863]

Err, you just said you've overclocked your RAM :confused:

Yes. Only the RAM. In other words, changed the RAM clock from 1600 to 1800. It should increase the memory performance, right?

I don't know much about overclocking, so I might be completely lost here and just measured a placebo. :confused:

Edited July 11, 2014 by Greenfist

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

Yes thats correct. But it depends always on the program, not every program uses more Mhz at the ram effectivley. If you want i can teach you a couple things. We could overclock your cpu synchron with the Ram, then ur sytem is working better together as if you would only overclock 1 part of the PC.

As mentioned last night i knew a few or more things about PC´s and Overclocking.

[Greenfist 1863]

I have a 3450S, I believe it can only be overclocked with BCLK which isn't really recommended. It currently runs at 3.6GHz max with turbo boost.