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k3lt

Low CPU utilization & Low FPS

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Something seriously wrong, as your system spec. leaves mine in the dust (apart from RAM where we are on par) but I can get a consistent 40-50fps, even in MP (server dependant obviously).

Intel i5 2500K CPU @ 3.3GHz

16GB RAM

GTX 670 SC

Windows 7 Home 64bit

I suppose it boils down to if you're trying to run the game on max'ed settings or if you've tried to auto-detect and adjust from there. Also take into account any other background processes that may be running and causing CPU drain.

I'm playng on highest settings for many of the options but I keep a drow distance of 2000 and object distance of 1000. I've tried to low the settings with no benefits in terms of fps. If i play in the editor alone I get more than 60 fps but if I play vs some AIs I have massive fps drop.

your ingame settings?

I'll let you know the exacts settings later, now I can't. :)

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I'm playng on highest settings for many of the options but I keep a drow distance of 2000 and object distance of 1000. I've tried to low the settings with no benefits in terms of fps. If i play in the editor alone I get more than 60 fps but if I play vs some AIs I have massive fps drop.

I've just uploaded my settings for you to compare yours against.

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I've just uploaded my settings for you to compare yours against.

Thanks man, the differences between your settings and mine are:

GENERAL:

Terrain -> Ultra

PIP -> High

Overall -> 2257

Object -> 1009

Shadow -> 100

DISPLAY:

V-Sync -> Off (I'm playng with borderless window mode)

AA&PP:

Every postprocess entry to 100

ATOC: deactivated

PPAA: FXAA High

ANISO. FILTERING: Ultra

Every other setting is the same as you.

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Thanks man, the differences between your settings and mine are:

GENERAL:

Terrain -> Ultra

PIP -> High

Overall -> 2257

Object -> 1009

Shadow -> 100

DISPLAY:

V-Sync -> Off (I'm playng with borderless window mode)

AA&PP:

Every postprocess entry to 100

ATOC: deactivated

PPAA: FXAA High

ANISO. FILTERING: Ultra

Every other setting is the same as you.

Try turning terrain detail down to Very High (or High). The difference in visual aesthetics is barely noticeable but that should help your FPS (slightly).

Not sure if DOF would affect performance (I turned mine off so as not to get headaches from prolonged games, same with rotation blur giving me motion sickness lol). The sharpen filter setting may have an impact too, consider reducing it (or turning it off fully). Turning down Anisotropic Filtering wont affect your image quality massively but will go some way to aiding your FPS. Each change on its own may not make a huge difference but added up they should all help.

Edited by Jackal326

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I assume anisotrop. filter (set it in nvidia driver setting to 16x) and other picture quality related paramenters won´t affect performance with a GTX 780. The "bottleneck" might be the cpu. Overclocking the cpu and ram a little bit helps for sure to compensate the bad cpu utilization in this game.

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I assume anisotrop. filter (set it in nvidia driver setting to 16x) and other picture quality related paramenters won´t affect performance with a GTX 780. The "bottleneck" might be the cpu. Overclocking the cpu and ram a little bit helps for sure to compensate the bad cpu utilization in this game.

True. However in D4NI3L3's, case his CPU is much faster/powerful than mine, yet my settings are generally higher (view distance especially) and my frame-rate far outstrips his. Some other background processes must be sapping processing power or some other factor must be attributing to the crappy FPS he's getting.

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Try turning terrain detail down to Very High (or High). The difference in visual aesthetics is barely noticeable but that should help your FPS (slightly).

Not sure if DOF would affect performance (I turned mine off so as not to get headaches from prolonged games, same with rotation blur giving me motion sickness lol). The sharpen filter setting may have an impact too, consider reducing it (or turning it off fully). Turning down Anisotropic Filtering wont affect your image quality massively but will go some way to aiding your FPS. Each change on its own may not make a huge difference but added up they should all help.

I'll try it but I notice big fps drops when AIs start to combat, I'm trying the AFCS mod which is basically a team dm. It's me and allied AI units vs enemy AI units, when the fight starts my fps drop from 80 to 20. It's an AI problem for sure.

I assume anisotrop. filter (set it in nvidia driver setting to 16x) and other picture quality related paramenters won´t affect performance with a GTX 780. The "bottleneck" might be the cpu. Overclocking the cpu and ram a little bit helps for sure to compensate the bad cpu utilization in this game.

My CPU is overclocket at 4.4 Ghz, I think it's enough. It's not my CPU, it's a very good CPU, it's the AI management of the game that is too heavy and poorly optimized imo.

By the way thanks for your support guys. I appreciate!! :D

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I just tried out. My fps drop to 20 - 10 when the battle begins. I tried to change every options but no change in fps, 20 - 11 fps whatever I do. It is an AI issue, without AI I get 80 fps, with AI combat 20 - 10 fps. It's AI fault, terrible optimization, I get a difference of 60 fps. :(

EDIT, i found this old topic regarding exactly this issue.

Edited by D4NI3L3

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I just tried out. My fps drop to 20 - 10 when the battle begins. I tried to change every options but no change in fps, 20 - 11 fps whatever I do. It is an AI issue, without AI I get 80 fps, with AI combat 20 - 10 fps. It's AI fault, terrible optimization, I get a difference of 60 fps. :(

EDIT, i found this old topic regarding exactly this issue.

How many AI?

Where the fight is?

Are they all inside your View Distance range and do almost all of them start to fire? Basicaly how heavy the fight is?

Any mods? What about when with vanilla?

Does this happen in some mission only?

AI can drop a lot of your fps but it really depends on a lot of things.

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Maybe time for some facts&findings: without mods I have significantly lower cpu-utilization than with mods; in facts:

benchmark without mods: 50-55% average cpu-usage

with mods: 70-75% average cpu-usage and at the end of the benchmark up to 82% usage! :)

-Mods: laxman´s reverb mod, Speedofsound, Blastcore Phoenix+tracers

-benchmark: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?187658-Yet-Another-Arma-Benchmark

-System in signature

-programs to log cpu-utilization: afterburner/rivatuner statisticsserver

-arma3-dev-version

P.S. the data is overall usage of the 4 cores.

More results are welcome :)

Edited by JumpingHubert

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How many AI?

Where the fight is?

Are they all inside your View Distance range and do almost all of them start to fire? Basicaly how heavy the fight is?

Any mods? What about when with vanilla?

Does this happen in some mission only?

AI can drop a lot of your fps but it really depends on a lot of things.

I'm actually using many mods but the result with no mods is the same. I have not too much time so I'm playing using the AFCS mod. It's a team VS team AI fight, it's very intense and funny. The fight is intense but not so much to giustify this fps drops.

I'm playing with less then 100 AI all in my view distance because the fights are very close toghether.

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Hi all,

Bought Arma 3 a couple of days ago. Just jumping on the low FPS bandwagon :)

My specs;

AMD FX-8320 @ 3.5Ghz

Asus M5A97 rev 2 AMD 970 MoBo

3GB XFX Radeon R9-280X 1000MHz

8GB Ram

- On a completely empty Altis I get around 60-70fps.

- With a handful of AI (Infantry showcase) this dips down to around 40.

- On a mission with anything more than a handful of AI (Combined arms showcase) I'm getting sub 30fps consistently.

My ARMA2 performance was nowhere near this bad, with the same PC. Add about 20/30 to each of the above and that's roughly where my ARMA 2 FPS rate was.

I've tried everything (apart from overclocking) in the optimization guide going around (https://www.day0.com.au/forum/arma/638-arma-3-performance-tweaks-and-settings-guide). And I'm not sure if this actually made a difference.

Now I'm not moaning, I'm not expecting miracles. But is there anything else that anyone can suggest? Maybe something hardware specific? I don't think it's too much to ask to expect a consistent 30fps in a medium sized mission.

How do my specs measure up? I know it's not a super high end machine, but I certainly don't think it's a budget build. It can run most of the current game crop at high or highest settings easily enough.

And on a side note. Is there realistically anything BI could do with ARMA 3 to improve performance? At this stage in the games development?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Edited by karskin

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Hi all,

Bought Arma 3 a couple of days ago. Just jumping on the low FPS bandwagon :)

My specs;

AMD FX-8320 @ 3.5Ghz

Asus M5A97 rev 2 AMD 970 MoBo

3GB XFX Radeon R9-280X 1000MHz

8GB Ram

- On a completely empty Altis I get around 60-70fps.

- With a handful of AI (Infantry showcase) this dips down to around 40.

- On a mission with anything more than a handful of AI (Combined arms showcase) I'm getting sub 30fps consistently.

My ARMA2 performance was nowhere near this bad, with the same PC. Add about 20/30 to each of the above and that's roughly where my ARMA 2 FPS rate was.

I've tried everything (apart from overclocking) in the optimization guide going around (https://www.day0.com.au/forum/arma/638-arma-3-performance-tweaks-and-settings-guide). And I'm not sure if this actually made a difference.

Now I'm not moaning, I'm not expecting miracles. But is there anything else that anyone can suggest? Maybe something hardware specific? I don't think it's too much to ask to expect a consistent 30fps in a medium sized mission.

How do my specs measure up? I know it's not a super high end machine, but I certainly don't think it's a budget build. It can run most of the current game crop at high or highest settings easily enough.

And on a side note. Is there realistically anything BI could do with ARMA 3 to improve performance? At this stage in the games development?

Thanks in advance for any help!

As mentioned earlier. If you want better fps, upgrade to Intel cpu and/or overclock cpu.

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I would not recommend throwing money at hardware just for this game. Yes, intel generally will run better, b/c it has better per-core performance than amd, in general. And, yes, overclocking your cpu will generally help (some) b/c the game needs clock speeds since it isn't equipped to adequately utilize modern hardware.

But, the fundamental problem is not with your computer. Don't let folks fool you into thinking otherwise.

The amount of money you'd have to throw at hardware for this game is not worth the minimal gains you would see in return (in my opinion). Most of the computing power bought with those $ will go under-utilized by the engine anyways.

But, to each his own. Bohemia relies heavily (in my opinion) on the fallacy that it is hardware that hasn't caught up to the engine, rather than the reality, that their engine hasn't caught up to the hardware.

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I would not recommend throwing money at hardware just for this game. Yes, intel generally will run better, b/c it has better per-core performance than amd, in general. And, yes, overclocking your cpu will generally help (some) b/c the game needs clock speeds since it isn't equipped to adequately utilize modern hardware.

But, the fundamental problem is not with your computer. Don't let folks fool you into thinking otherwise.

The amount of money you'd have to throw at hardware for this game is not worth the minimal gains you would see in return (in my opinion). Most of the computing power bought with those $ will go under-utilized by the engine anyways.

But, to each his own. Bohemia relies heavily (in my opinion) on the fallacy that it is hardware that hasn't caught up to the engine, rather than the reality, that their engine hasn't caught up to the hardware.

If you play other games and want to take a step up ready for future releases like 'GTA5' or 'The Witcher 3' (as examples), then any upgrade will help with those too.

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Hi all,

Bought Arma 3 a couple of days ago. Just jumping on the low FPS bandwagon :)

My specs;

AMD FX-8320 @ 3.5Ghz

Asus M5A97 rev 2 AMD 970 MoBo

3GB XFX Radeon R9-280X 1000MHz

8GB Ram

- On a completely empty Altis I get around 60-70fps.

- With a handful of AI (Infantry showcase) this dips down to around 40.

- On a mission with anything more than a handful of AI (Combined arms showcase) I'm getting sub 30fps consistently.

My ARMA2 performance was nowhere near this bad, with the same PC. Add about 20/30 to each of the above and that's roughly where my ARMA 2 FPS rate was.

I've tried everything (apart from overclocking) in the optimization guide going around (https://www.day0.com.au/forum/arma/638-arma-3-performance-tweaks-and-settings-guide). And I'm not sure if this actually made a difference.

Now I'm not moaning, I'm not expecting miracles. But is there anything else that anyone can suggest? Maybe something hardware specific? I don't think it's too much to ask to expect a consistent 30fps in a medium sized mission.

How do my specs measure up? I know it's not a super high end machine, but I certainly don't think it's a budget build. It can run most of the current game crop at high or highest settings easily enough.

And on a side note. Is there realistically anything BI could do with ARMA 3 to improve performance? At this stage in the games development?

Thanks in advance for any help!

I've done some testing with AI. What I found is that if you use more than 20-30 AI fighting on your view range you get 20 to 10 fps, if you use less than 20 you get between 30-40 fps, I get >80 fps with an empty island, it's an old unoptimized engine, I'm very disappointed.

It's not my hardware or yours, it is the crappy engine used by Bis.

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I've done some testing with AI. What I found is that if you use more than 20-30 AI fighting on your view range you get 20 to 10 fps, if you use less than 20 you get between 30-40 fps, I get >80 fps with an empty island, it's an old unoptimized engine, I'm very disappointed.

It's not my hardware or yours, it is the crappy engine used by Bis.

If you can find another sandbox-esque dynamic game engine that can render 30 editor placed AI fighting each other without having to script where they take cover and who they shoot, feel free to point it out.

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If you can find another sandbox-esque dynamic game engine that can render 30 editor placed AI fighting each other without having to script where they take cover and who they shoot, feel free to point it out.

I like the game so much but you agree with me that it is useless if I can't play with it. I know that dynamic AI is heavy to compute but I think that using multithreading in a better way should be the way. I don't want to minimize the game or the work behind this, I would to play it in a better way but now it is impossible. :)

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As mentioned earlier. If you want better fps, upgrade to Intel cpu and/or overclock cpu.

we need a disclaimer, sticky whatever because no one reads nothing :p

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we need a disclaimer, sticky whatever because no one reads nothing :p

We need a disclaimer or sticky telling people to spend upwards of $300+ on hardware to improve their performance marginally at best? I mean really even going from an equivalent AMD system to Intel you're only looking at a few FPS difference at most. Hell even going from a Phenom II x4 @ 3.4ghz to an i5-3570K @ 4.5ghz only resulted in MAYBE a 10 fps increase average. That's a justifiable upgrade in a sense not because I did it for one game but because the Phenom II is outdated as hell. Suggesting someone upgrade an FX-8XXX to an equiv Intel though is a tad silly though, especially for one game. The cost doesn't come close to justifying it.

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We need a disclaimer or sticky telling people to spend upwards of $300+ on hardware to improve their performance marginally at best? I mean really even going from an equivalent AMD system to Intel you're only looking at a few FPS difference at most. Hell even going from a Phenom II x4 @ 3.4ghz to an i5-3570K @ 4.5ghz only resulted in MAYBE a 10 fps increase average. That's a justifiable upgrade in a sense not because I did it for one game but because the Phenom II is outdated as hell. Suggesting someone upgrade an FX-8XXX to an equiv Intel though is a tad silly though, especially for one game. The cost doesn't come close to justifying it.

I wouldn't suggest the cost of building a new Intel system to replace a functioning AMD system is worth it just to play one game, even ArmA3 but I can say that upgrading from a Phenom II X4 955 (can't remember exactly what I had it overclocked to but it was as high as was possible with a decent third-party tower cooler) to an i5-4670k @4.4Ghz has made a world of difference for me and instead of getting slideshows of 13fps or worse at times on my clan's server, it doesn't seem to go below a playable 30fps anymore.

Obviously BIS is constantly updating ArmA3 and the client FPS when playing on servers depends on various factors, including the particular mission and the number of AI, so it's hard to say for sure that the upgrade is wholly responsible. I just know that with the AMD system every session there'd be at least one or two missions which were unplayable and that's never been an issue since I switched to Intel.

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I wouldn't suggest the cost of building a new Intel system to replace a functioning AMD system is worth it just to play one game, even ArmA3 but I can say that upgrading from a Phenom II X4 955 (can't remember exactly what I had it overclocked to but it was as high as was possible with a decent third-party tower cooler) to an i5-4670k @4.4Ghz has made a world of difference for me and instead of getting slideshows of 13fps or worse at times on my clan's server, it doesn't seem to go below a playable 30fps anymore.

Obviously BIS is constantly updating ArmA3 and the client FPS when playing on servers depends on various factors, including the particular mission and the number of AI, so it's hard to say for sure that the upgrade is wholly responsible. I just know that with the AMD system every session there'd be at least one or two missions which were unplayable and that's never been an issue since I switched to Intel.

My 965 never ran the game all that bad compared to my i5. I basically upgraded just the mobo/ram/cpu when I first started this build and kept the GTX 480. Performance difference in ArmA was nowhere near amazing, even after overclocking. Even with crossfired 290's now I still hit 20 fps quite frequently in multi player. I noticed it even in coops back when I used to play with CiA in missions that didn't even seem like they were that demanding. I just got too frustrated constantly trying to fix it and ultimately just gave up playing. There's really something wrong with the engine, not so much in single player but in multi player most definitely.

Also 30 fps isn't really playable to me. Maybe I would say it's tolerable, but not what I would call playable. Difference of opinion maybe, but I can easily tell a marked difference between 30 and 60 fps, especially in ArmA where everything is tied to FPS.

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I had an AMD Phenom x6 1100t BE (GPU was an AMD 6970 2GB) before upgrading to an Intel i7-4790k. My previous system was about 5 years old and I was able to play ArmA 3 with standard settings with anywhere from 20-40 FPS. I was satisfied with those frames, especially considering how old my system was. I must say that any upgrade would have been an improvement over my old system, but I did a lot of research and found that Intel simply had better CPU's when it came to things like single core performance. I seriously considered the AMD 8-core line of processors(Specifically the FX-9590), but found that Intel was simply better. You don't need Intel to enjoy the game, but it will most likely help with your framerate.

My current system is an Intel i7-4790k(4.4Ghz), AMD Raedon R9 290X Tri-X OC, 16GB 1866 Ram, with a Samsung XP941 M.2 SSD. My frames are now regularly over 60 in singleplayer with everything set to it's highest possible setting with view distance set at 6000 and object distance at 3000. Multiplayer is anywhere from 25-60+ FPS with the same settings.

Edited by Nicholas

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