re: Beyond recommended requirements - Terrible Performance

[maddogx 13]

I run with object/terrain detail at lowest settings with 1k/800m view/detail distance.

In your opinion, those settings too high for recommended system specs?

Or should i play with everything turned off/low in windowed mode @ 320x240 resolution?

Nope, something is definitely going wrong there. You should be able to run the same settings as me, at least.

Btw. I can't recommend windowed mode - anything but fullscreen seems to kill fps in my experience. ("Fullscreen window" gets me half the framerate of proper fullscreen mode.)

[Wanderzz 11]

I recently bought a GTX 670 with 4GB and the game runs much better but here are some things I've noticed.

The view distance can be set to 10k without a problem but the object draw distance has to be below 1500 otherwise there is a huge drop in framerate. This is most noticable when flying, especially in the plane, there is a huge drop in frame rate when turning "my head" side to side. The slower the plane speed the better the framerate because it appears to be less objects needs to be drawn as fast.

Object detail has a huge impact as well - lower detail really helps with performance.

So my question is this: When objects are being drawn are all the objects being drawn - rabbits, snakes shrubs etc etc?? When in a plane at 1000 feet I will never see these.

[maddogx 13]

So my question is this: When objects are being drawn are all the objects being drawn - rabbits, snakes shrubs etc etc?? When in a plane at 1000 feet I will never see these.

No, small objects aren't usually drawn at long distances, but it also depends on your object detail setting. You can actually see this when looking at a distant hill and changing the object detail setting, that certain smaller objects will pop up or disappear.

[Wanderzz 11]

No, small objects aren't usually drawn at long distances, but it also depends on your object detail setting. You can actually see this when looking at a distant hill and changing the object detail setting, that certain smaller objects will pop up or disappear.

Object detail is set to ultra. So its just trees, shrubs, and buildings being drawn that are causing the drop in framerate? Is this HD, CPU or GPU intensive?

[windies 11]

I haven't seen A3 go over 2gb. 2047 is the highest you can set -maxmem to, right? It would be nice if it could be set to 4096. 2gb seems like a very low number for such a complex game, and for instance everytime I open the map the game has to draw all the textures, I don't know if that's because I only have 1gb of video ram though.

I've only tested in the editor with a limited units in place, but yes, it's very smooth now, with minimal stutter.

You won't see ArmA 3 more use more than 2gb or around 2gb of physical memory because nonpaged and paged memory are shared in the address space for the working set of the program. If it used 3-4gb of physical ram, there would be no room for any paged data.

Yeah, with a reasonable number of AI (~50-60) it's very smooth on Altis. Also tested a small MP coop (just two people) and it worked very well.

It's mainly the larger scale battles where the problems start.

I have to disagree. I've not been able to have over 20-25 AI without having a massive performance drop. like 55 fps to 25 fps just for having the AI on the map and then 25 down to around 15-20 fps when they started engaging one another. Not to mention that the game goes from feeling mildly smooth to herky jerky even if the FPS manages to somehow go above 20fps.

[jurrasstoil 10]

I have to disagree. I've not been able to have over 20-25 AI without having a massive performance drop. like 55 fps to 25 fps just for having the AI on the map and then 25 down to around 15-20 fps when they started engaging one another. Not to mention that the game goes from feeling mildly smooth to herky jerky even if the FPS manages to somehow go above 20fps.

I just made a little test run with AI engaging in a town.

The "Mission" is quite simple. Just 2 Rifle Squads and 1 Fire Squad on each side of a town for a total of 40 AI soldiers, Move Command with 'Open Fire, engange at will' to clash in the middle of town. In the first run I sit on a hill overwatching the town, in the second run i'm miles away on the other end of the map. No player movement of course.

Run #1:

Run #2:

Both runs are about 5 minutes long (as you can see on the X-axis of the graphs).

I think the weirdest part, is that the AI clashing in the town (engaging and path finding) costs a specific amount of frames per second and not a percentage of the total fps. The difference between the most and the least fps in both runs is about 25ish fps. ~58 down to ~33 and ~95 down to ~70. You'd expect CPU Usage to go up when the AI is starting to enter the town and pathfinding while engaging enemies, but stays mostly the same.

However, the GPU Usage drops significantly stronger when I'm closer to the city.

After about 5 minutes 50-75% of the AI's are dead and you can see the fps slowly climb again once less AI are fighting and pathfinding.

Without any AI, my fps are about 62fps in the first run and about 97fps in the second one and since nothing is going on they stay like that of course.

Specs:

Xeon 1230v3 @ 3.5ghz on all cores

GTX660

8gb 1333 DDR3

win7 x64

Game is installed on a Samsung HD155UI (5.400 1.5TB HDD)

Edited September 11, 2013 by jurrasstoil

[TGxAethius 10]

I don't understand, were they even testing the MP themselves? And on what kind of space rig did they do it?

I mean, through whole alpha and beta people were complaining about that and we get the final product with main issue not being resolved.

[stk2008 14]

I don't understand, were they even testing the MP themselves? And on what kind of space rig did they do it?

I mean, through whole alpha and beta people were complaining about that and we get the final product with main issue not being resolved.

Probably because it cant be resolved.

We had terrible hardware utilization with arma2 and we will have it through arma3 life as well thats all I can see will happen.

in a few monthes time we will get feedback from devs saying sorry we cant optimize it its an engine limitation which was there exact reply for arma2.

[Baltsar 1]

That's a joke,

I feel sorry for the one who bought the game at FULL PRICE.

What a g

[TGxAethius 10]

Probably because it cant be resolved.

We had terrible hardware utilization with arma2 and we will have it through arma3 life as well thats all I can see will happen.

in a few monthes time we will get feedback from devs saying sorry we cant optimize it its an engine limitation which was there exact reply for arma2.

So, can you imagine the situation. They are testing the game playing on barely around 15 fps on highest settings. And say: Ah, well, damn it, let's sell this s...t.

:S

[jumpinghubert 49]

You'd expect CPU Usage to go up when the AI is starting to enter the town and pathfinding while engaging enemies, but stays mostly the same.

thanks for your investigations. In arma2 the behavior of cpu-usage with ai was more weired: Without ai you got max 50% and the more ai the lower the usage down to 25%. So its a little step forward :p

Edited September 12, 2013 by JumpingHubert

[Iagovar 10]

Same problem.

I have not an High End Computer but I cannot play Altis at all. Sometimes works with no problems, even with Medium-High Specs, but with no reason can drop to something horrible.

Intel G630 2'7

4GB Ram

Radon 7750 w 1GB

W7 32 Bits

I usually play Stratis with no problem at All.

[Furret 0]

Any thoughts on this I just looked. not sure nvr had an intel Processor ever so have no clue.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116941

You dont need an i7, go for an i5, something like this: here

[suprememodder 11]

terrible performance?

claim it's because your 13 year old engine is too awesome and requires a future computer to run.

profit.

[KyleK29 1]

Same problem.

I have not an High End Computer but I cannot play Altis at all. Sometimes works with no problems, even with Medium-High Specs, but with no reason can drop to something horrible.

Windows 7 x64

Intel G630 2'7

4GB Ram

Radon 7750 w 1GB

W7 32 Bits

I usually play Stratis with no problem at All.

Just for the record, I to have performance issues on Altis that did not exist on Stratis.

Intel i7 920

16gig DDR

SanDisk Extreme SSD

Radeon 7950 3gb

Was running a mix of ultra and very-high with good (playable) framerates on Stratis. Had to drop to medium on everything for Altis. CPU utilization is only around 40%, ram usage is around 1.5gigs when running a mission.

terrible performance?

claim it's because your 13 year old engine is too awesome and requires a future computer to run.

profit.

What's funny is that most developers reach the limitation of what they can do in their engine (or software), so they scrap it and start from scratch. A lot changes in 10 years of development, there's probably numerous ways to be more efficient for what they need to do but they overlook because they're still tweaking an outdated source. I'd assume it's a matter of capital over not wanting to do it.

Look what DICE did with Battlefield. They scrapped Refractor and brought out Frostbite.

This engine used to be state of the art. But sandbox engines have come and passed what this engine does. To claim this engine is state of the art now is a pipe-dream. It's good, but it could be great if it wasn't being held back by something/management(?).

Edited September 14, 2013 by KyleK29