FPS Drops After ~45 minutes of Gameplay

[Whispy 10]

My FPS is generally around mid 30s, but when I play for ~45 minutes to an hour, my FPS will suddenly drop to around 10 when I look around or press any keys. However, if I don't press a key or look around, it will go back to normal (but it resumes if I press a key/look around).

Today, I decided to record the CPU usage and memory using Performance Monitor. Here is what it looked like (the FPS dropping starts to happen at 2:14:35 PM):

The 'IO Read Operations/sec', 'Cache Faults/sec', and '% Privileged Time' all shoot up VERY high, while '% Idle Time' and '% C3 Time' both take a very steep drop. Afterwards, the log looks like it goes back to normal, but the FPS drops in-game still continue until I restart my client.

Specs:

Intel Xeon E3-1230v2

GTX 570

16 gb RAM

Win 8 64-bit

This occurs regardless of the mission I'm playing.

[Drumheller 19]

Exact same issue here

System Specs:

i5 Ivy Bridge 3570k

120 gig SSD

1tb Standard HD

8 gigs ram

nVidia Geforce GTX 560ti

Win 7 64

[Eiren 1]

Hello!

I had the same problem in the alpha and started a thread aswell:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?158252-Memory-Leak

I think its kind of a memory leak. But nobody had a solution.

My solution was the beta...

[EDcase 87]

Assuming temperatures are OK, what about monitoring mem usage...?

Since many do not have this problem (including me) it must be related to your system and you must find roughly where the problem is so you can tell BIS to look into it.

[Dwarden 1124]

just question, do you have enabled or disable windows swap file ?

[sofianebilal 10]

same problem here, but it occurs much earlier, around 20-30 minutes after having started playing !

[El_Bart0_LuisC 10]

SAME HERE

2500k

8bg

hd6950

w7

i get like 40-45 fps , after 30-40 min,,10-15fps (((cpu at 50+% gpu 60+%, some times more)))

then if i dont move back to 30´s , as soon a move or shoot they drops again to 10-15fps

cpu25% gpu 25%

[Whispy 10]

Assuming temperatures are OK, what about monitoring mem usage...?

Since many do not have this problem (including me) it must be related to your system and you must find roughly where the problem is so you can tell BIS to look into it.

My memory usage increases normally and maxes out somewhere in the high 2 gigabytes. (Though, shouldn't it max out at 4 gigabytes, as I'm on a 64-bit system and it's a LAA executable?)

just question, do you have enabled or disable windows swap file ?

By swapfile, do you mean pagefile? If so, this is my settings page for it:

It appears that Windows is set to automatically manage it. ARMA 3 is installed on the D: drive (a HDD, labeled 'Murgen'), while my OS and other programs are installed on the C: drive (an SSD, labeled 'Croaker'). Is the pagefile set up incorrectly? Should there be one on the D: drive?

(If the swapfile is different than the pagefile, please let me know :P)

Edited September 4, 2013 by Whispy

[k3lt 3]

It's set correctly, it's the game problem.

[Dwarden 1124]

ye, but is it increasing to 16GB while playing game ? you have automatic size managed by OS ...

[Whispy 10]

ye, but is it increasing to 16GB while playing game ? you have automatic size managed by OS ...

I do not know. How can I track this?

[Dwarden 1124]

just look on the same window before starting Arma 3, what's in the Currently Allocated and then while playing Arma 3 before and after the issue starts ...

[windies 11]

just look on the same window before starting Arma 3, what's in the Currently Allocated and then while playing Arma 3 before and after the issue starts ...

Make sure you do a restart first before you test it. Windows will dynamically size the pagefile up in size, but it will never decrease the pagefile unless you either restart or reconfigure the pagefile.

[Whispy 10]

After restarting my computer but not playing ARMA 3, here is what the Virtual Memory window looks like, and what the properties of pagefile.sys itself shows:

------------------------

While running ARMA 3:

------------------------

After playing ARMA 3 long enough that FPS problems begin:

So, I'm not sure what I was supposed to be looking for? It appears that barely anything changed. The only value that I noticed changing is the 'Space Available:' one...

------------------------

And here is a performance log from this session (the FPS problems begin at 1:10 PM, where the huge spikes are):

The biggest spikes are 'IO Write Operations/sec' and 'IO Data Operations/sec'. The one that reaches halfway to the top is 'IO Write Bytes/sec'. The rest of the spikes are smaller, but they still are spikes.

[windies 11]

I wouldn't fool with it much, there's easier ways to measure the pagefile and memory usage of a program. I would set your pagefile to a static size, like 5623mb for minimum and 5623mb for maximum.

If you wanted to measure pagefile growth, you would set the minimum to like 16mb and the maximum to 16384mb and then windows would dynamically size it up as needed. If it actually managed to hit 16384mb while playing ArmA 3 under those conditions then yeah I would say there's a memory leak.

[Dwarden 1124]

ok, ty for you time with the pagefile check , so that's not it ;)

[blackland 26]

i have Framedrops (or CTD or Blackscreen) after 3 - 10 min, exclusively on Altis!

Win7 x86, SSD Samsung 840 Evo pro, i5 4670k @ 3,9 GHz, GTX 660ti 3 GB RAM, RAM DDR3-2400 (16 GB) 12 of them are RAMDisk, included SWAP-File.

Start parameter: -maxmem=1600 -maxVram=1900

My Video Settings (very, very low), after Stuttering, Framedrops, Realtime:

... with or without vsync is always the same.

i sent many [CRASH] Dumpfiles to Dwarden ... :(

Edited September 9, 2013 by Blackland

[jumpinghubert 48]

hi blackland,

little theory on this: your gpu/cpu is downclocking/parking cores/overheating issue whatever. :)

[Whispy 10]

ok, ty for you time with the pagefile check , so that's not it ;)

Do you have any other suggestions?

[windies 11]

ok, ty for you time with the pagefile check , so that's not it ;)

What do you mean? He had it set to system managed which means it just uses large 16gb pagefile no matter your ram or settings. It proved nothing other than it booted up with a 16gb page file. It didn't disprove that there's not a memory leak with ArmA 3.

[tonygrunt 10]

Do you have any other suggestions?

Which SSD do you have?

SSDs tend to lose performance (and lifespan) when you start filling them, and at the time of your test you have around 12GB free (28510MB available minus 16384MB swapfile allocated) which might be a little low.

For example the included software with my Samsung SSD 840 Pro 500GB recommends a 10% provisioning area or 50GB. Other manufacturers might lock an area with the firmware or use both techniques.

Don't know how much impact this would have to the game but you could test this with moving the pagefile to another drive.

[blackland 26]

hi blackland,

little theory on this: your gpu/cpu is downclocking/parking cores/overheating issue whatever.

He He, no! Specs ar normal, i tested it. :j:

CPU Last ca. 52 - 70% with 70° C, RAM 1590 MB, SWAPfile 1650 MB, GPU Temp ca. 68°C.

Hours On Stratis no problems, use "Ultra" Settings, it´s okay!

[antoineflemming 14]

What do you mean? He had it set to system managed which means it just uses large 16gb pagefile no matter your ram or settings. It proved nothing other than it booted up with a 16gb page file. It didn't disprove that there's not a memory leak with ArmA 3.

Well, it obviously is the user's fault whenever there are performance issues. I mean, there's no way it could be an Arma 3 problem....

Don't expect to get "it's the game, not your computer" response from BIS.

[NoCountry 10]

Bump,

Same problem here.

I can play for 30 to 45 minutes max (on multiplayer) and my FPS will drop from 45 to 15 and swap up back and forth between 10 and 30 the entire time untill I do a full restart of the game.

Game was stable for alpha and late beta for me, now it's complete crap in performance.

All threads I can find online are of the alpha or beta and nobody else seems to be having this problem, plus I'm getting absolute minimal response from BI or Tech support and find it, to be frank, rather disgraceful.

I've been measuring my CPU and GPU usage, so far I can tell you they're not to blame.

GPU usage stays under 40 to 50% at all times, I even tried without SLI and it doesn't change anything, temperatures remain below 50 degrees.

CPU cores all stay at EXACTLY 38 degrees, only to peak to 42 when there's 'A LOT' going on, while their load varies with core 1 having around 20% and the others not even making it past the 5% mark at any time.

Memory doesn't appear to be doing at all and it's only assigning a maximum of 1.6 GB's to the game, which it never seems to use at all.

System doesn't show ANY changes when the massive FPS drop kicks in EXACTLY 45 minutes after starting the game.

CPU is unparked

No extra launch options have been used, since these have been INVALID SINCE ALPHA for me and most other players on my server.

Only other program is Teamspeak running in the background.

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bits (6.1, build 7601)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 (SLI, total 4068 MB VRam) (Commodore Custom)

Driver version 9.18.13.2723 (LATEST)

Intel® Core i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67 (8 CPUs), overclocked 10%

8192MB DDR3 1066 MHz Corsair 3-slot memory (Commodore Custom)

Dual Samsung HD502IJI 7200 RPM SATA (1 TB total) (200 GB available total, of which 50 on C: drive)

Pagefile 16 GB, 5 GB Used during gameplay

Standard Big-fan cooling set, can play games such as Metro LL and Battlefield 3 with 64 versus on ultra without getting the GPU higher than 70°C and the CPU 55°C

Furmark extreme shows no problems after 4 hour testing

Prime95 shows no problems after 12 hour testing

Memtest shows no problems

Any information would be appreciated.

Edited October 1, 2013 by NoCountry

[tvamvarg 0]

I'm there too. Sudden drop after about 45 minutes of playing. I'm on an older rig though, so mine ends up at about 1-2 FPS... :)

Restart the game, and I'm back to normal (actually quite playable with not too shabby settings, with my modest demands). Just dropping to main menu and restarting mission does not help.

I'm not sure what to run for diagnostics, but if I get some pointers I'll be happy to provide dumps of any kind.

Edit: now I played a couple of missions with all mods removed, and so far it looks to avoid crashes. What I had was TPW (most things disabled except bleedout though) and WW_AICOVER, and CBA since the other ones build on that. How about the rest of you with these issues?

System: Q6600@2,4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, GTX 465, Win 7 32 bit

Edited October 5, 2013 by tvamvarg