Bad performance

[Prefix 10]

I own an Alienware M17X with a GTX560M and 16 GB of memory. All the games i own, like BF3 and COD BO2 work like a charm. I decided to buy ARMA 3 and immediately after installing i encounter low FPS. even lower in multiplayer. I installed MSI afterburner and HWINFO and when playing ARMA i see that when my FPS drops, so does the GPU core usage. I really think it's a programming issue and hope that this will be resolved soon. Otherwise i will never never buy a game that is not finished yet to support game developers. This issue exists since ARMA 2 and can not believed this hasn't been resolved yet. This is the first time i bought a BETA for full price and i really hope that this will be reseolved soon otherwise this is the last time i buy a BETA to help support developers at this company.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T the clients that support you.

[JohnM81 10]

I own an Alienware M17X with a GTX560M and 16 GB of memory. All the games i own, like BF3 and COD BO2 work like a charm. I decided to buy ARMA 3 and immediately after installing i encounter low FPS. even lower in multiplayer. I installed MSI afterburner and HWINFO and when playing ARMA i see that when my FPS drops, so does the GPU core usage. I really think it's a programming issue and hope that this will be resolved soon. Otherwise i will never never buy a game that is not finished yet to support game developers. This issue exists since ARMA 2 and can not believed this hasn't been resolved yet. This is the first time i bought a BETA for full price and i really hope that this will be reseolved soon otherwise this is the last time i buy a BETA to help support developers at this company.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T the clients that support you.

So I have been having cronic issues with BP's FPS on my M17x R1 gaming laptop. So I was running Afterburner and played some. When I finished I looked at the usage graphs of my two descrete GTX 280m video cards and noticed something. Only one of them had any record of usage! I then loaded Arma 3 game and played some. Afterwards I look at the graphs and once again, only one video card was being used!

I then started up some other games, WoW, LoL, PZ, ect... Analyzed the graphs and then I saw both cards being used. So now I know both cards are working properly, its just Arma 3 game isn't using both cards causing a HUGE loss in FPS.

My first thought was maybe I was using an old driver but after a quick visit to NVIDIA's website I have confirmed I am using the most up to date one.

I will be posting this on the ARMA III forums, but they have rules that you have to be a 'regular' member before you can post even in their trouble shooting forum. And I have yet to achieve this status.

Get Afterburner and see if this is your issue as well?

So I was wondering if anyone might know how to fix this?

[dnk 13]

More exotic SLI high-end rigs having issues... hmmm...

PS the game struggles with latency and bandwidth issues. Having 2 titans doesn't net you much when their cores are waiting on all the data to be loaded and processed by the CPU and RAM. The CPU is mostly limited by one main thread on one core also.

What counts as "acceptable FPS"?

[ratszo 17]

I own an Alienware M17X with a GTX560M.....

i7-2760QM @ 2.40GHz?

[edit]

Ok, the 560m,

"....The similarly named desktop GeForce GTX 560Ti is based on the GF114 chip and offers more shader cores and significantly higher performance than the GTX 560M. The GTX 550Ti is based on the GF116 and is closer to the 560M in terms of performance, but it still features relatively higher clock speeds. Therefore, the performance of the 560M is more on par with the older desktop GeForce GTS 450."

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-560M.48313.0.html

I've got a gts 450 oc'ed to 880mhz from 720mhz stock.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Ratszo
560m info

[JohnM81 10]

More exotic SLI high-end rigs having issues... hmmm...

PS the game struggles with latency and bandwidth issues. Having 2 titans doesn't net you much when their cores are waiting on all the data to be loaded and processed by the CPU and RAM. The CPU is mostly limited by one main thread on one core also.

What counts as "acceptable FPS"?

Well as for me, I am struggling to get over 10FPS. Id be estatic with a consistant 25 FPS! I use Afterburner to evaluate the load on my graphics cards. And on one, 99% load and my FPS drops to 7. Temps aren't even going up. Second video card sitting there at 0% usage fat, happy, and lazy ;P. CPU never climes over 70% usage. I'm pretty sure its choking the on using just one GPU.

[ratszo 17]

Well as for me, I am struggling to get over 10FPS. Id be estatic with a consistant 25 FPS! I use Afterburner to evaluate the load on my graphics cards. And on one, 99% load and my FPS drops to 7. Temps aren't even going up. Second video card sitting there at 0% usage fat, happy, and lazy ;P. CPU never climes over 70% usage. I'm pretty sure its choking the on using just one GPU.

What's your cpu John?

Did you activate sli in nvidia CP after installing the new mobile driver?

[bohicafool 12]

I had a bad problem with FPS and now its solved! Make sure your motherboard/CPU is not in HALT or Parked. It will make a big difference with your FPS.

[JohnM81 10]

What's your cpu John?

Did you activate sli in nvidia CP after installing the new mobile driver?

I sure did. SLI activated and Physx on vid cards deactivated. FPS 7-8 tonight :(

---------- Post added at 06:32 ---------- Previous post was at 06:31 ----------

I had a bad problem with FPS and now its solved! Make sure your motherboard/CPU is not in HALT or Parked. It will make a big difference with your FPS.

How do I know if they are and how do I change that if need be?

---------- Post added at 06:57 ---------- Previous post was at 06:32 ----------

I had a bad problem with FPS and now its solved! Make sure your motherboard/CPU is not in HALT or Parked. It will make a big difference with your FPS.

I used this site:

http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

Disabled core parking for both ac and bat, went back into Breaking point Arma3 and FPS still sitting around 7-10. Also I checked CPU usage and it was at 70% while GPU1 at 99% and GPU2 0%.

Should I just give upon this game? ...

[ratszo 17]

I sure did. SLI activated and Physx on vid cards deactivated. FPS 7-8 tonight :(

280m is an old card, not dx11. It compares to a 9000 series desktop card.

If that's with a equally old core duo, it may not meet min. specs. for this game.

That's why i asked what cpu it has.

Moreover, the listed min. specs are ..., doubtful for realistic play.

[mamasan8 11]

Besides upgrading I can only think of one last thing to try

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#exThreads

But that is if GPU usage goes down to zero. That means the CPU is bogged down, it doesn't have time to handle GPU-calls. Now, if you have a dualcore, -exthreads might not do much or anything for you. And it doesn't do much for my 8-core AMD either. I've never seen GPU usage go beyond 70% in MP and Total CPU usage stays at 23% pretty much constantly. 70% on 1 core and 10-20 % utilization on the rest.

Arma 3 loves CPU, especially Intel-CPUs. The faster the Intel, the better (because Instructions Per Cycle, IPC, is higher on Intels than on AMDs)

[JohnM81 10]

280m is an old card, not dx11. It compares to a 9000 series desktop card.

If that's with a equally old core duo, it may not meet min. specs. for this game.

That's why i asked what cpu it has.

Moreover, the listed min. specs are ..., doubtful for realistic play.

The point of min specs and cpu not being fast enough is just incorrect. The choke point is the GPU. In fact I did an experiment. I got Afterburner on and when into Arma3:BP and lowered all settings. AB showed the GPU still maxed out and my FPS was 7. I put the game into window mode and then step by step started to turn down my resolution. Eventually I hit a point where AB showed the gpu wasn't being maxed out and low and behold as I had been saying my FPS shot up to 25-30. This proves its the GPU.

I am now running in window mode with consistant FPS of 25. So I at least can play the game now. This doesn't solve the issue. I am still running this game on half of my GPU's. But at least at these settings one of my GTX 280M's can handle the load.

[ratszo 17]

Well done.

Was thinking 'bout the 280 sli problem.

Maybe try a legacy older driver? Like a earlier dx11 or late dx10?

'Cause on these new drivers, doubt they're running Q&A for the 280s.

Also, have you posted on the m17 forum? Any ideas there?

[edit]

Oh..., try hitting auto-detect thru ingame settings.

Edited November 30, 2013 by Ratszo
auto-detect thru ingame settings.