FPS worse after latest stable update - BIS seriously why_

[CaptainObvious 95]

BI has been very good with communicating about the game, but they are pretty much ignoring the performance.

What? Performance has improved a lot since the beginning :rolleyes:

[kremator 1064]

Performance isn't too bad. Recommend you update your PC!

[TSAndrey 1]

What? Performance has improved a lot since the beginning :rolleyes:

Not saying it hasn't (it's been a bumpy ride though, with patches lowering FPS), but the devs have been pretty silent about it. In the beginning, Dwarden said that the performance is poor because of some bug that they will fix, and later they promised a peformance blog. They never spoke about those things again.

Performance isn't too bad. Recommend you update your PC!

Yeah, my GPU is weak. I'm thinking about upgrading it soon. But I still think performance could be better in some areas (MP, water)!

[CaptainObvious 95]

Not saying it hasn't (it's been a bumpy ride though, with patches lowering FPS), but the devs have been pretty silent about it. In the beginning, Dwarden said that the performance is poor because of some bug that they will fix, and later they promised a peformance blog. They never spoke about those things again.

Maybe it's better to say the devs have ignored talking about performance rather than the performance itself :)

I'm very pleased with the performace I'm getting atm with my rig, cpu being almost 4 years and the gpu 3 years old, honestly I can't see why a game released a few weeks ago should run well with mid-level hardware from years ago, of course it would be good if it did, but one shouldn't expect it to.

Of course there's room for improvement, quite a lot even, concidering the current hardware utilization.

[windies 11]

Maybe it's better to say the devs have ignored talking about performance rather than the performance itself :)

I'm very pleased with the performace I'm getting atm with my rig, cpu being almost 4 years and the gpu 3 years old, honestly I can't see why a game released a few weeks ago should run well with mid-level hardware from years ago, of course it would be good if it did, but one shouldn't expect it to.

Of course there's room for improvement, quite a lot even, concidering the current hardware utilization.

For one, the game doesn't run good even on newer monster systems. Plenty of people with very capable systems have complained about performance issue's, especially in MP. I also like how you say you're very pleased with performance and then turn around and say there's plenty of room for improvement and even acknowledge one of the problems that has been talked about endlessly on these forums. Of course it's not like double standard rationalizations aren't par for the course around here.

[CaptainObvious 95]

For one, the game doesn't run good even on newer monster systems. Plenty of people with very capable systems have complained about performance issue's, especially in MP. I also like how you say you're very pleased with performance and then turn around and say there's plenty of room for improvement and even acknowledge one of the problems that has been talked about endlessly on these forums. Of course it's not like double standard rationalizations aren't par for the course around here.

For one, my rig is over 3 years old and Arma runs at over 40fps, mostly around 50 from what I've noticed during playing*, should I not be pleased with it then?

Is there a game in the market that doesn't have room for improvement? No idea what your last sentence meant.

*settings High to Ultra, 3000&2000 VD.

[oldbear 390]

@ Windies : what do you mean by "the game doesn't run good even on newer monster systems" ?

The fact is that the game is offering "impossible" or "insane" settings ! You can't play on "Ultra", "Visibility" 12000m and "Sampling" 200 %, if you have a look at HardOcp Arma3 GPU review you will understand that you can play at a very high FPS rate with a high end rig but with some limitation on "Visibility". Most of the game around there are having limitations, in Arma3 we have the liberty to go for settings you can't play with, but quite nice to make great screenshots.

From your previous posts :

I'm guessing because my GPU isn't really under a heavy load because usage is generally only in the 40-70% range. I went from an average of around 35 fps single player to about 22-25 fps single player now. I don't even test multiplayer anymore cause it's almost assured that I get around 5-12 fps in multiplayer no matter what. In all honesty, ArmA for me is not really playable unless running 30fps or higher because below 30fps it gets very sluggish and stutters quite a bit.

and

Even with an i7 overclocked to the max and a GTX Titan, the game really only runs "acceptably". The problem is really not a lack of "computer horsepower" but rather a total lack of use of that horsepower.

I assume that, you are having a serious issue with your rig. We can help you to repair it, the practical way, show us your video settings.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Old Bear

[windies 11]

I mean there are plenty of people I've seen both on the forums and people who I play games with on a regular occasion who have issue's with current gen i7's and GTX 680's etc... Hell you actually quoted someone who literally said they have an i7 overclocked and a GTX titan and it only runs "acceptably". Most of the video settings besides SSAO, view distance and object detail don't have any affect on performance. How many times does someone need to say "I've tested with minimal settings and still experience performance issue's" before you get it in your head that it's an actual problem?

I think a large problem stems from the fact that some people are happy with 20 fps just because they choose to accept it as the norm. Kind of in the sense that it's ArmA, we shouldn't expect it to run good so my expectations are lower and therefor I'm content and happy because my lowered expectations are met.

---------- Post added at 01:44 ---------- Previous post was at 01:41 ----------

For one, my rig is over 3 years old and Arma runs at over 40fps, mostly around 50 from what I've noticed during playing*, should I not be pleased with it then?

Is there a game in the market that doesn't have room for improvement? No idea what your last sentence meant.

*settings High to Ultra, 3000&2000 VD.

My rig is like 25 years old and runs ArmA 3 at 250 fps, should I not be pleased with it then?

Ironic that you're named CaptainObvious.

[iceman77 18]

I've a mid range computer (if even that). i5-2500k, gtx560 and 8GB ram. It cost ~750$ well over a year ago. Runs the game smooth as glass if the mission is proper.

[CaptainObvious 95]

My rig is like 25 years old and runs ArmA 3 at 250 fps, should I not be pleased with it then?

Ironic that you're named CaptainObvious.

So my game runs like shit and my expectations are wrong, wow.

http://i.imgur.com/cPpdVIY.gif

[windies 11]

So my game runs like shit and my expectations are wrong, wow.

http://i.imgur.com/cPpdVIY.gif

It may very well run great for you. It doesn't for others though and just because it runs "great" for you doesn't invalidate the claims or the complaints of others. That's the part you can't seem to grasp.

Also saying your rig is 3 years old and runs the game great is completely subjective and vague.

[ratszo 17]

So my game runs like shit and my expectations are wrong, wow.

Na, while you're playing this great game, others would rather whine and troll on the forums.

The 'self-entitlement' is strong in this thread.

Bis has produced a game with near photo-realistic graphics AND open-ended settings.

Welcome to pc gaming --as Old Bear said, "adapt".

It's a new game. Bis is patching up every workday of the week.

CaptainObvious enjoys the game and so do i.

I play "Cliffs of Dover" too --that game, photo-realistic graphics AND open-ended settings, will bring any rig to its knees if rez and setting are pushed.

When a game is 'cutting-edge", the knife cuts both ways.

[dnk 13]

I'm pretty sure 227 pages, most voted feedback ticket, a problem in every A3 review, and more posts about it on the internet are not a "minority"...

Reviews from alpha/beta/early release and page count and complaint threads, awesome proof. The claim that "everyone's having issues" needs to be supported, by the way. That's how logic works. I don't have to support anything - I say it's not the case. Your side is arguing for something, provide evidence, solid evidence, not hand waving about thread posts and feedback votes. Hundreds of thousands of people bought this game, if just 0.5% have issues, it's going to spawn a 200-page thread if just 15% go on to whine about their issues on the forum. Obviously some have issues. They're vocal about it, understandably (though rarely constructively). Methinks you don't quite understand how that can skew your perspective of the actual preponderance of the issue...

I don't doubt there are some MP issues, mind you (if this thread was just about MP, it escaped me, given how little info the many complainers are posting about their issues - mostly just huffing and redface and threatening and other such negativity).

I've seen dozens/hundreds of people posting their specs. And almost no dev response. I remember being promised an optimization dev blog 5 months ago, where is that now?

Other people, yes. People in this thread, not really. And the devs have responded on many occasions. How much of a dev response is enough for you, by the way? 1 post/day? 1 post/week? 5 posts/issue? They do respond, and in the same thread, in the same week, people complain that they don't respond, right after they responded. What do you gain, anyway? "We're working on it" is about all they can say until they fix the problem, then they state what it was in the devblog/SPOTREPs/etc. They obviously have people working on it. They tell the community through SPOT/SITREPS about this constantly.

So... really, what do you all want exactly?

Also, just because you and your fellows keep posting 50x a day about your problems doesn't mean the devs are obligated to post a proportionate amount of times to respond. This may be their primary concern, but there are clearly also like 50 other things they need to spend time on. They can't keep everyone fully up to date on everything every week AND do their jobs.

[oldbear 390]

@ Windies : so you haven't answer the question !

We must know the settings of your game to help you ... and about quote, the "someone" was yourself.

But here I can see a hint :

How many times does someone need to say "I've tested with minimal settings and still experience performance issue's" before you get it in your head that it's an actual problem?

Some people are thinking that going for low settings will help improve their FPS, in fact if you are having a "good" GPU, this kind of move can be totally counter-productive.

As an example, if you set Shadows on "Low" thinking it will help, you are switching shadows rendering from GPU to CPU and it will not help getting better FPS rate.

On my low end Xperimental rig based upon Athlon II x2 250 after updating from GT450 to HD7770, I had better results -FPS wise- with higher settings, from "Standard" to "High".

I must also said that the game is quite playable in Single Player with such hardware and settings in the 20/30FPS range. I am neither "60FPS or death" syndrome nor "All 100% Full On" syndrome victim, I can enjoy what I am getting even if I said loudly that with a "minimum" specs build rig you are probably unable to play Multi-player.

I have done a small review on the subject you can have a look here : Arma3 'Minimum' specifications or ... is Arma 3 going to be playable on my Athlon II x2 250 / GTS 450 DDR3 ?

[TSAndrey 1]

Reviews from alpha/beta/early release and page count and complaint threads, awesome proof. The claim that "everyone's having issues" needs to be supported, by the way. That's how logic works. I don't have to support anything - I say it's not the case. Your side is arguing for something, provide evidence, solid evidence, not hand waving about thread posts and feedback votes. Hundreds of thousands of people bought this game, if just 0.5% have issues, it's going to spawn a 200-page thread if just 15% go on to whine about their issues on the forum. Obviously some have issues. They're vocal about it, understandably (though rarely constructively). Methinks you don't quite understand how that can skew your perspective of the actual preponderance of the issue...

So, if you go into MP, you will have the exact same FPS as in SP on all servers? No server ever lowers your FPS? You never get FPS drops? I find that hard to believe...

Also, 200 pages and a the most voted feedback ticket can't be shrugged off as a "minority". That's a very large percentage considering that's just 200 pages on this forum. Go look at the A3 community hub, reviews and etc. and you will see how many people are complaining about performance.

I don't see a reason for your sudden BI defence. None here is saying this game sucks or is insulting BI, people just want answers.

[CaptainObvious 95]

It may very well run great for you. It doesn't for others though and just because it runs "great" for you doesn't invalidate the claims or the complaints of others. That's the part you can't seem to grasp.

I've never said everyone's game is running fine, to me it seems the only one right now invalidating others' claims is you.

Also saying your rig is 3 years old and runs the game great is completely subjective and vague.

The rig is old, 3 years is next to eternity in computer hardware and that's not subjective, invalidate this:

Game settings:

Altis Benchmark by Helo, avg.FPS 47

Stratis Benchmark by Helo, avg.FPS 46

Hardware:

The game looks stunning and runs very well, even better in real playing situation where you're not flying all over the place at high speeds.

Now, I think I'm gonna go and enjoy a couple of sessions of smooth Arma goodness :yay:

[nikiforos 450]

I really don't get it why people that experience good performance try to prove all the people complaining wrong.

If you guys are happy with what you got then I'm happy for you but you should also try to accept that not everyone is happy.

[CaptainObvious 95]

I really don't get it why people that experience good performance try to prove all the people complaining wrong.

If you guys are happy with what you got then I'm happy for you but you should also try to accept that not everyone is happy.

Now this is an honest question, no laughing or pointing fingers or anything, what have you done to get the game running well and what hardware you have?

I ask because a friend of mine has somewhat similar system to mine, but his windows is filled with bloatware and overall his installs are a mess, no idea if he's ever cleaned the drivers for example when upgrading them, stuff like that, he doesn't get nearly as good performance as I do.

[xXxatrush1987 10]

Now this is an honest question, no laughing or pointing fingers or anything, what have you done to get the game running well and what hardware you have?

I ask because a friend of mine has somewhat similar system to mine, but his windows is filled with bloatware and overall his installs are a mess, no idea if he's ever cleaned the drivers for example when upgrading them, stuff like that, he doesn't get nearly as good performance as I do.

most of the people in this thread just missjudge bad multiplayer mission code with poor game performance. so they just complain hard to release stress i guess^^.

to everyone with poor singleplayer performance: i would help to disguise the bottlenecks or whatever breaks the game down(script bugs by bis in some of their missions, etc). but if you read all that bullshit here, people complaining about performance with hardware barely able to respond to the bios(but console port XY runs on ultra!!11!!*rage*) or playing usermissions by guys with great fantasy and ideas, but no single clue of scripting will make 80% of the posts.

lately i feared i would be on the complaining side, as i gave away my hd7970/hd7970ghz/r9 280x(depends on what bios i use)to a friend which gfx card struggles with X-Rebirth, and using my old gtx 560 again. but guess what: antialiasing and ssao tuned down/off and it just runs the same, even on my server with warfare and 47 other nerds, the gtx gives a constant 45-60fps.

now i really think most guys with performance probs are just as smart as my morning toast.

[MavericK96 0]

The rig is old, 3 years is next to eternity in computer hardware and that's not subjective, invalidate this:

:

You turned down or outright disabled quite a few settings to achieve that performance, though. If I wanted to turn everything way down, sure, I could squeeze out a bit more performance. As is, having to do that to even get 40-50 FPS is not really acceptable, IMO.

The real issue, and this has been the issue since ArmA 2 and before, is that not all of the CPU and GPU horsepower are being utilized. It has nothing to do with settings, it's an engine limitation/issue that has persisted.

[iceman77 18]

When you complain about the terrible performance, please include the scenarios (missions) where the issue is present. And not just a claim .. "all of them!!" as this would only validate that your rig is poorly optimized or has some other problem. IE; Are you playing Joe Smoes small coop / SP mission and this is happening? Or are you playing domination or wasteland? On what server? Is the servers .cfg set up properly for the given scenario? (how would you know?). What's your log files look like? Are they huge? Is the mission spamming your rpt with errors?

Also please include your video settings. I think it's a bunch of bullshit to lay all of the blame on BIS. It's funny, because I know exactly what servers / missions to stay away from so that they don't cause major performance issues on my computer. If i stay away from those, then all if fine and dandy. I can't expect to play a ginormous mission full of objects / Ai, that isn't optimized, and have great performance. That has nothing to do with BI.

Edited November 17, 2013 by Iceman77

[CaptainObvious 95]

You turned down or outright disabled quite a few settings to achieve that performance, though. If I wanted to turn everything way down, sure, I could squeeze out a bit more performance. As is, having to do that to even get 40-50 FPS is not really acceptable, IMO.

What the actual fuck? Of course I turn things down to gain fps, this is a pc game, ffs. :mad:

The game is hands down the best looking shooter on the market, even with my wow so much disable settings.

Geez!

The real issue, and this has been the issue since ArmA 2 and before, is that not all of the CPU and GPU horsepower are being utilized. It has nothing to do with settings, it's an engine limitation/issue that has persisted.

Read my posts again, especially #104 in this thread.

Over and out :icon_evil:

[MavericK96 0]

What the actual fuck? Of course I turn things down to gain fps, this is a pc game, ffs. :mad:

The game is hands down the best looking shooter on the market, even with my wow so much disable settings.

http://img2u.info/ckgni/i/gc2cd0ccf.jpg

Geez!

Whoa...settle down. Many of us have powerful rigs that we spent a lot of time and money on, and when we're getting like 50% or less utilization of that hardware, it's hard to accept having to turn down half the options just to get 40-50 FPS. That, to me, and apparently many others, is not "fine" performance. If you're happy with that, good for you, but don't come in here and claim that the game runs great and that performance hasn't declined for anyone.

What are your system specs, by the way? I never saw you post them. Hard to compare our performance to yours when we don't even know what you're running.

We'll have to agree to disagree about "best looking shooter on the market". It certainly does a lot more than any other shooter, but games like Metro and Crysis 3 are absolutely more graphically superior...it's not even a question. Don't get me wrong, ArmA 3 looks great, but we have to be honest with ourselves here.

Read my posts again, especially #104 in this thread.

Over and out :icon_evil:

Uhm...okay? So you admit there are performance and optimization/utilization issues, and then in the next breath it's "the game runs fine for me". I guess we have a different definition of "fine".

[CaptainObvious 95]

Whoa...settle down. Many of us have powerful rigs that we spent a lot of time and money on, and when we're getting like 50% or less utilization of that hardware, it's hard to accept having to turn down half the options just to get 40-50 FPS. That, to me, and apparently many others, is not "fine" performance. If you're happy with that, good for you, but don't come in here and claim that the game runs great and that performance hasn't declined for anyone.

What are your system specs, by the way? I never saw you post them. Hard to compare our performance to yours when we don't even know what you're running.

We'll have to agree to disagree about "best looking shooter on the market". It certainly does a lot more than any other shooter, but games like Metro and Crysis 3 are absolutely more graphically superior...it's not even a question. Don't get me wrong, ArmA 3 looks great, but we have to be honest with ourselves here.

I apologize the hostility, I've had a bad day.

You actually quoted the post with my hardware, here, and once again, I'm not saying Arma runs as good as it could(should), but I'm getting a feel that many of the people who have problems with it, either don't know how to properly maintain their system or have unrealistic expectations on how Arma should run in their machine, or both.

About visuals, Crysis and Metro sure are masterpieces of atmospheric scenes and take full advantage of their engines what comes to eye candy, yet Armas realism is the thing that pleases me most of the trio, it's just so real.

Although, when something explodes in Arma I tend to look the other way because yea, yuck.

Uhm...okay? So you admit there are performance and optimization/utilization issues, and then in the next breath it's "the game runs fine for me". I guess we have a different definition of "fine".

Well, the fact that Arma runs around 50fps with my setting sure surprised me, I would've never thought it'd run so good with a rig this old.

I define fine so that the game pleases my eyes and runs smooth enough to be able to aim and shoot properly.

[oldbear 390]

@ MavericK96 : be careful before turning down options, it can be totally counter-productive, as an example, if you are having "good enough" GPU, turning down shadows to "Low" thinking it will help, will only transfer shadows rendering on CPU, not a good move FPS wise.

Arma3, as previous Arma games are offering "impossible/crazy" settings such as : Quality "Ultra", Sampling "200%", Visibility "12 000m". The game is giving you some freedom with your settings, you must learn how to use them.

Having CPU not working @ 100% is not a proof that the game is not working well, as BIS has stated a long time ago, it will be easy for them to show you a higher usage with some routines, they have chosen to show you truth, of course, it's the hard way !

It is important not to lose the sights from the goal, which is the performance increase. All other things are secondary. One example of wrong metrics is a concurrency level. Concurrency level tells us how much are the additional cores used. This factor is very easy to measure (you can do it in default system task manager), and that is probably why many hard core end users and reviewers are interested about it. Often you can see phrases like "Game XXXX is using quad cores very well, because when you watch CPU usage in task manager, you see all cores are running 100 %". It is very easy to create a trivial program which will make "full use of all cores" - all you need to do it to spawn a few threads and make them spin in an infinite loop. Concurrency is not a goal, only a mean. It is required, but not sufficient. Real life scenarios are more intricated then idle loops, but the principle is the same: using CPU does not mean you get any benefit from using it. In many cases the overhead of going "threaded" is so high that even when two cores are running 100 %, the performance improvement is very small, say about 20 % from single core, and the difference between quad and dual is even smaller.

Source : http://www.bistudio.com/english/company/developers-blog/91-real-virtuality-going-multicore

On my now updated "minimum" specs "Athlon II x2 250/HD 7770/8 Go 1866/Dedicated Arma3 SSD 80Go" rig, in SP, the CPU load for the 2 cores is @ 80/90 % and for the GPU the load is @80/100%. My setting now are Quality "High", Visibility "2000m", AA&PP "Disabled". In Video Settings GUI : 30 FPS. Arma3Mark Altis benchmark score is in the 25/29 FPS range. I am playing SP missions/showcases/Campaign @20/30 FPS. Multi-Player seems still unplayable even after the update.

Here you can have a look at metrics taken during tests while I was playing the campaign before the update on "Athlon II x2 250/GTS450/4 Go 1600/Dedicated Arma3 SSD 80Go" rig.

On my main rig "i7 3770/GTX 670 OC/8 Go/ Dedicated Arma3 SSD 128Go", in SP, the CPU load is @ 55/85 on one core and @ 40/55 % on the 3 other ones, GPU load varies from 40% to 100%. My setting now are Quality "Ultra", Visibility "2000m", AA&PP Bloom&Blurs "Disabled" + "FSAA 2X & FXAA Ultra". In Video Settings GUI : 60 FPS. Arma3Mark Altis benchmark score is in the 43/48 FPS range. I am playing SP missions/showcases/Campaign @ 35/55 FPS. FPS rate in Multi-Player is in the 30/90 range when playing on our dedicated Clan server : 30 FPS being on a Coop mission on Altis, 90 FPS being on a CTF on Stratis.

I must tell you I enjoy playing Arma3, I spend hours playing missions I build on the fly on the editor. I spend hours building missions for my team and a lot of time playing with my team mates. Of course having start video gaming with Pong some years ago help me to enjoy what I have now :cool:

Edited November 18, 2013 by Old Bear