FPS worse after latest stable update - BIS seriously why_

[windies 11]

BI stating that better concurrency is not important is akin to the NSA saying they don't spy on the american public. Just because a company makes a statement in support of their status quo doesn't automatically make it true. Sure it's a bit of a half truth, performance per core is not linear by any means, but it doesn't mean that the RV engine takes advantage of those cores to the fullest capacity.

And to be clear, it's not an issue of load being at 100% across all cores, which for some reason everyone loves to assume that is what people mean, but rather it's about what each core is doing and how concurrent the operations are. 50-50-50-50% usage across all cores would be just as useful as 100-100-100-100% usage across all cores. The fact that load is so unbalanced across, EX. 70-30-25-20% load across 4 cores, simply shows that everything is stuffed into a primary thread on one core, with little bits and pieces threaded out into other cores which in all likelihood probably slows down the main thread even more.

If hardware usage means nothing in the grand scheme of "Performance" why does performance drop in concurrency with usage? Why does a server only using 20% of a core drop to 5 fps, but then a server at 50 fps uses 70% of a core?

Edited November 18, 2013 by Windies

[oldbear 390]

@ Windies : Ondřej Španěl has written this in November 2009, announcing that "Real Virtuality [engine was] Going Multicore", it's not a pro-domo statement made today!

[MavericK96 0]

Why is it, then, that a great deal of games will utilize 4+ cores at 100% (and run much better), if it "doesn't matter"? No offense to BIS, but I don't really buy that argument.

Again, not bashing on ArmA 3, I play regularly, but performance is nowhere near what it should be and we are still stuck with these issues from years past. I just want some confirmation that something is actively being done about it.

It just makes me sad, as a long-time BIS fan, to see this issue go unsolved.

[windies 11]

@ Windies : Ondřej Španěl has written this in November 2009, announcing that "Real Virtuality [engine was] Going Multicore", it's not a pro-domo statement made today!

Doesn't really matter when it was said, it's still a half truth statement that tries to shift the blame or fault of the engine away from a glaring issue in their engine which is the poor multithreading performance and concurrency by saying that it's irrelevant. BI is a business and you're a consumer, they're not gonna say "Hey our engine is crap and we have no idea how to fix it" if that actually is the case. What they will say is something along the lines of:

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.

and then hope the naive masses buy it rather than question them on it.

That whole statement is so stupid, it's like saying let's not lose sights on the goal, better fuel economy. Things like piston bore, fuel injection cycles and octane are all secondary. So we should focus on better fuel economy without focusing on HOW we get better fuel economy.

All we should focus on is the performance, not HOW we get that performance right?

You see what they did there? It's called smoke and mirrors. It's also stupid that they say other game engines only get good concurrency by running faux prime loops inside of their engine obviously to get good concurrency usage. "trivial program to run endless loops" = other game engines apparently in BI's eye's.

No really, it doesn't sound like anything is wrong when you read between the lines.... :rolleyes:

Edited November 18, 2013 by Windies

[dnk 13]

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...

From that post:

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).

To reiterate, there are MP issues. They need fixing, but this thread isn't clearly about MP-only issues as far as I can see (which isn't very far, given how opaque many of the complainers have been).

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.

It can be called a "minority" still of the entire customer base. Last I checked very, very few customers ever post in the forums, and obviously this is going to be titled towards those who have problems since, you know, people without issues don't typically sit around making threads and celebrating the fact they have "acceptable FPS".

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.

They are all over the forums since the alpha. Maybe I got this thread mixed up with others, but there's this animosity towards the devs/company that's completely uncalled for. Um, like the post above this one...

[windies 11]

NEWSFLASH: Calling someone out on their BS is now considered Animosity, more at 11.

Seriously, how is it animosity to point out the flaw in logic? That's the problem, the only way you can combat valid claims and valid criticism is to rage at them and try to act like it's some sort of conspiracy to destroy BI. If anyone is going to destroy BI, it will be BI themselves. They don't need any help from me nor would I be of any help in that endeavor. Change your name to DM Junior and get it over with.

[R0adki11 3945]

@all please keep things civil in this thread, otherwise punishments will be handed out.

[TSAndrey 1]

It can be called a "minority" still of the entire customer base. Last I checked very, very few customers ever post in the forums, and obviously this is going to be titled towards those who have problems since, you know, people without issues don't typically sit around making threads and celebrating the fact they have "acceptable FPS".

Obviously you don't expect every person with issues to go post about in the forums. If you look at the community hub, reviews, comments, videos, you will see a lot of complaints about performance (especially MP)

[R0adki11 3945]

Obviously you don't expect every person with issues to go post about in the forums. If you look at the community hub, reviews, comments, videos, you will see a lot of complaints about performance (especially MP)

Personally in my experience i have never found any issue with MP. Last night i was getting 60 FPS in a MP mission with 10 vs 10. Perfectly playable and no issues, vehicles and all sorts of weapons were been used.

[oldbear 390]

From my own experience, I have found some issues with MP but no more now than before latest stable update !

Speaking about Multi-players issues, I will quote myself :

Some of the issues are related to the game itself :

- because of the very special way it manages MP, not being in the current "client/server" scheme (making you loose 5/10 FPS)

- some weird issues [cause unknown] causing FPS loss*

Some of the issues are related to the server you are playing on :

- playing on a professional hosted/well managed server will be OK

- playing on a makeshift server made by a guy on an old PC will be a FPS black hole.

Some of the issues are related to the missions you are playing on the server :

- a well build mission, using well engineered scripts and features will run smoothly

- a incompetent hand tweaked mission with crappy scripts will be crap!

*On this point, you can get a look at my small review about Arma3 'Minimum' specifications or… is Arma 3 going to be playable on my Athlon II x2 250 / GTS 450 DDR3 ? : "At the moment, it's not possible to play in MultiPlayer with such a config. But the weirdest thing is that I have been getting lower visual quality ingame and at the same time a very low GPU load (around 30% for the test on the 1st server and around 50% for the test on the 2nd one.)"

[MavericK96 0]

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.

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.

Fair enough. :) Seeing your specs, though, it all makes sense...I am willing to bet that the sole reason you are getting that framerate is due to that fact that you are overclocked to 4.7 Ghz, which is not easily achievable for most processors. Because ArmA uses multicore/multithreading so poorly, having a massive clock speed like that is the only thing that actually improves performance. However, as I said, that's not really doable for a lot of us. The industry is going towards more cores rather than faster clock speeds, and as such so have most other game developers. ArmA is getting left in the dust in this respect...that's kind of where I'm coming from.

I personally don't think it's unrealistic to run ArmA 3 at 60 FPS with high/ultra settings (VD at a reasonable level of course) on a high-end machine, if in fact multicore utilization was better.

For instance, I tend to run at 1920x1080, most things Very High or Ultra but things like Terrain and (I believe) Objects turned down, at around 3000 VD/2000 Object VD. I regularly get dips into the low 20s in MP missions with only 10-12 people, and really not a ton of AI. Turning down settings (other than making VD ridiculously low, like 1000 or less) has any real effect on performance. I can have AA maxed, everything on Ultra, and I will get the same performance as with everything on Low and no AA. That, to me, indicates a large problem with the engine. Even in ArmA 2, with clearly inferior graphics, I get the same issues - low performance, low CPU/GPU utilization for no real reason, and extremely poor core load balancing (75% load on first core, 25% or less on other cores). And this is at almost 4 GHz, which a lot of people aren't even running. My processor is also fairly dated, but I am able to max out games like Metro: LL and Crysis 3 and get better performance than ArmA 3, because those games are utilizing all of my cores 100% as well as my GPU.

Edited November 18, 2013 by MavericK96

[dnk 13]

To Mister Andry, I can only say that my point on that matter has been made by now as well as can be made.

Do note my tone herein to be one of civility and pleasantness, after a quite delectable dinner of turkey and bacon.

NEWSFLASH: Calling someone out on their BS is now considered Animosity, more at 11.

Seriously, how is it animosity to point out the flaw in logic?

I will hold up the mirror only...

"Hey our engine is crap"

"naive masses"

"That whole statement is so stupid"

"It's also stupid"

I'm not sure what to call this other than "animosity", by the definition of:

.......ill will or resentment tending toward active hostility : an antagonistic attitude

And I do not see, nor have ever claimed, a "conspiracy to destroy BI". What I do see are many individuals acting similarly, out of their own flawed reasoning and expectations.

[nikiforos 450]

New patch update - Same or slightly worse performance ... Excellent BIS:beeeers:

Maybe they will optimize sometime in the near "future"

Edited November 20, 2013 by Nikiforos

[nicolasroger 11]

I didn't saw any degradation of performance at all. No noticeable gain in FPS too. I just don't see where the problem is right now?

This patch is great.

[nikiforos 450]

Well I said same or slightly worse performance . Altis benchmark gives me 2 fps less than before.

[MavericK96 0]

I gotta say, I like that Steam makes it easier, but I miss the old way of doing beta patches...at least then, you could switch between betas for benchmarking/testing purposes. As is, unless you extensively test the build essentially every day, the next day performance could change drastically and you wouldn't be able to go back and verify your findings against the previous build.

[oldbear 390]

Since last stable release, no change playing on my main rig but getting "micro freezes" on my low end one.

[nikiforos 450]

I can also confirm the micro freezes that you mentioned. Same performance though as before.

[ramius86 13]

On stratis my gpus are working over 90% , almost 98-99% both. On altis 40-50% both. Dont know exactly if this or previo is update but now on stratis ( dont play this much ) I got more than 100 fps with all video settings at max, altis always 30-40 max . Before on stratis ( dont know if 1.04 or this ) I was around 60-70 fps. Not bad

[nabbl 10]

No real difference on Altis...

Couldn't test Stratis though.

[nikiforos 450]

What a joke BIS , I get worse performance with the latest patch. Instead of improving and optimizing the game it get worse.

[krazikilla 5]

What a joke BIS , I get worse performance with the latest patch. Instead of improving and optimizing the game it get worse.

Same.

Since the last patch it got pretty unplayable for me. With todays patch it got unplayable :)

[2fast4u 10]

After todays patch fps slightly increased for me, even in multiplayer ;]

[Dwarden 1124]

not all performance changes are in stable yet, some are only in 1.09 DEV branch

+ new performance 1.08 server binary is already used on our stress test servers and by quite some admins ...

so if you have blazing FPS on those servers you can blame me later

[Drakenof 11]

Terrible performance, like always. With this patch or another.

I wonder how people with 3K$ computers feel when this game runs like shit no matter what they do.

War simulator, they said. It's funny, since the most you can simulate out of this game, without ending at 23 FPS, is 30v30 skirmishes. In multiplayer. With a good server, of course, otherwise it's even worse.

Sometimes i feel scammed with A3 but then i realize that BI, just like me, don't really know what they're doing. And i just end up laughing in despair.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Drakenof