AMD CPUs aren't doing well in ArmA 3

[Justin_Smith 10]

Hello, I was wanting to know why ArmA 3 only lags in multi-player with only AMD CPUs? I got a AMD Athlon II X4 640 3.0Ghz processor which is quite near the recommended AMD Processor that has been listed on the system requirements. Single-player runs about 40 - 60 FPS for me but just in multi-player games even when I'm in my own created session I get terrible frames like 15 - 17 FPS to be exact. It really would be great if there was a patch to at-least give AMD CPU users more frames in Multi-player or at-least a detailed guide from Bohemia why AMD CPUs seem to lag the most in Multiplayer games. That is all that I'm really wishing for to be fixed for ArmA 3, everything else is good. I really would hate to save money that I have trouble getting by to just to upgrade to an Intel set-up, please think about the people such as myself Bohemia and help us out and not let us spend money when we can't simply afford to. Also to the Intel Fans, no need for the future hostility. I'm simply begging for Bohemia's help in improving my overall gaming experience in ArmA 3. I also want to add to this post is that I'm a full time admin on a ArmA 3 server and hopping on the server to keep watch is really tough dealing with 15 - 17 FPS to play with, I would like to see you try to admin a server with 15 - 17 FPS. All I'm really asking for is at-least like another 10 - 15+ FPS from somewhere.

Thank you for taking your time reading my post, hopefully it reaches to you Bohemia Interactive.

Also my System Specs if you're curious:

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 640 3.0Ghz O/Ced to 3.6Ghz

VIDEO: MSI Gaming 2GB GTX 760

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1066 O/Ced to 1333

HDD: Western Digital Blue 250GB

O/S: Windows 7 64-Bit

3dMark Score:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7941901

What I've Tested by Far:

Made a simple mission in editor where I just place stuff on the map

- I put about 10 squads on the map, no FPS drops far from player.

- Put a generous amount of vehicles near player, no FPS drops.

- Put 10 squads by player, FPS drops by a-lot(So somewhere in that is causing lag, I did try setting texture quality to the lowest no increase in FPS).

Edited February 26, 2014 by Justin_Smith

[Maxon 1]

Ok, step by step.

- forget the minimum requirments. that means for me just (with that setup you can start the game, but not play).

- About IPC performance of your CPU (it is very bad = similar to the old Q6600 CPU from Intel #2007)

- Your memory can be an additional reason for performance problems (but not the only one). If possible, enter the bios, check the RAM settings, if possible switch to "ganged mode". My System 2 has with another memory and ganged mode a performance gain of 9% (5% with unganged mode).

- This are a few things you can try, but at least is to say, this cpu will never deliver stable FPS in Mutliplayer. Sorry to say it so hard, but it´s the truth.

And generally you can´t say AMD will not work very good with ARMA. ARMA needs IPC. Intel is in this Topic in Lead, but i can say that my System 2 (Piledriver architecture) will work good enough with ARMA

Edited February 26, 2014 by Maxon

[Justin_Smith 10]

Ok, step by step.

- forget the minimum requirments. that means for me just (with that setup you can start the game, but not play).

- About IPC performance of your CPU (it is very bad = similar to the old Q6600 CPU from Intel #2007)

- Your memory can be an additional reason for performance problems (but not the only one). If possible, enter the bios, check the RAM settings, if possible switch to "ganged mode". My System 2 has with another memory and ganged mode a performance gain of 9% (5% with unganged mode).

- This are a few things you can try, but at least is to say, this cpu will never deliver stable FPS in Mutliplayer. Sorry to say it so hard, but it´s the truth.

And generally you can´t say AMD will not work very good with ARMA. ARMA needs IPC. Intel is in this Topic in Lead, but i can say that my System 2 (Piledriver architecture) will work good enough with ARMA

I'm going to run some tests and see if I can find the problem and if I do I'll report what I find to Bohemia. Been doing a baseline test and my FPS in a plain free-roam based mission I get about 40 - 50 on Altis. Been spawning a bunch of AI Groups on the map that isn't near me I get 40 - 50 but when I am close to the spawned in AI Groups it drops quite a bit to around 20 - 25. I'm starting to think it has something to do with the character models. There might be some bugs with the multi-player code which I've been trying to see if I can track down what's causing the lag. Hopefully soon I'll do a test with a bunch of players in a private server on just an ordinary plain free-roam mission to see where my FPS is and then do another test with a bunch of AI with the same amount of players see what my FPS is at so at-least this way I can sort of tell where the problem is coming from. Hopefully I'll get results and anything that I find I'll report them, and hopefully Bohemia studios can find a way to fix it or at-least squeeze a bit more FPS out for us.

[Maxon 1]

I think the FPS are high wenn AI ist no in view because they will just go their waypoint or stay in the landscape.

but when they have detect you they interact with you as the player. and this will be more CPU intensive as doing their things.

[oldbear 390]

I have done some tests on my own "Athlon II x2 250/GTS 450" rig, you can find them here, Arma3 'Minimum' specifications or ... is Arma 3 going to be playable on my Athlon II x2 250 / GTS 450 DDR3 ?

I am active on some French forums with a lot of young guys on a budget, very often wanting to play on unplayable rigs, so the idea was to find means to get access to Arma at the lowest price.

My intend was to do a second part after I have stopped the test after 'Adapt' the 2nd campaign episode release. I had to play on "Low" with 1000 m visibility and I must say that I have been unable to leave the beach because most of the time I was more "pixel guessing" than playing. I had to stop due to headache.

I had switched to HD 7770 on "High" so I can differentiate Green guys from grass clutters, but get other problems just afterward due to CPU bottlenecking, now and then the game just freeze.

I had switched back to the original "Athlon II x2 250 / GTS 450 DDR3" and well, all I can say is that the game is running and is more or less playable but not enjoyable on Altis in single player.

Having reports of bad experiences from forum users with AMD FX 4100 BE or AMD Athlon X4 750K seems to confirm what was shown on Hardware.fr article Intel Core i7-4770K et i5-4670K : Haswell en test -> http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/41/IMG0041507.png about CPU hierarchy Arma3 wise.

There are many factors impacting CPU performances in Arma3 such as memory bandwith, CPU cache etc, but what can be seen is that Intel CPUs are performing better and are the best tools for the task.

Being quite frustrated test wise and always looking for the lowest price , I had built on the fly an "i3 4130/HD 7770/8 Go/256 Go SSD" experimental rig and I must tell you I am quite impressed.

[AlphaObeisance 11]

I seem to run fine until I'm in a server with more than 8 people, then it starts lagging until I get out of a populated area, usually the base. And that's just on missions like I&A. If we do a custom mission, I usually pull a steady 20-25fps. Not bad for dis lil laptop. Enough to enjoy the experience, but still not as hot as playing on my buddies PC.

I'm running BOTTOM of the line hardware. A $420 laptop.

K55 Asus Laptop

AMD A8-4500M APU w/ Radeon HD GFX 1.90GHz

6gb RAM (5.46 usable)

64bit OS Windows 8

[chrisb 196]

I did this test in Alpha last year on my old A2pc: Athlon IIx 4 640 with a 2gb HD5850 gpu. Try the test with the same settings, for a direct comparison cpu wise.

Card wise, yours should be a lot better really 'here', so go compare, as they say.

Allow for recording drop on msi @75% quality, details in vid..

:)

I don't play A3 much, just test here and there now (editor), but the performance has increased slightly if anything from the test above, not by much but a few fps.

[Justin_Smith 10]

I did this test in Alpha last year on my old A2pc: Athlon IIx 4 640 with a 2gb HD5850 gpu. Try the test with the same settings, for a direct comparison cpu wise.

Card wise, yours should be a lot better really 'here', so go compare, as they say.

Allow for recording drop on msi @75% quality, details in vid..

:)

I don't play A3 much, just test here and there now (editor), but the performance has increased slightly if anything from the test above, not by much but a few fps.

Yea, I don't quite get what's going on mainly, I've been in search of a way to optimize our MP experience. I do notice as well that my GPU in MP is at 30 - 50% and don't know why that is. I'm going to see if I can gather up a-lot of my friends at my community and do some series of tests and see what the results are and post them on here what I've tested and also report what I find to Bohemia, I don't know for sure if it's something to do with the missions or if it's something to do with Bohemia's well known engine. By far what I have done so far as for optimization is I added -noCB to the startup parameter it seems like I got a bit of a performance gain from it you guys might want to try it out to see. Also make sure everything in your nVidia or ATI control panel is set to where they need to be for the game and no power saving mode or anything such as that will kill your performance.

[oldbear 390]

I believe that the -noCB startup parameter usage is counter-productive. It was created to "Turns off multicore use. It slows down rendering but may resolve visual glitches."

From my own test, I had noted that Arma3 is using 2 cores on the Athlon II x2 using both core up to 100% then bottlenecking, I had also noted 2 Cores/4 Threads usage on i3-4130 up to 85% on one thread and more than 70% CPU usage.

So as Arma3 is clearly using 2 cores and more, I can't clearly understand how using only one core can improve performances.

[Justin_Smith 10]

I believe that the -noCB startup parameter usage is counter-productive. It was created to "Turns off multicore use. It slows down rendering but may resolve visual glitches."

From my own test, I had noted that Arma3 is using 2 cores on the Athlon II x2 using both core up to 100% then bottlenecking, I had also noted 2 Cores/4 Threads usage on i3-4130 up to 85% on one thread and more than 70% CPU usage.

So as Arma3 is clearly using 2 cores and more, I can't clearly understand how using only one core can improve performances.

I'm trying all options at the moment, see what does what as I do notice -noCB doesn't really do much with performance increase as I later found out. I do notice that it did slow down the rendering as it said it does. I really do hope that Bohemia comes out with a patch of some sort to give some more FPS. I really do enjoy playing ArmA and all but I just can't play it with the low FPS in multiplayer but I do fine in Single player so I don't mind playing campaign for the time being. Hopefully with my experimentation that I do on multiplayer with a group of friends and see if I can find the source. As for CPU usage my CPU does spike up to 60% at times. But I do notice one thing about GPU usage, it never uses the full GPU Usage in multiplayer and I wonder if that is normal. GPU Usage in mulitplayer is at 30% and in Single player it'll reach up to 80% so I don't know what's causing it use less GPU usage in multiplayer.

[mamasan8 11]

Yea, I don't quite get what's going on mainly, I've been in search of a way to optimize our MP experience. I do notice as well that my GPU in MP is at 30 - 50% and don't know why that is. I'm going to see if I can gather up a-lot of my friends at my community and do some series of tests and see what the results are and post them on here what I've tested and also report what I find to Bohemia, I don't know for sure if it's something to do with the missions or if it's something to do with Bohemia's well known engine. By far what I have done so far as for optimization is I added -noCB to the startup parameter it seems like I got a bit of a performance gain from it you guys might want to try it out to see. Also make sure everything in your nVidia or ATI control panel is set to where they need to be for the game and no power saving mode or anything such as that will kill your performance.

30-50% GPU in MP is quite normal, at least in my case. I can turn the sampling(first page in Video settings, think its topmost option) up to 120%-200% if I want to see higher utilization. I might loose 1-2 FPS at 200% but it is also supposed to make the game look better (and it does) but I usually use 120%. Simply because it has no downside. I want every FPS possible while the game should look good as well. If I'm attacking a town, I want to see the town (Visual distance 1000m is not enough for me, not even as infantry, so I run it at 2000m ). That 200% utilizes my 7870 to the max. I haven't tried it in SP since I rarely play singleplayer.

[Duke-Hrodberht 10]

I have an AMD athlon II 620 quad core and finally after your post I now know why Arma 3 suffers from disgusting performance issues in MP and suffers repeated crashes. I have been tweaking and mucking about with the settings for a full year because Bohemia Interactive has stayed silent on this issue as far as I can tell. The game for me is one big demo. It teases you with a look at what could be if you go out and buy a new pc.

Single player – silky smooth and full graphics ( add 20-30 enemy AI on editor and performance issues show up)

MP – Sandbox (Stratis) tested on 100 player server (no or minimal AI) - Silky smooth full graphics but occasional 2-3 second freeze

MP – Sandbox (Altis) Silky smooth most of time but the 2-3 second freeze becomes total and results in CTD after 20-30 minutes unhindered gameplay.

MP – Coop missions. Invade and Annex Server (Altis) – 15 fps until more than 15 players join the server then drops 2-6 fps. – Unplayable. Graphic settings are irrelevant and have no effect.

WARNING

This game cannot be played in multiplayer on Altis map if you have a 32bit system and an AMD processor unless there are less than 15 people on at one time. Effectively Altis map on MP is off limits for those unlucky enough to be in our category.

[jandrews 116]

Before my new build I used an AMD 4core oc'd to 2.9, although it is an older CPU, I feel my real problem was the RAM I used. DDR2 is more slow than DDR3. Even though it was 8 gb of RAM at best I got 20-30 fps online and in really busy areas 10-15, NOW

my new shiny i7 4950 with 32 gb DDR3 with 2 GTX 780s SLI'd get no less then 50-60 fps in king of the hill game mode, BUT I do get lag and slow downs related to the server connection. SO IMO older cores may not do well even though I had min specs due to a few things, internet connection, COOP missions with tons of AI, other player connections and older hardware. Its a combo issue, but sometimes I think people confuse their fps issues when its more server / internet connection.

[oldbear 390]

@ Duke-Hrodberht : now with last MP improvements I can play MP on Altis with my "Athlon II x2 250/GTS 450" rig, of course it's on low FPS range and "Low" graphics settings but nevertheless playable. I am on Windows 7 64bits and 8 Go 1600.

The only effective way to overcome the issues on Altis while playing an AMD cpu with a 4Go/32bits system is to switch to the "8 Go/64bits system" combo.

But before spending your money, you can get a look at this post from dazhbog, BI Developer, "... we have changed memory limits on 32bit OS to improve Altis performance ..."

I have also made a short attempt with faster RAM (1866 MHz), it seems to bring also some more frames but in quantity so small that it was lost in Benchmark results variations.

I am saying, it's now playable because after having made too many attempts trying to play Campaign 2nd part, I had stop making test on this rig and played on my usual PC. From my point of view something was wrong if I was unable to play the game in MP or in SP Campaign with a "Minimal" requirements compliant PC, but now, it's no more the case.

But back to the thread topic "AMD CPUs aren't doing well in ArmA 3". Now after discussing this subject on many forums, my main hunting ground being French JV.com Arma3 Forums, I know that's true, these CPUs are not well fitted for Arma3 job.

[spanishsurfer 58]

I have an AMD 8350 and the game runs at 45-50 fps single player and 30-40fps multiplayer.

[Duke-Hrodberht 10]

The sound in Arma 3 kills my poor CPU. Yesterday I download the antistasi SP campaign. It runs brilliant until a 40-50 man battle starts up at base. I’m firing from a guard tower, 25 men are firing into the compound and 25 men are returning fire, some are inside buildings and some outside and the sheer amount of (is it scripts?) fries the dam thing. I’ve also noticed that the CTD I experience on servers is often accompanied by me zooming in on something whilst sound scripts are being processed, especially large explosions. I have read this on numerous posts that big explosions are not very well done and are causing system instability.

So my conclusions are – My CPU hates the sound scripts more than anything. It can run the game brilliantly until lots of gunfire and big explosions. Is there anything I can do additionally to help my situation?

I am removing my sound mods and setting audio samples to 16 or 24 from 128.

I read a post on Steam http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=228562734

“Also you can change your sample rate in windows (I use now 16 bit and 96000 Hz) if you have issues with soundâ€

Would this help my CPU sound related issues?

Thanks for the input and yes I do believe its time for me to upgrade to 64 bit. I’m using the slowest RAM, an old HD, the worst processor and a mediocre GPU (GTX 650) I know my system is limited but the really annoying thing is I’m getting 30+fps in 90% of situations on the game.