Improve ArmA 3 performance with a low freq. cpu

[miketim 20]

Hey everyone.

I get like ok performance on ArmA 3, but its getting to the point where I just want better frames already and I am hoping to get new computer parts but don't have the money.

Specs:

AMD Phenom II x6 ~2.9 ghz

Gtx 560 ti 2gb edition (normal load clock around 850 or so)

8gb of some ram that is good enough

And a regular hard drive, no SSD or somthing

Using Fred41's Tbb_malloc.dll memory allocator.

Adjusted my maxframes from 1 to 10,000 as suggested in some forum for shit cpus, somthing felt off and somthing was odd so I changed it back, but it did have a few more fps performance , around 5+ more fps.

I have tried overclocking my cpu to 4 ghz with some guide once, didn't work

I am thinking that OCing my cpu would siginificantly help performance, but I don't know, most people here have these beast cpus and their gpu isnt working enough

my gpu works like hell on this game, sometimes 99% like crysis, so I assume gpu utilization is not a issue

[IT07 10]

All I can give you is a little advice: do not expect too much out of those tweaks even though they sound promising.

You will come to a point where your ArmA 3 just will not perform better even if you push your pc to the limit.

And example is my own PC: I have an i7-4770K, Asus Maximus Formula VI, GTX670 4Gb, 16Gb DDR3-1600 and very quick ssd. And frames in cities still suck. Especially in MP.

That is with all of the bullshit graphics turned off.....

[miketim 20]

Yeah, I was expecting as much.

Well, maybe someone can point me to a functioning tutorial as to how to oc my cpu, since I can't buy a new one for years.

Thanks for respoding.

[Polymath820 11]

Drop your Object render complexity to 100,000 vertices / objects or tweak this artificially, then read-lock it. I've set my object complexity to 100,000 seems like the only thing you can do without overloading your GPU. Then you can go crazy with setting up Textures etc. Object and vertice complexity also known as "object quality" Ultra is 1,000,000 objects in the scene and render further ahead of the player, which results in more CPU / GPU load. Although you will experience "pop-in" it is the only real way to avoid overloading the system. Your GTX 560 TI with it's 256bit memory interface has almost double the bandwidth mine has 128GB/s vs 80Gb/s but I've done some considerable messing around even attempted to use Positive Texture Biasing. Adds more aliasing but you can compensate etc for it.

Also your 100% usage isn't true 100% thats telling you about the single compute engine DirectCompute. Is doing your video-card like mine has about 12 computing engines. Often ArmA 3 will hammer the hell out of engine 0 or 1. To get a better picture of what your GPU is really doing download and run http://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Top of the interface you will see 5 histogram traces click them goto the GPU tab goto GPU and tick all "measure compute engines" You'll notice which engines are active and which are not.

But my advice:

Overclock the GPU first your AMD's CPU has the raw clock speed needed to run that GPU at higher clock rates.These parameters on the GPU, the memory clock and the gpu-shader clock. The memory clock quite often predicts performance overall. Your video-card at 1110Mhz or 950Mhz If your memory can pump the data fast enough then the clock speed of the GPU does not matter because the GPU doesn't just have a single core. It has multiple cores running at those frequencies I believe the relationship is if your memory can pump-out more data then the GPU will assign more data to each of the cores. Thereby increasing the GPU's overall usage. See I have a GTX 650 OC 2GB now the GPU shader clock itself is at 1110Mhz but the memory bandwidth just isn't there. In your instance overclocking the GPU should have quite a large effect due to the wider memory bitwidth interface.

Additionally: If you are going to overclock your CPU overclock a "single core" Due to ArmA 3 running on 1 core / 1 thread the main thread is what matters the most and ArmA 3 benefits from a raw clock speed on a single core, and any sub-threads won't be waiting for the main thread while the other assigned threads on the cores don't jump ahead.

Overclock a single core and allow dynamic processor clock on the rest of the cores but not at the same clock speed as the primary single thread core.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thg-graphics-card-buyers-guide,915-8.html

Myths:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-myths,3694-5.html

"Overclocking always yields performance benefits":

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-myths,3694-9.html

Edited June 10, 2014 by Polymath820
Overclocking Advice

[miketim 20]

Ok. I can try this stuff, but I hope you understand I have absolutely no problems as far as I can see with GPU usage.

You seemed to think I did?

Also, I didn't think arma runs on only one core, obviously its not optimized but, one core?

Didn't realize you can OC a single core, not even sure how to do that.

My BIOS dont seem to reference individual cores at all.

Also, "raw clock speed"

My CPU has a pretty crappy clock speed, but are you implying that it isnt my bottleneck? I really seemed to think it was, but I guess a good bit of my arma is "fps lag" ie: graphics rendering as opposed to like ram making choppyness or HDD loading slowly or somthing

Edit: Realized what you meant about some of the gpu stuff, if this doesnt make sense

Edit 2:

How do you

drop your render to complexity100,000 vertices

Is that the 3dperformance option in the config? (remember it helped in arma 2 but I forget if its the same thing or what)

Recently before today , I had dropped my gfx settings down like so:

Terrain quality: High--> Standard

Shadow Quality: High--> Standard

Disabled bloom ( No effect I really think)

Tried swtiching the low SBAO (I Think sorry might be forggeting that name)

Some type of SSAO ^ ?

Edited June 10, 2014 by MikeTim

[Polymath820 11]

Ok. I can try this stuff, but I hope you understand I have absolutely no problems as far as I can see with GPU usage.

You seemed to think I did?

Also, I didn't think arma runs on only one core, obviously its not optimized but, one core?

Didn't realize you can OC a single core, not even sure how to do that.

My BIOS dont seem to reference individual cores at all.

Also, "raw clock speed"

My CPU has a pretty crappy clock speed, but are you implying that it isnt my bottleneck? I really seemed to think it was, but I guess a good bit of my arma is "fps lag" ie: graphics rendering as opposed to like ram making choppyness or HDD loading slowly or somthing

Edit: Realized what you meant about some of the gpu stuff, if this doesnt make sense

Edit 2:

How do you

Is that the 3dperformance option in the config? (remember it helped in arma 2 but I forget if its the same thing or what)

Recently before today , I had dropped my gfx settings down like so:

Terrain quality: High--> Standard

Shadow Quality: High--> Standard

Disabled bloom ( No effect I really think)

Tried swtiching the low SBAO (I Think sorry might be forggeting that name)

Some type of SSAO ^ ?

HBAO it's a GPU based ambient occlusion shader, but in reality it doesn't mean much. All it does is "approximate light bouncing" and softens shadows and surfaces occluded from the light. I still need you to do a trace of each GPU engines. Your GPU is more than sufficient for your CPU but again a GPU usage trace using windows sysinternals will give me a better idea of whats happening also if you can give a CPU trace if your CPU is hovering at around 40 - 60% while playing

it is safe to say your GPU could be pushed further. Although if your GPU is at 100% on a single "compute engine" this is the divisions of processing cores on the die, then the bottleneck lays somewhere else. Namely it could be not your GPU but the memory clock or the bitwidth interface. The bitwidth and memory bandwidth are primary determiners for performance. Let me give you a bit more indepth. The GPU is running at 100% on Engine 0 the reason for that is because Engine 0 only has enough work from the memory to work on engine 0 if there was more work, the other core compute engines would start to see usage. Get the picture?

Object Quality is the one you want set it to "Low" in the ArmA3.cfg found in your "Documents" -> "Other Profiles" in your other profiles it will be "Name.ArmA3.cfg" whatever it's name is you can manually drop ArmA 3's "SceneComplexity" to 100,000 objects and read lock it by right clicking on it and clicking the "tick box" "read only" beware after this any changes you make to that account will only show through after you "un read lock it"

ArmA 3 is multi-threaded but all if not every video-game is "by technical standards" is single threaded. ArmA 3 runs it's main thread on the highest clock core. Then runs the other sub-threads on the other cores. if the main thread starts to be bogged down for example with too much work AI processing, view distance etc. the sub-threads which are the texture rendering, geometry and file-ops will have to come down to the speed of the slowest core. This results in frame-rate drops.

Overclocking a single core is quite simple you need a utility that allows you to control the FTG bus multiplier this is what your CPU clock is based on the FTG generates a frequency clock at the CMOS of 4.768Mhz to keep basic system time this is then sent to the FTG(Frequency Timing generator) to the bus multiplier the bus multiplier of say for your 2.9Ghz AMD 29.0 * 100Mhz = 2.9Ghz you can hopefully with your motherboard's overclocking software change this multiplier. from 29.0* to 38.0* or even 40.0* but beware constant overclocks that are running at high frequencies constantly result in more heat build up and shorten the life of components on the motherboard and in the CPU. Also you require to adjust the voltage of the CPU in small increments, the CPU at higher clock speeds requires more voltage to run at higher clock speeds, I recemmend stepping the voltage up if you get a BSOD by 0.001 - 0.005volts till you get a stable system. DO NOT go over the thermal IHS threshold. Which for you is 62*C

An additional question do you have DDR2 or DDR3 running? If you are running DDR2 are you able to get the BIOS update that allows 1333Mhz DDR3 ?

Edited June 11, 2014 by Polymath820

[xtrimiles 10]

I'm getting shitty frames to. from 7 to 20 whenever in a firefight or inside a town. This is whenever we run missions in Altis. We have about 20-30 people in a server. And using ALiVE, so meaning every town already have enemies/civilians/objects. But recently we decreased the objects so I had a stable 20-30 fps. I only have Intel Core i5-4200U and GT 740M. Yes, I'm using a non gaming laptop. BUT, when we tried a joint operation in Clafghan, a map addon. I had a stable 30-60 fps with 50-70 people inside the server and still using ALiVE. My point? 1st. Multiplayer Servers sometimes drop/kill/f*ck your fps

2nd. Map Objects sometimes or really drop/kill/f*ck your fps

Opinion, try using Clafghan :D Or tweak with your video settings

I used Razer Game Booster, some say they don't work. Well I say they do, I had a max 20 fps when I'm not using Razer, but when I started using it, I had max 30 fps

[jumpinghubert 49]

@MikeTim

whats your object distance and view distance?

[miketim 20]

View distance, something like 2500 more or less

Object distance about 1000-1100

I do feel like I would really like to keep the viewdistance up, I really cant stand too much popping and such, terrain detail "medium" or "normal" is a little annoying in terms of grass popup, but I can handle it I guess :(

Yeah I do use arma 2 maps, I get great fps on stuff like torabora and overall those are better, but my big problem is Altis, it really does lag a good bit sometimes, I feel like my FPS on there is always like consistently 5 or 10 fps lower than I would really like.

If you guys need more info ask me

Also, on clafghan I get problems sometimes with the black waterline lake glitches, do you know how to fix it lol

Also, ALIVE totally dips fps (not just for me) sometimes, trust me I have seen the difference, alive can drop fps by 20 in some mp servers (not clientside fps, the server one)

I am mostly talking about fps when doing coop with my 2-4 buds right off of the start new server option in the server browser, I don run a real dedicated one, I use some hamachi one but idk how to use it without hamachi, I guess using internet correctly would help the FPS on my coop game?

---------- Post added at 14:01 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------

@polymath

Why should I drop object quality to low, then i'm pretty sure it renders stuff at a 300 m distance in some shitty way and I can barley see the windows on buildings, stuff like entire bunkers can suddenly appear on those quality settings and I honestly dislike it.

I am running DDR3 ram, and my memory is already at that frequency I am pretty sure.

[xtrimiles 10]

Yeah I do use arma 2 maps, I get great fps on stuff like torabora and overall those are better, but my big problem is Altis, it really does lag a good bit sometimes, I feel like my FPS on there is always like consistently 5 or 10 fps lower than I would really like.

If you guys need more info ask me

Also, on clafghan I get problems sometimes with the black waterline lake glitches, do you know how to fix it lol

Also, ALIVE totally dips fps (not just for me) sometimes, trust me I have seen the difference, alive can drop fps by 20 in some mp servers (not clientside fps, the server one)

Advice, DO NOT USE ALTIS ANYMORE! Lol

Anyways, I don't know what you mean by the black waterline, I think it's with your video settings

[miketim 20]

No. black waterline is not somthing that has anything to do with my video settings.

Its a glitch, from using certain arma 2 maps in arma 3, that have ponds in them, the ponds have a rendering glitch when used in arma 3 that fills the whole screen with a big 3d artifact that has the pond textures on it, it only happens when the game renders more than one pond object at a time, that is unrelated but I will drop the link

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15579

Anyway, I get that I should't use altis yeah, but I kind of would like to use it. It is, after all, the default map for this game and it would be pretty shitty if I cannot use it.

It is not totally unplayable, its just annoying to use at all in cities, so I don't bother.

[Polymath820 11]

Again MikeTim try overclocking a single core and get back to me overclock Core 0 which on your AMD are number cores 0 - 5 overclock number 0.

More details would be helpful I need that Video-card trace.. I need a CPU trace.

e.g Core usage window sysinternals process explorer will give me that.

There is a way around your possible memory bandwidth issue. get a Hyper-Transport cable http://www.hypertransport.org/default.cfm?page=HTConnectorsAndCables Basically it makes the system talk through the HT-bus to the bridge (south and north) with much higher bit-rate but lower bit-width Which "in thoery" over-comes the limitations of an FSB running at 64bit-width.

http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/processors/desktop/phenom-ii#

All I can say is there is a bottleneck somewhere but without proper diagnostics I can't help very much.

[xtrimiles 10]

No. black waterline is not somthing that has anything to do with my video settings.

Its a glitch, from using certain arma 2 maps in arma 3, that have ponds in them, the ponds have a rendering glitch when used in arma 3 that fills the whole screen with a big 3d artifact that has the pond textures on it, it only happens when the game renders more than one pond object at a time, that is unrelated but I will drop the link

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15579

Anyway, I get that I should't use altis yeah, but I kind of would like to use it. It is, after all, the default map for this game and it would be pretty shitty if I cannot use it.

It is not totally unplayable, its just annoying to use at all in cities, so I don't bother.

I really haven't seen that glitch. We used clafghan map in a 48 hours gameplay with arma 3 mil-sim units doing a mission. I haven't seen that glitch even for a sec. Try redownloading the map, maybe there's a new update, and also it's requirements if there is some

[miketim 20]

Polymath can you send me somthing to help me do this overclock, I only overclocked once and it didnt even work, I am not familiar at all with it.

I will try to do this but I cannot do it today.

Thanks.

[Polymath820 11]

http://lifehacker.com/a-beginners-introduction-to-overclocking-your-intel-pr-5580998

http://www.techradar.com/au/news/computing-components/processors/beginner-s-guide-to-overclocking-1040234

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1804

I personally like how to geek

http://www.howtogeek.com/165064/what-is-overclocking-the-absolute-beginners-guide-to-understanding-how-geeks-speed-up-their-pcs/

I personally do not overclock unless the math sits where I'd like it to be High-volume water-pumps and vapor-condensation chamber coolers. You could just wait for the new Intel I7-4970k I am probably going to go for the I7-4970k which is base clocked at 4.00Ghz

http://ark.intel.com/products/80807/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_40-GHz

Might be considering an I7-4xxx (X edition)? (Haswell-E)

Edited June 17, 2014 by Polymath820

[kremator 1065]

There are tools around (read the forums) that will help with increasing FPS. You just have to hunt for them.

Fred41 has come up with quite a few ... there is a clue for you.

[miketim 20]

Yeah I use his memory allocator, I am going to go on a FPS hunt soon, but have to finish a week of tests, sorry to polymath and the other guys helping me, I will get back to the forums soon and try to get all this stuff done, if anyone has any more suggestions, please tell me I will take them when I get back.

---------- Post added at 21:48 ---------- Previous post was at 21:46 ----------

@polymath I use a AMD cpu....

[stilton 0]

You can fix the waterline bug on cl-Afghan by deleting a .Pbo file in the cl-Afghan folder...

..It's something like pond_column.pbo i cant remember exactly, and Ive deleted it - so i cant look for the exact name.. But searching for 'pond' in your clAfghan/addons folder should locate it.

Deleting that file fixed that bug [that's only appears (for me) when you're in the south by the towns] it also didn't show up any errors about missing files, i think it also completely removes the offending pond, wherever it is though... So if you're relying on that in the mission, that would be a problem