Performance issues

[Erwin23p 32]

Hi,

I restarted to play Arma 3 a couple of weeks ago and I have a shit of performance, not always but when I put distance vision to a lot (it's very useful for pilots) I can't play, I have 15-25FPs and normally my GPU and CPU I think could handle this but no. :(

I have made a benchmark to show you the GPU clock, usage and CPU usage.

The graphics settings are invideo, it's very strange because the GPU clock and usage get crazy, and usually in other games I get nice GPU usage and my GPU burns to 81Cº (it is normal for an R9 290 ^^).

In the first part I have the GPU clock at stock: 977/1250.

In the second one: 1090/1350/+30

Launching options: -cpucount=4 -maxmem=2047 -maxvram=2047

PC Spec:

MSI Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt

i5-3570k 3,4Ghz 4-núcleos

MSI R9 290 Gaming 4GB

Nzxt Phantom 630 Blanca

Cooler Master Hyper 412S CPU Cooler

Corsair Force Gs 128 Gb

Corsair TX850M 850W Modular

G.Skill Trident X DDR3 2400 8GB 2x4GB CL10

Samsung HD204UI 5400Rpm 2TB

English is not my natal language but I try to do the best. :)

Edited September 16, 2014 by elcabronazo
Fogot the PC spec. ^^

[stang725 10]

For reference, I get max usage of my SLI GTX 770 using 1600/1200/100 draw settings. (any higher and I am CPU limited)

I run i4770 (4.3Ghz OC) w/ 8GB 2133 ram. Overclocking my cards do nothing for FPS. I would recommend you run ALTIS 0.6 benchmark and find settings that give you max FPS with >90% GPU utilization so you know you are maxing out your card and not hitting CPU bottleneck.

I can get 76FPS for benchmark with all settings maxed out with those 1600/1200/100 draw settings for your reference. I see you want max distance, you will need a powerful CPU and to turn down a lot of graphic settings to make it playable...

If you run into a lot of AI or poor MP server... your FPS are going to be really bad no matter what your system is.

I can run AI heavy SP scenarios and bring my FPS from 70-80fps (50-60 player Stratis wasteland MP server) to 20-30fps for a single player map.

AI and MP servers are #1 cause of FPS loss, w/ draw distance being #2 in my opinion....

I can't see your benchmark, what is your CPU?

[Erwin23p 32]

Thanks, I'm going to try this, omg 1600/1200/100 Is nothing :S from a plane you can't see a shit xD.

I forgot to put my PC spec so I updated the thread.

So my CPU is bottlenecking mi GPU? but.... it's an R9 290 4Gb :(

[stang725 10]

If GPU usage never goes >85%, then you are CPU limited and you will need to either reduce CPU-related settings (draw distance is biggest offender I think). Maybe its possible to find better balance for draw settings than the settings I specified, but I think it will come at a cost to some graphic settings. At some point you, will be simply CPU limited w/ far draw distance. I would recommend playing with an empty map and just a single helo spawned to help find ideal settings for graphics because AI will not be active and limiting you for CPU processing power as much. Then play a scenario using same graphic / draw settings with more AI to see the affect that AI will have on your FPS.

[Erwin23p 32]

Ok So the only solution is that......thanks, if I do OC, I have it to 4,2Ghz and my temperature don't get over 59Cº I will try to do more OC, this will improve the performance right? But I think A3 only uses 2 cores I think.

[mordeaniischaos 3]

TERRAIN view distance is the key thing to keep high. You don't need more than 2500 for objects. You can still see UNITS past the object distance, so you should be able to engage targets with that.

Also keep in mind you probably won't get solid 60 in real missions as a pilot when you push the view distance. But you have to learn to balance it. You should get playable performance if you pull down the object detail and terrain detail and bring your object view distance down to 2500.

Also make sure to keep shadows at either off or high, because lower settings will actually use up more CPU where as higher ones use more GPU, which you should have room to work with more so than the CPU.

I bet if you just pull object detail to one of the two settings below ultra, you'll feel a difference. And combine that with 2500 object view distance, and you'll have much better performance. Objects are what make ArmA hard to render.

Depending on the map I can have terrain distance up at crazy high settings (even on Fallujah) as long as I keep the object distance and quality reasonable I get excellent performance with a GTX 680 and i7 3770k. That allows me to engage targets at great ranges, keep awareness, and have a better looking experience. Object detail isn't something you notice at distance, and even up close you won't mind it being lower than ultra because it just means you have to be a bit closer to see higher LOD detail. Object distance you can play with, but it's not nearly as important as terrain.

Also, if your CPU is bottlenecking your GPU, that means your CPU is either unable to feed the GPU what it needs fast enough for the GPU to maximize it's potential or the things the CPU needs to do before the GPU can do things aren't being done fast enough for the GPU to be use to full effect. The game can't calculate things like AI at a different rate from the render engine, and things like where entities are in the world come before what they look like. It doesn't mean your GPU isn't working well it means that your CPU isn't keeping up. Which in ArmA is pretty much always the case.

Edited September 17, 2014 by MordeaniisChaos

[miketim 20]

I keep my shadow distance at 60

[the_demongod 31]

Better solution: stop using JSRS and Blastcore.

I used to use both, got average of 15-30fps.

stopped using both. I get 38-55 now.

[stang725 10]

hmm, I use both add-ons and don't have any significant loss of FPS...

Arma 3 can use at least 4 cores / 8 threads.. main problem is that AI is a single-threaded (running on 1 core only) and as mentioned above, things are sometimes processed in series and not in parallel in ARMA. So your CPU will often limit the loading of your GPU because its struggling to keep up with what's going on.... can't "draw" AI on screen if your CPU hasn't figured out what the AI is going to do next... kind of thing.

As mentioned above as well... this is all about how quickly things are calculated by the CPU and how quickly you are moving stuff between RAM and VRAM as well... so memory speed / latency is also a variable to consider

I would pay another $50 for the game if they could multi-thread the AI to take actual advantage of 2+ cores, outside of that you need to wait for Intel to FABOUT a yet to be designed processor that would prob need to double current i7 single-core performance. Intel is worried about performance per watt, not max performance per core... so don't hold your breath....

At this point, hopefully ARMA 4 will get multi-threaded AI because the other two options are not looking like they will pan out.

Check out:

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

Edited September 17, 2014 by stang725