How well does ArmA 3 scale CPU wise.

[Polymath820 11]

Download this program and tell me while running arma 3.

1. The GPU usage and CPU usage

2. The mission you are playing.

[forteh 11]

Not sure if the poll entirely makes sense, but typically core0 is 80-90% with core1-3 is 25-30%. This is both on the altis benchmark and on sp campaign missions.

[St. Jimmy 272]

What I've monitored usage on cores really varies. CPU0 usage naturally has mostly the biggest usage but even that can change for couple of seconds to another core. I can see high usage on every core and thread but not at the same time.

Btw your poll has 9 options and I guess there should be 8. Also not all people even have 8 cores/threads so you should make more polls for 4 and 6 that are also very common.

I'll post and check some results later.

/Alone in the editor driving Hunter around some roads and towns:

Average on every core/thread above 20%.

Maximum usage per core/thread varies between 65%-94%.

Total CPU usage max 65% and average 36%. Minimum what I saw was 25% on total usage.

Need to test some multiplayer. I remember before that total CPU usage rarely or not at all gets over 25% but I haven't monitored that for a long time and in a good sessions.

Edited December 23, 2014 by St. Jimmy

[jumpinghubert 48]

I assume the only relevant parameter is the TOTAL cpu-usage.

-never under 45%

-on empty map 65-75% average

-the more AI the lower the cpu-usage down to 50% av.

-not mp-tested

Programs: rivatuner statistics server & hwinfo64

Hardware in signature.

Edited December 23, 2014 by JumpingHubert

[St. Jimmy 272]

Yep the more AI and stuff the lower the usage goes because of all the traffic that CPU needs to handle. My average goes down to av. 25% but I've hyper threading and JumpingHubert doesn't so pretty much the same results.

/Some AMD FX results would be welcome to see if they get same kind of usage.

Edited December 24, 2014 by St. Jimmy

[ProfTournesol 956]

Download this program and tell me while running arma 3.

1. The GPU usage and CPU usage

2. The mission you are playing.

What program ?

[St. Jimmy 272]

What program ?

HWiNFO, MSI Afterburner and RivarTunerStatisticServer. HWiNFO is really only needed for if you want to see total CPU usage and see some min, max, average from the session. Afterburner with RivaTuner can already display alot of things.

Here's old video how to set those

It's old video with old versions but the idea and setting up is the same.

[galzohar 31]

The more you load your CPU with a specific task, the more other tasks will have to wait. After all, the game handles everything in frames, so until all calculations of a frame aren't finished, it cannot process the next frame.

This is why having lots of AI makes the AI calculation take a very long time, lowering your FPS, but all other calculations don't really take any longer - They just happen less often and thus the CPU idles more.

If your CPU is faster (not more cores, just faster cores), you will improve performance in these cases.

Having more cores when the game engine (similar to most other game engines when given CPU-intensive tasks) can't really split the tasks between them is quite pointless. Anything more than 4 cores is almost a complete waste for Arma and basically anything else that isn't a pure computational task that can be split between cores, like encoding / decoding / compression / decompression / parallel compilation, or just running any X unrelated CPU-heavy tasks in parallel. Games just aren't there and probably won't be there for a while. What most games do is make sure there isn't so much of a single task that the CPU must do, but this can't really be done in Arma where the user is the one who chooses what the game engine must process. BIS can only optimize the tasks to execute more efficiently, but in the end if you load the mission up with 2000 AI, there is nothing BIS can do.

[Defunkt 431]

The more you load your CPU with a specific task, the more other tasks will have to wait. After all, the game handles everything in frames, so until all calculations of a frame aren't finished, it cannot process the next frame.

This is why having lots of AI makes the AI calculation take a very long time, lowering your FPS, but all other calculations don't really take any longer - They just happen less often and thus the CPU idles more.

If your CPU is faster (not more cores, just faster cores), you will improve performance in these cases.

Whether the primary thread is ready for new AI instructions or not the other cores should be fully utilized determining what the AI would choose to do next. There's no reason other cores couldn't be evaluating all options in terms of path finding, nearby targets and available cover and simply provide 'what should this unit be doing now' whenever requested by the primary thread. The behaviour of AI is pretty much the perfect task for parallel processing.

[galzohar 31]

While I would theoretically agree that it seems like a good thing to parallelize, it's hard to really say something definite like that without looking at the actual code and algorithms that Arma runs for AI.

[aussiebobby 1]

Fx 8350.

40mins mp(breaking Point) 65 players

Core usage

0)31.8

1)35.7

2)6.3

3)1.1

4)25.3

5)37.3

6)3.7

7)0.4

average 40.9

[vran. 13]

Fx 8350.

40mins mp(breaking Point) 65 players

Core usage

0)31.8

1)35.7

2)6.3

3)1.1

4)25.3

5)37.3

6)3.7

7)0.4

average 40.9

Yeah this is bad. But to be honest I think most PC developers haven't yet gotten the grip on multi core development and rather develop for less but faster cores (i.e. Intel CPUs). You should see better results on AMD CPUs once developers start making better use of multiple cores.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Need to test some multiplayer. I remember before that total CPU usage rarely or not at all gets over 25% but I haven't monitored that for a long time and in a good sessions.

Aand some results from 50 player Invade & Annex mission. It ran pretty nicely when I got out of the base and started to attack the main objective.

Before that I tried some 20 player domination. The fps and usage wasn't too good and the reason was likely because there was some script kiddie teleporting people.

Total CPU usage was then 10% less in multiplayer than alone in the edtor in singleplayer. I might go test some TacBF performance later this night and give some results from pure PVP CPU usage. There I've had before very great performance so got to wonder if I can get close to alone in the editor CPU usage.

Edited December 26, 2014 by St. Jimmy

[aussiebobby 1]

After disabling the unused cores

Average cpu usage/Altis benchmark

1)52.8

2)28.9

3)36.8

4)28.2

Max cpu/thread usage Average 49.3

I also got an extra 6fps in Altis benchmark.

Ill test mp later tonight

1/2 hour of mp (Breaking point

0)59.8

1)48

2)42.4

3)59.3

Cpu/thread usage average,59.0

Edited December 27, 2014 by AussieBobby

[Greenfist 1863]

Altis Benchmark:

0) 79%

1) 27%

2) 22%

4) 21%

My AI heavy benchmark: (intense 70 AI fight in a small town)

0) 79%

1) 30%

2) 32%

4) 30%

Surprisingly similar results despite the very different benchmarks. Altis gives 70 fps average, AI 21 fps.

CPU: i5-3450

[St. Jimmy 272]

Singleplayer editor. 80 AI fighting against each other.

I think BIS has improved this or overclocking has some better results because 12 months ago I remember that my CPU usage was lower.