NVidia Performance Tweak Guide

[Wisebone 0]

Hello everyone.

I've spend some days trying to get the maximum out of my Geforce 6600 running on a Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe, AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 1200 MB DDR SD-RAM. My FPS is playable most of the time and the bottleneck is the trees in the game, they draw up to 20-50 fps away from me.

So I'll guess that BIS will have to work on some solution for the performance bug in the trees for improving the fps overall.

First you should get a Registry Hacker for your Nvidia Drivers called 'Coolbits 2' and it will unlock some menues that Nvidia had hidden away for tweaking some special things.

When you have found it and installed it then we can move on to tweaking your card for maximum effect in Frames per Second in ArmA.

1. Changing your Nvidia settings

Anti-Aliasing: Deactivated

Anisotrop Filter: Deactived

System Performing: High Performance

Vertical Sync: Deactivated

Force Mipmaps: Nothing

Texture Clamp: Deactivated

Trilinear Optimising: Activated

Anisotropic Mip-Filteroptimiser: Activated

Anisotropic Testoptimiser: Actived

Triple-Double Buffer: Deactivated

Negative LOD-Bias: Hold

2. Extended Settings

Max frames to render ahead: 0

3. Overclocking

I have no responsibility if your computer explodes, use this at your own risk. I've only used the auto thing and nothing happend.

Okay first open the Overclocking tab, set it to Manuel Overclocking. Now select 'Detect Optimised Frequenses' and wait till its done and you should be done with tweaking on the videocard.

4. Ingame Video Settings

Put View Distance at 1000 and everything at lowest settings or off if possible. When it's done go try and play and put a FPS meter on like Fraps for example. If it's going good try set up the settings a bit and find the suitable settings for good fps and beatiful graphics to get the most out of the game.

-------------------------------------------------------

I'm running the game at approx. 30-45 FPS outside in open areas like the Desert for example. When i get into forest/tree massed areas my fps drops down at 8-20 and inside cities its running at 12-25 FPS. If i look up in the skies i have 50-100 FPS and on the map at full zoom i have 250-280 FPS. Plus my mouse doesn't lag in the game so i can do lots of things without being annoyed on slow reactions..

Sorry if it's hard to find those settings by name but I'm using a danish version so it's from raw translation.

Please, if you know any better ways to optimise the FPS then please post it so everyone can get the maximum out of their games. Don't forget to post your system specs aswell.

[Wisebone 0]

Not anyone who wanna test it out and come with some comments if it boosted your performance for Armed Assault?

[guttersnipe 1]

"250-280 FPS" - uh huh, i take the rest of your post just as seriously..

[NeMeSiS 11]

Well, ive been using very similiar settings for quite some time now (everything the same but i have texture preference on quality and mipmap level on performance) on a slighty better system. (Amd X2 4200+, 1.5gb ram, x1600XT).

Ingame settings are like this:

Everything on normal except for shadows (off), AF (high), AA (low), viewdistance 1800, 1024×768)

My FPS is 40-50 in the desert, 15-22 in forests, 20-30FPS in cities.

No mag lag/drag/whatever thanks to no vsync+render frames ahead (its called 'Flip queue size' in my case).

I can advice such settings to anyone, before i did this ArmA was almost unplayable.

Quote[/b] ]"250-280 FPS" - uh huh, i take the rest of your post just as seriously..

He said, 'fully zoomed in on the map', if your PC cant draw white pixels and some black lines with 100+ FPS you have serious problems

EDIT: Using the latest omega drivers and the latest Directx version (from this december)

[-duke- 0]

Not anyone who wanna test it out and come with some comments if it boosted your performance for Armed Assault?

My system is new, my graphix card is new, my performance is acceptable, so I'm not interested in trying any NVIDIA based 3rd party apps.

[stompy 0]

Coolbits only enables options that are already there, but not visible by default. Wouldnt call it a 'hack'

[sickboy 13]

Not anyone who wanna test it out and come with some comments if it boosted your performance for Armed Assault?

My system is new, my graphix card is new, my performance is acceptable, so I'm not interested in trying any NVIDIA based 3rd party apps.

Then why reply?

--

Thank you for sharing your settings m8! Will hand this over to a few of our Nvidia users and see what they return

[RN Escobar 0]

should of course add that if u disable v-sync with an lcd, expect things to go horribly wrong.

and if u disable v-sync with an lcd in coolbits, i suspect it will take u a very long time to get back to being able to see anything

[NeMeSiS 11]

i suspect it will take u a very long time to get back to being able to see anything

Like.. entering windows in safe mode, and turning it back on again?

I dont know much about lcds, i prefer CRTs, the are much cheaper, image quality is (usually) better and they are (usually) better for gaming. There are some LCDs which are suited for gaming, but those are even more expensive, and just about as good as a CRT..

Unless you have a *very* small room i see no reason whatsoever to use a flatscreen.

[RN Escobar 0]

maybe i'm wrong but if you force the driver to do something not normal, which is what you do with coolbits and forcing V-Sync off, safe mode won't help, will it???

never done it cause i'm not stupid, so i don't know

[chipper 0]

All CoolBits does is enable the hidden overclocking options in your Nvidia control panel.

All that other stuff like forcing V Sync off is already in the Nvidia control panel.

Theres nothing wrong with Coolbits. Everyone should have it!

[stompy 0]

should of course add that if u disable v-sync with an lcd, expect things to go horribly wrong.

and if u disable v-sync with an lcd in coolbits, i suspect it will take u a very long time to get back to being able to see anything

19" lcd here, vsynch forced off. I still see clearly.

[Wisebone 0]

Nice to see all the replies, yeah Coolbits is not really a hack.. Thats just what they state on the homepage, but this post was more like a guide/setup for optimising ArmA to best FPS.. Ofcourse if you have other hardware it will be different but this is mine and i shared it with the rest of the community since i couldn't find any myself.

[Misfit Leader 1]

Tonight i've tried something stupid, put all option on low with my 8800GTX.

And i've seen that my framerate was blocked by an unknown vsynch. (i've tested multiple resolution and the 2 refresh rate for my monitor 60 and 75Hz, all the time the framerate adjust to the monitor refresh rate)

Where is the problem ?

The vsynch is disabled in both nVidia drivers and nVidia ArmA profiles...

Maybe it's a bug of the newest driver ? If someone installed the 169.09 too, could he take a look at that problem.

Edit : Also i got artefact problem too, and it's not due to overheat, i've checked the temp they don't go upper than 80° i don't know if it's ArmA + GF8 or 169.09 issue.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ] i've checked the temp they don't go upper than 80°

That is already too high. Keep in mind that temp-sensors are not very precise and you are more likely already having temperatures around 90 ° which is getting into the "I want to destroy my gfx-card" - zone. I assume you have overclocked your card or something is going really wrong with your gfx-fan. If you have such temps at your gfx-cpu i don´t want to know how hot your GFX-Ram modules get.

Quote[/b] ]And i've seen that my framerate was blocked by an unknown vsynch. (i've tested multiple resolution and the 2 refresh rate for my monitor 60 and 75Hz, all the time the framerate adjust to the monitor refresh rate)

V-Sync just synchronises vertical movement of the picture display with new data input for picture display.

The reason why to deactivate V-Sync with Arma is that most of the times the gfx-card takes longer time to calculate the new picture than the monitor needs to display it. This results in glitches.

It has nothing to do with your default or custom set framerate that you mention. That´s a completely different thing.

[boomboomer 0]

That is already too high. Keep in mind that temp-sensors are not very precise and you are more likely already having temperatures around 90 ° which is getting into the "I want to destroy my gfx-card" - zone. I assume you have overclocked your card or something is going really wrong with your gfx-fan. If you have such temps at your gfx-cpu i don´t want to know how hot your GFX-Ram modules get.

Your comment is not relevant to the graphics card the original poster mentions. 8800GTX's run at 60 deg at idle and around 80-90 deg full load so his temps are normal. The ram modules are all tied to the same heatsink so run at the same temps.

[-Puma- 2]

That is already too high. Keep in mind that temp-sensors are not very precise and you are more likely already having temperatures around 90 ° which is getting into the "I want to destroy my gfx-card" - zone. I assume you have overclocked your card or something is going really wrong with your gfx-fan. If you have such temps at your gfx-cpu i don´t want to know how hot your GFX-Ram modules get.

Your comment is not relevant to the graphics card the original poster mentions. 8800GTX's run at 60 deg at idle and around 80-90 deg full load so his temps are normal. The ram modules are all tied to the same heatsink so run at the same temps.

i like to keep my gfx under 90C alltough nvidiots are capable to run at higher temps than that. if u have xp and fan set to auto, manually adjust it to 100% when playing. it keeps my card at 75C.

about the coolbits. have forceware 163 drivers and have tried to get coolbits working. downloaded coolbits2 and applied it to registry, but no extra options are showing

it worked fine with older control panel (pre dx10 days)

sumthing im doing wrong???

btw i have xp x64 pro

[bonko the sane 2]

the newest Nvidia drivers control panel isnt accepting the coobits reg, try NVTray , i have the same OS as you and it works just fine on the 169.09 winXp64 beta drivers (latest on official site), also, stay off the beta NVTray, the onscreen counter it has (temp,mem, etc) had a serious memory leak on my rig.

edit: and a very simple guide to OC the GPU Tom's Hardware - Overclock Your Graphics Card in 5 Minutes

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Your comment is not relevant to the graphics card the original poster mentions. 8800GTX's run at 60 deg at idle and around 80-90 deg full load so his temps are normal. The ram modules are all tied to the same heatsink so run at the same temps.

No ?

He does get artefacts which indeed indicates that he has got a temperature problem. There have been a lot of people here who were able to run other games with no problems but Arma pushed their hardware to the limits and they had heat problems. It ranged from inproper case-cooling to bad standard fans or missing heatlube on Gfx cards or overclocked cards.

It´s not that I´m pulling things from my anus, it´s just that I have seen quite a number of users here with comparable problems who were able to improve it by keeping all of the above in mind and even added some additional or better cooling systems to their computers and/or gfx-cards.

[Misfit Leader 1]

Artefact doesn't mean it's a problem with the gfx card or gfx temp.. also only ArmA got this artefact.

Crysis, Witcher, CoD 4, all these game and more don't have that bug.

Maybe the game doesn't fully support the "alt+tab".

Edit : I could also say that i got 2 fans on the box, the air before and after is not hot at all. I got a good power supply too (SeaSonic S12 500W)

[Yoma 0]

No ?

He does get artefacts which indeed indicates that he has got a temperature problem. There have been a lot of people here who were able to run other games with no problems but Arma pushed their hardware to the limits and they had heat problems. It ranged from inproper case-cooling to bad standard fans or missing heatlube on Gfx cards or overclocked cards.

It´s not that I´m pulling things from my anus, it´s just that I have seen quite a number of users here with comparable problems who were able to improve it by keeping all of the above in mind and even added some additional or better cooling systems to their computers and/or gfx-cards.

Balschoiw,

Allthough you are indeed right that artifacts can/will occur when having temperature problems, I can confirm that my 8800GTX doesn't need to run hot for arma to spawn artifacts.

All i need to do is alt tab a couple of times and continue gaming. After i do that, it ALLWAYS happens, whatever my GFX temp is, whatever i do ingame. The silly thing is that it seems to happen on SOME OBJECTS ONLY. You can have a perfectly nice view, but as soon as the game tries to draw say a M249 it goes bananas as long as you look at that object.

Turn around and you have a perfect view.

Put the object back in view and there it goes again. Also it's completely independent of driverversion (untill now), of driversettings, of machine etc etc. I have a buddy that has exactly the same on a completely different spec pc, only thing we have in common is the GTX, that said i also saw it happen on my x1950pro. It's a bug in the game, period. I don't know shite about 3dprogramming, but to me it looks like the models "mesh" just goes bannana's, occasionally leading to funny alienlike men running around.

After you get the bug the game will crash within 1-15 minutes. Hopefully it will be one of the fixes in 1.09 (is this shaderrelated?)

I hope they fix it, but it won't kill me if they don't/can't: i'll still love the game.

Only a pity as i like to alttab quite a lot when i get some programming inspiration.

[-Puma- 2]

the newest Nvidia drivers control panel isnt accepting the coobits reg, try NVTray , i have the same OS as you and it works just fine on the 169.09 winXp64 beta drivers (latest on official site), also, stay off the beta NVTray, the onscreen counter it has (temp,mem, etc) had a serious memory leak on my rig.

edit: and a very simple guide to OC the GPU Tom's Hardware - Overclock Your Graphics Card in 5 Minutes

thanks. dont want to use nvtrau tough because it messes up my settings and sometimes arma wont load with it. how are the beta drivers BTW?? should i move from the latest official ones?

ontopic, alt-tab thing u sayed happens to me too. i just dont alt-tab so problem solved. (alltough it hasnt because i like to alt-tab out too )