Horrible Performance...

[walker 0]

Hi all

I too noticed more of the people having problems with ArmA are running 8800s. ATI x1950 pro runs ArmA as smooth as a nut and costs about a third as much as the Nvidia card. It is odd.

Apparently the 8800 appear to have problems with many other games and people complaining about lower than expected FPS, artifacts, unplayability and failures of apps such as Maya. Do a search on Google and check Nvidia's own forums you will see several threads such these.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85572

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33850802

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t27152.html

Although the reviewers seem happy with minimum frame rates in the low 20 FPSs for Fear 12 FPS for quake and down to as low as 8 FPS in Oblivion.

http://www.i4u.com/section-viewarticle-143.html

Perhaps peoples expectations at seeing the headline speeds for these games of around 70 FPS when the reality is they can drop to 20 FPS and as low as 8 FPS for high end games are misleading them?

I am running 1.04 on a laptop as well with only a 9700 and everything set to Low ArmA runs perfectly well. It is odd that the high end Nvidia card seem to have problems.

I wonder if it is mismatched hardware. Possibly some form of bottlenecking where the card does its part so fast that it is causing a traffick jam at the mother board, CPU, ram or bus? Leading to buffers clogging and data having to be sent twice. I wonder if under clocking may be the answer? A lot of the complaints seem to be about buffers clogging and not refreshing.

Kind Regards walker

[Planck 1]

I think it is high time you stopped writing drivel Luciano.

Most people on this forum know by now that you make some sense, but NOT all the time.

Try and act in a more responsible way, your actions and words will show everyone for what you are in later times.

Planck

[walker 0]

Hi all

I am descerning a patern here 8800s again

See my post in this thread.http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;st=525

By the way the two threads need merging I will make a post to the moddies

Kind Regards Walker

[Tracer 0]

Quote[/b] ]Thing is, it has potential and BIS have a very good reputation -if OFP is anything to go by- of patching and supporting.

Only OFP never had such graphical problems to begin with.  

Its not the drivers, if it was the drivers, it would happen to any game.  Also, its BIS responsability to optimize for graphic cards and drivers, not Nvidia/Ati to adapt for every game.  

Those bugs are kind of extreme and will take years to fix.  I doubt they will be fixed everytime soon as we have yet to find out what causes them.  The only thing that comes to mind is bad optimization and that takes lots of time to fix.  

Some games are being optimized for years before being released (example is STALKER).  I doubt ARMA had any serious optimization or even beta testing.  Not to mention it took less then 2 years to finish it from scratch.

To clear my end of this issue up for you Luciano, i actualy don't suffer from a graphics card/driver issue, like what has been mentioned here.(White fog etc,etc)

I have a GeForce 7800GT 256mb PCI-E (using ForceWare 91.47 and XP) and i play just fine with no anomalies. (all settings on Normal, except shadows) Only if i crank settings way,way past what i know i can play at, do i get flashing textures or even a crash. But that's self induced.

I'm talking about missing textures or memory leaks, bad AI and poor mission design etc,etc.

As i said, it's BIS that falls on their sword if they do not address their baby.

Quote[/b] ]Some games are being optimized for years before being released (example is STALKER).

Don't take that literaly!

Remember Dikatana?

Or Duke Nukem Forever?

[LtJamesWatts 0]

I'm giving it six months, can't say then I haven't been patient.

If by then problems are still the same or not fully solved then I'll delete my downloaded German version of my HD and throw away my retail copy.

Good money down the drain and I'll be more careful next time.

[raedor 8]

Merged the Major Graphical bug(s) thread in here.

[raedor 8]

Also, if you own an ATI card, check this.

[Barnaby2007 0]

Hello

I read this but.......

Combat:

Your aiming precision is also influenced by your health status and posture.

OK but should that mean my weapon waves about like I'm trying to take a weeee while standing on a football.

I have recently upgraded my pc specifically to play ArmA and although I can even get my fps to over 100 at times I still suffer from the above.

My question is this:- IS IT A PROBLEM OR IS IT HOW IT SHOULD BE.

I have Vsync off but it does not seem to improve no matter what tweak I do.

GFix are 2 x 256 Nvidia 7600TS meant to run Sli, not really sure if they are set like this.

I'm a aged surfer like.

Any help please???

[walker 0]

Hi Barnaby

Make sure Vsynch is turned off in your graphic card preferences.

Aiming problems with health are if you are shot, in particular shot in the arms.

If not shot you should not see any problems with aiming at target less than 500m. With a sniper rifle you will get some bob and weave at this range and greater. This will be worse depending on stance:

Standing up is quite bad.

Crouched or nealt is better.

Laying down is best.

The bob and weave is said to be based on motion capture of a real soldier holding different weapons.

Some have reported smothing of bob and weave by leaning the rifle against a wall edge; I can not confirm it but when standing or crouched I tend to shoot from round wall edges anyway it is just I am too preocupied with taking the shot to take time to notice it. I would suggest you try it out your self in the editor to see if it works.

Pressing the zoom key (default right mouse or "V" key)simulates holding your breath smooths bob and weave for up to 20 seconds or so.

You may need to alter you mouse sensitivty.

Finaly if you were using a pirate version or, no CD cracks, or trainer software, or cheats: with OFP then FADE (BIS anti piracy and anti cheat protection) would cause your rifle to dance around like crazy and you would have a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn. I have heard that ArmA also has FADE.

Kind Regards Walker

[Barnaby2007 0]

Cheers Walker that's a great reply.

Reading through your list I think I'm down to the last two.

Mouse sensitivity -- but allthough I try it still seems too sensitive.

As for the built in FADE that's what it feels like.

Except I have purchased two legal copies.

1st the German download patched across to English.

Then to 1st day delivery of the UK 1.04 version.

The only other thing I note is that the RMB or V key only seem to do zooming and not any steadying well not that I notice anyway.

Does that give any more clues or does it add to my confusion.

Thanks

[Frosty_theAussie 0]

I find it hard to accept that an update of a six year old graphics engine runs twice/three times as slow on my PC as games that have been released in the last 8 months.

[CoolSprog 0]

Firstly, i havent read any GOOD comments in terms of performance reguarding the 8800GTS/X cards, this CAN be because of drivers as the 8800 series has an entirely seperate driver set from the other NVidia cards.

Now i run Arma in "Very High" with AA turned off, as my resolution is at 1440x900, and anti-anistrophic(?) turned to very high also. In desert/open areas the game runs, well i dunno the FPS but its anywhere between 60 and 100000000000 coz i cant tell hehe.

In towns/citys, it can get slightly sluggish but its liveable.

However, foliage, those beautiful bushes and trees, where you can see every leaf, wonderful stuff, except it sends my PC into a cardiac trying to walk through/past one. If i aim at one my overheat alarm will go off within 5-10 seconds.

My reasons for running it in very high is because the performance is the same in "High", default or lower wields better results but my ignorance stops me running it any lower, as i spent a fortune on this rig soley for Arma, the game ive been waiting for for as long as i can remember.

The most frustrating part is not knowing if im going to beable to play a mission or not, because if theres dense foliage, i will never land a shot with a good 3 second delay on my irons.

My spec:

AMD 4200 Dual-Core 1mb Cache.

8800GTS 640mb (Overclocked using Peg Link Mode in bios).

Windows XP SP2.

Latest NVidia drivers.

SATA 2 (SATA300) With NCQ, 16mb Cache and 4.6ms (Very good hard drive, and epensive ) 87gig free space, and is a seperate drive from my OS drive.

2GIG DDR 800mhz.

Go faster stripes (joke )

Hope this helps some of you .

[Falken 0]

You can't compare this game to BF2 and I'm not sure why people do because there completely different. BF2 does not have a free roaming 400 km/sq area of play nor does it have dynamic AI. I'm pretty sure the weather is all the same as well as day/night transitions so how you compare them is beyond me.

Now onto the rest of your question, yes, many of us experience lag on even good computers. I'm running an E6600 Dual Core 2.4 w/2 GB DDR2 Dual Channel @667 MHz and an NVIDIA 8800GTS. My game is set to 1024 x 768 and all details @ medium which seems to run mid 30's to low 40's FPS (average). Desert areas or areas with less foliage run far better while wooded areas produce lag spikes and flying only worsens the situation.

Try lowering your shadow settings, view distance, terrain detail and anti-aliasing. Personally, I'd sugges lowering everything and/or disabling the setting then bringing them up one value at a time until you have the best performance/visual ratio.

You may have something wrong there. I have the same system as you, except my 8800 is the GTX model, I get 60fps in most rural areas, 40-60 fps in most towns and 30-40fps in Corazol.

Also my friend who has a less advanced system than you (one of the older intel Dualcores) and has the same Graphics card as you. He gets similar FPS to me.

edit: Oh holy heck, I just realised I quoted a two month old post! Optimisations huh?

Edit: Just for clarification, I run Arma at "high" for everything except AA, which is at very high. The reason for this is that I am running my system on a 32" HDTV and low AA settings are quite apparent. Setting my AA to veryhigh gets rid of any problems.

[Bunkers 0]

Firstly, i havent read any GOOD comments in terms of performance reguarding the 8800GTS/X cards, this CAN be because of drivers as the 8800 series has an entirely seperate driver set from the other NVidia cards.

Any hope 1.05 will work better on the 8800 cards?

[ironbluedawn 0]

My system is:

Pentium D 3.4ghz Dual-Core

2gb Corsair RAM

nVidia GeForce 7600GT 256mb

Creative Labs Audigy Platinum Pro Sound Card

I have to run the game on low to get any decent framerates. For comparison, I can run Rainbow Six Vegas on high with no problems. All newer games are fine, except ArmA.

[imustkill 0]

I run:

AMD64 2800+ o/c 2ghz skt 754

1gb DDR333 RAM

6600GT 128mb AGP8x

I pull off a good 20-40 frames steady with everything on Very Low/Off - Low. It's the grass swaying around that kills my performance and my resolution. So I lowered my resolution, gained 10 frames. When I start flying there is hardly any slowdown in performance.

[Pedroshin 0]

Firstly, i havent read any GOOD comments in terms of performance reguarding the 8800GTS/X cards, this CAN be because of drivers as the 8800 series has an entirely seperate driver set from the other NVidia cards.

Any hope 1.05 will work better on the 8800 cards?

Add the 7800 to that as well...

Tried everything for my Nvidia cards and Dual core processor.

It's soooo funny that I still can get an average of 26-42 FPS with 640x480x32 + ALL Very Low or Disabled + Distance view 500. This means graphics MUCH worse than OFP.

I mean.. I have

2 7800GT 256 MB in SLI,

AMD X2 4400+,

2GB of RAM.

Hitachi HDT722525DLA380 250GB (30GB Partition for OS and OS-related Programs and the 2nd 220GB Partition for everything else).

SAMSUNG SP1213C 120GB for storage.

GA-K8NXP-SLI Nforce 4. Supports SATA II, dunno if that's 1.5 or 3.0 or something in-between.

I run BF2, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Oblivion and the rest of other games perfectly so this must be some kind of joke right?

Might I just as well add that I ran OFP with an average of 40-80 FPS with 1024x768x32 + All Very High or Enabled + Distance view 3000 with my old ATI 9800 XT 256MB and Intel P4 3.2GHz.

It's amazing how this game gains so few FPS when you change graphics from Very High to Very Low (including changing the resolutions). It makes me think that there's really something wrong with it. Turning Anti-Aliasing On/Off seems to make only a 2 FPS difference while in other games it can make a 10 FPS difference. This would be a good thing if the performance was good to start off with.

When I run at Normal to Very High + 1280x1024 in ArmA with my current setup FPS can dip as low as 25 FPS in most of places, 20 FPS near cities, 15 FPS inside cities and 10 FPS in vegetation areas. It only barely touches 40-35 FPS when I'm looking at the sky in an open field...

Please fix it. I've already defragged, optimized, updated, installed dual core optimizers and all that stuff... Unless someone tells me they have a system like mine and get the same results I won't consider the problem to be my setup.

By the way, just saying that it seems to run smooth or run good is not enough to do an analysis of how well the game runs for the rest of you. You must say the FPS and besides saying if the graphics are low, medium or high you should specify the resolution.

I LOVED OFP and I LOVE this game but, to my disapointment, I HATE the performance... and I'm not really into doing a full system upgrade just because of one game...

I still have some hope that Nvidia will address ArmA's issues, including SLI issues, in the next official driver release, which is taking some bloody long time to be released (latest driver was released about 4 months ago). They seem to be only focusing on 8800 and Vista drivers lately...

[karazy 0]

Crap happens to me too. Good to know it's just the engine.

[Bram 0]

Heres a scary thought.. what if this is as good as it gets, what if no amount of patching yields any performance gains and it's left down to the mercy of brute force and hardware price drops before we can get the most out of Arma. That would suck eh?

[Key Dutch 0]

wooshhhh, glad to know 8800 is not realy good. i think x1950 better, exept bug.

poor peeps, i run game on Higest seting on 1600x1200 with 2500 ramge, dont have any problems even when in wood or flying chopper, probably cose im triple bufering video (its helps when FSP less than refresh rate)

[dirtylarrygb 0]

wooshhhh, glad to know 8800 is not realy good. i think x1950 better, exept bug.

poor peeps, i run game on Higest seting on 1600x1200 with 2500 ramge, dont have any problems even when in wood or flying chopper, probably cose im triple bufering video (its helps when FSP less than refresh rate)

Erm tripple buffering generally fooks FPS??? ARMA has it's own version.

ARMA is also currently not optomised for SLI or DUAL/QUAD cores. So depending on OS and technical skill some Dual GPU and CPU users see very different results.

Post Process High can FPS stumble even the very fastest 8800 GTX (EVGA KO ACS3 626/1000).

Supersample AA also wrecks an 8800's performance. For me an 8800 GTX provides 1600x1024 stable 60 under almost any condition if I knock texture to HIGH, terrain to LOW, post process off AA HIGH. Everything else can be max and I get a min 60 fps.

I lose post process but gain shadows very high. Some rigs top end rigs need shaders turned from very high and high to meduim to insure Stable FPS.

I suspect Terrain above Normal and Shaders at very high can upset even the very fastest PC's currently available. i think the higher the terrain and the higher the shaders when factored with AA ad AF and LOD can humble any PC. I know for a fact I can get 3-10 FPS if I max everything at 1600x1024 and have Supersample AA and gamma correct AA all on.

On 8800 users have the fog issue, its to do with the nvidia drivers and its not the only game HL2 had it as well. The 8800 is 2x 7900GTX in one card same price less messing, just as always takes a few months for nvidia to make drivers that make it super sexy.

Same with dual core stuff, very few games actually drive them properly at the moment, many game runs just as well on a single core. But that will change soon.

[dirtylarrygb 0]

Firstly, i havent read any GOOD comments in terms of performance reguarding the 8800GTS/X cards, this CAN be because of drivers as the 8800 series has an entirely seperate driver set from the other NVidia cards.

Now i run Arma in "Very High" with AA turned off, as my resolution is at 1440x900, and anti-anistrophic(?) turned to very high also. In desert/open areas the game runs, well i dunno the FPS but its anywhere between 60 and 100000000000 coz i cant tell hehe.

A 7900 can get close to the above, BUT IT can't do supersample AA and very high AA and not implode the machine at high res.

A 7800/900 is a cheap and very fast GPU, run things max'ed if you need to run above 1280 res and want super sample AA and very high AA settings you need a 7900/800 SLI rig or 1x 8800 GTS/GTX. it's that simple.

I will take some sample shots of AA super sample with high AA VS no AA and post soon. Even at 1600x1024 AA makes a huge difference in the look of the game and immersiveness.view of ARMA in HD

[Key Dutch 0]

dont know bout u m8, i runn all setings on max, but there is one thing, i dont know bout 8800, but catalist for ATI allow  or not to controll setings of ur video," let the application decide". in my case, i do not allow this, and with higest setings on 1600x1200 , i never have less than 42 FPS. dont know why i can run game smoth, probably im lucky ba@@@rd.  

P.S. probably u need consider what application run at same time, and consider if its nesesary run them with arma, i would say minimase amount of them. Plas if 8800 its 2 x 7900 , its even worse 7900 512MB was not impress me, its was slow and expirence lots of lagg (my sister have it on her comp) i test 7900 Vs x 1950 Pro (ddr3) both 512 MB on same system and on same game (mediieval II) 7900 was slow like hell, was lots of lagg, slide show on higest settings and resolution 1600 x 1200, at same time x1950 pro 512Mb hold hame on same setings nice and smoth, and starting have lag only after 3-4 hrs of playing non-stop.funest thing is medieval II bin desine for nVidia, at least they have they logo in startup video.

[dirtylarrygb 0]

dont know bout u m8, i runn all setings on max, but there is one thing, i dont know bout 8800, but catalist for ATI allow or not to controll setings of ur video," let the application decide". in my case, i do not allow this, and with higest setings on 1600x1200 , i never have less than 42 FPS. dont know why i can run game smoth, probably im lucky ba@@@rd.

P.S. probably u need consider what application run at same time, and consider if its nesesary run them with arma, i would say minimase amount of them. Plas if 8800 its 2 x 7900 , its even worse 7900 512MB was not impress me, its was slow and expirence lots of lagg (my sister have it on her comp) i test 7900 Vs x 1950 Pro (ddr3) both 512 MB on same system and on same game (mediieval II) 7900 was slow like hell, was lots of lagg, slide show on higest settings and resolution 1600 x 1200, at same time x1950 pro 512Mb hold hame on same setings nice and smoth, and starting have lag only after 3-4 hrs of playing non-stop.funest thing is medieval II bin desine for nVidia, at least they have they logo in startup video.

8800 nvidia lets you choose AAX 2x-16q and AFx 16

settings are application decide, enhance application setting, or override (used to force AA or disable it).

So your telling me with fraps FPS if you go prone in the grass with AA very high PP On all settings maxed (including texture) you never drop below 42 FPS with a vis range of 2km? HDR 32.

In that case your machine is out performing the E6600's even quad cores that are OC'ed with 8800's!

7800 and 1950 both have games they are better at, both have very similar benchmarks on the web in most games. In general the 8800 out performs both by 50-100%. So an 8800 is genrally equvilant to 7900 SLI or 1950 crossfire. The r600 should be the same if not better.

most people also forget that gamma correct AA and supersample transparencys and LOD clamp/allow in nvidia control panal can also dramatical increase visual quality but also degrade FPS by upto 100%

So in ATI your Overriding the application, thus turning OFF AA and AF which might explain the 42FPS.

[Oleg-Russia 10]

Guys, let`s face the truth ,game is totaly unoptimized(on some pc`s it works fine and others with a good specs just not running as you expect from it) , my friend who owns intel core i7 4ghz overcloacked/12gb memory ddr3 /and Nvidia 9800 2GTX(2 videocards 9800 in one) have got 25-35 fps on everything high ,while he runs crysis on ultra high setttings with fps 90-120.

All of my friends who own`s Arma experience memory leaks wich causing constant crashes like: "Out of memory ,Arma could`t allocate requested[600kb]"!!!!!!On 4gb and 8gb memory systems ,while 2 gb is free ,it can`t allocate 600KB!!!! WTF!

I`ve also alot of lags ,game just keep on lagging ,never ends with loading textures / boxy/lowpoly models,just looks horrible.

My specs: Intel core 2 quad 2.4/4gb ddr2 800mhz/nvidia quadro FX 4600.

You might wanna say you`ve got videocard which is not supposted for games,i`d like to say "NO" ,i need it for my work BUT, in crysis i have everything on ultra high and it keeps running on 30-40 fps without lags.

And in all other modern games i just do not experience any lag at all.

Lets just hope developers will release patch soon as possible wich will increase performace of the game.

Edited July 18, 2009 by Oleg-Russia