Horrible Performance...

[shadow 6]

I guess I could fire up my game again and see if Shadow can help me.

Must i post my specs again? *Sigh*

Intel Core 2 Duo e6700 - Latest Drivers

XFX 8800 GTX - Latest Drivers

eVGA 680i Motherboard - Latest BIOS

2GB DDR2 Corsair Memory

Thermaltake Toughpower 850W PSU

2x 320GB Seagate Barracuda - RAID 0

It will NOT run shading detail above "Low," Texture Detail above "Normal," & AntiAliasing above "Low." If these settings are changed by 1 degree the game will have slideshow FPS near the trees and forests.

I would assume you're using Forceware 97.92 (the only one that actually support 8800). I would atleast start there.

Eventhough you dont have SLI, your card might be in some way dependant on these game-profiles.

I would try renaming arma.exe to fear.exe. That way it uses all internal performance settings that are used in FEAR. They are alot more than the few you see in your drivers control panel. If you use nHancer you can see all content and how it is configured. But for now, try renaming the EXE.

You and I have the same CPU and same amount of RAM. You have a 680i chipset, I'm using Asus P5B (i965).

My settings are:

Res 1280x1024, viewdist 2000m, terrain detail high, object detail high, object textures high, shading detail high, post-effects low, AF very high, shadows medium, blood high, AA low.

Your computer should be able to run those settings with 35 to 60 fps walking around on Ramahdi.

Also turn off hw-acc and EAX for your soundcard just to eliminate that source.

[Kevlar2007 1]

...

It can be, I don't know only guessing like everybody else.

It could also be that ArmaMark is not so reliable source of information.

But if you are so sure than it is up to you, I am not so sure if it is only people hardware/settings/system, there are many people that tried everything on the page and which know what they do and still they are not able to solve their performance problems and that is what makes me doubt on Hardware/System issues.

I admit that some people have some expectations regarding FPS, I myself think that constant FPS of 25 and above is ok and on this settings arma is playable.

Instead of starting all the argumentations all the time there are other threads in the forum which people can use to see what they can do to try to improve arma performance for start people should look in following thread, also if you have some performance tips then post them in this thread it is more effective and we don't need to repeat ourselves here all the time :

Hardware Issues: Tips/Tricks/Solutions

and also try search in the forum itself there are many troubleshooting tips around the forum also.

[Jack-UK 0]

It is indeed strange how people with identical or greater specs experience less performance than another player.

The only logical explanation is that they have something different within the PC which is having an impact.. though im not sure what that may be. Remember some GFX cards get modified by companies like BFG etc. who overclock GFX cards and sell them for a bit extra and stuff like that.. so sometimes people's cards vary, even if they are the same model.

Some people may overclock themselves too.

If this is not the case and hardware is IDENTICAL. then theres something varying in terms of settings, whether ingame or out of game. Or theres various background processes which sap out some performance...

Bah this game's a mystery =) I guess you could compare performance on another game and see if that difference still occurs.. if not.. then theres something wrong with how ArmA interacts with something within the system..

And also as Skull said, if you have any tried and tested solutions to any issues/tweaks please do post them in the Hardware Issues: Tips/Tricks/Solutions thread and i'll update my main post.

[Potatomasher 0]

Now i got even better result on Arma-mark. Quality preference was normal, res 1024*768 and view distance 1500.

2210 with comp. on my sig. Before this tweak it was 1880.

Now the actual tweak was i managed to get my mem chips running 400Mhz speed. Before memory were running about 260Mhz speed. I had to lower my processor overclock in order to get stable system. Now CPU speed is 2400Mhz, before it was 2600Mhz. Oh, and i had to remove two 256mb mem chips because they were old 333mhz.

Now i'm really happy with my mark score.

[Goldenwings2002 0]

Nope, all my other games run great... Maximum Resolution & Settings. Oh well, I think I have found a nice balance on Arma that I'm satisfied with.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Nope, all my other games run great... Maximum Resolution & Settings. Oh well, I think I have found a nice balance on Arma that I'm satisfied with.

You call that balance?

What is your performance drop in/very close to bushes compared to >10m away from bushes?

[slingblade20000 0]

Bunks wrote>

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;st=315

Quote[/b] ]Well I just installed my Raptor with the new Demo build and again my rate of FPS increased jumped even more. So far Ive seen a nice change with the build 5116, now with the Raptor HD yet another small boost. Before I changed HD, when I OC my CPU and memory I noticed hardly any difference but since I put the new build and HD in (no partitions) OCing allowed a small gain in FPS. BTW, I see no drop in forests or bushes now whatsoever??? But overall my FPS went from 20-23 FPS at 800 x 600 with my old setup to 27-40 (sometimes as much as 50) at higher settings and 1440 x 900 res.

So I don't know if one thing or the other made the major changes, but I do know that the HD has made a diff for me. But so did the new Build and so did the over-clock. All together I am running a 2 year old puter and now can play the game at 1440 resolutions (AA High AF Very High) and keep an average of 30FPS.

P4 2.8 (OC 3.1)

X850xt

2 gigs Ram

74gig Raptor HD

Looks like Salindawg and whiskeybullets were right

[Victor_S. 0]

Ofp like ARMA was always a wierd game. In ofp I would get better performance by turning up my resolution rather than down. You just gotta play with it until it settels down and does what you like.

[Maddmatt 1]

Looks like Salindawg and whiskeybullets were right

No, it was the new build. The 5116 build improves performance quite a bit. I got a similar performance improvement when I installed the new build, that is with no changes to my PC.

[Bunks 0]

Looks like Salindawg and whiskeybullets were right

No, it was the new build. The 5116 build improves performance quite a bit. I got a similar performance improvement when I installed the new build, that is with no changes to my PC.

I dont know about that Mad, Like I said, the new build was no question part of the solution and I cant say it was the only factor. What I did see was I had a bottleneck by at least 2 parts of my PC when I 1st played Arma and I couldn't figure out which ones they were. So when I OC'ed my CPU and my GPU I saw no improvments to FPS. Then I installed the new build on an old reformatted ATA HD and saw a small boost to FPS but OC'ing was stil no impact. I dont remember how much since I did not intensively do a FPS count. But I do believe it was 1-3 FPS increase. But then when I added the Raptor and then put the game exclusively on that drive and erased all partitions, I saw another boost of 2-3 FPS on average. But the amazing part was that after the Raptor was in, all of a sudden OC'ing my CPU (not my GPU???) resulted in FPS increases of 1-2 more.

So am I saying Hard drives are the main part of performance? ...nope, but I am saying that I had a bottleneck that couldnt be identified and it now seems my HD was part of the problem. So through trial and error I found the part that was the weakest link in the chain. So for me the fix was $150 for a new HD, which I think bought myself some time till an upgrade is needed.

People with high end rigs may see no help from this, but for mid to low end systems its important to rule out each component by tweaking as people may have bottlenecks in other areas. But overall I think this game is so poorly optimized that its a simple roll of the dice as to which part may be the so called "Weakest Link" in your system. But for many with older rigs , I can say with confidence that a newly reformatted unpartitioned HD(and Im not talking about just a Windows XP type format but a KillDisk type) will allow a small boost no matter what.

If I had to say for sure what was wrong with Arma when I 1st installed it I couldn't tell you. A friend of mine who is a site admin at a PC forum has tested this game with 6 different Video cards and said he hasn't seen results like this with any game before. So for people to just spend cash at one part is risky till you at least make sure the HD bottleneck isn't the issue. I would hate to see people spend money like that and still hate the game play afterwards.

[Maddmatt 1]

...

Well I have a relatively cheap Samsung SATA 160Gig Hard drive, it also hasn't been defragmented or formatted in a year. I have about 7Gig free at the moment. It was probably the equivalent of 50$.

The ArmA demo runs pretty well on it. If your hard drive was a bottleneck then it must have been a pretty bad one, or just very old. I have my GPU slightly overclocked, it's a 7800GT. The overclocking definitely makes a difference. My CPU is still at stock speed.

[Bunks 0]

It was a WD 8mg cache HD but ATA like I said. But adding newer parts like a new GPU card or a better CPU would have resulted in very little performance increases for the money. I just want ppl with mid to low end rigs to try maybe a fresh HD or a completly reformatted one b4 they do spend $$$.

As far as Wingnut and Lee with the 8800 high end rigs. So far many gripes about shading has been with the new unified shader architecture in the card having trouble with games that are ported over from xbox games...hmmmm??? It may just be a bad card itself. Have either of you guys have a spare card to test with? I know the GTX has a inherent design flaw but the GTS has no such problem. I feel for you guys, cause I was going to buy that same setup a few weeks back but the demo caused me to rethink spending any cash till I found out whats really wrong here.

Here's my suggestions before you go screwing with what is an obvious excellent setup. Run 3dmark tests and see how your results line up with others with similar specs. Try this site out for instance. If you see little difference from others than at least you won't be bashing your brains out trying to find a problem thats not there but with the game itself.

[karl76 0]

Arma has a general issue with the 8800 (GTS and GTX), and so far in all 8800 drivers as well, 96.86, 97.02, 97.44, 97.92. It´s BIS responsiblity to report this issue to Nvidia and communicate with them and try to find a solution. My 3dmark scores are right where they should be and my other games run nicely as well, so it´s definitly not a hardware/end-user issue.

Specs:

Intel C2D E6600 aircooled by Zalman CNPS 9700LED @ 3.22Ghz

Asus P5B Deluxe (i965P)

SuperTalent 2GB DDR2-800 RAM (CL4-4-4-12) @ 920Mhz

Leadtek 8800 GTX (tried all drivers I mentioned above, currently 97.92

WD Raptor 74GB

Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum (latest drivers)

OCZ GameXStream 700w

Windows XP Pro SP2 with all hotfixes and updates

Detailed report on the issue can be found in this thread:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....2;st=15

[SlurrpyChillyFries 0]

yes, i am having the same problem.

specs:

2 gig of ram (400)

3800+ x2

no swap file

8800 asus gts

2 wd raptor drives (older ones, 36 gig)

xfi sound card

asus a8n-e

i thought it might me an issue with trackir but it isnt.

[jaguax 0]

BF2 does not model things like ballistics or penetration to name a few.

No offense to you or anything, but BF2 does feature bullet penetration through certain solids.

[Marines 0]

Well, it looks as if next-gen AMD processors may indeed be a contributing factor, as I've read quite a few posts where AMD users experience problems. This could explain why myself, when reinstalling the OS and changing the GPU, had little effect.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

Use the NoGrass islands and your FPS will rise 10-20 fps

[NeMeSiS 11]

Well, it looks as if next-gen AMD processors may indeed be a contributing factor, as I've read quite a few posts where AMD users experience problems. This could explain why myself, when reinstalling the OS and changing the GPU, had little effect.

Then explain why my AMD x2 4200+ (and im not the only one) has no problems at all.

The problems appears to be totally random, which isnt really logical for PCs..

[vilas 473]

many people writes about horrible memory usage, performance (previous topc : http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;st=60) etcetera

but today i made some addons in Nogova style, i wanted to make mission, i placed units, i placed points, triggers, switch to game, than switch to map, than swich to game, to editor

every time performace was worse

untill i crushed windows

all was 640*480, 16 colors like in DOS time

reset

ARMA looks beautifull on screens but it is unplayable

this is the worst game i ever had

BIS must do something with memory cleaning etc. because this engine is horrible, ARMA after swiching to editor, map changes into somekind of boxes without textures

looking at screens i would given this game 10 points on ten

but for playing 0 points

edit: here is a picture after 4 reloads

[sailindawg 0]

Well, it looks as if next-gen AMD processors may indeed be a contributing factor, as I've read quite a few posts where AMD users experience problems. This could explain why myself, when reinstalling the OS and changing the GPU, had little effect.

Then explain why my AMD x2 4200+ (and im not the only one) has no problems at all.

The problems appears to be totally random, which isnt really logical for PCs..

OPF, the problems are not random. The same problems occur across all hardware platforms. The problems experienced are as follows:

- low memory utlization

- loss of textures as HDR effect blossoms

- Very low fps

- frequent crash to desktops

- sounds dropping out

- general ingame lag

- loosing internet server connections

This are the problems I have had with the demo and the problems that others with the full game are experiencing. These problems are what I have been reading about in this forum since joining. Yes, this is a tech support forum, so problems are discussed, however, these problems take any enjoyment out of the game. I have yet to see any solutions for solving the above problems, save the maxmem tweak.

[NeMeSiS 11]

1 low memory utlization

2 loss of textures as HDR effect blossoms

3 Very low fps

4 frequent crash to desktops

5 sounds dropping out

6 general ingame lag

7 loosing internet server connections

1. Is that bad? The game uses the meory it needs, the engine is partly based of the xbox vesion, xbox only has 64mb ram so the engine had to be optimized back then to use only a bit of ram. Better low memory usage then some ram hogging game right?

2. Not sure what you are talking about here, ive no texture loss because the HDR, ive seen the HDR going too bright a few times but when a moved it was back to normal again.

The HDR going too bright/dark happens to some people constantly though, but no real relation between them in system specs.

3. Everyone? Generally people where a bit dissapointed with their FPS, but most people dont have incredibly low performance for their systems.

4. Only had CTDs when testing .fsm's, there may be quite some ingame bugs, but it doesnt crash here.

(havent seen alot of people complaining about CTDs either)

5. (havent heard this before, dont know what to say.. )

6. Dont know what you mean, if you mean the lag between mouse input->actual movement of gun in the game, tried forcing off vsync?

(Dont know why BIS didnt add a vsync option in the settings menu..)

7. Wouldnt know, tried MP a few times but im a SP player..

(Heard it quite alot though)

Look i really dont want to sound like a fanboy, but ArmA sold (tens of) thousands of games already so the people with problems are only a small percentage of the total number of games sold.

And usually when there is a bug that alot of people expierence, all those people have something the same in/on their PC (*aaah, that bug always occurs with driver version x*/ *the game has problems with CPU x*).

But most bugs (like the HDR/'memory not clearing' bugs) seem to occur on all sorts of PCs, and there seems to be no real 'pattern'.

[sailindawg 0]

OPF, This isn't a pissing contest regarding sales of the games or popularity. I'm a pc enthusiast that has been gaming for the past 5 years and been building my own systems over that time period. Am I an expert, heck NO. But I do know my way around a pc, especially when it comes to optimizing for a game.

In your various posts back to me on these forums, you have never reconciled that I have the latest demo. The full game is not available in my country as of yet. You have also never reconciled any problem that I have brought to the attention of this Tech Support forum. You try to contradict my experiences. If I was the only person having issues, then fine, it's me. However, I am not alone.

How do you expect games sales to do, when an individual, unfamiliar with the OFP franchise, downloads a demo, only to have it play at very low frames and the demo seems exceptionally bugged. Particularly, when that individual has spent some serious money on a pc that can play true cutting edge games such as Company of Heroes, GRAW, BF2, COD2, FEAR, FarCry, HL2 all at high settings at 1920x1200 resolutions! Quite simply, the game will not sell because the competition offers a similar game type/style that runs much better across all hard ware platforms.

ARMA is that more advanced? Please. I really like the game. I like the game play. But the programming needs to be optimized. I would like to see the comparatively small dev group of BIS kick the heck out of the big publishing house's like Ubi and EA with this title. Finally put something out that offers something more tactical than GRAW or BF2 or Full Spectrum Warrior. Maybe it's the American attitude of supporting the underdog in me that hopes this game will be optimized to run like a banshee across all pc platforms.

So please OPF, offer me some vaild fixes. The game runs like something is holding it back. Like the fps are capped. If the game could be made to run at higher fps, then situation like fps dropping when near trees or bushes wouldn't turn the game into a power point presentation.

[NeMeSiS 11]

*too much to quote*

What im saying is: We are seeing the same problems over and over again, problems that are really strange and there seems to be no relation between the problems on different PCs.

Im saying that noone seems to know where to start looking for a fix.

If you feel like the FPS is capped, turn of vsync in your driver settings, if the FPS drops near bushes, lower the shading quality (helps a bit, its better then nothing). There are several tweaking topics which can help you to get maybe a 5-10FPS boost in total, and if you would have searched then you would have found alot of topics which are about the same bugs (some you said), all without a fix.

And i also said that the game isnt as buggy as most people say, you listed 7 things like everyone experienced them while only a small percentage has (some) of them.

And indeed, the game runs slower compared to other games, but the only games ill compare it too are Boiling Point and Just Cause, both have enormous areas and a living world, you really, REALLY cant compare it too BF2/HL2/GRAW, all those games have only a small number of things going on at once, in maps that are very, very small compared to Sahrani (all the maps in those games together would probably fit in ArmA, while ArmA has no loading times between them..).

[BraTTy 0]

I'm confused. People must be trying to run Arma at settings higher than their pc can handle.

I tried to play Morrowind Oblivion the other day and I got annoyed with the sluggish gameplay.My laptop has a hard time handling it.

Arma plays smoother than BF2 or Oblivion on my pc.

Check your settings, shut down programs running in the background or something.

People also complain that they have to spend alot of $$ on hardware to run Arma.

PC hardware is really cheap now. Asides from high-end video cards and cpus, hardware is at a all time low

Want a little cheese to go with that whine!

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Any news about a patch for us customers?

Or do we have to wait till 505 release to play this game?

Anyone?

MfG Lee