Hardware Issues: Tips/Tricks/Solutions

[lee_h._oswald 0]

im guessing that means it didn't work for some reason?

No, it means that everything is fine.

@Maruk

How does ArmA perform on your 8800GTX?

MfG Lee

[ROBOTB9 0]

I have been had some "hard drive locks" issues and after some time the pc crashs....

It´s only happen when i run ARMA. I have many other games and don´t have any kind of problem.

I send a email to support and they suggest the obvious...update drivers, etc...

It´s not necessary, the problem is with ARMA software/hardware protection....

I give up from this KING OF THE BUGS game.... and advise any new possible customer to NOT BUY THIS BUGED GAME.

PS> I´m using the SPROCKET DOWNLOADABLE VERSION.

[Jack-UK 0]

Well if you provided some more information about your problem instead of 'hard drive locks' then maybe people will help you. And to tell people not to buy the game after it has sold very well and is played by thousands without problem is quite a bad comment to make

[Pain-less 0]

I'll admit I had problems with the Securom on ArmA. But once I figured out the problem, the game runs great.

[Raj 0]

elo just got my copy of arma, great game, though i don't find great difference with ofp except for the graphics...just the first impression.

well the game lags a lot. my specs are

p4 3.0 ghz

512 ddr ram

fx5200 with 256 memory

The game is not playable at all except in the deserts. All the options are set to very low and the resolution to 640*480 with color depth 16 bit.

hmmm any of you guys knows a good alternative for the fx 5200.

[omadmartigano 0]

How I gained lots of FPS in ArmA: (ATI x1900XTX)

I used ATITool and change the fan to go att 100% speed.

From low to high( on everything! ) on graphics and 1024x768 to 1280x1024 in ArmA!

ArmA before:

ArmA after:

Must be the ATI-drivers that sux.

[Boweavel 0]

elo just got my copy of arma, great game, though i don't find great difference with ofp except for the graphics...just the first impression.

well the game lags a lot. my specs are

Gday all.

I too have just purchased ARMA, I had played the demo a month ago and it had that OFP feel too it so i couldnt wait to get it.

Did anyone play Soldner when it first came out ?  This is what ARMA reminds me of..  Polished and almost perfect.. but Not.

I have a new system and it runs.

AMD Athlon 64 x2 5200 (Dual core)

4gig ddr2 Ram

1x 8800 GTS 320mb (just bought 2nd one for SLI, just need nvidia to get their drivers together for it)

on an Asus M2N4-SLI mobo

Vista 32 bit "Home Premium"

22inch widescreen Viewsonic game res is 1680x1050

Running 1.4 (Red Ant publisher) and have applied 1.5 patch

If I have any video settings higher than Normal, tree leaves become lego blocks and textures are messing from most buildings, some vehicles will show only half their textures.

Skin textures on fellow soldiers can take anywhere from 2 seconds upto 30 seconds for the high detail skin texture to load on the body.

Random Crash's to desktop, allways some error with the ram or memory ?  and often it is still running in the sytem process tree.

Very Laggy. Always a pause or 2 every minute both ingame and when simply sitting on the main screen.

I noticed with wheeled vehicles, If you turn then try to go forward or reverse, the vehicle will just sit there until you stop turning, only then will it move off... Likewise when trying to stop, If you have any turn on the wheel the vehicle will just keep on moving along. When you stop the steering the vehicle stops like its hit a brickwall. excuse me if its been mentioned before somewhere.

Otherwise Im quiet pleased with it, Tho its easy to see it does need a little work but then could Vista be my Issue ? I see on the box there is nothing mentioning Vista and I know quirt a few of my older games wont run properly on i9t either.

It could just be the 8800GTS as their doesnt seem to be any full support for the card from Nvidia just yet.

Anyhoot, Just a gday from down under and perhaps shoot one of ya's online sometime     Ive just been training and yet to start the Campaign, Supreme Commander takes up to much time  

[lee_h._oswald 0]

ArmA has no support for your:

- Dual Core CPU

- VGA SLI Mode

- Windows Vista

+ ArmA has problems with geforce 8800 series. For me(8800GTS/640MB), it's huge frame drop after some minutes of play. After Alt+Tab or changing the shadows to "disabled" and then back to "very high", FPS are ok for another couple of minutes.

We still have to wait for new patches and new vga driver.

MfG Lee *sick of waiting*

[paragraphic l 2]

Don't think there is a localization script that would keep you from playing a game from a different area on any computer

[Boweavel 0]

ArmA has no support for your:

- Dual Core CPU

- VGA SLI Mode

- Windows Vista

Well that sucks .. Why dont Bohemia say that on their website or the game packahe itself ?

Whats the point of upgrading to a kickarse system If you cant even run the latest games.

Any known time frame on just how long I will have to wait to be able to use my..

- Dual Core CPU

- VGA SLI Mode

- Windows Vista

???

Otherwise I guess I'll take it back for a Refund if its not going to be supported.

Cheers for the Info

[MrZig 0]

Well that sucks .. Why dont Bohemia say that on their website or the game packahe itself ?

Whats the point of upgrading to a kickarse system If you cant even run the latest games.

Any known time frame on just how long I will have to wait to be able to use my..

- Dual Core CPU

- VGA SLI Mode

- Windows Vista

???

Otherwise I guess I'll take it back for a Refund if its not going to be supported.

Cheers for the Info

By "no support for dual core" all that means is it only uses one core. It'll still run, and about 30% faster than on a single core if I remember Suma's statement correctly.

SLI and Vista, not completely sure about them, but I am pretty sure that some users have got both of those to work correctly. 8800+Vista users are having trouble tho. Try searchin around.

[Boweavel 0]

Guess I'll just hang in there and wait.. As I dont want to refund it, OFP was one of my favorite games and Im hoping ARMA can replace it.

I Guess I'll just wait n see

[Infam0us 10]

How I gained lots of FPS in ArmA: (ATI x1900XTX)

I used ATITool and change the fan to go att 100% speed.

From low to high( on everything! ) on graphics and 1024x768 to 1280x1024 in ArmA!

ArmA before:

ArmA after:

Must be the ATI-drivers that sux.

Can you post some before and after clock speeds aswell as the graphics card that you used so I can see how much of an increase you got, I'm intrested as I used the same tool and only got a minimal raise in FPS ...

[Jack-UK 0]

Guess I'll just hang in there and wait.. As I dont want to refund it, OFP was one of my favorite games and Im hoping ARMA can replace it.

I Guess I'll just wait n see  

To support SLI:

rename Arma.exe to fear.exe and it SHOULD trick your card into thinking SLI is working.

Dual core is not 'incompatible' it is just not dual core 'optimised' just like almost all other games.

Vista has it problems, as does all new OS's. You'll have to wait for patches of Vista for it to work better, and for better Nvidia drivers.

[hugo2020 0]

Hello,

I would like to come back on battlefield, searching for the "OFP-Feeling".

Would you plz tell me, is that hardware enough for mid-case video options?

x1950/512MB

p4, 3ghz

2 GB RAM

Thank you very much in advance for a kind note.

Best Regards

Hugo

[Jack-UK 0]

Yup i run the same GFX card, ur CPU is faster than mine, and u got twice as much RAM.

Should run smooth as silk on medium settings

[hugo2020 0]

Thank you!

Another Q:

1. Will bring S-ATA RAID 0 a performance in ARMA boost?

2. Will work a x1950 with a 350W Power Supplier?

Would work 400W ?

[Jack-UK 0]

The X1950 requires a lot of power.. you need to make sure it has at least 30Amps on the +12V rail, or if its a dual rail PSU 22Amps on each +12V rails.

Wattage i'd say 400 at the minimum, im using an Enermax Liberty 520W and it runs great.

Not too sure on the hard-drives, some people got new HD's and they brought no more performance increase, it shouldnt matter too much so long as u keep ur hard drive defragged

[cjph 0]

Hi

I am building a budget system with an AMD 64 4000 with 2Gb of PC3200 value Ram (Elixir/Nanya chips), and currently have a Gainward GS7800 AGP (20 pixel pipelines, 512Mb, overclocked to 575/1430 GPU/memory). I have around 200 UK pounds to spend and as I have AGP and PCI-e slots on the motherboard was thinking of changing to PCI-e - but which card ? For the money I seem to be able to get an X1950 Pro with 512Mb, an X1950 XT with 256Mb or a GTS8800 with 320Mb - what is the current consesus on performance with these cards ? I'm leaning towards the Nvidia but am open to suggestions.

I think the two questions are 1) Are the 8800/DX10 cards performing with Arma OK (I read of issues with fog etc - to be fixed in 1.06 ?) and 2) Does graphics card memory over 256Mb make a big difference with the performance, given the scale of Arma ?

With my current setup I can keep the leftmost settings to medium, AA and AAF disabled and blood and post processing at low, and get acceptable framerates with a 3000m view distance, but not what I had hoped - I have the zoom in 'problem' where trees and textures change when a scope is used. Not bad performance, I know,  but I had hoped for better with the setup - I would guess an A64 4000 (which I can overclock to 2.6G currently and hope to get more on the new board) would be enough for good Arma and it is the graphics card move from AGP to PCI-e and a faster GPU etc which will provide the biggest boost (I don't have the budget for a Core 2 Duo / DDR2 swap as well). I'll probablt jump to Core 2 and DDR2 when I get some more money and use whatever PCI-e card I get on the new rig.

Thanks for any replies.

cjph

[BroK3n 0]

i was off outta the country for a little while a few days ago... The place i went to had no internet and i was bored with my laptop so i went out to buy a game or two.

I bought Just Cause and found that it was similar to Arma in a number of ways particularly the map size and all that view/draw distance.

Checking on their forums after i got back frm the trip had me reading on all the familiar problems that we have on Arma such as stuttering and physics bugs.

I had the stuttering problem when Just Cause was installed on my main PC and also the same with Arma on occasions.

Their forums had a fix for it and it solved my problem, in both Just Cause and Arma.

Go over to My computer, right click and go into properties. Select Hardware then Device Manager. Look into your IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and double click on Primary IDE Channel.

Look under ther Advanced Settings tab and the transfer mode should be DMA and not anything else. Mine shows Ultra DMA Mode 5

If its not DMA, uninstall the IDE driver, restart the comp and then restart it again after it's reinstalled its driver automatically. The transfer mode should be switched to DMA.

Hope that helps. Solved the stuttering for me... and i'm using a common 2 year old seagate hard drive. Nothing fancy.

[cjph 0]

SS9 - I don't see the detail level of the foliage etc increase - it seems to change (sometimes colour, some times shape etc) and is most noticable on trees when sniping. I've seen some posts in various forums mentioning a change when zooming but nothing really explaining why other than suggesting GPU performance causes it and to crank down the settings. As from my initial post, I am not keen to do as I like the eye candy.

I've read another post today saying Arma is a big stretcher of CPUs as well as graphics, and even a highly clocked Core 2 Duo and 8800 would struggle to hold a stable 40 fps all the time on high settings, so I might even keep the 7800GS and try and save up for a complete refresh. Unless of course anyone knows of a tweak - all the stuff I've read shows all systems are different and you've got find your own optimum settings.

cjph

[Blackstar 0]

I'd like to say thanks to all the guys who have contributed to this thread, there is a lot of really good info in it.

I have spent the last three evenings fiddling with my settings to try and get this great game running at a decent FPS.

My system is as follows:-

P4 3ghz, Running at 3.3ghz

2GB DDR400 Corsair

ATI X1950 Pro (AGP) - Catalyst 7.3

Asus P4C800E-Deluxe Mobo

X-Fi

450W PSU

Windows XP Pro SP2

Latest drivers for everything, constantly defragged using Diskeeper (every time the Screensaver kicks in, it defrags), Windows Pagefile on it's own logical drive (not the 'c' drive)

I dropped all my settings and my res to 1024x768, ran ArmaMark and got a score of 954!!!

Changed my res up to my native Windows res of 1280x1024 and got an ArmaMark score of around 1300.

Although better, this still seems really poor for my hardware, and I have seen guys with similar or lower spec machines getting better scores. I just don't understand why.

Am I missing something crucial?

[Infam0us 10]

Hey Blackstar, not sure if you where on one of our servers last night =22SAS= your name seems familiar? Anyway all I can say is that System Specs seem to have no impact on how well people can run this game

... seems lower specs PCs can run it better than higher specs, all I can say is tweak your PC and do whatever to see what effect it has!

[BroK3n 0]

my 1.7ghz single core acer laptop runs arma at 60fps, even with two-years old hardware (x700 gfx, 1gb ram), at low settings. Negligible stutters.

However my current hardware runs 1.05 at 25 fps, tops. 50fps on 1.04. Negligible stutters after my above-mentioned fix.

I think its still more on the dual-core/hyperthreaded and ram management issue currently.

Could someone clarify if mods add to the stuttering? i tend to get a tad bit lower performance when using mods such as FDF or Modwar sounds.

[dwringer 45]

Well I've got a P4 3.6 GHz, 2GB DDR2, and an 8800GTS 320MB... and every time I play ArmA the performance is different, and there are different bugs. Sometimes I can play at 1280x1024 on High for a while, other times, 1024x768 on low is what it takes for acceptable frame rates... although I shouldn't say "acceptable" because it still randomly pops up with weird errors or stutters. The most common one of course is missing textures, but sometimes the geometry gets screwy... like everything is going off to some vertex several hundred meters in the sky, and the textures went with it or something. Anyone else get this?

I have a Realtek onboard audio card, maybe that's the issue... but sometimes it works fine :\