Hardware Issues: Tips/Tricks/Solutions

[sluggCDN 0]

Found my IDEAL ArmA system.

I just put together a new system which finally allows me to play ArmA the way it should be played. I was experimenting with my old system maxing it out to the fullest and still falling short of desired result in terms of game's performance. What I found that a videocard is what makes it happen, not so much a processor.

OLD SYSTEM:

P4 3 ghz HT, socket 478

3 gig ram, DDR 400

ATI Radeo X1600 PRO 512mb DDR2, AGP

NEW SYSTEM:

Core 2 Duo 6400 2.13 ghz

Intel D975 XBX2 Crossfire motherboard, socket LGA775

2 gig ram, DDR2 800

ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256mb GDDR3, PCI-E

the major pain in ArmA with the old system was aiming and navigating in forest and urban environment - it was very frustrating due to enormous lag when I'd enable dynamic shadows or had more the 20 units in my view. All other graphic settings were set to low, with AA at normal and terrain very-low (without grass) and anisotropic effects disabled; screen res.: 1152x864, view distance 900m.

the new system allows me to set screen res to 1280x1024 with high AA, high anisotropic effects, high textures, normal dynamic shadows, normal terrain and object detail. I experience NO LAG regardless wether I'm in a city or open field (the forest is yet to be tested).

I originally planned to use AT Radeon X1650 PRO 512mb, PCI-E, DDR2. But it gave me very poor performance, I was amazed that with the new processor core2duo, motherboard and ram I was getting the same performance as on my old Pentium4 system when using X1650Pro PCIE card. I switched to the ATI X1950 videocard and it's magic - it solved all the performance issues I had.

I know I'm on a right path now in terms of my system configuration. Adding the second ATI Radeon X1950 PRO card as a Crossfire pair will make it even smoother. And of course extra ram will be gravy too. So there you have it.

[sneakyman 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?

I have pretty much the same setup, w/ 1 gig less of Ram and a ATI 9800 XT (AGP).

Curious in regard to the answer to your post.

Will post my score, I'm sure you're kickin my ass. Although I'm not getting any stuttering, pretty smooth. Well, that's w/ everything on low, AA disabled etc.

[sneakyman 0]

Found my IDEAL ArmA system.

I just put together a new system which finally allows me to play ArmA the way it should be played. I was experimenting with my old system maxing it out to the fullest and still falling short of desired result in terms of game's performance. What I found that a videocard is what makes it happen, not so much a processor.

OLD SYSTEM:

P4 3 ghz HT, socket 478

3 gig ram, DDR 400

ATI Radeo X1600 PRO 512mb DDR2, AGP

NEW SYSTEM:

Core 2 Duo 6400 2.13 ghz

Intel D975 XBX2 Crossfire motherboard, socket LGA775

2 gig ram, DDR2 800

ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 256mb GDDR3, PCI-E

the major pain in ArmA with the old system was aiming and navigating in forest and urban environment - it was very frustrating due to enormous lag when I'd enable dynamic shadows or had more the 20 units in my view. All other graphic settings were set to low, with AA at normal and terrain very-low (without grass) and anisotropic effects disabled; screen res.: 1152x864, view distance 900m.

the new system allows me to set screen res to 1280x1024 with high AA, high anisotropic effects, high textures, normal dynamic shadows, normal terrain and object detail. I experience NO LAG regardless wether I'm in a city or open field (the forest is yet to be tested).

I originally planned to use AT Radeon X1650 PRO 512mb, PCI-E, DDR2. But it gave me very poor performance, I was amazed that with the new processor core2duo, motherboard and ram I was getting the same performance as on my old Pentium4 system when using X1650Pro PCIE card. I switched to the ATI X1950 videocard and it's magic - it solved all the performance issues I had.

I know I'm on a right path now in terms of my system configuration. Adding the second ATI Radeon X1950 PRO card as a Crossfire pair will make it even smoother. And of course extra ram will be gravy too. So there you have it.

Great post, and the kind of post I think everyone is looking for here. Well, I guess those of us that are nailing down specs for a new machine.

I'm done w/ ATI though. My current card (9800XT) had to be replaced twice by ATI, and has never been really stable. When I get a new system I'm going to light it on fire and put it out w/ a hammer.

Why did you opt for the Intel chipset as opposed to the Nvidia or ATI?

[Jack-UK 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?

Theres DEFINATELY a problem there, check my sig for my spec, im running it much better.. i havent done an ArmAMark test but its running pretty smooth

Theres something wrong there... ur spec is much better than mine, i dont know what the problem could be tho :S

@ Slugg: Glad u got urself a good ArmA System, i too am running an X1950 PRO and it gave me a huge boost in performance, im running on a 2.4Ghz processor (single core) 1GB RAM and i think my performance is only a little short of yours, so its not too bad!

[sluggCDN 0]

@ sneakyman

Quote[/b] ]Why did you opt for the Intel chipset as opposed to the Nvidia or ATI?

There are a number of reasons. But the main criterion is the expandability of my new system. Here is my train of thought: AMD vs Intel - that's really the same as "what's better, Pepsi or Coke?" As for the nVidia chipset, for me it was the least preferable option since ArmA doesn't work with SLI, which would be my next step in system upgrade. I've yet to hear a complaint about Crossfire & ArmA incompatibility. Crossfire is an ATI feature which gives your system great expansion capabilities. It's much more flexible and robust than nVidia SLI technology. Even if ArmA doesn't work with Crossfire, it's still a more flexible system expansion feature. On top of this I find ATI Radeon family of cards far more visually pleasing in terms of colour, crispness and clarity of onscreen graphics rendering. I am a graphic designer by trade and use my system as a workstation as well. ATI cards are more versatile than nVidia in general. nVidia is purely a gaming oriented brand.

In terms of Intel vs. AMD, again it's my personal preference to go for Intel. I guess I'm an Intel's loyal customer . It kind of makes sense to buy an Intel processor and an Intel motherboard if you want full system integration and stability. As far as I know the motherboard I chose is the latest, best Intel product. Can't go wrong with that: crossfire, 1066mhz fsb, all latest Intel cpu support; ultimately lots of room for expansion.

So if your options are:

SLI vs Crossfire, I'd go with Crossfire - more stable and flexible, and far more expansion options. Another plus - it just might work with ArmA . This choice also sorts out your doubts in terms of whether to go for an nVidia or ATI videocard. ATI has more options for future system upgrade/expansion (Crossfire).

As for the ATI motherboards:

ATI motherboards seem to be camping with AMD processors and I personally prefer Intel over AMD; same as Pepsi vs. Coke.

http://www.ncix.com/product....tid=110

[fitzee 7]

Does having a gfx card with DDR2 ram (which i just noticed) and the socket 939 which doesn't support ddr2 mainboard ram create a slight incompatibility/performace slowdown?

I would say no.

My vid card has DDR3, and it works fine with my 939-based nforce3. In OFP with all in-game settings maxxed my fps never dropped below 70's(unless i had ton of action on screen).

ArmA is another story, but still it runs very well for me considering my old system, and easily looks 10x better than ofp did on max settings.

[inferno7312 0]

shadow! shadow is the nightmare for me! I always set everything as low in my ArmA, I can get almost 30~35 in the city, 40~50 in the desert, but only 10~20  in the forest.

if we disabled the shadow, fps would become twice! In the forest I can get 40 fps. Shadow of forest or woods should be imporved!

[fitzee 7]

Have you tried setting shadows to high? I get 10 fps more with shadows on high than I do with them on low to medium.

[Heatseeker 0]

Have you tried setting shadows to high? I get 10 fps more with shadows on high than I do with them on low to medium.

I tried that to check them out and they looked very messed up .

Im just adding that new XP drivers for nvidia 8800 series users are out now, http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_97.94.html.

I need an 8800 GTX user to test them and post:

"Wow! OMFG there awsome, 90fps everywhere!!"

Thanks .

[Hudson 0]

I need an 8800 GTX user to test them and post:

"Wow! OMFG there awsome, 90fps everywhere!!"

Ive been playing with these drivers for a couple hours and see no change in my frame rate. Ran ArmaMark and get pretty much the same scores as with the 97.92 drivers.

[Heatseeker 0]

I need an 8800 GTX user to test them and post:

"Wow! OMFG there awsome, 90fps everywhere!!"

Ive been playing with these drivers for a couple hours and see no change in my frame rate. Ran ArmaMark and get pretty much the same scores as with the 97.92 drivers.

Nonono, thats not what i want to read .

Well... i'll just presume that the game runs stable and well for you .

[Hudson 0]

Yes, very well here. Only have an ocassional problem in large MP missions. And I must add this game looks amazing on high settings

[CameronMcDonald 146]

In a sense it's a good thing those new XP drivers had no improvement - I'm a Vista-ite over here, and I haven't seen a decent driver yet for Armed Assault. My poor, poor EN8800GTX. If those XP drivers had been better, I may have just gone back to dual-boot.

[sbsmac 0]

I haven't done any definitive testing but my experience with the latest official 97.94 drivers was that they were significantly worse for ArmA than the unofficial 101.02 drivers available from http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1609 Stuttering was incredibly bad with 97.94 whilst playing MP (CTF Cayo map seems to be a bad case for some reason), so much so that I backed off a whole load of graphics options to try and fix it. After that experience I returned to 101.02 and performance seemed to improve again. As I say, this is just a _subjective_ opinion and one needs to be careful about drawing conclusions from limited testing.

I'm running 1920x1200 on XP with 8800GTX and O/C 6700. With 101.02 I can put most settings on high or even very high and still get acceptable performance (60fps on Urban maps, 30-40fps or maps with lots of trees and bushes). Average framerate is fine but the thing that affects gameplay are the 'tugs' or 'stutters' which often seem to occur on seeing another player. (Maybe texture loading?)

[ravellron 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*

now i'm fine.... yes same problem like mine...

[ravellron 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*

now i'm fine.... yes same problem like mine...

i tried yesterday turn Vsync on and the problem seems disappear...

maybe it was depending by map..

today i'll try it better

i tried and make the same problem also with vsync..

the only solution its to turn both texture and shadows to normal

[FalconFlyer 0]

Hey, i have occasional CTD's because of the memory surface.

I know i have to do this: use -maxmem=512 command line option to reduce memory footprint.

But how and where do i need to do that?

[Jack-UK 0]

1)Right click your ArmA shortcut on your desktop

2)Click Properties then click the shortcut tab

3)On the Target field, scroll right to the end after the ....ArmA.exe" and add this to the end:

-maxmem=512

so you'll get a target line like this:

"C:/Program Files/Bohemia Interactive/Armed Assault/ArmA.exe" -maxmem=512

Then it should work

[FalconFlyer 0]

Weird, i can't get 'in' the target field. I have vista, but it's just a gray section, i can't put my cursor in it. What should i do?

Also, it only says this in the target field:

Launch ArmA combat operations (demo).

There is no arma.exe

Is this new in vista?

[Jack-UK 0]

oh the demo.. look in your ArmA demo folder for the main exe file, then create a shortcut and paste it to ur desktop. Then do the target line thing

[FalconFlyer 0]

oh the demo.. look in your ArmA demo folder for the main exe file, then create a shortcut and paste it to ur desktop. Then do the target line thing

Thank you, i've got it now

[daleyg 0]

Hello,

Did anybody noticed this yet?

The hud (highlighted in screenshot), and or voice menus,

will cost you about 7 FPS.

Isnt that a bit too much, just for that?

Is there a way to disable those menus?

Here some screens.

[Jack-UK 0]

Hmm no i havent noticed that.. i dont think u can disable it either...

[robert(uk) 0]

I have decided to post this after finding someone else who was experiencing the same issue as me in-game yesterday. He also has an Audigy 2 ZS sound card.

It seems that if you have one of these cards, and you enable EAX and Hardware Acceleration, you will get lockups and CTDs. Similarly, if you disable both of these, you will get the same. But if you disable EAX and leave Hardware Acceleration enabled, it stops the problem.

Give it a go and see if it works...

[OFPDude 0]

Hello,

Did anybody noticed this yet?

The hud (highlighted in screenshot), and or voice menus,

will cost you about 7 FPS.

Isnt that a bit too much, just for that?

Is there a way to disable those menus?

Here some screens.

interesting......checking it out