Hardware Issues: Tips/Tricks/Solutions

[Jack-UK 0]

Yeah its strange, sometimes settings like AA can really increase performance.. its a mystery to me why lol

And wow that CPU is mega overclocked... u sure it stable? Do you have watercooling or anything better than stock? I'd be careful with that overclock...

[r3pent 0]

well it seems stable enough..i rarely rarely get system crashes or hangs,all my games run sweet.

i got a stock cooling fan on the cpu/heatsink,but i got 3 more case fans running too,i have actually had the cpu running at the magic 4ghz before but it was getting so hot then i clocked her back a little.

[hbk 0]

Don't know if it's the right place to post this, but here I go

Time to share all that testing.

First of all, I must say I'm pretty amazed with all the things BiS have done right (event if there are thing they have done wrong). But that's not the point.

The rig : P4B2.4 - 2GB PC2700 (333MHz) - X800PRO AGP 256MB - SB Audigy 2

(no overcloking as it leads to no significant results, i prefer stability over a 0.1FPS gain)

The settings :

I run between 15 to 25 FPS depending of the situation (playable but could be better).

I have 25+ in "desert" areas with not much AI, drops into the 15 when in towns with some AI. I only drop under the 10 when experiencing heavy overdraw (zooming in some forest areas from certain angles).

Now, onto the main course.

What I figured so far (BiS is welcome to criticize)

Resolution : The game has lots of overdraw (vegetation), and is also pixel shader intensive, so playing at higher resolutions is not an option. Also, keep in mind that at very high resolutions all the buffers needed (frame, Z, and more) may use up to 100MB of vid mem (more on this later). TFT users may be at a stake here but CRT users with "not so high end" cards should keep to 1024x768.

Visibility : Going down to 500m do not lead to significant performance improvements. Going up to 3000m also do not cost many FPS most of the time. As more than 1200 meters isn't really useful except when flying (even the tanks don't need that much range most of the time the way the game is designed), I choose to "help" my FPS a little. Pushing to 3000m do have a positive visual impact though.

Terrain detail : Going to Very Low disables the grass layers and gives a huge performance boost in case of GPU limited rig. I noticed that Low setting would make some visual artifacts when "sniping" due to terrain simplification (objects under the terrain, that kind of things). Normal settings gives a fine result and do not seem to have a huge impact on performance (except for the overdraw eating grass).

Object detail : Seem to have a main impact on the CPU load (and CPU to GPU bandwith), going over the Low setting can have some impact on performance in some areas. Higher settings will improve visual quality but there will still be "clipping" when moving fast (cars/flying). It only pushes the "clipping limit" farther.

Texture detail : Now this is a big one. This game goes heavy on texture load and so vid mem is going to explode if you go too far. Very Low settings are really ugly, especially all vegetation. Low settings is fine for me. Going higher than Low will overload 256MB video cards. Yup, sorry but there's no other way to do it right now. I will explain more on this, later.

Shading detail : Going to Very Low disable most pixel shader effects. This will be visible on all mettalic things (so specular any more), on vegetation (but it gives a huge performance boost while in greeny areas), and most of all on the terrain multitexturing (all terrain ~50 meters and farther will look pretty flat). Higher values than Low are not recommended on any GPU that is not "hi-end". It puts a heavy load on the pixel shading resources. Basically, any GPU that do not have more than 16 pixel shader pipelines should keep it to Low or Medium at best.

Postprocess effect : This is a FPS killer. It puts a huge load on Pixel Shading. The effect of High setting is a simulation of the Depth of Field effect (blur on distance depending of your eyes focus). High setting makes the game really pretty, but not worth the FPS drop if you ask me (except if you have a dual hi-end card or something like that).

Anisotropic filtering : With the execption of some artifacts mainly visible on the ground (no trilinear), this improves the texture "quality" on roads, terrain, and some buildings (keeping it simple, I know what anisotropic means). This don't put a huge load on the GPU unless you have low end vid cards. Don't go higher than Normal though, it still eats some GPU processing power.

Shadow detail : That's another FPS eater. Low and Normal will already eat your FPS especially if you enable grass (which you should if you can afford it, my two cents). High and Very High setting *may* lead to better FPS in some areas, but *will* lead to lower FPS most of the time. At higher settings "static" objects will not use the same shadowing technique, i find it prettier, but it still eats your FPS (unless you have some spare). Be aware that the shadowing techniques used on Low and Normal that are still used on High and Very High on moving objects will lead to some artifacts when used in conjunction with Antialisaing (borders of shadowed objects will be "brighter").

Antialiasing : Higher antialiasing will lead to no more jagged edges (to some extent). It puts some load on the video card and will make you use more video memory for your buffers (leading to less memory avaliable for textures). I'd recommend at least a Low antialias if your video card can afford it.

Blood : Do not seem to have a significant impact on performance. It's mainly a "parental control" setting, or so it seems.

Now, onto some explanation about video memory.

Your card have onboard video memory. It's mainly used for two things : Textures and Buffers (it also stores some Geometry but the size is irrelevant regarding Buffer and Texture sizes). Buffers are needed for your "display", it will eat more as you increase resolution and antialiasing (mainly). You can easily need up to 50MB of vid mem with some AA and "standard" resolutions (1280x1024). Textures will fill what's left (as needed) depending on the situation (i.e. the game 3D engine). Now, video memory is something that is virtually extended with AGP aperture (and probably a similar technique with PCI-E buses). It's something piloted by your BIOS settings. AGP Aperture do increase your video memory, and so allow for much more space to put your textures, textures that will be either loaded on the fly into the main vid ram, or accessed directly if the vid ram is already saturated. However, this technique makes use of your main RAM. This mean you will have less RAM avaliable, but that may not be an issue. The main issue is that your system RAM is *way* much slower than your video ram, also, the AGP bus (or PCI-E bus) may be bottlenecked by the extra bandwith needed.

Now, onto Arma applications of this fine but not really useful knowledge. If you ask for more texture than your vid ram can handle, they will be loaded into the AGP Aperture leading to massive disaster regarding FPS. If your AGP aperture is not enough, you will have no area to store your textures, leading to ... texture errors. Yeah, that's what happen (most likely) on most of the rigs experiencing this problem. So there you have it, ArmA uses a shitload of texture memory even on the Normal setting, leading to crappy performance and texture errors. Now, you can do many things, lowering your Texture setting will help, as increasing your AGP Aperture if possible. But even then, there is another issue. In some areas, mainly cities, you still won't have enough vid mem. That, and the fact it seems that ArmA does have trouble in mangaing the video memory efficiently (BiS correct me on that if i'm wrong), may lead to catastrophic results.

The way I see things, and the way I achieve somewhat good performance on my "crappy" rig, is pretty rude. Lower down the AGP Aperture in your BIOS as much as you can (effectively disabling it on most mobos) and use a lower texture setting. That way, you wont suffer from the "AGP bottleneck" and most of the time you won't notice the "texture loading" as your vid mem should be enough to store anything that's displayed.

Well, this is no miracle solution, it's my solution. Not really pretty, but works on my rig. With this, you will never need to Alt-Tab because it won't have any effect (or so to say). Of course, your image quality isn't really on par with what you might have expected, and texture loading may still be noticable in some areas. But it's just a matter of choice. I choose FPS (well, with 15 to 25 FPS I don't really have a choice but who cares).

Regards,

HBK

[Jack-UK 0]

Great explanation mate

Really useful, explained a lot of things (especially about AGP Aperture)

Unfortunately my mobo wont allow AGP aperture settings to be changed in the BIOS and my 512mb card can get overloaded at normal settings... but i believe that the game needs some more texture memory efficiency... So i'm gonna wait a few patches before lowering my texture detail further

But nice post man

[desigamer 0]

What are the best settings for an

AMD 4400

nVidia 7900gtx

2GIG ram

Bcos everything on v.high is slow

[Jack-UK 0]

Just fiddle with the settings, try different combinations, find one which looks good enough for you, and which gives good performance.

[operation madman 0]

what is the chepist computer that can play arma on normal and at least the second worse resolution?

I ask this in anouther area but they are not reponding

[Bad Pilot 0]

Very welcome info on graphics there, especially the AGP aperture which explains some of the crashes I've had. I couldn't understand why the game was crashing 256MB short of the 2GB available memory limit.

I had turned off the XP swapfile, maxed-out the aperture and told ArmA to use a maximum quantity of RAM but I didn't take into account the aperture when deciding on that maximum. When the game RAM demand collided with the BIOS aperture allocation, ArmA crashed every time.

The one other fault I had, which persisted even after I upgraded my nVidia GF6600GT 256MB to an ATI X1950 Pro 512MB, I narrowed down to audio. I disabled onboard 6.1 and installed a branded Creative PCI card, and still got crashes, even with hardware acceleration and EAX disabled. Then, I noticed just one line in the troubleshooting biki which said update your OpenAL drivers (www.openal.org). WTF is OpenAL? Who cares - updating it has eradicated my crashes.

Now the game's stable, I've reapplied my motherboard o/c settings. I'll put the sound back as it was and then I'm going to experiment with the AGP aperture to see what changes.

I've mentioned it in another post somewhere that I'd love to know more details about how the interplay of graphics settings with graphics hardware works - so you can see definitively whether what you've set is optimal or not.

-Fenix out.

[nuxil 2]

gotta love this game,, but for some reason i get texture lag when i put textures on high or verry high,, IMO i should have a pc that can handle it,, if i set every thihng to default. it works fine,, but i want more,, since i got a gforce 8800 card..

hw is:

amd 64 3700+ "overcloked with 300 Mhz"

ram : 2 gb crosair

grafick: gforce 8800 gts "640 MB ram"

disks: "not relevant"

mobo: asus a8n32 sli delux.

i have not tested the FPS with default settings,, but i get no lagging at all.. but as soon as i turn it up a bit, things start to slow down..

is this a common issue people have ?

[hbk 0]

I've mentioned it in another post somewhere that I'd love to know more details about how the interplay of graphics settings with graphics hardware works - so you can see definitively whether what you've set is optimal or not.

What kind of detail do you ask ? Thing are pretty complex or, should I say, hard to explain.

Basically, most of the ArmA settings do have an impact on the GPU rather than the CPU.

Resolution have a main impact on the GPU (fillrate) and the video RAM. It might have some side effect on the CPU (due to objects LODs) but I can't confirm that.

Visibility has an impact on everything (raw triangle rendering). But it seems the default setting can be increased to 2000~3000 with little impact on performance (dunno why) at least in most areas.

Terrain detail has a similar impact than Visibility (i.e. raw triangle rendering) except for the Very Low detail that disables grass. Grass eat a lot of GPU power (fillrate).

Object detail has mostly an impact on your CPU, but in the end, your GPU is gonna work more, albeit a little more (triangle rendering).

Texture detail has a main impact on video memory and system memory as well (textures need to be loaded in order to be transfered). It also put a huge load on the CPU while streaming.

Shading detail has an impact on GPU (shading power) as more shaders and more sophisticated ones need to be computed.

Postprocess effect has an impact on GPU (fillrate, shading power) for similar reasons.

Anisotropic filtering is a "GPU olny" related feature (fillrate, shading power).

Shadow detail has varying impacts on your GPU and your CPU depending on the scene (triangle rendering, fillrate).

Antialiasing is a "GPU olny" related feature (fillrate, shading power), and it eats lots of video memory (proportionnal to used resolution).

[nuxil 2]

Intresting

[biggibs 0]

Hi

Here's a tip for people having fps,missing sound issues,

and use an onboard soundcard (nforce asus mobo with ac97 sound in my case)

Try turning off your sound hardware acceleration 'ingame'

Note.i had to close the game and restart it for the change to take effect.

After just buying Arma and trying MP i was having terrible trouble with some sounds (vehicles,radio messages,choppers) not playing

Plus realy low framerates (5 fps at most),but only in mp!

basicly game was unplayable.

In sp missions,campaign sound and framerate are fine.

I have an asus a8n5x nforce 4 mobo and i'm using the onboard ac97 sound.

Asking a few people ingame about it didn't help i got the usual crap of get a legal copy and FADE awnsers.:rolleyes:

So i tried turning the graphics settings down too medium without any luck.

I then tried turning the sound hardware acceleration off 'ingame' and it didn't help at all.

But after closing the game and restarting 'BAM' decent framerates and alot more sounds working.

& i was able to set my video settings back to most things on high

Sorry i don't have any numbers for you framerates wise but i was ingame and was too enthrawled at having a playable game again to check but the change in framerate differance was like night & day!

Hope soemone else will find this usefull

BiGGiBs

p.s. if my sys specs,drivers and dxdiag will help

i'll happily post them,just send a pm if needed

but for now i'm going back to play some more mp arma:D

[McTavish 0]

It seems ArmA is one of those "stressful" games that comes along occasionally and exposes the weak spots in everyones computer

I bought an X1950 XT to play it and all those pixel rendering pipelines mean I can throw as much AA/AF and post processing at it as I like.

I've been struggling with low framerates though and the one change I've made that has made a realy worthwhile difference is the one recommended by HBK (thanks) above. My 256Mb card just cannot cope easily with Textures set to Medium or higher. I resisted and resisted (because that is one of the few settings I consider really important for games) but finally dropped it down to "low" and the framerate soared. I've added in "high" AF and the textures still look good to me so I don't feel like I'm loosing out too much, especially since I can enable Post Processing on high- I'm in love with that depth of field effect

Moral of the story- everyones bottle-neck is going to be different so try everything.

[SHWiiNG 0]

HELP>>> When i select 1024 x 480 Resolution (this is the perfect choice as its lower then 1024 x 740 but high enough to get high quality textures) The game is extremely Blocky and Blurry..i sould use 800 x 600 but that too is a too blurry but no blocky..

PLEASE ANY HELP!

[Jack-UK 0]

Its probably blocky because you would be stretching the view... Try 1024*768 and if the problem dissapears then that is a poor resolution, you must have it in a bit of scale. You're giving your monitor 1024 pixels across and only 480 downwards...

[Possessed 0]

...nothing...

[HGuderian 0]

Hi to all!

Only a suggestion:

edit your boot.ini adding this "/3GB /Userva=2900" (without quotes). It tell to Win XP SP2 it can use more than 2Gb RAM for applications. Of course only for apps that are enabled with "IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE" header can utilize more than 2GB space.

I don't know if AA is enabled too (?)...but after adding that I've not more crashes.

(I've read this tip in SupremeCommander's "forums.gaspowered.com")

[INNOCENT&CLUELESS 0]

I assembled recently a new rig which is until now totally out of control. But only together with ArmA, all other applications are fine.

But I blame until now newest HW and newest drivers to be the root cause of that mess.

@HGuderian: I equipped 4GB RAM of the type approved corsair into the stryker extreme. But the system shows only 3,28 GB. The stryker extreme manual says that in this case "it might show a LITTLE bit less RAM" then in reality is equipped, but not saying anything how much the OS could utilize. I mean 3,28! That would mean I paid almost a complete Gig for nothing!

To your comment: Does it mean this entry in the boot.ini is MANDATORY to enable XP SP2 to utilize RAM above 2GB?

[Dwarden 1124]

I&C u not paid for useless 1GB of RAM ...

only in case of 32bit OS ...

in future if You move to Vista 64b You will be able utilize all ...

btw range of value fos /USERVA is from 2900 to 3030 MB

aka quote from MS KB

Quote[/b] ]

Use of the /Userva switch

With the /Userva switch, you can customize how the memory is allocated when you use the /3GB switch. The number following /Userva= is the amount of memory in megabytes (MB) that will be allocated to each process. If you set /3gb /Userva=3030, this reserves 3,030 MB of memory to the process space, as compared to 3,072 MB when you use the /3GB switch alone. The 42 MB that is saved when you set /Userva=3030 is used to increase the kernel memory space, free system page table entries (PTEs). The PTE memory pool is increased by the difference between 3 GB (specified by the /3GB switch) and the value that is assigned to the /Userva switch.

bit more info at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316739/

tho i was under impression USERVA works only in Windows 2003 Server OS

also there is /PAE switch http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=291988

yet all these need software specific compiled to be able use that memory ...

[sneakyman 0]

P4 3GHZ, 1G of Ram (matched pair corsair), ATI 9800XT, SB AudigyII. Recent format.

Anyone running this game with any kind of stability with a ATI 9800XT card? I got the latest drivers, big mistake, less stable than the previous driver. Now running Catalyst 6 drivers, all the setting in ATI control panel down to performance.

I'm getting hard locks, where your VPU recover would kick in, but, shut it off. So, it just locks up. Gotta say this is my last ATI card, there isn't a game this card likes aside solitare.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Yes I read the thread, lowering apeture size to 4x. Again thanks in advance.

[sneakyman 0]

Dbl post...

[HGuderian 0]

I think Dwarden have more aknowledgement than me.

However take a look here: http://forums.gaspowered.com

under "Crashing with large maps, several skirmish AI (FIX)" thread. I can say only that after the edit I haven't more crashes.

Best regards

[muska54 0]

i really dont understand why i am getting very bad performance with :

3.4ghz p4

8800gts 640mb

2gb corsair ram

for the game to be playable at about 20+ fps i must set everything to either low or very low.

its on a brand new comp with a fresh install of windows xp.

others are getting much better performance with lesser hardware. eg http://youtube.com/watch?v=yXOYJ7MiBBQ

it says 15fps avg but looks smoother to me. i get less than this and he has fraps running.. i dont understand.

all my other games run smooth as silk.

anybody else have a similar computer and can post their performance??

thnx

[maruk 80]

Defrag your hard-drive Regular defragging is very useful

Defragmenting hdd is really quite important because ArmA is loading data on the go. That means hard drive performance is also very important. But there, file fragmentation could be one of the major slow downs (even if you have fast hard drive).

There's one very good tool that allows you to easily make sure specific file are perfectly contiguous:

Contig from Sysinternals (now Microsoft's subsidiary).

You can run it on your entire ArmA folder like this:

Contig.exe -s "c:\program files\bohemia interactive\arma\*.*"

P.S.: I am using the following computers to play ArmA:

Primary: dual core P4 920 3.0 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, GF8800GTX 768 MB VRAM, Win XP Pro

Secondary: P4 640 3.2 GHz overclocked to 3.45 GHz, 1 GB RAM, GF7900GT 256 MB VRAM overclocked to 500 MHz/766 MHz, Win XP Pro

[deevius 0]

Maruk, just tried to use that tool and got:

Numbers of files processed: 187

Number of files defragmented: 0

"All files were either defragmented or unable to be defragmented."

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