Hardware and settings for ArmA

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

I recently upgraded my rig too to get better fps.

Still got mad stutters all the time until I found a gem in the fixes/tweaks thread.

Lower your texture detail to Normal or Low,

and go into your BIOS and change your AGP aperture, or PCI-Ex PEG Buffer length to Small / Short or whatever low setting your BIOS allows.

It has way improved my framerate and texture loading.

Object detail is very high, terrain normal, shading very high, shadows very high, other stuff tweaked for vid card best-performance-achievable / my preference.

So this texture bottleneck, once addressed, allows you to really crank up your settings without much penalty.

Also I forced the windows disk access to 32-bit (it was defaulting to 16 bit in Windows-automatic-mad-world) and I also installed the game itself onto a raid set, purely for game installations. The MOST important change for ArmA was reducing the texture sizes and PEG buffer length - makes it squirt textures less-amount and more often to the vid-card - the PCI interface and texture transfer was my bottleneck.

This is a re-post as I feel it should be find-able in both relevant threads - it really has made a helluva lot of difference!!!

[Caaahl 0]

WarWolf @ Aug. 31 2007,11:13)][...]

and go into your BIOS and change your AGP aperture, or PCI-Ex PEG Buffer length to Small / Short or whatever low setting your BIOS allows.

[...]

I'd really like to try this, but i cant find such an option in my BIOS settings.

I got an ASRock ALiveNF6G-VSTA motherboard an a XFX 8600GT 256MB.

Any ideas, how to change PEG-Buffer there?

[Baz 0]

i just recently upgraded my computer to a BFG Nvidia 8800GTX OC and AMD athalon 64 X2 6400+ (3.2 ghz) and bought a M2N-E Asus mobo with Nvidia 570 MCP chipset. Arma runs perfect now, no lag what so ever at 3500 View distance. And the game runs smooth on everything on very high without any problems or hiccups. Anybody wanting to upgrade their machine should get a new CPU, Vid card and mobo. It might be a bit pricey but it is damn sure worth it. I had SLI 2 7800s before and it ran every game just fine on everything at highest settings... Except armed assault... But, now with the 8800 GTX I run everything on very high including arma.

[ArMoGaDoN 0]

Rgr that, but brand new kit is pricey - mine is older but now hightly overclocked - and the PCI bus at 110% seems stable too, and this also improves stutters, but at 112% though Securom starts complaining...

No idea on other motherboards and buffer lenths/apertures.

Try google or the manufacturers website to see if a bios update is possible to allow it?

[TrunkzJr 0]

Now there gonna be working on ArmA2

[leckig 0]

Can a 8800 GTS 320 Mb run this game maxed out? Also, my CPU shouldnt really limit it in ArmA, should it? I saw somewhere that Marek said the a VGA should be as strong as possible but CPU-side a 3 Ghz P4 is enough, and I've got stuff in that category.

no way... in my resolution I have everything on low to get over 20 FPS in trees/cities. It goes down to <10 at times anyhow.

I just got 8800 GTX - this works MUCH better than GTS 320. Much better.

[Kamikaze666 0]

so arma is just very video-ram hungry?

[NeMeSiS 11]

so arma is just very video-ram hungry?

The bushes seem to eat pixel-shaders for breakfast.

[trini scourge 1]

I recently upgraded my vid card and my performance hasn't upgraded at all. I haven't had many negative things to say about ArmA but man, what a poorly optimized graphics engine. How is it possible for me to run Bioshock, COD4 and World in Conflict at near High settings (hell I can even run Crysis at medium-low details), but I can't even run ArmA on normal? Anyone got any advice?

My specs: 2 Intel Pentium D processors running at 2.8Ghz each

2Gb Kingston PC2 5300 RAM

ATI 1950 Pro 512Mb factory overclocked

2 X 100 Gb Harddrives

[OFPCAT 0]

For playing Arma, I would buy a SONI VAIO notebook with the following configuration. Old players, please tell whether they are very workable for ARMA?

* CPU: T7700 ( 240 GHz )

VGA CARD: NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600M GT

NAM: 1GB DDR2

HARD DISK: 200 GB ( Serial ATA, 5400 revolves )

[cross 1]

Well i have 7800 GTX and i just downloaded the XG163.76 driver from http://tweakforce.com .

Together with the Riva tuner i was able to max the OC settings with some reasonable heat..now the card runs at 73 celcius with regular fans and max OC to 490Mhz and 1350Mhz

Running the game at 20-40 with normal settings, PostPr&AA off. Distance 2k.

[Rommel 2]

E6750 (2.66GHZ) Core 2 Duo

8800GTS 320 (Palit)

1GB of DDR2 800mhz OCZ System Elite (Second Stick doesn't like motherboard, so don't crusify me for only 1GB o RAM :P)

2x250GB, 1x300GB.

Settings:

Terrain: High

Objects: High

Textures: High

Shading: Very Low (Usually Very High/High/Normal)

Post Processing: Low

Anisoptric Filtering: Disabled

Shadows: Normal

Anti-aliasing: Disabled

Blood: High

Anywhere I go, I've always got atleast 75 frames per second, with anti-aliasing on, I am very prone to crashing, as with anisoptric. Only in ArmA though .

At some points however it just jumps down to 2FPS if I look at something the wrong way, turn around or zoom out on somewhere and its fine, and doesnt happen again.

[Q1184 0]

@trini scourge:

You need a more powerful CPU. People seem to underestimate CPU's influence on performance. I upgraded from Athlon 64 4000+ to Core 2 Duo 6750, and with the same GFX card (much like yours, x1950 pro) my FPS dramatically increased (1.5-1.7 times). I could now crank the viewdistance up to 4k without noticeable FPS loss. Settings are mostly normal to high, resolution is 1280x1024. I'd recommend a Core 2 Duo (even the cheap 4xxx series is great, as they easily overclock up to 3 GHz).

[trini scourge 1]

@trini scourge:

You need a more powerful CPU. People seem to underestimate CPU's influence on performance. I upgraded from Athlon 64 4000+ to Core 2 Duo 6750, and with the same GFX card (much like yours, x1950 pro) my FPS dramatically increased (1.5-1.7 times). I could now crank the viewdistance up to 4k without noticeable FPS loss. Settings are mostly normal to high, resolution is 1280x1024. I'd recommend a Core 2 Duo (even the cheap 4xxx series is great, as they easily overclock up to 3 GHz).

Thanks Q1184, I'm probably going to get a new proc in a few months.

[Lepardi 0]

I'm getting a Radeon 2900 Pro 1024Mb DDR4 soon, how does it run with 2900 series cards?

[FritzDaKat 0]

Well i have 7800 GTX and i just downloaded the XG163.76 driver from http://tweakforce.com .

Together with the Riva tuner i was able to max the OC settings with some reasonable heat..now the card runs at 73 celcius with regular fans and max OC to 490Mhz and 1350Mhz

Running the game at 20-40 with normal settings, PostPr&AA off. Distance 2k.

Ya might want to think about slapping on a Vantec Iceberq 6 VGA cooler on there. I run a 7600 gt and was hitting temps in that range with a hundred Mhz OC on ram and gpu. Now with the cooler installed and a lil' arctic silver, even with the OC, I'm barely hitting 65C.

I certainly thought it was worth the $40 u.s.d.

Just make sure that theres a couple inches of free space past the end of your card as I found the cooler overhung by about 1.5 - 2" and I ended up having to relocate a hard drive.

The install was pretty straightforward, no major issues for me.

To top it all off, it doubles as a case exhaust.   (Lowered average temps by about 4 C)

Vantec Iceberq 6 VGA cooler

***Edit*** Hadn't checked temps for a couple weeks and now that the grease has had some time to cook in a bit, I'm not even hitting the 60C mark.

[Elcivor 0]

I know that I have an older computer, but still.. what would you suggest with my sys spec, tweaks and mods also allowed to make better performance(except the no-grass thing)

AMD Athlon 2.0ghz 2400+

Asus Radeon 9600SE 128mb

1.5gig ram

[Lepardi 0]

I suggest you start saving money now and get a new pc ASAP.

[OFPCAT 0]

I've spent around 3500 bucks getting a new notebook with high configuration. But still couldn't play ARMA smoothly and could only put two squads with several vehicles in game with some lags. When I retried it with my OFP addons under Liberation Mod, it went very fast with lots of soliders and vehicles. So it seems ARMA still waiting for next PC generation but not currently.

[NeMeSiS 11]

I've spent around 3500 bucks getting a new notebook with high configuration.  But still couldn't play ARMA smoothly and could only put two squads with several vehicles in game with some lags.  When I retried it with my OFP addons under Liberation Mod, it went very fast with lots of soliders and vehicles. So it seems ARMA still waiting for next PC generation but not currently.

What are the specs of the laptop?

[armafan86 0]

Hi! i´m going to upgrade my video card to Geforce 8500gt 512 ram. Will it be good for arma? Thanx!

[NeMeSiS 11]

Hi! i´m going to upgrade my video card to Geforce 8500gt 512 ram. Will it be good for arma? Thanx!

No, its a low end budgetcard, dont buy it.

The 8800GT only costs 200€ and is a very good card.

[armafan86 0]

Ok. Thank you! What about Nvidia 7600gt or 8600gt?

[jumpinghubert 49]

hello, if you want up to 40% more performance then give a try the lowplants-addon from kegety´s.

greets from germany

[OFPCAT 0]

CPU: T7700 (2.40GHZ)

VAGA CARD: NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600M GT

RAM: KINGSTON 3GB DDR2

HARD DISC: 200GB ( 5400 rev. 100GBX2 )

MONITOR: 17" ( WUXGA 1920X1200 )

OPERATING SYSTEM: WINDOWS VISTA HOME PREMIUM

It should be one of the fastest version for laptop in my country. Any suggestions what I could do for making the game more quicker with less lags in ARMA? I just tried to disable all special effect options yesterday. But that degraded the game amusement.