Hardware and settings for ArmA

[1in1class 0]

iv got an vary important question i got an mother board thats main memory supports ddr266/333/400/433/466/500/533. I got an 6800 ultra geforce and looking to get an 7800 BFG geforce card, but the 7800 BFG says Memory Type GDDR3 on it? Will i be able to run this card on my mainboard? They are both AGP. My mainboard is an AGP 8x/4x.

[1in1class 0]

any one?? plz help will an 7800 BFG with GDDR3 memory work with my main board that Main Memory supports DDR? The 7800 BFG is an APG card and my Main Board slot is an APG.

[BraTTy 0]

That is saying that the memory on the video card is DDR3 which is very good and has no relation to the memory within your pc

You will be able to use any AGP video card in your system, doesn't matter what your motherboard supports for system memory

Your only concern is the size of the videocard (some are extremely long) and just depends on how much room in your case and nearby items

[1in1class 0]

thxs

[Chaos 0]

Can 4GB DDR-2 RAM help for better performance and quickely loading in Arma in XP Pro SP2?

[paragraphic l 2]

I've got a new system but the performance is not what I would've expected to get with this, it's actually almost the same as my 2year old notebook did.

These are the specs of my new system and the current ingame settings;

ASUSTek Motherboard P5N-E SLI

Intel Core2Duo E6850 @ 3.00GHz

ATI RADEON HD 3870 X2 with 1024MB GDDR3 @ Catalyst 8.2 drivers

2GB DDR2 GEiL RAM @ 4-4-4-12 800Mhz

Windows XP Pro 32-bit

Ingame:

1280x1024 @ 60Hz

VD: 4098m

Terrain Details: Normal | AF: V High

Object Details: High | Shadow Details: V High

Texture Details: Normal | AA: Normal

Shading Details: V High | Blood: High

Post Processing: V High

and I only get around 30FPS

Am I aiming to high or should I get better performance with this system? Any hints or maybe found a bottleneck?

[gL33k 0]

30fps vanilla, mean +/- 20fps while tank , russian , and church explode.

you clearly target too high.

shadow very high seem make shadow for smoke cloud => power hunger. in any case, i think it take a large amount of video memory.

maybe high is more clever.

shading very high is.... erm ... wait i have a nvidia card anyway , with all that, my game crash constantly .

bohemia , wake up !!!§§

[paragraphic l 2]

with my laptop that had a 1.7 ghz processor and 6800 Mobile GPU I allready could play with shading @ very high and shadows @ high

but it does not really make much difference if I lower both only gains like 10 fps MAX

[OL 0]

with my laptop that had a 1.7 ghz processor and 6800 Mobile GPU I allready could play with shading @ very high and shadows @ high

but it does not really make much difference if I lower both only gains like 10 fps MAX

Make sure that within CCC everything is set to application controlled and the the transparency anti aliasing (or whatever term ATI use for it) is off. This improves my FPS massively on a similar computer.

[Radnik 18]

Ok, simple question:

Nvidia 8800GT 512MB or AMD 3870 512MB?

Just for ArmA, and rest is E4400, P35, 1GB memory...planing to play with 1280x1024.

All the tests shows this Nvdia model advantage over AMD.

[platoon_spare 0]

Quote[/b] ]paragraphic l Posted on Feb. 20 2008,00:28

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've got a new system but the performance is not what I would've expected to get with this, it's actually almost the same as my 2year old notebook did.

These are the specs of my new system and the current ingame settings;

ASUSTek Motherboard P5N-E SLI

Intel Core2Duo E6850 @ 3.00GHz

ATI RADEON HD 3870 X2 with 1024MB GDDR3 @ Catalyst 8.2 drivers

2GB DDR2 GEiL RAM @ 4-4-4-12 800Mhz

Windows XP Pro 32-bit

Ingame:

1280x1024 @ 60Hz

VD: 4098m

Terrain Details: Normal | AF: V High

Object Details: High | Shadow Details: V High

Texture Details: Normal | AA: Normal

Shading Details: V High | Blood: High

Post Processing: V High

and I only get around 30FPS

ok.. arma settings are not logical or so it seems to me.

so change one thing at a time not multiples of settings at the beginning till you get used to them,

your native resolution ifor you monitor is the best to use also dont force 75hz on a 60hz lcd  monitor.(some driver versions did allow this )

so start default

set refresh rate and  screen size to siut your monitor (native) put your quality preference to VERY HIGH and then work backwards ie..

Try putting post processing to low first of all .. this seems to change the most for me frame rates .. then try shadows / but never combine them to much as they dont seems to add together ....often the results get worse .. so try always from default remembering to set up your refresh rate screen size always you will know when its right as the difference is obvious +++ plus not to mention dont use 1.08 but a must is version 1.09 beta ...as anything else  JUST TOO PAINFUL

I use a e6300(1.8 oc'd to over 3.17)  4 gig of ram ocz ,1- 8800gts 640mg and get 60 fps. monitor samsung 226bw And oh yer windows vista  for all you vistas haters

Arma at 1680x1050 60hz  QP at very high @ 16:10 ratio

shadow details at very low for ctf skermish maps

pp effects.. low

oh yer have fraps running and test between each tweek.

Dave

[paragraphic l 2]

It is actually not that I don't have the idea how to tweak my FPS, if that means lowering my ingame settings, it is more that I THOUGHT I SHOULD get 60fps with these settings at the very least!

Your example allready proves my point +20-30FPS with all worse but the 2Gb extra RAM

Is it my card? the drivers? or did I just do something completely wrong on my end?!

[Mr Sarkey 0]

Anybody tried Armed Assault with the new GeForce 9600GT?

(I'll have one in a few days to test it out wiht hopefully.)

[sickboy 13]

It is actually not that I don't have the idea how to tweak my FPS, if that means lowering my ingame settings, it is more that I THOUGHT I SHOULD get 60fps with these settings at the very least!

Your example allready proves my point +20-30FPS with all worse but the 2Gb extra RAM

Is it my card? the drivers? or did I just do something completely wrong on my end?!

Did you try turning off EAX, and run everything on very high, with anti aliasing on normal?

Also try hdrprecision=32   in the arma.cfg after closed game, and then start.

At least should bring better hdr ^^

Did you try running with and without mods?

Are you somehow able to get a higher refreshrate, incase of forced v-sync?

I'm running atm with:

Quote[/b] ]

Asus Maximus Formula (FSB: 1666mhz)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (running 4x 3333mhz)

4x 2GB OCZ Titanium XTC (1000mhz, 5-5-5-15 2t)

Geforce 8800GTX 768MB

Creative X-Fi  (2.15.0004)

Vista x64 SP1 RTM (running on crippled 3GB RAM available when playing ArmA )

Settings:

Quote[/b] ]

1920x1080@60hz

All graphics settings Very High (or highest) except Anti Aliasing on Normal.

Viewdistance: 5000m

ArmA v1.09beta with 6thSense.eu Mod v1.24

I'm bouncing between 30-60fps depending on scenery and happenings, this is however measured in MP

I should within a few weeks get a Core 2 Quad 45nm, hopefully driving it over 3.6 or maybe 4ghz. I'm hoping for even better performance, altough I think the next-gen graphics cards will have to achieve this

[platoon_spare 0]

Quote[/b] ]It is actually not that I don't have the idea how to tweak my FPS, if that means lowering my ingame settings, it is more that I THOUGHT I SHOULD get 60fps with these settings at the very least!

Your example allready proves my point +20-30FPS with all worse but the 2Gb extra RAM

Is it my card? the drivers? or did I just do something completely wrong on my end?!

Sorry but you dont know how to tweek fps ingame? or why you should do it ?  please be more clear..

why .. well because I dont have a top end card my 8800gts 640 is good for arma but it does not come near a 8800gtx OC 768 X2 i.e SLI........ So you tweek... meaning lowering setting to get faster frame rates which means worse visuals (nice picture/sexy looking grass etc)  but better performace in multiplayer games and flying jets with view distances set very high which obviously put stress on your card.....

How to ..well download FRAPS a frame rate program and as many ppl have written ....play with your settings ...

Addding extra ram to my striker extreme mb didnt improve my frame rates and i didint notice any change in armas speed or loading........... Overclocking my cpu made a big difference leaving my ram at 850  instead of pushing it to 1150 (as water cooled ocz ram should be able to do) helped me from not having my systen crash all the while .......

so tweeking system and arma setting go hand in hand  ..

nividia drivers whql work for me......... the betas after lots of testing i nomally avoid unless i have problem related to new hardware i have installed .

How you lean to tweek ? ... well the hard way  .. lots of arma lock ups .. lots of systems crashes  lots of time and lots of patience ......... which runs out often with my motherboard..

And most of all lots of google trawling...

SICKBOY   what does the tweek in the arma cfg do exactly?

Dave

[paragraphic l 2]

Sorry if it was not clear, but I meant that I know how to tweak my FPS with the ingame settings, but I want to know about other tweaks like ATI tray tool or maybe someone know that the 8.2 cat drivers are not optimal for this card?

AA is allready on Normal, difference between Low and High is not that much really

Do you mean that I should turn ON VSync? to check if I get higher FPS

Checked with and without mods

And with HDR=32 I have no more AA on which I enjoy MORE

And well I don't get near 60 EVER with around the same settings as you have

[platoon_spare 0]

ok  well  what monitor are u using ? 22inc lcd ?

Anyway try 16.10 ratio with quality on very high then set 60hz and screen size to suit your native rate of monitor  Always save settings and exit arma to save fully the new settings as they go back previous ones if you go test .... Your view distance is too high for normal game play really 1200 is fine unless flying or distance shooting.this will help on frame rates.

then as before turn post processing to low and then play with shadows / terrian details etc till your frame rate goes up and quality balance remains acceptable ..

Again depands on what your doing for ctf and multiplayer games.... speed is everything and nice grass sucks as your kissing it while your dead.

If your playing against the AI who cares anyway ...there too super anyway. You dont need good fps but a nice cross to stick on your grave lol.

As for utilities ....best ask elsewhere dont tweek my graphics card  now as it costs to much to replace really.

good luck m8

Dave

[stun 5]

I'm resigned to getting between 30-60fps also. After wasting far too much of my life tweaking the visual settings on arma it has finally occured to me that it makes bugger all difference. As far as I can tell arma is the most CPU intensive game I have ever owned and it is my CPU that is dictating my frame rate. I recently bought an 8800 gt and it makes very little difference if i have all the settings maxed out or at their lowest settings I still get between 30-70 fps. I guess my C2D E6400 with 2 gigs of ram just ain't up to it for arma. I guess I will have to trade it in for a super computer .

[platoon_spare 0]

Not sure how you get 70 fps unless you have a crt monitor as my with my 60hz lcd monitor the frame rates match the refresh rate  ie 60hz from asking around it seems that it really unless your forcing the refresh rates as i did at 1 time getting 75hz /75fps but it was a false reading and the visual quailty was worse anyway for me ... to repeat the same things as above native settings for lcd at 16:10 60hz and once you hit 60fps that it .....obviously a better GPU OR X2 ups your quality ... and that seems about all.......once you have a dual core running over 3 then arma does not seem to improve. Yes i know arma uses one core but maybe your system uses the other helping to take load of the first core.(anyway my idea based on owning 3 pcs with  OC 'S win2000, xp and vista and various qualitys of graphics cards/cpu's.

Dont waste money on quad core /super pc's for arma ...maybe for ofp2 or arma 2 , but we shall have to wait and see.

Dave

[stun 5]

@platoon_spare

CRT and vsync off. Another gig of ram and the 8800gt was all i'm willing to spend for improving my arma experience. I want to get at least another year out of this system.

you could really waste a lot of time and money trying to get the best performance from arma. this game ain't counter strike, so i don't need cs performance. my biggest concern is the hit that AI units make on the CPU. CEX and other large missions have it running at close to 100% for extended periods, if only the other core would do a bit more to help, sigh....

the strangest thing is that some times the cores decide to share the load and at other times it's completely down to one core. thanks microsoft and intel!

Most games when you drop graphics settings dramatically you get a big boost in frame rates. all i can think is BIS have screwed up the settings, i.e i used to get better performance with shadows set to high rather than low with my old 7600gt or the problem is the game is just too cpu intensive for most computers.

the only tweak that has helped me is setting render frames ahead to 0 or 1. that has always made a huge difference.

[platoon_spare 0]

@stun

yer got to agree with you about bis and the settings ... they dont just work how you think they should do  ... And if you play 1.08 you can forget it .. pisses me off play arma totally till 1.09 beta came out and after tweeking the setting its finally fun to play .. I went back to 1.08 for a match the other night and went to bed so angry that i wish i hadnt bothered.

For me the grass business lowered in 1.09 as in kegertys mod has made all the diffeence i seem to have seen a slight advantage with the nvidia 71.16 VISTA 32 drivers and some updaters drivers from nvidia for my striker extreme but it moves ahead slowly not as one would have expected to work when i purchased my graphics card nearly a year agao now.

Still i think post procsssing to low helps me most followed by terrian at very low and shadows off .. i have now been testing antilasing at normal which gives an edge over off.

Next week Im going to try sli for the first time , knowing that maybe the fps may even go down but hoping to push the distance up to max for flying those harriers.

What actually happens setting frames render ahead to 0 or 1 ?   And where is this setting to be found?

Dave

[Väinämöinen 0]

My arma rig was x6800 a 3.8ghz, 3-3-3-9 DDR2 and x1950xtx but I bought ATI 3870x2 to boost performance. I installed Vista x64 Ultimate too. Remember to enable CatalystAI "Standard". If you disable it you will get less than 15fps. Im not happy but its enough...With this settings i get 35-60fps. Arma 1.09beta (Ati drivers 8-2_vista64_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_58134):

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7966/fpsnm7.jpg

Image resized from 1600*1200

[stun 5]

@platoon_spare

if you use an nvidia card "Max Frames to Render Ahead" is under "additional direct3D settings" if you use the old nvidia control panel. with my 7600gt and now with my 8800gt it tends to smooth out the frame rate, stops it stuttering (mouse lag). it won't increase fps but makes the game a bit smoother in my experience. I currently have it set at 2, but have also used it set to 1 and 0. try it on 2 and see what happens.

check out the link for more info

http://www.tweakguides.com/GRAW_8.html

[OL 0]

From my experience ArmA is massively CPU dependent. Overclocking or buying a faster CPU would be my first upgrade.

AA, especially with the transparency (nvidia) or adaptive (ATI) modes enabled kills FPS in towns or forests. However, basic AA doesn't seem to cause that big of a hit.

[Gubar 0]

Hi,

what kind of performance can I expect on an opteron 175 dual core, 7800 gt 256 mb, 2 gigs of ram, at a resolution of 1440 x 900?

I expect it should be ok... but I also thought that when I bought OF years ago, and had to wait about a year to play it properly when I upgraded.

thanks,

gubar