Arma and Vista

[guyguy1 0]

Hey guys, I just got a new notebook today. Core 2 Duo @2GHz, nvidia Go 7950 GTX, 2 GB RAM. Windows VISTA.

I started up the ArmA demo and played it (US Demo). To my dissapointment, the only settings i could get good fps on was at 1024x786 with everthing on high besides AA and PostProcess. Viewdistance was at 1600. Any higher resolution/texture detail would lag up the game.

My friend has a windows XP laptop the same settings as mine and he can play it on higher resolutions without any lag. Is there any way to optimize windows vista so that ArmA will perform better? I know that there is a way you can allocate more RAM for the game and a way to stop vista from eating up so much memory. But how?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Edit: I have not installed ANY drivers of any sort. I just started using the machine out of the box. Also, I find that when it is idle on the desktop, ram usage is 25% and cpu usage is 16%. So theres evidence that SOMETHING is eating up performance. Once again my spcs are

Nvidia Go 7950 GTX

Core 2 Duo 2.00 ghz

2 GB ram

7200 rpm 160gb hard drive

I also got a laptop cooler so if anyone knows how to overclock could you tell me?

Thanks again

[sniper pilot 36]

Its been said time and time again by the devs... ArmA does not support Vista

[guyguy1 0]

It does run on vista, but there are some apps that take up cpu, ram, and video card memory. i just want to get the best performance because i already got the vista machine. no turning back now.

[maddogx 13]

It does run on vista, but there are some apps that take up cpu, ram, and video card memory. i just want to get the best performance because i already got the vista machine. no turning back now.

You'll generally want to close all apps like antivirus software and filesharing programs. Sniper Pilot is right though: ArmA does not officially support Vista. Sure, it runs on it, but there is no guarantee that it will run very well.

If you can run it Ok with almost everything on high, then you're one of the lucky ones. Others are getting <10 fps on big mutha systems. It's all down to Vista.

[Kirby 2]

And you're moaning about THOSE settings with a "good" FPS?!

I'd be happy with medium settings at that res with 30FPS.

[guyguy1 0]

isn't there a place in the arma settings or w.e where you can change the amount of RAM the game can use? The default wasn't too high. i remember seeing something like that being talked about around here but I don't know where to find it..

[TheVoodoo 0]

I had the same problem...

i solved it this way:

I stick with vista,

don't care anymore about ArmA,

wait to grab a nextgen Game with better performance and support...

BTW: Any other Game works PERFECT with Vista and ArmA did also till 1.05 arrived.

Maybe i check back in 1 year if it runs smooth on a Quadcore CPU with 4GHz, GF 9850GX2 1024MB DDR3 VRAM, 3GB Ram (the rest of the 8GB are deactivated due x64 issues), Soundblaster X-Fi 2 and WindowsXP (=> ??LOL??)

[Poseidon88 0]

I wouldn't waste your time right now.  I bought ArmA last week, and tried to run it under Vista first.  The performance was actually OK after patching to 1.8, but it was so spectacularly unstable that I actually set up another partition with XP just so I can play it.  It's a little disappointing, as I really like using Vista for everything else I do, and nearly every other game I own (and there are a lot) runs perfectly on Vista.  The ones that don't are so old, I mostly don't care that much.  If they were willing to officially support Vista, I might have stuck with it, but as it stands it isn't worth the hassle.

[binkster 0]

I used to play arma under Vista untill I made a dual boot with xp. There was a 50% increase in performance from vista to xp for me. One thing is that my vista was using about 800mb of ram when xp uses around 150mb. Also the constant scanning of the harddrive. For some reason Vista will just scan and scan, I think i read somewhere that this helps the search engine of vista. Anyways Vista may be a good system for games maybe around Service pack 2. Too many resources being used for an OS.

[xnodunitx 0]

Its been said time and time again by the devs... ArmA does not support Vista

More like Vista does not support Arma.

We'v heard this song several times..I don't really see why people 'upgrade' to vista. Its a memory hog, can take longer for virtually any applications to load, sometimes requires new hardware entirerly.

And so on. Your usually better off sticking with and I can't believe I'm saying this, XP.

[TrunkzJr 0]

I have new hardware, most of my problems come from the 8800 Gtx and ArmA problems, other then that i think it runs great. THO i must say i do think it should officially support it cause in a year or 2 alot more ppl will have Vista especially when all the big bugs come out.

[guyguy1 0]

Does anybody know where to allocate more RAM to the ArmA game? I remember reading somewhere in these forums that there was a certain file or whatever that controls the amount of RAM the game can use and you simply have to change the number to change the number of RAM it uses. I have comfirmed the fact that there is something controlling the amount of RAM the game uses; my RAM meter constantly stalls at 51% when playing ArmA.

Thanks

[4 IN 1 0]

if you are using XP then you can simply disable pagefile and force ArmA to run on your ram, now that you use vista....

[Gisen 0]

As everyone has said already Vista is shite for gaming. However if you must use it, turn all the fancy pretty gubbins off (aero interface, sidebar, everything) and if possible alt+tab out of game in order to close down explorer as well. And definitely don't be running any 'security' programs.

[1212PDMCDMPPM 200]

As everyone has said already Vista is shite for gaming.  However if you must use it, turn all the fancy pretty gubbins off (aero interface, sidebar, everything) and if possible alt+tab out of game in order to close down explorer as well.  And definitely don't be running any 'security' programs.

And stop the Windows search service.

I noticed a real boost in the time it took to display textures while turning it off.

It's sad that I get the same performance from a new Vista installation without antivirus on a defragmented Raptor than my old XP installation, on a old fragmented hard drive.

1.

[tutmeister 0]

I'm using Vista Ultimate and I run this game pretty fantastic on a medium to high system:

-3GB DDR2 5300 RAM (2GB runs it fine too, I use photoshop professionally, so require RAM for that)

-eVGA 7950GTX 512MB videocard

-ASUS P5L2 motherboard using onboard sound!

-normal S-ATA hard drive.

What I've done is a fresh install of Arma and then patched it up to 1.8.

In windows vista, I run Aero, but I've disabled the following services:

-windows search.(so it takes a few more seconds when searching...)

-routing and remote access. (i don't need it, you may.)

-secondary logon.(again, I do't need it and it wastes memory)

-windows defender.(I use 3rd party software: spybot and ccleaner)

-windows media center extender service.

On the rest I've gone through and set most to manual, so they start when they are needed and not when windows starts. So if you do a fresh restart and then play ArmA, you'll only get services online that are neccessary.

Now for the biggie IMHO, I use a piece of software called FSautostart, which defrags my RAM and places ArmA as a high priority process on startup of the game. You have to create a profile in the software, it was originally designed to aid users of flight sim, hence the name.

FSAUTOSTART

With all the above, I run ArmA on high settings with 6000 metres visibility and get a steady 40-50 FPS, which I'm very happy with.

[llama9000 0]

Dammmn. Good thing I've read this before contemplating getting a new system and use Vista! I do have a question though:

What version of Vista are you using? I know there is a basic home version of Vista that does not carry the Aero interface (which I don't care much about), has anyone tried ArmA on it?

[RMK 0]

Running on Vista Home Premium here, usually just turn off Indexing (for vistas search engine), the sidebar and switch Aero to Vista Basic scheme, turn off avast and msn and voila smoother than I ever had it running on XP

Intel Core 2 Duo 6300 @ 2.1ghz

7950GT 512mb

2.5gb DDR2 RAM (4100/5300)

320gb SATAII

Realtek 7.1 onboard

Game runs at about 50-60fps with everything on medium/high, get about 10fps if I turn off shadows and another 5-10 if I turn off AA

also, vista uses 25% of RAM just running the OS and 2% of CPU

[KDog35 0]

Glad I read this topic. I have Vista Home Premium and have been very dissapointed in the performance running arma.

My specs are: dual core e6600, 2 gig ram, X-fi SB sound card, ATI 256gb card.

I feel really stupid asking this, but is there another way of turning off programs besides going to start up/run "msconfig" and un-click the programs you do not want to run?? What is Indexing and how do I identify under start up to disable? I want to know what this "Aero" is so I can make changes also.

Please help, i want to get this game running better and i know it will only take some adjustments.

[txrx 0]

There is defo some way still to go before Vista and DirectX 9 games are running as well as they should on a XP box. I've got both installed here (dual boot) and whilst Microsoft FSX will run like a dream on Vista, other DX9 games can crawl when compared to their XP installs.

Company of heroes has a nice benchmark test and whilst it's not Arma it amazed me to see how much of a drop in FPS Vista can show it's interesting to see what difference programming api and methods can make.

COH recently has had a Vista patch tho which I've yet to install. So I'd say it's early days in terms of the backwards compatibility stakes etc.

I've yet to install ArmA on my Vista install but judging by some of the topics here I'm going to wait. Maybe a DX10 patch or update would be cool?!

[sniper pilot 36]

It does run on vista, but there are some apps that take up cpu, ram, and video card memory. i just want to get the best performance because i already got the vista machine. no turning back now.

Yes it DOES run, but Devs have said its not supported...yet

[TheVoodoo 0]

just wanted to add that everyone who says "aero theme slows down the system" doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. Aero is a GPU supported, 3D accelerated userinterface that usually speeds up the system if you own a considerable gfx card.

[Sevan 0]

I'm running ArmA on Vista and getting simliar performance as my friend with a near identical XP setup.

As far as I know, when you open the game it automatically turns off Aero and reverts to basic. You can do a test, run the game with Aero on, then run the game in classic or basic. identical performance. It has no affect, for me.

I have 2GB of DDR2800 RAM and I've never noticed memory usage go beyond 70% when also running the game.

As far as company of heroes, which is off topic, the next expansion pack has directx 10 only affects (vista only), and will backwards apply them to the orginal game.