What is the bottleneck ?

[menos 0]

Hello everybody,

despite this is my very first post in this fine forum about a game which is very new to me.

in short: I am running v1.08 with these specs:

-Pentium D805 2,66 @ 3GHz

-2GB DDRII PC 667 MDT RAM (4 4 4 12)

-Asrock CoreDual-VSTA

-Gainward GF 7800GS 512 Bliss AGP 8x (G71 with 20ppl and 7vs)

-Nvidia 163 beta driver (no significant changes to older ones with ArmA)

-All driver settings are tweaked to performance except texture quality

-ingame settings are all tweaked to low or very low. shadows and AA are disabled

The game is the only software that runs quite bad on this machine - FPS over 32FPS are not seen here.

It doesn´t matter wich resolution I choose.

I can run native with 1680 x 1050 or at 1024 x 768 - there is no gain in FPS.

To see that all changes I do with no effect at all on the performance is quite frustrating.

I run ArmA with " -maxmem=1023" wich seemed to reduce the CTDs. Until I found out about 1023 the game almost crashed nearly every 5 to 10 minutes.

What is wrong with my setup or the software and what could be the weakest point here?

I´ll try to upload some of the CTDs i made shots from.

Any advice is welcome,

Ciao,

menos

PS: the troubleshooting guide has been studied several evenings along with intense testing. The very helpful tweaks and advices here on the board were considered also (especially the pagefile ones wich have been tested here and unfortunately didn´t show any difference).

All in all I am coming to a conclusion that this software has some very strange behaviour on some machines, wich has not been cured due to patching. Problematic only is the fact that this could be the killer software of the genre (I kicked a 5GB BF2 installation along with the finest mods available off the hdd after playing ArmA the first time).

[Beagle 684]

I'm allways satisfied with FPS around 24-30, so I don't see the Problem here...but:

Im running everything on high at 1280x1024 5:4 with 2400m view distance on a comparable System.

Athlon64X2 5000+ (2,6 GHz)

2 GB MDT DDR2 800

MSI 7900GS 512 PCIe (550Core/700RAM)

no overclocking.

It also ran similar on my old:

AthlonXP 3200+

1 GB RAM

EVGA 7800GS 256 AGP (430Core/700RAM)

So, I'am unable to indentify a bootleneck just by your numbers.

[wolfsblut_ 0]

I'm allways satisfied with FPS around 24-30, so I don't see the Problem here...but:

Im running everything on high at 1280x1024 5:4 with 2400m view distance on a comparable System.

...

It also ran similar on my old:

AthlonXP 3200+

1 GB RAM

EVGA 7800GS 256 AGP (430Core/700RAM)

So, I'am unable to indentify a bootleneck just by your numbers.

AthlonXP 3500

1 GB RAM

7800GS 256 AGP

1024x768

no AA

no AF

view 1000m

everything on "low" except "blood"

=> sometimes mouse-/aminglags => no chances in deathmatches etc.

[menos 0]

So it seems I am quite on high hopes to get this software running without getting eye cancer and fried braincells by choppy 25FPS ?

To bad - as I thought that a fluid running ArmA is absolutely essential for good aiming and long range shots aswell as flying helicopters without risking the crews life by only 5 to 10FPS.

"Darn - this taxi is risky - sorry guys, missed 3FPS here, to see that rock"

I really would like to have it running without touching the 30 FPS (from above of course).

So thanx for some input so far Beagle

Is this machine so bad ?

[jtec 0]

you tried -maxmem=512" in the shortcut target?

Also what is your viewdistance as to be honest about 2000 is fine by all accounts as most servers run about this distance as far as im aware. im using a 7900 gs and i can run with most settings on highest with view distance at the 2000 mark and 1024 x 768 screen res. I have 3 gig of ram, and a dual core 5200 athlon

[Jack-UK 0]

You have 2GB RAM, try this tweak

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....b+tweak

[fasad 1]

Question:

Quote[/b] ]What is the bottleneck ?

Answer:

Quote[/b] ]Pentium D805 2,66 @ 3GH

I understand this is a low cost/performance dual core CPU with a slow FSB. Since ArmA only uses one core, your CPU is very likely to be the weak link.

[xnodunitx 0]

Indeed, I had a friend who decided to upgrade to a dual core, problem is they got a 1.6ghz, you can imagine how much fun they had with that.

You say you can't run native 1024x768 at the least, can you visually see the graphics change at all? If so then I remember having a similar problem, had to uninstall all drivers for the video card and reinstall them then it worked. You may want to try this regardless, anything might help.

[Kevlar2007 1]

[MehMan 0]

What OS are you running it on?

[Beagle 684]

After that chart above, it's the Processor.

[hit-man 0]

Yes, i'm sure it's limiting the graphic-card. Your CPU and GPU need to be on one performance-level.

[Pulverizer 1]

It's never that simple with a game like OFP/ArmA to measure performance and tweak settings. Different missions and different settings have different requirements and due to LODs, fps might stay the same even when you play on a better machine on which the better lods further away will eat up the added performance.

Leave the task manager on (ctrl+alt+del) to monitor cpu usage during play, if it stays mostly at 100%, a faster cpu would probably help. Mines around 25% on small missions yet I get crap fps: time for a new gfx card.

[menos 0]

Thank you all for the different ideas and kind comments. Regarding these I made some more testing and tweaking of my system only for ArmA.

On 30.07.2007 Asrock released a new final bios for the Asrock CoreDual VSTA wich added a microcode update regarding dual core cpus wich seemed to boost performance alot in non dual cpu programmed games like ArmA  

I studied further overclocking guides regarding my mainboard to raise some clocks - now the good old D805 runs at 3.2 GHz (with stock cooler, rockstable at 50°C under full load).

My DDRII timings had been sharpened too, but lead to more CTDs in ArmA (and in ArmA only regardless superstable behaviour in other games at high settings and several stress programms, wich is very sad. ArmA seems very very problematic, when it comes to overclocking)

The graphic cards hardware settings I left untouched.

ALL THIS GAVE ME AN BOOST IN THE ARMA BENCHMARK FROM 1800 POINTS TO 2400 POINTS !!! I think this boost is quite impressive.

The most distinctive difference was, that textures and LODs where loaded within splitseconds and ran very very smooth compared to my old setup, where mainly in the "heli flight over the runway - scene" the runway textures where only loaded, when the Cobra chopper in the end of the scene arrived almost in the middle of the screen. The first UAZ scene even jumped from around 22000 - 24000 to around 30000 !!!

Then I did further testing with Rivatuner, new Nvidia betadrivers and the D3D Overrider 1.3, wich comes with Rivatuner.

After taking over the driversettings with Rivatuner instead of the native control panel my ArmA score was messed up to 1800 again    - I did something wrong.

I then used the D3D Overrider 1.3 settings to force to Vsync and tripple buffering in DX 9 and the game ran alot smoother but still in the bad 1800 region.

Some comments on your kind ideas:

I'm allways satisfied with FPS around 24-30, . . .

Well I am used to have around 45 FPS with other demanding games at very high settings with this machine (when I built this PC out of curiosity and an experimental budget of 300€, the first software was Queke4 with latest patches and highest settings at 1680 x 1050.) Queke is one of the very fine games that introduced a multicore code later by patching.(HINT, HINT) You can enable and disable the multicore usage via menu. Queke ran totally awsome on this cheap Comp - even without multicore support I ran with about 45FPS and I was absolutely amazed by this good old Computer !

You have 2GB RAM, try this tweak

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....b+tweak

As I stated, I did this pagefile tweak and it gave nothing to mention here - seems I had no caching trouble before and unless WinXP makes up its own invisible pagefile, wich is something between 1.5GB to 4.5GB in this machine while running different software and watching the pagefile rising in taskmanager. I am not aware whether this is a good or bad thing, Windows does but as you cannot prevent this its useless to temper with here.

Question:

Quote[/b] ]What is the bottleneck ?

Answer:

Quote[/b] ]Pentium D805 2,66 @ 3GH

I understand this is a low cost/performance dual core CPU with a slow FSB. Since ArmA only uses one core, your CPU is very likely to be the weak link.

Well, you are right. This is a low cost CPU, wich happens to leak just 55,- € from my bank account. BUT it performes like hell on every single software I tried EXCEPT ArmA.

The nice chart, Kevlar2007 showed us is unfortunately not meeting the problem of this thread, as my D805 performes around the benchmarks of an D940 (regarding its dry benchmarking and its raw clock speed) so in the game presented here (UNREAL TOURNAMENT - remember) I would land around 50FPS.

But as the crux of my problem shows, and everyone who is involved with computers and gaming has learned ever single game with different engines, cpu usage and gpu, . . . runs different on ones machine.

So as I am in the mood (what an asshole I can be in times    ) and just for a showoff I ll come around with another table:

Btw, this test is a nice read even if one has no D805:

A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at £79.95 - Can it be True?

Quote[/b] ]What OS are you running it on?

Win XP Pro SP2 patched and hotfixed to 07/2007

Quote[/b] ]After that chart above, it's the Processor.

no  

@Pulverizer: You shed light on an very interesting point here.  

As it happens, the CPU runs only at about 68%, so something is slowing the game down, BUT NOT THE CPU (the core that is used, which runs at 3.2GHz)

Ciao,

menos

[Major Fubar 0]

Moving to Troubleshooting

[Barry the baldy 0]

PentiumD are known for their horrid performance.

To get up to ARMA standards you're going to need to pick up a new processor and a new video card.

You COULD run ARMA (not at very good settings) if you just upgraded to a Core 2 Duo... at least the E6600 if oyu want bang for your buck but to hit the sweet spot you're gonna want to up the ante on your video card too.