Game Performance

[jolulure 0]

Hi!

I have just bought my new gaming machine!!! it comes with 2gigs of RAM, CORE 2 DUO at 2ghz, and the nVidia 8600GT.

To my surprise, the game demo (v1.06) runs at 16-20 fps at low-medium graphics quality, and at 1024x768...

Is this normal for such a "breath taking" graphics card?

[NeMeSiS 11]

Its a bit on the slow side, tried new drivers and the usual scanning for virusses/defragmenting etc, and the -maxmem command and disabled your pagefile?

[jolulure 0]

well, the machine is 45minutes old, so i dont think i have many viruses ....

i didnt understand the page file and those... can you repeat? thanks!

[NeMeSiS 11]

i didnt understand the page file and those... can you repeat? thanks!

Well i have a dutch version of windows so i have to guess the english translations.

right mouse button on 'this PC'->properties->advanced->(the highest button, the one with 'visual effects' and other stuff)->advanced->change->no pagefile->change->OK->reboot.

If it still doesnt work properly:

Right mouse button on your ArmA shortcut->properties->shortcut->and in the target box add after the last " the following:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE"> -maxmem=

After the = a number like 256, 512, 1024 etc etc. (And dont forget the space between " and - )

This often has a positive effect for 8x00 users.

[hoz 0]

TS forum is better suited for this topic

[Jack-UK 0]

By the way, the 8600 series is not a 'breathtaking' card... Its quite overrated... Nvidia seem to be making a lot of money from it because people believe it is a cheaper version of the 8800 series.. but infact i believe its equal to a 7900 or something like that?

[Doelwit 0]

By the way, the 8600 series is not a 'breathtaking' card... Its quite overrated... Nvidia seem to be making a lot of money from it because people believe it is a cheaper version of the 8800 series.. but infact i believe its equal to a 7900 or something like that?

Actually the normal 7900 is a whole lot faster than the 8600gt. In some games the 7600 gt is even faster than the 8600 gt.

[NeMeSiS 11]

By the way, the 8600 series is not a 'breathtaking' card... Its quite overrated... Nvidia seem to be making a lot of money from it because people believe it is a cheaper version of the 8800 series.. but infact i believe its equal to a 7900 or something like that?

Actually the normal 7900 is a whole lot faster than the 8600gt. In some games the 7600 gt is even faster than the 8600 gt.

Its a bit faster then my x1600XT, however my settings are all on normal (+AF on high, AA on low) and my FPS in north Sahrani is 25-35 (unless im looking at certain bushes from up close).

So there is definitely something misconfigured on his system.

[kklownboy 43]

yeah the old 7600gt v. the 8600gt... bad NVDA bad... the 8600gt is less than a 7600gt, you have to get a 8600gts, to be similar to a 7600gt.. BUT the 7600gts is less than a 7600gt. NVDA changed the name this gen. now GTS is > GT...

[-Puma- 2]

turn post processing low and shadows off.

[76 0]

jolulure try playing around with your Nvidia Control Panel.... I have to screw around swapping all sorts of settings till it seems to run sweetly... even putting settings higher will make it run better..... go figure, oh and this is with a 8800GTS 640MB

[jolulure 0]

ive tried the pagefile, the -maxmem thing, defragging, playing around (almost 1 hour) with the nvidia panel... still no luck, just some 5 fps more

at the first mission of the demo level, i get around 20 fps with minimum graphics quality and at 1024x768...

is this normal?

[tzvetoslav 0]

Well no...but here are some things you should know :

1st:You have a C2Duo at 2GHz which means it runs at 4GHz.ArmA doesn't handle C2Duo processors so that means the game runs with only one core - 2GHz.

2nd:Try overclocking your vga.You'll get a boost.

3rd:Overclock CPU.

4th:If you don't get any performance increace with disabled pagefile you should turn it on again and set it to like 500-500 or 1000-1000 not 500-1000 or something like that.I'm not quite sure that it's better to have no paging file.

Also,you should disable Ainti Aliasing in the game and in the NVIDIA control panel set Vertical Sync to "Force off".Good luck!

[NeMeSiS 11]

1st:You have a C2Duo at 2GHz which means it runs at 4GHz.ArmA doesn't handle C2Duo processors so that means the game runs with only one core - 2GHz.

Even if ArmA was optimized to use multiple cores, you still couldnt just add the mhz of both cores together, it doesnt work like that.

[gL33k 0]

...If you don't get any performance increace with disabled pagefile ...

i tried.

First, you can easily crash if your RAM reach the max. sometime, it's flush itslef on re-fill with current data, sometime it crash . with my ATI card .

but , if you set well your graphics settings , you can achieve a really smooth game experience. i didnt have these constant slowdown due to HDD access.

i will get a more mature opinion in few day , but it seem that disabling page file is still the best tweak available.

(texture @ normal with 256MB video card & high @ 512MB.)

[Wolfrug 0]

I'll tell you what my experiences are once my 8600 GT 512MB arrives (at some point towards the end of this week, I hope). I've otherwise got a crappier system than you (AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1gb ram), but who knows, eh. Seems to depend largely on pure blind luck how well things run.

In my experience grass still tugs down FPS by a damn lot, so disabling that (by putting that one setting, agh, the first one on the left hand side. Terrain detail? on Very Low) will generally get you a whole bunch o' FPS.

Let's hope there's SOME sweet love left in the world for us poor 8600 GT users. *crosses fingers*

Regards,

Wolfrug

[gL33k 0]

Atlhon + 8600GT , i think there is no way to play decently with shadow and grass.

objet detail normal impose itself , and small resolution too.

[Jambo107 0]

Goto the shop you bought the game from, get a refund. Save your money for a finished product - Crysis is around the corner and has extremely large maps, not so much realism. Call of Duty 4 is out very soon and without a shadow of a doubt they will be some amazing realism mods out for it.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Goto the shop you bought the game from, get a refund. Save your money for a finished product - Crysis is around the corner and has extremely large maps, not so much realism. Call of Duty 4 is out very soon and without a shadow of a doubt they will be some amazing realism mods out for it.

Saying that he needs to buy another game isnt really great tech support, might as well ask him to just reformat his PC and only install XP, drivers and ArmA.

[Jambo107 0]

Well if he can't get performance from that system what hope is there. Refund it, swap it and wait for any news on patches or better yet just wait till its in the bargin bin and get it then with all the patches.

[sailindawg 0]

Quote[/b] ]1st:You have a C2Duo at 2GHz which means it runs at 4GHz.ArmA doesn't handle C2Duo processors so that means the game runs with only one core - 2GHz.

This is not correct. The processor will run at 2000 Mhz (2GHz) regardless of the number of cores. All that multi cores do is enable is the ability of the processor to do more work than a single core processor per clock cycle. The second core picks up the excess work as the first core starts to reach peak cycles. In an application that is multi threaded, the application will be run more quickly, because both cores share simultaneous calculation duty. In a single threaded application, such as ARMA, the dual core is utilized, but not to the degree as a multi-threaded application.

@original poster

The reason your machine is running ARMA at lower frames is:

1) 2.0 GHz is just not that fast. ARMA needs at least a 2.8-3.0 GHz cpu to run fps that will range from 30-60 fps. ARMA is a very cpu intensive game. The game engine seemlessly streams a 400 square kilometer island. Think Oblivion, when you think of ARMA in regard to a game engine that creates and streams a world. ARMA is a game world and really gives a cpu a good work out.

2) Your vid card, as already stated is very entry level. In order to run ARMA at higher fps and at higher resolutions, one needs a high level 79xx series card, a ATI x19xx card or a 8800 GTS or GTX. ARMA runs best on the older 79xx cards or the ATI x19xx cards.

3) Your 2 gig RAM is a very good decision.

4) Do not overlook your hard drive. Because the ARMA engine streams the world, it needs to load very large graphic files. A slow spinning hard drive will most certainly bottleneck your system and yield poor ARMA performance. A slower hard drive will also page slower as well. Basically, GIGO. If the hard drive can't get the info to the cpu fast enough, then the cpu can't do it's job.

It is very hard to buy an off the shelf system. The sales people often don't know a hard drive from a stick of RAM. Very often, they have never even opened a pc case. Regarding an ARMA capable system, here's my system specs:

AMD 4400 X2 (running at 2.85 GHz)

2x1GB RAM

1-Raptor hard drive

7950 GX2 (running 600/700 clocks)

700 W OCZ power supply.

I built my system, run a 12 hour Prime 95 stable overclock and I can run ARMA, at high settings, and get a consistent 30-60 fps at 1152x864 resolution. The game looks incredible.

My suggestion to you, is to either learn how to build your own system or if you really want to game, take the pc back to the store and buy the highest clocked Intel C2Duo you can afford. Go for the 3.0 6850. And get a very high end vid card, at least an 8800 GTS with 640 MB RAM.

ARMA is a very good combat sim, but it takes a lot out of a system to run it well.

I hope this helps.

Good Luck!