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rossiski

Kind of disappointed with a 4870x2

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After several years of having a substandard computer, I finally updated and bought (I believed) a very good rig for a good chunk of cash.  My intent was to "max" out the graphics settings within ArmA.  At this point, I'm unable to do so.

System specs:

E8600 C2D Wolfdale 3.33GHz

Sapphire 4870x2 2gb GDDR5

Corsair 1000 PSU

4GB G.Skill 1066MHz RAM

Asus Rampage Formula X48

I'm getting high 20s in FPS in the Northern Island at 1900x1200 with the settings below, according to FRAPS.  Any higher changes results in choppy play.  In some spots down south, I max out at my 75Hz refresh rate.  It looks good, especially from what I was playing before (800x600, all very low).  I was also running Kegety's Low Plants mod.  I have not begun to overclock anything yet.  I wanted a system baseline.

Should I have tempered my expectations?  

arma2008-08-1820-07-25-80.jpg

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-Set Texture to Normal

-Set Antialiasing to High

-Set AntiIsotorpic Filter to High

-Lower resolution to 1600 range..

try again

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4870 X2's run best on Quad cores. I know this because I am running 2 4870 X2 in CrossfireX on a QX9770.

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I keep on reading things about how ArmA doesn't scale well on dual graphics cards... I don't know the validity of that but judging the amount of problems people seem to have with them, I would be inclined to believes its true. That said, running ArmA at 1900x1200 is going to tax any system, have you tried playing on 1680x1050 or 1600x1200?

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Hi rossiski, 1900/1200 will dog down on the north island. You should be able to go veryhigh on AF, and AA. I get lows too in the north. PostProcess low can give you 15 frames at times.

I run 1600/1200 and have found that to be a good res for highsettings with my current hardware.

You own a 24in now? 75hz and 1900/1200 should be real nice.

The only expectation you didnt "get" was that ANY card can run this game at all "veryhigh" over 1280/1024 with Vsync on and not hit the TEENs low 20s on certain spots on the map. Its all the same spots too. I just lower my view distance in the slow spots to 800 or even lower if Urban, so to keep my 60 refresh above 30fps. Otherwise the dreaded MS can make life hard.

My previous 2900s in CF where good, your 4870x2 is like four 2900s in CF, my current 9800gx2 has the same slow spots. My 1950xtx had a hard time then CF them, single frames would happen(v1.04)... I only get single frames now, on one gX2 GPU and very rare.

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4870 X2's run best on Quad cores. I know this because I am running 2 4870 X2 in CrossfireX on a QX9770.

Umm Quad funny as the game don't even support even 2 core's never mind 4.

You will find it be more to do with having 2 video cards.

It's the dam game and maybe some fixes to arma engine and ATI drivers then you would get better results. But heard that there might not be any more patches sad_o.gif. Pretty sad though with a card like that you should be able get quite more performance better than a 2900XT.

try low v high, v high, low, low, normal, low\normal, normal or higher, high.

Still kinda sad though as this card blazes though other games like paper. Yeah that hot it burns the paper on the way past :P.

I hope they have sorted Arma 2 out. I yeah i noticed fraps slows some games down too.

See ya in game soon ross.

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Ok, here is the problem with the 4870X2.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/4870-x2-amd,1992-4.html

As youw ill see, the 4870 does not work well on lower end resolutions or smaller monitors. While you are running very high it could still be a slight issue.

Also, ArmA has alot of issues with higher end equipment. I know my 8 gigs of ram had to be disabled down to 3 gigs to work, and it is buggy as heck with my quad core also.

You also need to keep in mind that the drivers for the 4800 series is still very new and immature, they are basically modified 3800 drivers. Give the drivers time to mature and games will work better on it.

I run the standards 4870 right now on all max details at 1680 x1050 right now and I averaged 60 FPS, at least thats what fraps told me.

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-Set Texture to Normal

-Set Antialiasing to High

-Set AntiIsotorpic Filter to High

-Lower resolution to 1600 range..

try again

Sorry, tried that.  

Single digit FPS.  You can't max out the AA without a SIGNIFICANT penalty.

EDIT: to everyone, I thank you for your responses.  After further testing, it's the shadow detail that causes the greatest changes in FPS.  I'll keep on testing with some overclocks coming soon. Just waiting for a HSF from newegg.

For the record, using Catalyst 8.52 from the install disk.  The latest driver from ATI (as of today) doesn't recognize the 4870x2.

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My  two cents:

Was running ArmA @ 1920x1200 with an 8800 Ultra most settings at high. Tried a 4870 and had lousy performance - very choppy with low fps even with normal settings. Then tried a 4870x2 and had worse performance than using the 8800. Finally, put a 280 in and it performs! Much faster than the 8800 Ultra. Haven't spent time trying to determine actual increase but it "feels" twice as fast with everything now at very high except AA (normal) and postprocess (low). And no more slow downs when staring at forests, scope sights, etc. Very happy now...

Same thing happened with MS Flight Sim 9 and FSX - both apps improved alot; running 1920x1200@32bit measured 30-40% increase in fps using shift-x. The 4870's both ran poorly and far less than the 8800. But the audio had no occassional stutter when running the ATI cards - seems to be an Nvidia thing.

Certain apps get along better with the Nvidia architechure, and I'd say ArmA is one that benefits more from Nvidia than ATI cards.

(Hope the NV texture bug is gone. Haven't seen a crash yet.)

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I feel your pain. is why ArmA collects dust on my shelf. only game I own I cant get out of the 20's on FPS. Even tho all the systemrequirement sites swear i have a machine for it all the way around. Go figure.

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his problem is most likely CFX profile (or in fact absence) for ArmA.exe ...

so keep writing about issues to AMD.ATI so they include it in drivers

http://support.ati.com/ics....ype=web

thus in fact only 1 GPU is used and most likely not the best / fastest AA mode ...

anyway i would drop the post processing to High ...

also what AA filter mode are You using in CCC settings ?

try Edge-detect ...

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Dont instantly think its JUST the video card though, again I run ArmA with a ATi Sapphire 4870 with an average of about 53 FPS in combat. Theres more to it then JUST the video card. There is also his quad core, which there are ALOT of known issues with ArmA and quad cores. Its probably multiple conflicts combing into one.

I run arma with this specs

Q9450 2.66 GHz quad core

8 gigs of ram disabled down to 3 when I play arma

Sapphire 4870

Creative Xtreme Gamer

I get 53 frames and I can play the game at max detail with a max draw distance. Its NOT just the video cards, there is other hardware issues to take into consideration. It may be an ATi issues but again, the 4870 and 4870X2 dont even have mature drivers yet give them a little while before bashing them.

If you are having major issues, reduce your memory to 203 gigs and I bet you arma will work alot better.

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his problem is most likely CFX profile (or in fact absence) for ArmA.exe ...

so keep writing about issues to AMD.ATI so they include it in drivers

http://support.ati.com/ics....ype=web

thus in fact only 1 GPU is used and most likely not the best / fastest AA mode ...

anyway i would drop the post processing to High ...

also what AA filter mode are You using in CCC settings ?

try Edge-detect ...

I had box as the AA filter.  I'll try Edge-detect.  Thanks for the link.  I'll hit ATI up.

Regarding the two GPU cores, I had GPU-Z running last night and each core was reading 53-54%, individually.  Could that really mean I'm only using one GPU?  How else can you tell if both cores are being used?  Temps are different (by 20 deg C), but that could be because both GPUs are "in series" within the heat sink.

To add further fuel to the fire, enabling Crossfire isn't possible under CCC.  There's simply no menu option within the current user interface.

Isn't it normally down at the bottom under Overdrive?  So I guess that means no ability to rename ArmA into Fear.exe, right?  Additionally, I thought Crossfire was intrinsically "enabled" with this card and didn't need to have anything changed in the CCC.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is looking more and more like a driver issue.  banghead.gif

<span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%'>Everyone's assistance is appreciated.  Your comments and thoughts are most welcome.</span>

CCCsansCrossfire.jpg

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When I played World War 2 Online, which was a game that was different from other games in that it had vast view distances and a persistent battlefield (no loading zones... you can take hours to cross the entire map in a plane)... there was always a certain ceiling to the framerate that a faster CPU and faster GPU didn't help much with.

I see the same sort of effect in ArmA... it appears to come with the territory when you move from shoebox areas into large battlefields.

When I play, I prefer gameplay over eyecandy... so I'm happy with normal settings with my 8800GT in ArmA. I don't need to have every setting on maximum.

I'm sure your rig blows away many other games that you can at least be happy with at least.

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Quote[/b] ]When I play, I prefer gameplay over eyecandy... so I'm happy with normal settings with my 8800GT in ArmA.  I don't need to have every setting on maximum.

I agree. I'm still experimenting with ArmA on my new GTX 260. I boosted texture detail from normal to high and actually liked normal better. With high textures, it looked like they had applied a unnaturally strong sharpening filter and it just didn't look as "real".

My settings are scattered between normal and high and I get down to 23fps in the vineyard in Ortego City. I'm still experimenting with all the options. It will probably take quite some time to figure out what combination works best.

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I'm sure your rig blows away many other games that you can at least be happy with at least.

I wish another game was worth my time.  Hah!   rofl.gif

My old rig definitely stressed gameplay over eyecandy.  AsRock can testify to that.

EDIT: Found a really good tool for controlling the fan on these ATi cards.  I dropped from 90deg C to 50deg C at load with ArmA.

http://en.expreview.com/img/software/0808/Expertool-ati.exe

EDIT2: Don't use that fan control unless you uninstall the CCC and only have the driver installed. I had a bunch of soft-reboots while in-game before I figured out what it was. Alternatively, it's possible to edit the XML to "manual" and set the fan percent to 50%. I'm now running 54 Deg C while at load instead of 94 Deg C before.

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rossiski its probabley a crossfire issue to run only one core on your card disable cat Ai in ati control panel and then try.

Edit before trying the above try renaming the arma.exe to fear.exe heard that helps getting crossfire working in a couple of games.

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Can you try one/two settings for me?

Crank everything to max setting except view distance (set to whatever you like). And turn off AA and set Post Processing to lowest setting. What do you have (@FPS)?

Now turn off Shadows. What do you have?

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rossiski its probabley a crossfire issue to run only one core on your card disable cat Ai in ati control panel and then try.

Edit before trying the above try renaming the arma.exe to fear.exe heard that helps getting crossfire working in a couple of games.

Crossfire isn't available on this card. It's enabled by default. There's no option to disable or enable it with the Catalyst Control Center.

I'll try the Catalyst AI path.

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Hi rossiski

If you are running Vista check your power settings scheme and make sure you have not got it set to "Energy saving mode"

look here:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows....33.mspx

If you have set to "Energy saving mode", then try setting to  to "Balanced".

Kind Regards walker

Good tip.  I'm already on high-performance under the power settings.

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Can you try one/two settings for me?

Crank everything to max setting except view distance (set to whatever you like). And turn off AA and set Post Processing to lowest setting. What do you have (@FPS)?

Now turn off Shadows. What do you have?

I'm on the northern Island in the town of Hunapu.

Everything cranked except for AA disabled, post process effects on low, and blood on High (highest it can go).  View distance is 2300m.

1600x1200 = avg 33-36 fps, going up to 45

1900x1200 = avg 28-33 fps, going up to 40

EDIT: I am using the new 8.8 Catalyst, which I believe seems to be working better.

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