Massive, massive slowdowns with 4870x2

[kklownboy 43]

copy your ARMA.exe, then rename the copy to a compatible.exe.

I use fear.exe, gives AFR1.

How does one pick this new .exe that's been renamed within CCC?

DONT use the CCC for a profile. The ONLY reason to use the CCC for profiles is to have a FAN hack(4870,X2). If you rename, just click on the rename and or shortcut. The Driver will see the name and apply the stock settings for the App.

Fear has CF support as do many games. I used to be able to use hl2, but then it stopped working and went to fear.(2900cf) I had to use Fear with my GX2, with the early driver, but nvda has basic profiles for Arma now, was just the demo at first.

You may have to delete your profiles and start again. To get the CCC to use fear.exe in your Arma folder, browes to it.

I have a fan hack/profile to run the fans at 27% for desktop/2d stuff and a Profile/hack to run at 88%/Fear for arma.

THE LOUDEST CARD IN THE WORLD.

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

Quote[/b] ]

And what's with the performance? Even with a top high end 4870x2, I average around 20fps at 2560x1600. Although the drivers are a bit immature, I didn't know ArmA was coded THIS badly.

20 FPS at 2560x1600, You are going to see that pretty much with any game... your card is one of very few that can do more than that in newer games, i'm surprised to see, because 2560x1600 murders performance on most computers.

All these new cards in the last year from ATI and Nvidia are not necessarily as fast as they should be.

So ArmA isn't coded greatly, understand that ArmA was created by a small developer in the Czech Republic, its not a massive team like those that make other games.

[Väinämöinen 0]

My previous card was a 3870x2, but it gave me stuttering and sometimes sub 20 fps at 1600x1200. So i bought the 4870x2...

But it had some complications with my old P5W DH motherboard. I dunno why, maybe it was PCIE 1.0 while card had PCIE 2.0 or something else. Arma froze, as did 3dmark06. Furmark and 3dmark Vantage worked just fine.

My next board was Maximus Formula II. 4870x2 and Arma works great. I can up AA, AF and viewdistance with no visible performance hit. Only setting that brings this card on its knees is the Arma Shadows on High or Very High.

You just can't get stable 60fps. It usually sets around 30-55fps. Arma is just coded this way.

In CCC Enable Catalyst AI - it will enable second GPU too. Select Anti-Aliasing Filter to Box (Edge Detect gives you 10fps less). Disable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing. It will eat your FPS if you are crawling through bushes/trees/grass!

In Arma you can crank everything up but Shadows but don't select better than normal level Shadows.

What helped on stuttering issue was putting Arma on 5GB RamDrive. No more low FPS caused by texture loading...

[kklownboy 43]

Quote[/b] ]

NVDA does have HDR to 32

all AMD cards beyond HD3xxx maybe even 2xxx could do HDR32 with AA enabled ... (exclude low end models)

There is no AA option, other than "Disabled" when setting the HDR to 32 in the arma.cfg. With a ATi card. Was the same with my 2900s , and now with the 4870x2. HDR16 disables AA, but you can select low to high options, but they will be disabled again when you start the game. Have to reset everytime.

HDR 32 is so nice but jaggies for ATI and a way low frame rate for NVDA... Maybe the next generation cards can handle ARMA...

[hamis 0]

Quote[/b] ]What helped on stuttering issue was putting Arma on 5GB RamDrive. No more low FPS caused by texture loading...

Could you tell us more about this?Maybe i'm hopeless because my arma is about 11gb now,and of course groving yet then good enough addon's are released.

[NeMeSiS 11]

HDR16 disables AA, but you can select low to high options, but they will be disabled again when you start the game. Have to reset everytime.

Im pretty sure my x1600XT could do 16bit HDR + AA already.

[kklownboy 43]

I have been testing a 1600, on a 4400x2 rig, and now a 1950xtx.

yes the 1600 will do 16hdr and AA. The issues is/was that changing from 8 to 16 will disable the AA in the in game setting, but you just select it again. AND its not all the time, no biggie.

ARMA on a 1600, is just not fun. Need a 800x600 res to get the settings i like... Now the 1950xtx at 1440x900 and lower is good to go, As has been stated, this game needs CPU power. In vanilla Warfare, with a 1950xtx normal settings (whatever) Vsync off, i can start out with 90fps... but as the game progress it will settle down to 20... on a AMD64 4400x2(939socket) 2.2ghz.

On a X6800@2.93ghz(stock, conroe) with my 4870x2, 1600/1200 veryhigh settings( whatever ) Vanilla Warfare, Vsync on, 60fps then will settle down to 40... CPU limited

Cant wait for stock 4.2ghz cpus...

[Väinämöinen 0]

Quote[/b] ]What helped on stuttering issue was putting Arma on 5GB RamDrive. No more low FPS caused by texture loading...

Could you tell us more about this?Maybe i'm hopeless because my arma is about 11gb now,and of course groving yet then good enough addon's are released.

There are plenty of Ramdrive programs on the net.

You need plenty of DDR RAM for a starter. I got 8GB. Ramdrive will use DDR2 memory as virtual HDD. My Arma folder is 4,9GB in size so my RamDrive is 5GB and 3GB is free for the system to use. I deleted all unnecessary folders like Campaign, missions, MPmissions. I have 2 addons which i use in MP games:fdfsounds and armaeffects. They fit fine in Ramdrive.

Two raptors in RAID-0 has reading/writing rate of 100-130MB/s. Ramdrive has unbeatable reading rate of 3,0GBs (depends how fast memory you got). Access times are lowered significally. I tested that all with Sandra.

I wish i had 16GBs of DDR3. Then i could put my pagefile on Ramdrive too.  

Some specs on below:

[Dwarden 1125]

you can place on ramdrive even part of of the game and not whole ... thanks to junctions , symlinks etc

[oblisk 0]

So BI still hasn't made any official posts regarding ArmA and the 4870x2... Any idea when it will be fixed?

I know the drivers are still very immature with the 4870x2, and I'm hoping future drivers will fix the performance issues, but something from BI would also be great.

[-=seany=- 5]

There are plenty of Ramdrive programs on the net.

could you recommend any? please.

some seem to have lots of features but are hard to configure, others are easy to use but lack useful features.

[Dwarden 1125]

So BI still hasn't made any official posts regarding ArmA and the 4870x2... Any idea when it will be fixed?

I know the drivers are still very immature with the 4870x2, and I'm hoping future drivers will fix the performance issues, but something from BI would also be great.

there is beta of 8.9 drivers floating on net try them (both Vista and XP)

[oblisk 0]

So BI still hasn't made any official posts regarding ArmA and the 4870x2... Any idea when it will be fixed?

I know the drivers are still very immature with the 4870x2, and I'm hoping future drivers will fix the performance issues, but something from BI would also be great.

there is beta of 8.9 drivers floating on net try them (both Vista and XP)

Yeah, there are the 8.54betas, but I think I'm gonna wait for the official ones.

Any day now...

[Dwarden 1125]

So BI still hasn't made any official posts regarding ArmA and the 4870x2... Any idea when it will be fixed?

I know the drivers are still very immature with the 4870x2, and I'm hoping future drivers will fix the performance issues, but something from BI would also be great.

there is beta of 8.9 drivers floating on net try them (both Vista and XP)

Yeah, there are the 8.54betas, but I think I'm gonna wait for the official ones.

Any day now...

these are newer, they leaked last week

Driver Packaging Version 8.53-080820a-068930C-ATI

Catalyst® Version 08.9

[kklownboy 43]

So BI still hasn't made any official posts regarding ArmA and the 4870x2... Any idea when it will be fixed?

I know the drivers are still very immature with the 4870x2, and I'm hoping future drivers will fix the performance issues, but something from BI would also be great.

I see no performance issues? My 4870x2 runs this game better than my GX2.  

BI will never make a comment on this vidcard, why should they?

 Its a cutting edge card, And a CF type card which needs some owner tweaking. Mostly renaming the .exe. If you cant make that work, your not doing it rt, and need to delete your arma.cfg and your playername.cfg, and try harder.

 The issue with somebetas on brand new cards is your OS may loose the device,  No card found, real pain when that happens.

You have to have the Catalyst_AI ON, not off, and you have to rename the arma.exe to some game that is AFR_friendly.exe.

I doubt there will ever be a profile from ATI for this game, maybe Arma2....?

[Väinämöinen 0]

oblisk

Use official Catalyst 8.8 drivers

Rename arma.exe to fear.exe

Put shadow level to low or normal

Enable Catalyst AI

No matter what your other ingame settings are you should be getting decent framerates.

If it doesn't you have some driver or hardware conflict.

I did not get your other hardware? If you have more than 2GBs of system memory, you have to play Arma in Windowed mode not Fullscreen.

Did you try with sounds disabled?

Test with other programs like Furmark, 3dmark06, Vantage. Use fraps to see your framerates.

20-40fps in Arma is normal.

At first i got shitty performance and BSODs because of incompatible mobo. I had to change that and now it works better than ever.

Not perfect...but better

[hamis 0]

@Väinämöinen

Could you give detailed instructions about loading only essential parts of game to ramdrive?I ordered 8gb,so i need this info in quite soon.

[Väinämöinen 0]

Here is couple of Ramdrive programs you can try them first:

http://www.farstone.com/software/virtual-hard-drive.htm

(has 30 days trial and its quite cheap)

Im using Superspeed Ramdisk 9.0 Software

http://www.superspeed.com/download/trialversions.php

(has trial version too but full version is expensive)

Ofcourse you will need OS that supports more than 3GB of memory. Vista x64 is sufficient. If you are using more than 3GB of ram and your GPU is Ati branded then you must play the game on windowed mode.

All necesseary folders and files for Arma to work on a Ramdrive are (4,5GB):

With RamDrive size of 5GB, you have 500MB of free space for MODs. And it's possible to increase the drive size by one gig.

Ramdrive works just like HDD. You install full game first on real HDD and then copy only relevant files/folders on a Ramdrive. Only one installation of the full game is needed. The you make shortcut on yor desktop pointing to your Arma on Virtual Drive with all needed shotcut parameters: mods,nosplash etc.

And then you start the game and go shoot those laggers on MP    

[Dwarden 1125]

partial solution needs splitting ArmA into several mod folders

(read copy the needed files on ramdisk)

let say you place the islands, sounds and some of the objects into 1-2GB RAMdrive

then using junction to define source and target

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

mkdir F:\ArmA\ramdrive

mkdir F:\ArmA\ramdriveQG

mkdir R:\ramdrive

mkdir R:\ramdriveQG

junction F:\ArmA\ramdrive r:\ramdrive

junction F:\ArmA\ramdriveQG r:\ramdriveQG

then starting ArmA with commandline

-mod=RamDrive;dbe1;@somemod

and ArmA:QG with commandline

-mod=RamDrive;dbe1;RamDriveQG;somemod;@somemodQG

i checked by profiling the ArmA.exe I/O logs that it reads correctly e.g. sara.pbo saralite.pbo sounds.pbo etc. from the R: drive

i tested this with Cenatek RamDrive

and there is free ramdisk You can use but you need read the manual as it needs bit of work!

http://nguest156.depositfiles.com/auth-75....isk.zip

same method can be applied to split ArmA into use of combinedn HDDs / SSDs / RamDrives / RAIDs w/e you got and want use

[hamis 0]

Quote[/b] ]If your GPU is Ati branded then you must play the game on windowed mode.

Why?Isn't there any way around?

[Väinämöinen 0]

Yeah, Buy Nvidia card...

About the bug:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki...._screen

Whats so bad about windowed mode?

I have dual displays and both of them are on 1600*1200 resolution. I put this

-window -x=1600 -y=1200

on Arma shortcut and i'm playing with 1600*1200 resolution. No probs there...

[Dwarden 1125]

i'm dont get the comment about windowed mode only on ATI cards ... why?

[Väinämöinen 0]

As virtual RAM drive needs loads of ram i wouldn't run it with less than 8GB of a system memory.

Using that much of a memory you will get the famous "8GB=Only windowed Arma" bug.

There was some topic on this forums about it. Im not sure if its on Nvidia cards also...

But I'm sure its on Ati cards if you have more than 3GB of RAM.

Here is the topic:

http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....6;st=15

[Dwarden 1125]

no such problem on server2008 ... so meh

[oblisk 0]

So BI still hasn't made any official posts regarding ArmA and the 4870x2... Any idea when it will be fixed?

I know the drivers are still very immature with the 4870x2, and I'm hoping future drivers will fix the performance issues, but something from BI would also be great.

there is beta of 8.9 drivers floating on net try them (both Vista and XP)

Yeah, there are the 8.54betas, but I think I'm gonna wait for the official ones.

Any day now...

these are newer, they leaked last week

Driver Packaging Version 8.53-080820a-068930C-ATI

Catalyst® Version 08.9

8.54 Drivers are newer. What you posted is 8.53.

Also, I have to disable Cat AI for ArmA to work properly. If it's enabled, I would be inconsistent walking/driving speeds.