ArmA and CPU power

[kroky 1]

I'm interested too in this. Is there any possibiliy to make use of the dual core to enhance the processing speed of ArmA, besides the effect that Nvidia drivers use dual core?

[kklownboy 43]

Learn to use the Affinity setting. Core/CPU "0" is the OSes. So set ARMA to CPU/Core "1". This is on a Dual core, on a Quad you would have 0,1,2,3. "0" is always the OSes first choice. There are alot of progs and apps that will help you do this. Google away.

[ShrubMiK 0]

If you want to run a server and play on it yourself, you can utilise an extra core by running a dedicated server, instead of starting the server within the normal game.

If you want to join an online MP server, you're already effectively utilising a second core...but in this case the second core is on another computer, a long way away

[Commando84 0]

interesting info here for sure!

My comp. at school that im sometimes playing arma at during after work hours due to my home comp fails to even show me the boot screen power is on and all but i think the new graphics card made my power supply to die

Anyways back to the school computer its Cpu fan starts spinning at max speed when i pain in photoshop and also when i bake Ao or normal maps and also when i play warefare

Im wondering if its the psu or cpu that has failed at my comp at home

[kklownboy 43]

Well vidcards are still big in this game, for resolution and AA.

Added another 4870x2 to my rig, running CFX, and its playable at 2048/1536 with all maxed. Had to go out and buy a FD520 Sony CRT 21in to see. Playing At 1600/1200 its beyond smooth, NO slowdowns or lag, but still slow loading textures at times..

finally a real joy to play this game. OC my CPU too 3.3 and its better at warfare too. What a wacked game. Hope ARMA 2 is easier on the budget.

[desertjedi 3]

Time to report back...

I picked up an E8500 and now have it stable at 4.2Ghz.

My minimum frame rate in City Ortego Battle (with 150-200? AI soldiers) went up from ~22 to ~38 which is a 72% increase. In general, in non-cpu-intensive situations, frame rates jumped by about 30%. I was surprised by this and wonder if it simply is because my FSB went from 350 (old cpu) to 443 (new cpu). That's probably part of it.

BTW, my 3DMark06 score jumped from 12,500 to 17,300. Obviously my E2180 cpu, even overclocked, was greatly holding back my GTX 260. And this was extremely apparent in ArmA.

[cjph 0]

Hi DesertJedi

Out of interest, what was your E2180 clocked at (would indicate 3.5GHz - 10x350 fsb ?) ? I have a E2160 clocked at 3GHz, and FPS did increase when I went to 3.15GHZ, though not stable enough playing Arma. So I concluded (with further testing) that even at 3GHz the 512Mb 8800GTS I have (o/c'd to 780/1100) is also being held back.

cjph

[desertjedi 3]

Quote[/b] ]what was your E2180 clocked at

9x350=3.15Ghz. There was more in the chip but the amount of work to get it out of it wasn't worth it.

The oc on the E8500 to 4.2Ghz was pretty easy. Vcore is at 1.39v - no other voltage adjustments needed.

[cjph 0]

OK thanks - know what you mean - have been trying to get more out of the E2160 without success - 340 fsb seems my max. (though the Gigabyte 965P mobo might also play a part).

Do you think you have maxed out the GT280 now, or would get more out of a faster clock ? Most general gaming forums are still recomending a fast dual instead of a quad (ie Q6600) for gaming, but my impression from what I've read is that it is a harder choise between a fast dual and average quad for Arma. At 4.2G I doubt you will have a problem ;-).

cjph

[desertjedi 3]

The first board I used to oc my E2180 was that really popular Gigabyte "P35" board and it was totally useless for overclocking.

I then switched to an Abit IP35-E and got my E2180 up to 3.5Ghz but finally began to realize that it was not completely stable and eventually the board would not boot.

My DFI "BloodIron" has been awesome for oc'ing.

I have my GTX 260 oc'ed to 700Mhz on the core. With that kind of GPU power, I really don't need to worry about graphics performance in ArmA. Now if ArmA made use of both cpu cores, that would be a huge help for those developing grand-scale battles.

[kklownboy 43]

Yeah the P45 for Intell is really the way to go rt now. I have found keeping your RAM at spec, or even a lil loose is the only way to keep a stable "gaming" rig.

You have the P35? good deal at newegg for them., waiting for the P45 version

[hit-man 0]

Interesting topic. Did anybody test and did set the core affinity to the second CPU (1) on a dualcore ?

[kklownboy 43]

yes, no love

[mikebart 1]

What do you guys think in general about the i7 920's?, I just bought one the other week, its unclocked and it runs Arma great at almost full settings at around 8000k vd, so im pretty happy with it and when i set afinity for programs it has 8 processors, that makes me pretty happy too, I dont really know what it means but it sounds good...

[Raidar 1]

Now for a short intermission:

I made a two stage "updating" of my hardware. In the first stage i got myself a new mainboard "Asus R.O.G. Striker II Extreme" and a new "Asus GTX-260", with the old "Intel Pentium D 940 3.2GHz".

The improvements where visible, but not stunning in compare to my old "Asus EN7900GTX". I was able to run around in the editor on my own, with great fps, but playing a mission: the same like usual. Changing graphic settings resulting in minimal fps differences. ACE was barely playable and evolution missions....

Then my second part of hardware delivery: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 E0 and a Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro (quite astonishing what a sound environement difference it makes).

I can finally run ACE smooth with aprox. three times more fps. ArmA just feels like a complete new game! Even in 3D Mark 06 i got my points doubled.

Yes i know, my old CPU was a bigger piece of crap than i thought...

Grtz

[SteelyDan 0]

Anyone running Armed Assault with a Phenom II yet?

[bigshot 64]

why so astonished? its well established for quite sometime now that arma is extremely cpu intensive (much more so than gpu)...especially with AI. (most gamers i know wont even touch it because it doesnt run well even on semi-respectable hardware...although i myself still run it on a 6 year old machine, heh)

Also, dont do any fps testing in the editor as you will probably find inaccurate results since the editor often yields better performance numbers than regular in-game (or is it the other way around?). Anyone who's dabbled heavily into mission making can tell you this, dunno exactly why though.

[Buskape 1]

Anyone running Armed Assault with a Phenom II yet?

I am running Armed Assault on a Phenom II X4 920 @ stock 2.8ghz with a Geforce 9800GTX+

The game runs flawlessly at 1920x1200 high details, even on large combats, but the other cores don't seem to be used properly, i'll wait to see how Arma II will handle this nice processor.

[Alex72 1]

I had a weird game time last night.

I used to play on AMD X2 3800+, 2gb PC3200 400mhz (DDR) RAM, GF8800GTS 320MB. I played around a mix of HIGH/MEDIUM and it was alright. Most often no stutter at all, sometimes bit worse.

Yesterday i exchanged the cpu to a 6000+ (3.1ghz dual core) and DDR2 800mhz and i basically have to play on the same settings... When i looked into a tree it really slowed down big time (didnt on my former gear...). I played with my friend wich use the same system and he plays high/very high and no stutters at all.

Im just very confused atm. Drivers and all is up to date. Defragged HD and all you can think of. Searching hard for what it can be. But i would think that upping the cpu 1ghz and faster RAM would made me get better performance. When im alone in the editor i notice difference. Where it stuttered before it doesnt now. But with some action its just like with the old computer.

Weird.

EDIT: This was supposed to be my mid PC as im getting a E8600, DDR3, GTX280 computer for the real deal. Just hoped this would do something instead of being like the old crapola.

Regards

Alex

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

I've been running ArmA on AMD 2x2 cpu's, for all most 2 years now...why would anyone think quad cpu's would be any different? ArmA only uses 1 core.

My @3ghz surely helps but, ArmAII and multi core support,  is when we can start comparing.

[Yoma 0]

I'm thinking of buying a new cpu too.

Coming from E6750 2.66

I'm kind of split on 2 choises:

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3 Ghz

-Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 3.33 Ghz

The 9650 is a tad more expensive but probably the 8600 will run Arma better...

The question is will Arma2 scale up when you use a quadcore or wont' it.

Anyway if anyone did a similar upgrade do leave a note on what it did to Arma.

[oChaos.DNJ 0]

Have you tried overclocking your E6750 yet? I'd pretty much bet it would be possible to get to or pass the clocks on the CPUs your thinking of upgrading to.

Also if you are going to upgrade... being an overclocker, Id choose others to save money. Q9550 vs E8400 for me. I'm kinda wanting to upgrade from my E6600@ 3.32Ghz, I'm wanting a quad but the E8400 is cheaper and can overclock higher. Which will be better for games that aren't multithreaded.

or..Maybe I'll just hold out and go i7+mobo+DDR3......$$$$ though.

[Yoma 0]

I've had one bad experience with dataloss after overclocking years ago, so i've quit doing it alltogether.

Besides that my mainboard,memory and cooling are not made for overclocking and will most likely stink at it.

I prefer stable and no hassle.

[Rexxenexx 0]

I'm with Yoma. I'm pretty much set on Q9650 (from my Q6600) because everything I work with pretty much will be multi-threaded. I just ordered EVGA 01G-P3-1285-AR Geforce GTX 285 from zipzoomfly. It was cheaper than the regular one by a couple bucks. Now I'm pondering when to buy the processor...

EDIT: BTW in the press kit if you look at the RealVirtualityEngine-GC2008.pdf it does say "Multicore support".

UPDATE: Gonna try and RMA the new 285 tomorrow. It glitches and if the game is really intense eventually BSD's. I BSD playing ArmA in MP. That sucked!

I found out @75* the glitches start and the fan doesn't go faster when it should. It starts at 40% and when the card is hot its like 46%. :P Really retarded BIOS. It needs to ramp up faster,like I said before. Like 60% @75*.

285's shouldn't get that hot. With the fan forced to 100% its all good, doesn't go above 50*, but that doesn't mean I should pretend its ok. So RMA it is. BTW I tested doing back to back of the same level in the game Dirt. So for sure they need to look into the fan settings.

ArmA gained @6fps average compared to the 8800 GTX. GTA4 still cound crank the settings but is noticeably better fps with higher settings. Dirt was ultra smooth w/ cranked settings. So it is a good card relatively speaking.

BTW, EVGA has a really cool app to tweak the card. Actually its the best/easiest/nicest to use tool I've seen for tweaking, and I'm actually using right now on the ASUS 8800GTX and it works! lol. It shows the stock fan Idle is 60% on the 8800GTX. You can adjust everything you need to on the card and it shows a couple sensors. The really cool thing is it seems "lighter" than other apps I've used. IE. it loads quick and doesn't seem to bother anything.

Anyways, I'll update again if you guys are interested in what happens when/if I get a replacement.

UPDATE II: I got the new card today after RMA and so far it is better. Idle temp is @37* and max so far is 56* and that's with the fan only at 40%. So I guess the GPU on the one I returned was crap.