graphics bugs with ATI 4800 series (4850/4870/4890)

[thr0tt 12]

Soo been doing the the mutigpu debuggness, and as in ARMA1 using a Crysis.exe rename of your arma2.exe the HDR, the flashing to dark ect is greatly reduced, like not really there :) .There is still the classic strobe but it settles down real fast after you start something, and after that its way better than arma2.exe... So -winxp + Crysis.exe FTW. 4870x2's in CFX/Quadfire, great fps and now less migraines. will try a few others, farcry2 Fear2 ect...

There has been an ArmA2 profile in the drivers since 9.4 I believe so there should be no need to rename the .exe, but if it works for you then all good. I also hear the putting lucky heather near your GPU also increases FPS but I may be mistaken.

[kklownboy 43]

There has been an ArmA2 profile in the drivers since 9.4 I believe so there should be no need to rename the .exe, but if it works for you then all good. I also hear the putting lucky heather near your GPU also increases FPS but I may be mistaken.

my last post was in the wrong thread... But yeah they have had the "profile" in even earlier, but you do need to renam as of 9.6 to not have the "mutigpu" issue . A rename may work for you too. I have had to rename ARMA 1 since day one (german 1.0) to use CF and SLi. I guess it will be the same for ARMA2...

[Brainbug 10]

Maybe is it also due to some object with a little bug that triggers this. I mainly experienced those weird polygon spikes in Elektrozavodsk, other areas were issue-free (of course I haven't come around all of Chernarus yet, but enough to narrow it down to Elektrozavodsk).

However, I just played there with the Catalyst 9.6 and didn't get any errors, maybe it is gone (but I haven't tested enough yet to be sure).

Oh, FYI: I have a Radeon 4850 512MB (device ID 9442), running Win XP 32bit with 4GB RAM (or rather 3,25 of course), in-game settings are maxed except for terrain (low) object detail (medium) and fillrate opt. (100%).

OT (sry):

Not an ATI problem IMHO. Games should be programmed to be somewhat device independant.

Actually it would be a problem of the API, in this case DirectX, if the need arises that game programmers or driver programmers bypass the interface. In theory, an interface should not be penetrated, it rather defines certain standardized calls and returns so that both sides (in this case hardware and game) of it can communicate with each other without knowing from each other. DirectX maybe not bad, but if the game has to know if either an AMD or nVidia card is in the box, then the interface doesn't do its job by the book.

So yes, you are right with the above quote (I would even replace "somewhat" with "totally"), but you can't blame either the driver programmer nor the game programmer, they just try to cope with the imperfect interface.

[DFA_Graywo1f 0]

I have an ATI 3870 ICQ3 and i will try using very high..... High does not work but i only have 512MB of video memory on the card. so we'll see.

[Surtr52 10]

I'll be able to throw my hat in to the testing once the demo comes out, Vista 64 4gigs of system memory and a Sapphire 4870 1gb.

I hope I don't have these problems, but my luck says otherwise.

One thing I'm wondering, is why hasn't Bohemia fixed it if was occurring in the original arma. None of them own a radeon?

Edited June 20, 2009 by Surtr52

[Brainbug 10]

OK, now with 1.02: No change, still errors :(

[sirex 0]

it didnt happen to me in the original arma, at least.

[Basil Brush 10]

I got the texture corruption with video memory at 'default' but when I changed to 'very high' and restarted it has not shown itself since (for now). Still get slow loading textures though quite often.

[thr0tt 12]

I got the texture corruption with video memory at 'default' but when I changed to 'very high' and restarted it has not shown itself since (for now). Still get slow loading textures though quite often.

Good news for you hopefully. Fingers crossed for you.

[Brainbug 10]

Actually, it became worse, much worse. With 1.01 I had it sometimes, but usually could play for hours. Now with 1.02 it has become unplayable, every few minutes I have to alt-tab out because I can't see anything anymore, after that it works for a short while. :mad:

[Conkermon 10]

Same problem here. Have similar rig to everyone else, ATI Radeon HD 4870 not overclocked. Have the latest drivers and newest patch.

First encountered the problem on the campaign mission Red Harvest when I entered Chernogorsk. Like others have said it seems to be the result of being in a large built up area with a lot of stuff happening.

Since so many of us with ATI 4800 series cards in the same kind of places are getting the exact same problem, it's pretty clear that the responsibility for resolving the problem should not rest with us users. BI or the ATI people need to fix this and it should definitely get priority over other problems as it is literally unplayable.

[Brainbug 10]

Seriously, how can we play with this?

If I could, I'd go back to 1.01, but most servers switched already.

I can only hope it will be fixed in the next patch.

[Conkermon 10]

Seriously, how can we play with this?

If I could, I'd go back to 1.01, but most servers switched already.

I can only hope it will be fixed in the next patch.

I'd just like to know that BIS are aware of it and are attempting to resolve it. Was great to see a response from a developer a few pages back and some suggestions (which unfortunately didn't work), but this thread now stretches to 11 pages and since then there has been sweet fuck all. I understand this was also an issue that went unresolved in ArmA I? In which case I'm a tad worried that the policy henceforth will be to disregard those of us with the problem as they've never been able to fix it..

[palanoid 0]

after updating to ver 1.02,my game has now become playable.

no more corruption when i played the mp evolution coop,but the downside is i have to tune down video memory setting and texture detail to low,which are below default settings. i have an HD 4870 512mb

[Brainbug 10]

I think I found something, it may be the anisotropic filtering! In a desperate attempt I disabled the AF completely, and I haven't had any problems anymore!

Please help to verify this thought, either it really helps (it would also help the programmers to narrow it down) or I'm just lucky.

You have to set anisotropic filtering to 'use application settings' in the Catalyst Control Panel, then to 'disabled' or 'deaktiviert' in game:

Of course the textures will now look bad, but at least you can see everything and the game is playable again. Fiddling with the texture resolution or the memory setting didn't do anything, so you are free to set what you want here (since the textures look crappy anyway, you might just turn them down to squeeze out a few more fps, but dont expect too much). This still needs to be fixed in either a patch or a new driver, but at least we won't have to toss the game into the corner until then. :)

Edited June 23, 2009 by Brainbug

[AMiRAl 10]

Hi everyone, and thanks for the tips.

@Brainbug : i will try this asap.

indeed, i experiment the same artifact problem from the first time i've launched the game (yesterday :rolleyes:). it happens fast in the middle of nowhere in Chernarus land too, when looking in a given direction. the higher my video options are, the faster it appears.

with a Sapp. HD 4850 X2 1Gig ( C2D @ 2.8GHz, 2 Gb RAM, Xp, Dx 9.0c march 2009, CCC 9.6, ArmA II 1.02, very high, 1680x1050 100%)

the 'anisotropic filter' option was locked on ("4x" if i remember well) in my arma 2 advanced video option menu.

i couldn't change it. i'll try and disable it in the CCC to try this workaround, and give you feedback.

i really hope that Bohemia and/or ATI give us a real fix soon !

Edit (June 24th) : in fact disabling 'anistropic filtering' helps quite a lot, i can play much longer without getting artifacts ... but it doesn't completely solves the problem sometimes in places rich in objects (villages center) : they still suddenly appear and then go in seconds.

so as proposed in firsts posts i manually set my GPU fans above 45% (hopefully i use a headset when playing !) and i was freed of these annoying polygons for this time.

i may check every other workaround too, since it seems that multiple factors lead to this.

Edited June 24, 2009 by AMiRAl
more information

[Brainbug 10]

Yes indeed, I had now problems again as well, so it doesn't help. What does seem to help is just changing any settings, then it works for a while. I reverted now to AF on and could play again for a while. As long as it lasts...

I'm now totally clueless what might cause this.

[Crazyfox 0]

I have the same problem here as many others.

Some people here may not have the exactly same problem but this is what happends.

After a while playing around i get the texture failures seen in the screens, when this happends the fps drops to 0-3. If i monitor my cpu load it is almoast constant when this happends, GPU stays the same. It happends quicker in the bigger cities, can almost not play there at all. It seems to do with how much textures that is loaded. Tabbing out or making the game reload the texutres resets the problem but it will happend again after a while.

Have tried a lot of stuff, nothing works. Have only played the 1.02 patch of the game. Nothing overheats, and have tried the ATI 1.6 and the 1.7 beta driver.

Lowering settings in game to lowest still gives me error but it will take longer.

As I said i've tried a lot of stuff but nothing works, were close to format the partition with windows on and reinstall but as it seems that other ppl got the problem ill wait. Im able to provide help if you tell me how, (monitoring software etc) haven't been able to find any error report log yet though.

Please fix this problem BI as the game is great and i want to be able to play it.

My Specs: HD4870 1GB, A64 X2 5000+, 3GB RAM. WINXP 32bit.

[Brainbug 10]

I want to add that I experienced this type of error in the past in other games and on other computer hardware (always Ati cards), e.g. in Gothic3 on a x1900 or in BF2 on a X800pro. In all cases this was fixed at some point by either a game patch or a new driver, don't know for sure exactly (I just noticed several months later that it was gone). But it shows that this type of error is known and also a solution is known, so I'm pretty confident that we will see it being fixed at some (hopefully not too distant) point in the future.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Brainbug

[Tankriders 0]

Have you disabled the AI Catalyst, that worked for me. I have a ATI 3870 2x card..

[Badstar 10]

Hi! There is a severe graphics bug thats happening to me. I allready searched the forum for anything similar but found nothing. So I hope it may get fixed in a patch because it makes this great game pretty much unplayable for me.

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So ... I got this strange layers everywhere in the game. The higher the settings the more it appears. Its also caused by areas with many objects. Looking on the ground makes it disappear. And they even drop shadows as you can see in picture 2. It might also interest you that I had several blue screens when I tried to change settings in the moment these things appeared. No blue screens when they were not visible.

My System:

Windows XP SP2

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93Ghz

ATI Radeon HD 4850

4GB Memory

Same problem with me, ATI Sapphire HD 4870 512 mo !!!

The game is unplayable because of large artifacts !!! (especially over the cities "Tchernogorsk")

My System :

Windows XP 32 SP3

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz

MB :Asus P5Q-PRO

Sapphire Ati Raedon HD 4870 512 Mo : http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?psn=000101&pid=174

4GB Memory (3.25Go/XP 32)

Sorry for my English but I'm from Belgium : my language is french.

[Brainbug 10]

1.02 Build 58134

After driving through Chernogorsk in the editor for just 2-3min, I got the bug again. Obviously it hasn't been worked on yet.

[ginger mcale 11]

I dont know if it has been said already in this thread, but it seems the problem does occur when the VRAM gets FULL.

An user from german forums found it out.

When the VRAM gets FULL, the graphic errors come. Bohemia are you guys doing something about it?

By the way, another video on youtube posted by someone showing this problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imN3xa0sZxU

[Crazyfox 0]

I don't think its becouse of that the vram gets full. My vram has never gone down to the bottom when i get the problem. But the error could just eat up all the vram when the strange textures is shown, i dunno.

[Elanzer 10]

Count me in as another also experiencing this issue.