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

[sethos 2]

Stay FAR away from the 10.6 drivers, even the 10.5s, they are rubbish. I rolled back to 10.4 and got rid of a ton of problems and BSODs.

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

no problems here with 10.6

are u shure u uninstall the right way??

[sethos 2]

no problems here with 10.6

are u shure u uninstall the right way??

Yes, I know what I'm doing and the 10.6 ARE problematic drivers, which many people can report. You just have to remember there's more than one generation of ATI cards out there and chances are it'll wreck havoc with some older generations, which it did with me ( 4870X2 ).

[minimalaco 30]

Yes, I itself having problems of yield with version 1.52 OA, and the 10,4 of ati: (.

nobody says nothing? solutions?

as it is possible that it arma 2 runs excellent, and OA no? : S

[=kct=blackmamba 44]

did u use the new patch to make them compatible ?: OA Patch 1.52 ??

note: isnt steam compatible

http://www.arma2.com/support/updates/file/338-a2oa_patch_152.html?lang=en

Edited June 30, 2010 by =KCT=BlackMamba

[minimalaco 30]

did u use the new patch to make them compatible ?: OA Patch 1.52 ??

Yep, patch 1.52

[Dwarden 1125]

Yep, patch 1.52

this is due absence of Crossfire profile in AMD.ATI drivers for ARMA 2:OA binary

if you have retail or sprocket version of OA try rename game exe to arma2.exe

it should then use Crossfire profile for A2 and might work way better

Edited June 30, 2010 by Dwarden

[SkyDice 10]

this is due absence of Crossfire profile in AMD.ATI drivers for ARMA 2:OA binary

if you have retail or sprocket version of OA try rename game exe to arma2.exe

it should then use Crossfire profile for A2 and might work way better

Sorry if this is a silly question, but would this work for Steam users, and if not, is there another way to enable crossfire under Steam?

[minimalaco 30]

Sorry if this is a silly question, but would this work for Steam users, and if not, is there another way to enable crossfire under Steam?

steam does not work, I also have steam :(

[enad 11]

Ive tried renaming it. I maybe gained 2 FPS. It's not even worth it.

[minimalaco 30]

Ive tried renaming it. I maybe gained 2 FPS. It's not even worth it.

x2, that is not the solution, the only solution is that the people of BIS fix the problem.

the people of BIS this abreast of this problem? or we are only speaking to the air.

:mad:

[rogue221 10]

I'm so sick of this Sim. I've reconfigured tweaked and broken my windows OS 3 times trying to get this garbage to run. Even RMAed some hardware after people getting me to belive it was my rig that had a hard time runing it. Each new patch just made the game worst and worst.

I do even have time to learn the game properly because I spend most of the time tweaking.

I give up, I wish I never bought it to begin with. My only regret is I cant get a refund thru steam.

I dont care how realistic it is. Its completely useless to play. My system is mainstream and should beable to play this sim perfectly fine.

I'm going back to playing DCS Black shark.

[kridian 33]

Attention all gamers! Please upgrade your OS to at least Vista 64 so BIS can start using Direct X 10.

Thank You.

[Richey79 10]

I'm so sick of this Sim. I've reconfigured tweaked and broken my windows OS 3 times trying to get this garbage to run. Even RMAed some hardware after people getting me to belive it was my rig that had a hard time runing it... .

This is the reaction you need to avoid - I know it's easy to fall into with Arma 2.

Have patience. Don't think about buying new hardware etc. Having a more powerful machine will not necessarily give you better performance until they implement the changes they made in Arma2 patch 1.07 into OA.exe, which is currently at a different stage of architecture.

If it is getting that frustrating, leave OA for a month and come back and see what they have done to help. You can lose days trying to tweak for better performance which is caused entirely by the program.

[rogue221 10]

This is the reaction you need to avoid - I know it's easy to fall into with Arma 2.

Have patience. Don't think about buying new hardware etc. Having a more powerful machine will not necessarily give you better performance until they implement the changes they made in Arma2 patch 1.07 into OA.exe, which is currently at a different stage of architecture.

If it is getting that frustrating, leave OA for a month and come back and see what they have done to help. You can lose days trying to tweak for better performance which is caused entirely by the program.

And I really hate to have this reaction, but I just want to enjoy the sim, not read forums for hours trying to debug the latest issue and dissassemble my rig just for this particular sim/game. When everything else I have runs absolutely flawless.

THe thing is I've supported this game since its release. I was one of the people that said give it a chance they'll get it figured out.

Then as each patch came out more issues came along. The performance really hasnt changed much. Maybe in some areas but overall its still the same.

Then they release this rediculous addon without even solving much of the problems.

I have still yet to complete the campaign or even learn much of the basic skills to play the game properly due to constant issues.

I'm uninstalling the game for now, and since I'm stuck with it via steam, maybe I'll check back in a year or 2 and maybe then the game will be much better by then.

My apologizes if I may seem rude, but enough is enough. I want to enjoy some gaming this summer.

[Yoma 0]

First of all: to all crossfire/dual GPU core users:

This is one reason why I don't buy your setups.

As new games come out you're dependant on a 3rd party company (ATI/NVidia) to sort out new crossfire/blabla profiles. That in turn means that if a big big big company churns out a new game, you'll have an updated profile within days/ a week. Smaller developers... you have to pray. Please do tell us all how BIS is supposed to create a working crossfire profile for your ATICard and push that out automatically to all ATI users. Don't blame a developer for buggy technology that should be standardised accross the board and should really not even NEED profiles or at least be able to default to a decently working one if none exist. The only real reason crossfire and it's NVIDIA counterpart were invented is for you to buy more cards, while they can stall new technology. Historically you'll see that each new highperformance card just about adds up to the performance of 2 combined earlier tech cards. This is not a coincidence, it's called marketing and you bought into it.

Second: turn down the postprocessing setting in your config, stop upscaling to 200% of native resolution, stop trying to set all settings superhigh (except for shadows which should be high/very high to use GPU).

Third: Ati has some strangeness in Anti Aliasing implementation which makes it run slower then on NVIDIA cards. Either drop it or live with it.

Fourth: If the game runs at 40-50 FPS on average you don't have great performance issues and are simply moaning.

For me the game is running pretty good but that's a pretty subjective thing.

If you can't put up with installing a patch now and then, this game/engine might not be for you. Go play something optimised with 400m VD and all the rest faked.

Sorry for my blatentness... i'm just so fed up with people moaning about they ultra mega super crossfire setup giving them hassles that it makes me puke.

Edited July 3, 2010 by Yoma

[SkyDice 10]

Massive issues here with both ARMA2 & Op Arrow with x2 5770. If I run ARMA2 with the latest update and try it with crossfire, I get horrendous lighting flicker, even in daylight.

I tested it with the campaign mission after Pusta in A2 (daylight) and the Pusta mission - in Pusta I get very obvious gradient on the sunrise and awful flicker, at the beginning of the mission after (daylight, wooded area) the light seems to swap between day/night in a fraction of a second, making it completely unplayable. Running on a single 5770 with HDR @ 16 resolves most of the flicker, but not the gradient, even after testing all possible HRD settings in the .cfg.

In Op Arrow, on a single card I get the sunrise/set gradient even worse, not to mention awful texture pop-in and lag when approaching towns or heavily populated areas, but no flicker. OA with crossfire is just as bad as ARMA2, without the flicker. I run all settings at normal on both games, with the exception of grass detail, which is at low.

Will anything be done to resolve these issues? If this thread has a sticky, and people are seeing the same issues in OA, even before the patch to the latest ARMA2 version with LAA (which helps, but doesn't resolve the gfx issues), then there's obviously something very wrong. Has there been any word from BIS?

@ Yoma - nice attitude. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that virtually every developer tests their software with both ATI & Nvidia cards to make sure there are no major glitches with either brand. Developer 'size' is irrelevant, it shouldn't be too much to ask for any game to work ok with either card series - ATI and Nvidia are market leaders around the world and virtually everyone who plays any pc game will have one or the other. Not only that, but the dual GPU setup *does* work with Nvidia - so why not with ATI?

I don't have an 'ultra mega super' setup, I just want the game to damn well work as advertised on my perfectly adequate system. Not too much to ask, is it? It's down to the developer to ensure general system compatibility (in this case, between two of two major card manufacturers - not a great leap in logic, that) for any product release. Anything else is simply releasing a broken product, or one that should be advertised as 'Nvidia only' - in which case, I and about a gazillion other people with ATI cards should be asking for our money back.

Edited July 5, 2010 by SkyDice

[Yoma 0]

@ Yoma - nice attitude. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that virtually every developer tests their software with both ATI & Nvidia cards to make sure there are no major glitches with either brand. Developer 'size' is irrelevant, it shouldn't be too much to ask for any game to work ok with either card series - ATI and Nvidia are market leaders around the world and virtually everyone who plays any pc game will have one or the other. Not only that, but the dual GPU setup *does* work with Nvidia - so why not with ATI?

Maybe because they have better drivers? Just have a bit of patience and hope for a decent ATI driver in the near future. Developer size IS NOT irrelevent at all especially not when it comes to fixing drivers or adding driver profiles.

Good luck and sorry for my crappy attitude. Thing is multigpu setups have had issues from day one and time after time, game after game this gets proven. Don't worry, it will work out in the end, but it will need time.

[SkyDice 10]

Maybe because they have better drivers? Just have a bit of patience and hope for a decent ATI driver in the near future. Developer size IS NOT irrelevent at all especially not when it comes to fixing drivers or adding driver profiles.

Good luck and sorry for my crappy attitude. Thing is multigpu setups have had issues from day one and time after time, game after game this gets proven. Don't worry, it will work out in the end, but it will need time.

No probs dude, thanks. :) I guess we know that the multi-gpu thing does have a few glitches, and developer size will obviously make a degree of difference, but it still seems fairly sensible to assume any developer would qa both major name gfx card manufacturers before release. I can understand skipping over smaller manufacturers, but such a high % of people use one or the other it seems silly not to test the two majors. In some cases, ATI users are having trouble with one card, so it's also a general ATI support issue, rather than solely a multi-gpu one (and hence partially ATI's responsibility too).

Anyway no harm done :) I'm still learning all this stuff, so you probably know more than me anyway! I just want to get the best out of this awesome game. I'm trying to learn the editor too so I'm already pulling my hair out! ;)

And... back on topic.... :)

[Dwarden 1125]

Sorry if this is a silly question, but would this work for Steam users, and if not, is there another way to enable crossfire under Steam?

it works different way for STEAM users

rename arma2oa.exe to arma2.exe

* i want you to rename the file yourself i will not make it auto

then run script file i attached to this post

what it does is equal to this command run at commandline withing OA directory

mklink arma2oa.exe arma2.exe

in short it create symbolic link saying arma2oa.exe == arma2.exe

and drivers will detect the arma2.exe properly

incase this dont work You need try use hardlink

mklink /H arma2oa.exe arma2.exe

(be careful erasing hardlink erasing both link and target while erasing symbolic link only the link)

[SkyDice 10]

it works different way for STEAM users

rename arma2oa.exe to arma2.exe

* i want you to rename the file yourself i will not make it auto

then run script file i attached to this post

what it does is equal to this command run at commandline withing OA directory

mklink arma2oa.exe arma2.exe

in short it create symbolic link saying arma2oa.exe == arma2.exe

and drivers will detect the arma2.exe properly

incase this dont work You need try use hardlink

mklink /H arma2oa.exe arma2.exe

(be careful erasing hardlink erasing both link and target while erasing symbolic link only the link)

Ok thanks Dwarden, I'll try it shortly and report back for everyone else. It'll be interesting to see if the lighting flicker and other issues my 5770's throw out with ARMA2 are replicated in OA. Appreciate the help :)

---------- Post added at 02:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:01 AM ----------

Ok, the good news first. The rename & script combination works fine, starting OA via steam gives me no problems (though I did get an odd message telling me 'arma2.exe' was attempting to bypass the firewall - I allowed it).

On the down side, I don't get the CrossfireX logo like I do with ARMA2 when running OA through steam. I don't see much in the way of improvement in framerate either, unfortunately - I'm testing in Zargabad, on the 'Civilian Life' scenario mission (as it's heavily populated). Maybe 5 fps increase or so, if anything - FRAPS gives me 30-40ish, dropping to 20 while riding the bike or entering the large mosque near the start, just like it does on a single card, so it's hard to tell.

One thing I have noticed post-patching this way is some odd shadow draw in the large mosque near the Zargabad scenario start point. To be honest, I only spent a few minutes in this scenario prior to the patch, so I can't remember if it was there before the patch, but it'll be interesting to see if anyone can replicate it:

Ride the bike at the start (or whatever) straight North down the road until you come to the large mosque on the left. Hop off the bike, enter the mosque through the front entrance into the courtyard. Move round the back left of the courtyard.

At the rear left are the archways that go all the way round the courtyard. If I stand in the centre (as it were) of the left hand rear side, facing the rear archways and move closer, it alters the shadows to fit the sun's angle over the building better from my line of sight when I get maybe ten feet away from the archways - so it looks like the whole back left side lights up as I get close. This is probably another example of the LOD issue (as bushes, buildings etc often 'pop in' to full textures at about 10-15 feet distance). It might even be related to the blinding flicker I get in ARMA2 while running crossfire (brilliant white screen flashes at maybe 5-10 flashes per second, like a strobe, with occasional complete light absence as if it were suddenly a night mission). Like I say, I can't remember if it was there before, so I guess that's not much help. I also get white 'static' or white lines over the 'damaged' parts of the mosque's outside textures at any distance over about 10 feet, vanishing at around 5-10 feet to become the proper texture.

I also get mouse stutter in menus, even in the startup menu. I don't (so far) get the blinding flicker I get in ARMA2 while running crossfire, so that's something at least.

Settings wise I'm on all normal, with v.high video memory, low post-processing and AA off. One thought does occur to me, probably because I'm not too hot on directx - if another version of direct x is installed over the DX9 that is installed with arma2/OA, will the DX9 drivers remain present? I've installed a couple of games since installing ARMA2, all with different versions of DX. Maybe they've overwritten the DX9 that ARMA2 needs, leading to the A2 flickering & light transition gradient I experience, and the shadow-draw in OA?

Thanks for the help Dwarden, though it looks like there's a way to go yet! :) I know you don't have a magic fix for the many ATI issues people seem to be having (myself included, 5770 x2), but do BIS have any ideas as to why this stuff might be happening to ATI users? Appreciate all your help and your team's hard work on the ARMA series. :)

Edited July 5, 2010 by SkyDice

[Richey79 10]

If I run ARMA2 with the latest update and try it with crossfire, I get horrendous lighting flicker, even in daylight.

Setting video memory to 'default' has always fixed this problem 99% for me. I believe this is the setting that ATI cards need, whereas with NVidia you need to try out medium, high or very high to find the best one for your card. Setting HDR precision to 32 will fix the problem 100%. Of course, you will probably need to compromise by reducing one of your other settings in order to do this.

I get mouse stutter in the menus at the moment, but I've got to a point where I'm very happy with my performance (no point in stating FPS - I find it meaningless with this game), so don't obsess about it being a symptom of / linked closely to your problems. I get zero mouse-lag in game.

I suggest testing for performance at certain settings in the editor (or a small scale pre-made mission). Once you have enough units / scripts working, the hit to performance will make all settings run at the same speed regardless of graphics configuration.

Edited July 5, 2010 by Richey79

[Dwarden 1125]

...

You tried also the /H for hardlink ?

about the DirectX 9 latest version will install the older will do nothing if newer present

i suggest to install DirectX 9 Redist from June 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3B170B25-ABAB-4BC3-AE91-50CEB6D8FA8D&displaylang=en

and yes the memory set to "Default" helps people with crossfire and X2 cards to run properly on nonstandard / huge VRAM sizes

Edited July 5, 2010 by Dwarden

[SkyDice 10]

Setting video memory to 'default' has always fixed this problem 99% for me. I believe this is the setting that ATI cards need, whereas with NVidia you need to try out medium, high or very high to find the best one for your card. Setting HDR precision to 32 will fix the problem 100%. Of course, you will probably need to compromise by reducing one of your other settings in order to do this.

I get mouse stutter in the menus at the moment, but I've got to a point where I'm very happy with my performance (no point in stating FPS - I find it meaningless with this game), so don't obsess about it being a symptom of / linked closely to your problems. I get zero mouse-lag in game.

I suggest testing for performance at certain settings in the editor (or a small scale pre-made mission). Once you have enough units / scripts working, the hit to performance will make all settings run at the same speed regardless of graphics configuration.

I don't get the mouse stutter in game either, just in menus and even then it seems intermittent. I've just been back into Arma2 to see what my video memory is set to, and it was on default - I've just increased it to V. High and the flicker's gone completely, as far as I can see! My HDR is at 16, 32 looks too bad for my taste and still shows the flicker but 16 runs fine with no frameloss, and now the flicker's fixed via the vid.mem, I'm happy, although I'm convinced I had it on v.high to begin with and was advised before to turn it down to default, as it gave a higher value. Maybe the 1.07 fixed that default size issue? Cheers dude, can't believe it was that simple!

You tried also the /H for hardlink ?

about the DirectX 9 latest version will install the older will do nothing if newer present

i suggest to install DirectX 9 Redist from June 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3B170B25-ABAB-4BC3-AE91-50CEB6D8FA8D&displaylang=en

and yes the memory set to "Default" helps people with crossfire and X2 cards to run properly on nonstandard / huge VRAM sizes

I'll grab the DX9 shortly, thanks for the link. I didn't try the manual method as I wasn't too sure what you meant (plus it's never a good idea to try these things at 3am lol) - do I just put 'mklink /H arma2oa.exe arma2.exe' into the windows command prompt? Do I need to undo the renaming I did for the script file you attached and start from scratch? Also, could you clarify this a bit better:

'(be careful erasing hardlink erasing both link and target while erasing symbolic link only the link)'

Should I be erasing something when trying the hardlink? Or is it a warning that if I delete the hardlink later (not sure how, does this mean the arma2oa.exe?) it'll delete both arma2oa & arma2.exe? Also, how do I undo or remove the link (hardlink especially)?

Thanks for all the help everyone :)

Edited July 6, 2010 by SkyDice

[Dwarden 1125]

remember you need to be in same path where the exes are when typing this in command prompot ...

or use the one i attached

WARNING : remember if you erase hardlink, you erase also the targeted file !