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

[SkyDice 10]

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 !

Ok, thanks! One more question then, how do I revert this back once the OA patch with LAA etc is released (as that should help too)? Will I need to, or can I just leave it as is?

[Dwarden 1124]

i think if you rename/copy the arma2.exe into arma2oa.exe it overwrites the hardlink and that's it :)

[SkyDice 10]

i think if you rename/copy the arma2.exe into arma2oa.exe it overwrites the hardlink and that's it :)

Oh, easy as that? Brilliant, thanks :)

EDIT: I ran the hardlink file you attached and I'm afraid still no joy, second GPU isn't being used at all :( Oh well, thanks for trying, guess I'll have to wait for the patch!

Edited July 6, 2010 by SkyDice

[Dwarden 1124]

hmm and you have latest crossfire application profiles ?

that's quite strange ... tried use beta build ? you can rename the exe to arma2

[Chill xl 10]

Same goes for me, renaming the exe using a soft or a hardlink doesn't get me any crossfire. The -winxp param however does the trick, but the performance is worse then without this param. Same goes for the beta build...

This is with 10.6 and latest cf profiles (23june).

[Dwarden 1124]

this is weird cause this guy get the logo going

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1664206&postcount=7

so you don't get the logo nor with the hardlink nor renamed beta arma2oa.exe to arma2.exe ?

[SkyDice 10]

this is weird cause this guy get the logo going

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1664206&postcount=7

so you don't get the logo nor with the hardlink nor renamed beta arma2oa.exe to arma2.exe ?

Nope, neither I'm afraid. Appreciate the help though! The guy you linked to us using CA 10.6, from his post - I'm on 10.4, as 10.6 is awfully buggy. As far as I know, 10.4 is the most stable all round, not sure if that makes any difference? OS is Win7 64. :)

[rogue221 10]

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.

No offense but your telling us something we already know. The problem is the game runs the same on low or high settings regardless what you set any graphic option too.

Just to note, most of us dual GPU users are aware that our cards are as powerful as the next gen single. The reason we get them is because not all of us buy new cards every generation.

I build a new rig every 4 years, but I alway used the top model GPU at time to get the most for years to come. I dont need to pay 400 bucks for DX11. Theres no big marketing plan to fool us. We are aware of what a Dual GPU card does and doesnt do. Its called research.

I didnt use any scaling at all. 1680x1050 is all I use. I only use AA in games that have decent performance with a single GPU (arma 2 not one of them). Those that have poor crossfire performance I disable a GPU and gain some performance back.

I've always ran arma with default medium settings to keep things simple. However I can max out everything and get the same performance, but its not 40fps even on the lowest settings. I wish I could maintain 40fps.

I have trifire, and just for fokes who say the whole problem lies in crossfire. I removed the 4870 x2 and tried yet again with a fresh install and my single 4870, and get the same performance.

So do you have any other suggestions to add?

Edited July 7, 2010 by rogue221

[Chill xl 10]

this is weird cause this guy get the logo going

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1664206&postcount=7

so you don't get the logo nor with the hardlink nor renamed beta arma2oa.exe to arma2.exe ?

Indeed i do not get the logo nor with soft nor with hardlink nor beta renamed, unless i add the -winxp param.

I checked to see if CF worked in Arma 2, there it shows the logo without using any param and works great, performance is nearly doubled...

I'm using the Steam OA version, 10.6 driver + latest profiles on win 7 x64, but have tested 10.5 and 10.4 all with the above results.

---------- Post added at 04:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:27 AM ----------

Just retested renaming the beta and i have a go on CF (without the -winxp param) with added performance!!

Edited July 7, 2010 by Chill xl

[bono_lv 10]

Same goes for me, renaming the exe using a soft or a hardlink doesn't get me any crossfire. The -winxp param however does the trick, but the performance is worse then without this param. Same goes for the beta build...

This is with 10.6 and latest cf profiles (23june).

I can confirm that -winxp parameter reduces performance of OA quite drasticaly.

Win7 x64, 10.6 ATI ccc, latest cf profiles. OA Steam version. HD4870x2 (single dual-gpu card).

But still OA performance overall is much better than Arma 2, except when in huge town or on slow server MP game. Weird that it feels like server slows down clients fps. Maybe I'm wrong on that point...

[SkyDice 10]

Would adding this help (for quad core i5)?

-nosplash -cpucount=4 -exThreads=7

Can we do this via Steam?

EDIT: Yes we can. Right click on the game in your Steam Library, then select 'Properties', click 'Set Launch Options' and enter your preferred option. The above is for quad core, make sure you get the right one here:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=101124

And it does seem to have improved my overall framerate stability by quite a bit! Might get rid of the nosplash though as I don't mind the startup sequence. :)

Edited July 7, 2010 by SkyDice

[Abc94 10]

Patched to 1.07 and I am still having this problem constantly since last Augest. I posted a couple of times earlier in this thread.

wfGea5Bl5I0&feature=related

1SitcAf48zA&feature

It happens more frequently in cities and forests but also occurs in less detailed areas.

As well, my FPS will sometimes drop from around 30 to around 1-2 randomly with no visible artifacting. This to seems to also happen more often in higher detailed areas.

My specs are:

Win XP 32 bit

ATI 4850 512MB

3GB of ram (DDR2 if it matters)

Phenom X6 3.2 GHz (When I got this I thought it would make a big differnce in performance but so far I haven't noticed much with ARMA II) (Used to have a dual core)

I know alot of people are having this exact problem. Has anyone found a fix for this?

I have:

Tried nearly everything with ATI video settings (CCC) and in game settings

Tried all the ATI driver versions down to around 9.3 (properly uninstalling them with dirver cleaner each time)

Updated my onboard graphics card

Formatted my Computer about three times

Uninstalled Arma II twice

tried -Cpucount=6, Maxmem=2047, exthreads=7

No other games that have this problem

I haven't really tried anything with hyperthreading in BIOS. Is it safe to disable it to see if it makes a differnce?

[Beagle 684]

Looks like video memory set at "default"...just try "very high" or "high", but never use "default" with ATI cards.

[Lepssa 10]

As well, my FPS will sometimes drop from around 30 to around 1-2 randomly with no visible artifacting. This to seems to also happen more often in higher detailed areas.

I have exactly same problem on my Windows Xp partiton. When running OA on W7 no problems at all. Same setting in game and via ATI tray tools.

[WillaCHilla 10]

Looks like video memory set at "default"...just try "very high" or "high", but never use "default" with ATI cards.

Better not to affirm this for all ATI-users in general. For me, settings like "very high" or "high" will give worse performance than the "default"-settings.

[Abc94 10]

Yeah I tried default and very high video memory settings. It sometimes makes it go away for a while. I think I tried it on high before, but I will test it again anyways.

I have exactly same problem on my Windows Xp partiton.

Really? I have a partition on my hard drive too. ARMA II is installed on the same partition that all the windows files are on. But that's an interesting connection and maybe it is part of the problem.

I think maybe even a poll should be started to see if people with this problem have partitioned hard drives.

[JSj 12]

I have this exact same problem with my ATI 4850. I have Win XP, but the HD is not partitioned.

[Lepssa 10]

Just put some testing into this. I have Xp partition just to run Arma because it performs a lot better than w7. It seem that very high/high video memory gets me rid of artifacts but game is sttutering + texture LOD trashing it gets little better with betas thou. Strange think is that on W7 with default texture memory i dont have any of these issues but Arma perform slowly (20-30%). I never have this problem with my old 8800gtx.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Lepssa

[RAQ 0]

downloaded and installed A2OA_demo

started it

took helicopter training, on waypoint 2-3 after picking up the troops the screen explodes in triangles, just like the youtube video above in post #1012

ati 4870 512MB

windows xp

Q6600

4GB RAM

I can play all other games for hours on end with 0 problems (well except arma2, same problem)

[Beagle 684]

downloaded and installed A2OA_demo

started it

took helicopter training, on waypoint 2-3 after picking up the troops the screen explodes in triangles, just like the youtube video above in post #1012

ati 4870 512MB

windows xp

Q6600

4GB RAM

I can play all other games for hours on end with 0 problems (well except arma2, same problem)

Well again: dont use default for texture memory. Use high instead. The gain in fps is obviously not worth it. And no overclocking.

[RAQ 0]

Changed texture to high

Now I got to the 4'th or 5'th waypoint after picking up troop before the triangle explosion occured.

[ginger mcale 11]

Ive made many tests and collected informations and discussed a lot about it a year ago (in this thread), ive also made the youtube video you mentioned. Here are all informations and hints about it (should be very informative to you):

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/2500

My advise? Install Windows 7 - 64 bit and you will not have this problem anymore. I dont have seen a another solution. A workaround was to change the graphic memory value to normal or even low, but that does produce not a nice graphical presentation.

The bug still isnt fixed. I informed about that a week or so in that dev heaven ticket i have linked but i got this answer:

GingerMcAle create a new ticket and provide up-to-date information. Ty

I will definetly not. The informations in there are still correct. I have spend weeks on that problem and finally fixed the problem for me by using a workaround, by installing Windows 7 - 64 bit. I think Windows Vista - 64 bit could also be a solution here but check the ticket ive linked to see all facts about it.

[Dwarden 1124]

Patched to 1.07 and I am still having this problem constantly since last Augest. I posted a couple of times earlier in this thread.

wfGea5Bl5I0&feature=related

1SitcAf48zA&feature

It happens more frequently in cities and forests but also occurs in less detailed areas.

As well, my FPS will sometimes drop from around 30 to around 1-2 randomly with no visible artifacting. This to seems to also happen more often in higher detailed areas.

My specs are:

Win XP 32 bit

ATI 4850 512MB

3GB of ram (DDR2 if it matters)

Phenom X6 3.2 GHz (When I got this I thought it would make a big differnce in performance but so far I haven't noticed much with ARMA II) (Used to have a dual core)

I know alot of people are having this exact problem. Has anyone found a fix for this?

I have:

Tried nearly everything with ATI video settings (CCC) and in game settings

Tried all the ATI driver versions down to around 9.3 (properly uninstalling them with dirver cleaner each time)

Updated my onboard graphics card

Formatted my Computer about three times

Uninstalled Arma II twice

tried -Cpucount=6, Maxmem=2047, exthreads=7

No other games that have this problem

I haven't really tried anything with hyperthreading in BIOS. Is it safe to disable it to see if it makes a differnce?

the problem with the 'rarity' of this cases it seems to be as some hidden flaw in the GPU or firmware of these GPU cards...

or combination of card and driver vs game ...

there is no repro to follow and no patter to track

i have ATI cards from 2xxx, 3xxx, 4xxx and 5xxx serie and i don't have these issues

yes in past there were some vertexes out of range in ARMA 1 and some similar issue in early ARMA 2 but

that all got fixed by engine updates and some in drivers by AMD

since then i'm unable to replicate reports like the one above

ofcourse if someone has case where to report it and track (e.g. able replicate it by two different users on different hardware (same models))

feel free to share

Edited July 23, 2010 by Dwarden

[totaleclipse 10]

When I launch the game I get the good old 'Input Not Supported' screen :\

I have a 1GB Radeon HD4890

[Jintara 10]

Ok,new catalyst's out now,for those who wan't to gamble or are interested.

I'll stick 10.3 still,works for me best.

http://sites.amd.com/US/GAME/DOWNLOADS/Pages/downloads.aspx