ArmaHolic ArmA 2 Optimization

[armafreak 10]

I am really concerned with what I've seen here, I am currently running Arma 2 on a Toshiba x205 with an 8700 GT OC'd to hell and back. (not that it means much.. easy moosenoodles, but Armamark score is 2200 on the 3rd run)

I bought the German version the day it came out, and this is my 3rd time through the campaign. I've played this game to the best of my Laptops ability, which isn't great, but come next week I have a monster rig arriving, and judging by the posts here, I could have waited 6-8 months and paid less for the same rig, plus the game would actually be playable/optimised. I played OFP, then was fortunate to come into Arma 1 at version 1.08 and find 1.14 excellent. But the timeline between the release of Arma 1 & 1.14 is what really gets me...

Hopefully someone, somewhere, has an epiphany and we find a broad ranging solution.

[galzohar 31]

All you guys running Vista may want to consider XP. You don't need the 64 bit (game uses max 2GB RAM anyway) and a lot of people report that XP works much better than Vista.

[jason187781 10]

I have battled for about a week, trying to get the best out of Arma 2's Graphics. It took me 3 HRS to update all Sound Card, Nvidia Graphics, Direct X, Forceware, Firmware and Motherboard Drivers to the latest versions. I installed Advanced System Care ( A very Good Free Clean up tool ) And Game Booster ( Also a very Good free optimizing Programme ). I ran Several Armamark 2 benchmark programmes before all the updates and after but noticed very little change in Average scores. I messed about with the Config file ( Seemed like just an awkward way of setting your graphics options to me, ) I have installed the new Patch. And spent hours on the internet forums looking for solutions.

I am only speaking for myself and by no means an expert on modding, but I have been playing arma 2 with my view distance at 1600 and Graphics setting on High. View distance seems to be the biggest power drain ever. When your down on the ground you can't really tell the difference and It runs like a dream. I would like to see further but upto now hasn't affected the single player game exsperience at all, Even when snipeing. If you are prepared to wait for future patches and don't want to mess about with your Config files or modding I would suggest this option for now to get the most out of a buggy game.

windows home

GTX280 1GB

Phenom Quad 2.6ghz

4GB Ram

[UKCarbine 10]

How many installations of the game can you have? I have win xp home 32-bit on my old 74gb raptor. I might install the game and see if it runs any better on that.

Also I was tinkering with changing the the .exe file name to enable crossfire.

I read somewhere doing this can trigger 'fade'.

Is this true? I haven't noticed anything to make me post this other than somebody said the aiming is the first thing to go and to be honest I think the aiming is a bit bobbins with the iron sights.

Carb

[von_paulus 0]

How many installations of the game can you have? I have win xp home 32-bit on my old 74gb raptor. I might install the game and see if it runs any better on that.

DVD Version: unlimited

Digital Version: 3

[UKCarbine 10]

DVD Version: unlimited

Digital Version: 3

Oh thats good news then, thanks for the heads up Von_Paulus.

Defo going to give it a go tonight then.

Cheers

Carb

[Väinämöinen 0]

I can confirm on 4870x2 Vista x64 my game is capped 30fps and 60fps on menus. No matter how low settings or vsync on/off.

Hope they fix it.

[Fox '09 14]

Thanks Vainamoinen (argh long name)

I will look into a fix for that. If not, BIS will.. woo go BIS.

---------- Post added at 04:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:20 PM ----------

Oh and as a reference, All my ingame settings are set to the highest possible expect for fillrate which is set by render_w/h anyway. View distance is 4000. No problem for my computer.

[Herbal Influence 10]

LOL - :eek: don't consider me gay ... because I don't invest in hardware too much.

I did just invest 70 Euros to have a AMD 6000+ x2 instead of my old 3800+ x2 (was in it since 12/06).

It was really easy: I simply took out the old cpu in a 10 secs and put the new in place (2 secs).

And the result ... the result is .... I can now really play AA1 !:)

Which I didn't want .... I wanted to get ready AA2 ... :o

At least AA2 is running smooth now on low settings (AA1 on "high").

my other specs:

2GByte RAM, 7600 GT and never forget the resolution: 1050x1680

But I can wait ... I really can wait ... for crcti (thanks to Squeeze) is my favourite and is not really, really as nice by now as it is in OF ... so I keep on gaming OF a lot and I wait ... for more ideas to increase my performance and save money for a gtx260 or so .. :cool:

Edited June 26, 2009 by Herbal Influence
yep ! ;-)

[jason187781 10]

Doing what?

[Yapab 10]

The problem with ArmA 2 is that even high end cards (GTX295, GTX285, 4870X2) do not give playable fps at High settings.

Once you actually play the larger maps with more action on the screen these cards cannot deliver playable 30+ fps in most cases... lowering the settings makes the game look crap and worse than other games which run faster.

Hopefully the game will be optimised further .

Yapa

[Fox '09 14]

Yapab, i have no clue what your talking about there. (4870X2 not included)

SLI makes it very playable.

Even my GTX 275 can run it fine 40+ fps

GTX 285 won't have any problem with it, too.

the GTX 295, no problem. (with sli enabled of course)

Please, make sure you know what your talking about before you post :)

[Yapab 10]

AxF FoX play some MP or play the campaign / bigger missions and you will see...

Also you say with "SLI enabled".... well until today you couldnt enable SLI easily... had to use hacks to get it working.

Even now a EVGA Hotfix has to be used to get it working and it produces flickering... do you have SLI? Have you tested SLI in it?

Most of the problems seem to be in the campaign and MP missions, the demo training mission and first missions seem to run fast as they are scaled down.

This could be a CPU limitation but even i7 CPU's are having these problems so who knows?

Edited June 26, 2009 by Yapab

[Fox '09 14]

campaign works fine for me. 40 + fps.

Do people bother to update their drivers?

Well, hacks, or no hacks, it works. that's all that counts.

If you have tweaked everything in this thread, then there is no reason to say you get bad fps imo. If my "Performance" computer can run smoothly maxed out, then easily an enthusiast computer can run it. It's a driver thing. I just tried SLI with 2 9600 GT's. No problem with flickering or anything. It's honestly in the config that will cause things like that. If you play around with the settings, then it usually goes away from what i've seen.

[Ferrox 10]

I can confirm on 4870x2 Vista x64 my game is capped 30fps and 60fps on menus. No matter how low settings or vsync on/off.

Hope they fix it.

Menu is indeed capped at 60fps for me as well. But was just in multiplayer and I was getting 50-60 in game too on my spec below. This was at 1920x1200 3D all very high except shadows normal, postprocessing low, view distance 3700 odd. I believe a lot of the fps drops are due to high AI presence. Just using -winxp -nosplash and @english mod.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Ferrox

[Longy221 0]

Is there something wrong for me? I can only run at a mix between low and medium and I only get average fps of around 40 when there's nothing happening. (for me games are really hard to play when fps is less than 30). I got a 9800GX2, 4gb RAM and Q9450 2.66GHz. Surely that system should be able to run this game alot better.

Edited June 26, 2009 by Longy221

[INVICTUS 10]

I get around 30 FPS with my XPS M1730 E8400, 4GB RAM, Dual 8800m GTX Sli not really that impressed honestly... I expected much more. Even with the EVGA Fix settings changed to low or very high same results. I am not sure the exact issue I believe it to be an NVIDIA related one. Just put new drivers still the same. Well I guess I will be waiting on some other fix....

[adom23 10]

you guys keep goin on about Arma2 Mark... ive dloaded it but theres no instructions on how u install or run it!?

I have Q6600 2.4ghz (yes the easily overclockable CPU doesnt overclock on my system, typical!)

4 gig ram (PC6400 800mHZ)

Windows 7 64bit

Palit GTX 260 876mb (or sumthing near) 216 core

Gigabyte GA-N650iSli-DS4 board

Hellish performance online for arma 2 and not much better in single player either... sick of tryin different settings so i think am gonna live with it and hope they fix it. I cant comment on my FPS as I havent got anything to record them with but its not good I can say that lol.

Anyway tried low end settings and high end, no difference, I give up... jsut thought id try this Arma mark thing.

Cheers

PS! Dloading the 182 version of the geforce drivers to give them a go ... then I really am giving up :p

Edited June 26, 2009 by adom23

[Fox '09 14]

you guys keep goin on about Arma2 Mark... ive dloaded it but theres no instructions on how u install or run it!?

I have Q6600 2.4ghz (yes the easily overclockable CPU doesnt overclock on my system, typical!)

4 gig ram (PC6400 800mHZ)

Windows 7 64bit

Palit GTX 260 876mb (or sumthing near) 216 core

Gigabyte GA-N650iSli-DS4 board

Hellish performance online for arma 2 and not much better in single player either... sick of tryin different settings so i think am gonna live with it and hope they fix it. I cant comment on my FPS as I havent got anything to record them with but its not good I can say that lol.

Anyway tried low end settings and high end, no difference, I give up... jsut thought id try this Arma mark thing.

Cheers

PS! Dloading the 182 version of the geforce drivers to give them a go ... then I really am giving up :p

Don't dload the 182 drivers, go and grab the 190 drivers from guru3d.com

Look around for them, they are fantastic and they are only 50 megs.

btw, it's 896 MB on your GTX 260, close hehe.

[INVICTUS 10]

I have a other machine Phenom 2 940 @3.6Ghz 4gb RAM, 2 8800 GTS (g92) in SLI same performance 30 FPS now all I am saying is WTF mate! lol......

[adom23 10]

Don't dload the 182 drivers, go and grab the 190 drivers from guru3d.com

Look around for them, they are fantastic and they are only 50 megs.

btw, it's 896 MB on your GTX 260, close hehe.

Cheers! Dloading the 190 drivers now, found em quite easily :)

---------- Post added at 11:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:17 PM ----------

tried the 190 geforce drivers and seemed to be a slight improvement BUT about 10 mins into a game all textures nearby begun to flash and dissapear then pc crashed lol...

[colazel 10]

It is possible to make a resume of what the best setting for the optimization for arma 2...bloom, AA, texture, shadow, distance, etc

[adom23 10]

ya know what .. im an idiot ... i totally did not know they had released a mini patch!

Just started to dload it now and ppl seem to be quite impressed with it ... neway shall see how it goes ! :D

[Fox '09 14]

ya know what .. im an idiot ... i totally did not know they had released a mini patch!

Just started to dload it now and ppl seem to be quite impressed with it ... neway shall see how it goes ! :D

ok! remember to give us feedback. Hope your problems solv'd

cheers

[PuFu 4599]

ok, after messing around with settings for about 10 days or so since 505 release, saying that a game can't beat me, i was wrong. I gave up.

encountered issues:

- MP - almost unplayable - FPS stuck at about 24 FPS no matter what mission i play, no matter what settings i choose from very low to very high (, same thing, which i actually find beyond weirdness. Changing resolution from 1680x1050 to 640x480 doesn't move that FPS counter at all for instance....

Note that while in editor i get around 45-60 FPS everywhere on the map settings my details to High/V high - PP - off, in MP (the reason i bought this game) are around 23-24 FPS, going around 20 FPS if huge battles occur. Looking UP or down or straight into a wall makes no difference to me, the most i can get is 27 (in the conditions stated above)

- Framerate seems to be pretty unstable, more than A1 has ever been. jumps up and down like a gum ball.

tryouts so far:

* all the renaming exe file etc

* -maxmem=2047 thingy

* -winxp (although i am already running on Win XP64, but had to try it).

* messing in the riva tunner/nvidia control panel - tried all settings changing and switching about. Found the ones which are performing better, but that doesn't render my MP problems null.

* redid, changed and edited my profiles several time, pending on information i gathered from other ppl.

* defraged, cleaned up registries etc. This is done under normal circumstances once every week at least anyways

* tried all drivers from 180 series to current 186.18 - there is no 190 for XP64 yet

PC used:

* C2D e6600 OCed @ 3Ghz - tried it with stock clocks, with 2.7, even pushed it today to 3.4 for a test, same results (back to 3.0 since on 3.4 was acting too hot)

* 4 GB DDR2 800Mhz CL4 high performance modules

* GTX 260 216 stock OC 896MB

* 2x320 HDDs 7200 16mb

* OS - Win XP64 PRO

running on 1680x1050 - current drivers 186.16

Personal conclusion - i am bottlenecked by the CPU, since ArmA2 is pretty intensive on those. Still i am unsure why would this game would need so many horsepower on an average PvP game - no Ai, etc etc. Is it the netcode, sending information across the board?

My personal conclusion was that the game is beyond any optimization, netcode, engine code etc - non scalable, at all. I am looking forward to seeing this fixed in some near future.

PS: seems i am getting worse and worse performance by patch release, rather than the other way around for some reason

PPS: sorry for the long read.

Edited June 27, 2009 by PuFu
PS