ArmaHolic ArmA 2 Optimization

[SgtMjr 10]

I can't read all pages. Just to note, that with my 8800GTX I don't have the pre-rendered frames option in my nVidia driver settings mentioned in the first post.

Also, could anyone please confirm that the frame rate is better with High object detail compared to medium?

Thanks =)

The pre-rendered frames option is in the Nvidia control panel in "Manage 3D Settings". "Select Program Settings" and with the ARMA.exe selected there are menu options to change various settings including pre-rendered frames, V-sync, AA ,AF etc etc.

Many posters have confirmed better FPS with High Object Detail, YMMV.

[Snowwhite 10]

Ok, to clear things up here:

- Shadows at high vs normal gives same framerate but lags a tad more.

- Object Detail at high vs normal is +5 FPS down and lags a lot more (worst option to turn up actualy)

So if you do want to tune a setting then use shadows.

The better FPS people mention is actualy having the same or slightly (1 FPS or so) better FPS but what they don't test thoroughly is the lag they get with it (render lag)

The mouse seem to respond better but the background rendering actualy has a harder time keeping up.

Hopefully that made sence and got the "Higher is better" placebo talk out of the way.

Edited July 7, 2009 by Snowwhite

[thresh0ld 10]

does anyone else experience lag in campaign mode, but in multiplayer the game runs smoothly with no problems

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

Could it be cpu having problem keeping up? Isn't AI managed locally in campaign (putting more strain on your cpu) but managed server side in multiplayer (more strain on servers cpu)?

[Hellster 19]

Good Question. I've been asking that as well, with no real solid response.

Edited July 7, 2009 by He||razør

[Kenjineering 10]

If you have Vista or Win7. Change your power plan to "High Performance" via the control panel. (default is "Balanced"). I haven't tried this with Arma2.. but I remember it made a difference when I first bought Crysis.

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

People are reporting the same issues with singleplayer campaign stressing the cpu much more than multiplayer. This makes sense although I can't believe that the AI is THAT complex that it eats up as much cpu power as it actually does. Buildings seem to do similar things to performance.

Interesting idea with the power plan settings. Must give that a try when I get home, apparently a package has arrived for me which means I might have a trackir to unwrap as well :D

[Hellster 19]

As far as Buildings eating up CPU power that could be either unoptimized textures, or corruption in transparencies / other details. I remember some custom Cam nets that someone made in ArmA that would drop your FPS to 12, exactly while you were looking at them, then turn away, and BAM back up to 60.

I love the detail of the buildings, but they seriously need to go back through the textures and make sure they aren't too heavy in DPI.

Edited July 7, 2009 by He||razør

[Thunderbird 0]

Indeed, the Buildings aren't CPU friendly, I wonder whether this is due to the amount of polygons that every building does contain or is it due to the rendering system.

Regards,

TB

[Pvtpile1981 10]

NVIDIA OWNERS! Set

Max pre rendered frames to 8 in the advanced 3d settings for global or ArmA 2. This improves performance vastly. Discovered by some guy in another thread.. arhghh

Is this for Nvidia cards that have been put in SLI or does it work for single GPU's as well?

[Blueshift 10]

My hero... Will try this asap

Well, putting 182.5 worked just better but, I still can't play the game :(

ctd, ctd, ctd and gray textures, receiving, ctd, ctd , ctd, and gray textures :(

I'm sad, I though I could play at least one hour, it's more like 5 minutes and crash. :(

(If you wondering, i7920, 3Gb DDR3 12k8, mobo is an Asus P6T, WinXP 32 bit on a raptor, Arma2 on another one, gpu is a ENGTX260, the PSU is a Corsair 650W).

Edited July 7, 2009 by Blueshift

[shataan 1]

"does it work for single GPU's as well"

It worked for my 8800 GTX.... yes.

[f2k sel 164]

I have my 8800gt using six frames ahead with it set to eight I notice it's no quicker and I see texture loading much more.

[Pvtpile1981 10]

I have my 8800gt using six frames ahead with it set to eight I notice it's no quicker and I see texture loading much more.

Thats what I noticed on my 9800 GT mate, when I bumped it up to 8 when ever an explosion went off the game would go down to 3/4 fps then quickly back up so ive left it at 6 and it runs better.

[voodoochile123 10]

I have my 8800gt using six frames ahead with it set to eight I notice it's no quicker and I see texture loading much more.

I got the setting working now. It was originally on 3, and I changed it to 8. It made 0 difference to my fps :(

Also the high better than medium thing was not true for me. Although I found that AF makes no difference to performance at all, so whether it's completely off or on Very High, the performance is identical. I also found that the difference between shadows off and shadows low was none existent, maybe 1fps. So I leave them on low for now.

I currently am enjoying the game at about 25-30FPS with medium settings and a shadows on low. It looks nice and it's smooth enough to play. This is in the campaign on busy missions so other areas are better. I really am anxiously waiting for a patch though because I want to have more than 30fps and I want to be able to raise the settings a bit. I have an 8800GTX and a C2D running at 3.33Ghz, so having everything set to low/medium isn't good.

[Thunderbird 0]

As we all have noticed, the AI in ArmA II needs much more CPU than before, I tried to figure out the reasons behind such an increase, then I found that:

• The first one is that the AI runs much more extra-scripts than before.
  
• The second point is that the AI uses new hard coded commands [A la 'nearestobject'] to behave more realistically, therefore, the AI requires much more CPU than before.
  

Making the AI slightly dumber is the only way to make CPU friendly Large Battlefields with countless AI units.

I hope that BIS fixes that with the upcoming patch without altering the AI current behaviour, otherwise, we would have to tweak this ourselves but the result might be not that satisfying.

Regards,

TB

[apollo4war 10]

I hope that BIS fixes that with the upcoming patch without altering the AI current behaviour, otherwise, we would have to tweak this ourselves but the result might be not that satisfying.

We all hope... but there must be a way for bi to do it - the game must also be playable on mininum system requirements. And my rig must play it smooth :-P

The funny thing is that clocking my cpu to orginal clocks or disable one or two cores also changed nothing on my system. fps is most ~15-25 in campaign, sometimes up to ~30. But it must be very cpu dependant, since my gpu('s) doesn't looks like they were much overstrained.

And i really wonder why bi makes no use of any hardware accelerated sound or gpgpu acceleration, when they need soooo much cpu power(?). ahh... forget it, i already know... that needs much more development :-P

Edited July 29, 2009 by apollo4war

[Masterfragg 10]

As we all have noticed, the AI in ArmA II needs much more CPU than before, I tried to figure out the reasons behind such an increase, then I found that:

• The first one is that the AI runs much more extra-scripts than before.
  
• The second point is that the AI uses new hard coded commands [A la 'nearestobject'] to behave more realistically, therefore, the AI requires much more CPU than before.
  

Making the AI slightly dumber is the only way to make CPU friendly Large Battlefields with countless AI units.

I hope that BIS fixes that with the upcoming patch without altering the AI current behaviour, otherwise, we would have to tweak this ourselves but the result might be not that satisfying.

Regards,

TB

Interestingly, a fellow on the Steam forums (a programmer) done some investigation on this subject.

He can to the conclusion that on this Quad Core only around 40% of each core was being used most of the time (around the same is being used on mine for the record) and on a Dual Core around 70% is being used on both cores.

He mentioned that at all times Arma's .exe only has 23 threads open at any one time.

This game is CPU bound quite a bit but it's also not optimized to use cores fully and once BIS sort this out it'll run 100% better for everyone so just hold off for a while and it'll be sorted.

So it's not infact the AI as it is the poor optimization (it seems)

Also I did the 150 AI plane armageddon thing in the editor and I still got better FPS than in the Campaign >30 FPS

When I'm in a town I drop frames like nobodys business so that suggests poor geometric work on the buildings etc so they need to fix that also.

Of course all this is speculation based apon his work and he'd know more about it, I'll try to find a link to give you guys but hey...We know it's performing pooring due to BIS and not our hardware just like Armed Assault before this :cool:

[adom23 10]

We all hope... but there must be a way for bi to do it - the game must also be playable on mininum system requirements. And my rig must play it smooth :-P

The funny thing is that clocking my cpu to orginal clocks or disable one or two cores also changed nothing on my system. fps is most ~15-25 in campaign, sometimes up to ~30. But it must be very cpu dependant, since my gpu('s) doesn't looks like they were much overstrained.

And i really wonder why bi makes no use of any hardware accelerated sound or gpgpu acceleration, when they need so much cpu power(?). ahh... forget it, i know it anyway... that needs much more development :-P

How can u possibly have such poor performance!? .. Your system absolutely rapes mine and I get 20-60 FPS whilst playing SP/MP :O

[jaundiced 10]

When I'm in a town I drop frames like nobodys business so that suggests poor geometric work on the buildings etc so they need to fix that also.

if you look through the known bugs list it is evident that many models for this game are shoddy with unjoined vertices, etc. so this is a very likely candidate for some performance issues.

---------- Post added at 04:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:05 PM ----------

How can u possibly have such poor performance!? .. Your system absolutely rapes mine and I get 20-60 FPS whilst playing SP/MP :O

there seems to be no logic regarding hardware --> performance ratios. some people with 3 gen old gpu and dual core outperform brand new rigs with quad, shiny new gpus.

*shrugs*

ive stopped trying to make sense of it - just waiting on a patch.

[apollo4war 10]

ive stopped trying to make sense of it - just waiting on a patch.

me2 - i'm going on holiday for a few weeks... give arma2 a nice place in the shelf, and move back to arma until patch 1.10+ is out... (and nvidia's driver version is 400.00+) :D

Edited July 29, 2009 by apollo4war

[SgtMjr 10]

MASTERFRAGG

I can confirm the core use that you mentioned. My Q6600 uses about 40% as well. I was happy to see that but there is more headroom there. Let's hope that the optimization happens soon.

Lots of new info out these past couple of days, eh? Welcome to the BIS testing corps:mad:

[DLcmdr 0]

Hey guys i dont know nothing about programming but i can state the obvious:

Grid teh driving game makes my new gtx275 heat up to 90 degrees celsius.

Arma2 wont even top 78 degrees.

That must mean something.

[shataan 1]

Anyone here with a Crosshair mobo?

I dunno what did it exactly, but ARMA 2 is looking/sounding alot different now after a few updates. For starters, I updated to the 1207 Asus Crosshair bios. As well I reinstalled the latest 1.1.4 Dual Core Optimizer.

I was complaining early how I couldn`t hear some effects like bullets whizzing by, or see other effects that other peeps were seeing. After the updates, I am seeing beauty stuff like red tracers, more smoke/dirt dustcloud effects, the list goes on. And the game is running really nice for me now. A.I. is moving around very well, same with vehicles, and the animals.

I did a few earlier tweaks like the prerender = 8 , texquality= 3, texmemory=3, the normal tweak fair posted here. But tho they did seem to help, the 2 updates above REALLY worked for me. So maybe any Crosshair users out there might wanna try the bios update and 1.1.4 dual core optimizer. Can`t hurt.

[Masterfragg 10]

Hi guys

Interesting update.

I clean installed Windows 7 x64 RC 7100 and updated my bios to the latest version. Not good people.

26fps average with default settings and shadows/post proc off gave me 30fps.

Guess something had a bad effect :j:

---------- Post added at 02:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:59 PM ----------

Reinstalling Windows Vista x64.

After which I'll OC my CPU from 3ghz to 3.76ghz I had this stable last night but didn't get a chance to test before I started formating (it was 6am when I had finished OC'ing)

I'll report back soon.