ArmaHolic ArmA 2 Optimization

[mcvittees 0]

OK, so I have an OK system, plays Arma2 well at 30-33 FPS (Fraps) in most situations except smokey cities, where it's a jerky frame fest. I have all the settings at the optimum for my rig as per the various posts on this forum. Last night I changed the interface res to normal and set the screen res to 1900X1080. Now I'm in the low 40's FPS-wise. WTF! Initially the higher res and high/ V high settings had me at 26-28 FPS so I dropped it down.

Can anyone give a reason for this jump in FPS?

System: Q6600 3.0Ghz, P35MoBo, 8800GTX stock (190.38 drivers), 4G DDR-800 RAM, Vista 32. Dell 2408WFP.

ARMA: all settings at High or V High, view distance 1600, AA off, V sync off, PhysX off, pre-rendered frames 3, single display, most settings in Nvidia control panel on application controlled or auto. Nvidia scaling.

I've got exactly the same components as you and I'm curious: I run video memory, textures and ansitropic filtering(?-sp?)at v.high, terrain at low, object detail normal or low, post processing off and AA at normal (AA doesn't seem to hit fps much for me). I run the interface and 3d world at 1680*1050 and get ~30fps in the countryside and anywhere between 12 and 20fps in the bigger towns. Does that match your experience?

[InFireBaptize 0]

is setting XP compatibility through shortcut property works the same as setting -winxp?

[-=seany=- 5]

is setting XP compatibility through shortcut property works the same as setting -winxp?

I don't think so.

[SgtMjr 10]

I've got exactly the same components as you and I'm curious: I run video memory, textures and ansitropic filtering(?-sp?)at v.high, terrain at low, object detail normal or low, post processing off and AA at normal (AA doesn't seem to hit fps much for me). I run the interface and 3d world at 1680*1050 and get ~30fps in the countryside and anywhere between 12 and 20fps in the bigger towns. Does that match your experience?

Yes Mate. My initial experience was very choppy at 1900X1200 until I used the optimumization tweaks recommended here and dropped res to 1680X1050. I ran three Fraps runs using 'Trial by Fire' ( combo of town and countryside ) and my avg is 32 fps. Highs in the 50's and lows in the single digits. Smokey scenes in Chernogorsk are the real killer, I have to run away LOL.

The post you quote was a glitch, my bad, I thought I had a jump in performance but I was mistaken. I'm not unhappy mind you, 30fps in this game plays OK IMO.

[mcvittees 0]

I'm not unhappy mind you, 30fps in this game plays OK IMO.

True enough, but still, one always wants more!:p

[Masterfragg 10]

heh...

Mate came round today with his copy of Arma 2 to test the new patch on my computer.

I returned my copy of Arma 2 to the shop as faulty as you may have read eariler in this topic.

The reasons were for the game barely bloody working and running like a rabid one legged dog.

Right my thoughts on this new patch.

Very good! they have done some interesting things with the AI and fixed many bugs I had not had the chance to encounter due to technical difficulties.

But the important part that we should all be asking.

Whats the performance like?

Guess...!

Eariler in my posts you may have read that no matter my settings I was getting a constant 27 FPS in "Trial by Fire" Single Player Mission.

Well I'm getting 27 sometimes 28fps which...Is not really an improvement but it does feel a tiny bit smoother which made the game feel much better.

However, CPU usage is still at 40% for cores 1/3 and 50ish% for 4th

Ram usage is 530mb which is a pathetic amount considering I have 4gb...Bloody games should USE this memory as much as possible shouldn't it?

Still I can't complain I can't make games myself, sadly it just means that I'll have to avoid Arma 2 for the longterm which I hate that because I love the game.

I'll keep my eyes on the forum and I'll stay hopefully that one day in the future BIS will employ some of the community members as an actual beta tester team rather than test the 1.00 game on the public.

I hope that with their next game (if there is a next game) they'll do that or something simular because there is such a following with their games it seems a pity that the community has to put up with sub-par releases, and I do understand that it is a small company but back in the days of bedroom programming in the ages of the Commodore and the Amstrad CPC 464 (Tape loading computers) you rarely came across a game with major problems.

Bar "Seymour goes to Hollywood" which couldn't be completed due to a bug and "Predator" (game of the movie) which took 30 minutes to load and on death required you to RELOAD for 30 minutes lol

In the Sega days you wouldn't expect this.

In the Doom days it wasn't as bad as this.

In the Playstation One (PSX) days you wouldn't of accepted this.

In todays day I refuse to accept this.

On that note I take my leave for now.

I by no means say that BIS are the worst because they are far from it, I'm just more critical about games I love! There are a ton of developers out there that are far worse such as Konami (Their support for PC games is legendary for being piss poor) and Square Soft (All Final Fantasy games to be released have been screwed up) and Blizzard....Activision or Blizzavision as I like to call them are just....awful!

So I ain't picking on BIS by any means.

Now thats clear!

Adios gamers! I'm going to play OFP for a bit on a MFCTI!

Maybe a little Arma 1 with all it's 13 players (about 2 nights ago there was 13 players lol)

Thanks for all the help guys!

I'll always be grateful to the community!

[Milamber 10]

Im a little lost!

I have a GTX295, what do I need to edit - do i need to adjust my VRAM details and adjust the sceneComplexity to =160000.

[jaundiced 10]

Doing this greatly improved my performance, I have the ArmAholic thread favorited.

is it a coincidence your post is identical to the one on the first page? :butbut:

JohnnyBoy755

Doing this greatly improved my performance, I have the ArmAholic thread favorited.

[Dead3yez 0]

Check sig - no, it's not the same.

[edit]

Misread D:

Edited August 7, 2009 by Dead3yez

[Karhis 10]

Masterfragg, I have similiar problems as well. The game runs poorly, somewhere between 20 and 30 fps and ingame settings seem to have very little effect to the performance. Also CPU and GPU are not fully utilized.

For more detail, you might want to check my post in another thread:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1397866&postcount=15

[shahin 10]

Hello BIC! over at armaholic, we found various ways to improve arma 2s performance greatly.

Here is parts of the thread. ( I have permission to put it here)

Well, i'd like to show you guys something i found.

Resolution_W=1600; -Screen resolution (Width)

Resolution_H=900; -Screen resolution (height)

Render_W=1600; -Render Resolution (Width)

Render_H=900; -Render Resolution (Height)

As far as i know, the render resolution is what is rendered, and then the screen resolution is what is outputted on the screen. So by changing the render resolution to match the screen resolution, it renders the screen size rather than the max resolution (CRT 18XXx15xx(Not sure what resolution, but around there)

Benchies

Running at 1680x1050 here is a result of an earlier test, SceneComplexion 160k

Frames: 4219 - Time: 101274ms - Avg: 41.659 - Min: 30 - Max: 60

And now a newer one using those render settings and higher complexion, SceneComplexion 180k.

Frames: 4983 - Time: 115663ms - Avg: 43.082 - Min: 34 - Max: 66

That' gave me the opportunity to run it maxed out completely.

My specs: GTX 275; E8400 @ 4.05 GHz; 4GB DDR2 1080MHz

My whole config: (DISCLAIMER: Remember, this in no way, should be what your computer is if it is less than my computers specs. This is for showing what my config looks like, and nothing else.)

language="English";
adapter=-1;
3D_Performance=-180000;
Resolution_Bpp=32;
Resolution_W=1680;
Resolution_H=1050;
refresh=60;
Render_W=1680;
Render_H=1050;
FSAA=0;
postFX=2;
HDRPrecision=8;
lastDeviceId="";
localVRAM=924188672;
nonlocalVRAM=1475895296;

Your Config file is usually located in:

XP: C:\documents and settings\user\<login account>\My documents\ArmA 2

Vista: C:\users\<login account>\documents\Arma 2

Windows 7: 1. C:\users\<login account>\my documents\Arma 2

Basically, it's in your documents folder under the name "ArmA2.cfg"

Same thing with the player profile, where you put "sceneComplexity" execpt its named "loginname.arma2profile"

Go to the bottom, and if you don't see "sceneComplexity=" then add it. For instance, mine is

sceneComplexity=160000;

Sorry for the confusion about putting it in the arma2.cfg.

REMEMBER TO SET THE FILE AS READ ONLY SO ARMA 2 DOES NOT CHANGE IT!!!!

Dead3yez :

Some of you may have realised that in ArmA 1 the optimisation of the graphics was a little weird, i.e some of the graphics settings on higher levels increased your FPS rather than decreased your FPS. I am just wondering on what you have found with ArmA II. Given that I am playing an early release I do also hope that the game will be optimised further in later versions.

I'm currently running ArmA 2 on a duelcore AMD5200, 4GBram, xfi soundcard and an XFX 8800gs 680mhz, 384mb ram, and will be for the next month or so until my pockets get a little more bigger. I have a 24inch monitor 1980*1200, running the graphics of ArmAII at this resolution really puts strain on my card, so I have to run on 1680*1050 to get away with a decent FPS. Personally I call a good playable level >30FPS, with my current settings I can reach up to 50FPS in single player, leaving leeway for when playing multiplayer, or missions with high GPU and CPU usages.

To give you an idea of my settings and what my game looks at the moment here are some images, the difference from ArmA-ArmA2 appears to be substantially different.

Dead3yez :

I did some playing with the Scene complexion as it seemed to be the best way of improving the quality without much drop in the framerate. I also decreased the shading detail a little more by two. After applying some values to the scene complextion I ran around the village taking the same route and recorded the frame rate. (SC = scenecomplexion) These are the results.

SC@110k

Frames: 4843 - Time: 101276ms - Avg: 47.820 - Min: 33 - Max: 68

SC@160k

Frames: 4219 - Time: 101274ms - Avg: 41.659 - Min: 30 - Max: 60

SC@160k Battle 1

Frames: 3010 - Time: 90679ms - Avg: 33.194 - Min: 20 - Max: 48

SC@160k Battle 2

Frames: 3137 - Time: 126169ms - Avg: 24.863 - Min: 13 - Max: 44

[thumb=datas/thumbs/3321-bat2.jpg]3321-bat2.jpg[/thumb]

SC@250k

Frames: 3907 - Time: 100802ms - Avg: 38.759 - Min: 31 - Max: 55

SC@350k

Frames: 3631 - Time: 93669ms - Avg: 38.764 - Min: 26 - Max: 53

All setting very high VD@1600 1920*1200

Frames: 2403 - Time: 127963ms - Avg: 18.779 - Min: 8 - Max: 47

I hope this solves all problems for you guys.

Some feedback would be nice and details on your experience with graphics performance / settings.

NOTES + BRAND SPECIFIC ENHANCEMENTS

And the VRAM settings in my config "896 (MB)" is supposed to be in bytes. Sorry for not mentioning it.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73947

Oh and Cinoara gave me this pic, check this out.

*IMG REMOVED BY MOD*

SLI SUPPORT:

1. Rename ArmA2.exe to crysis.exe or crysis64.exe

2. use the command parameter with crysis.exe or crysis64.exe -winxp

EVGA SLI FOR ARMA 2! EVGA CARDS ONLY.

Discussion thread: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=76369

And finally

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

hi..i have 4850..cpu 3.4 4 meg catch..xp 32...fsp 15..all dirve update..4gig ram...what can i do?

Edited August 20, 2009 by Placebo

[Lovehandles 10]

Nice quote.

[=silver= 0]

what can i do?

Lobotomy...

[Masterfragg 10]

OK guys!

Yesterday I fixed a few 500GB SATAII HDD's together in a RAID 0 Stripe config.

Gotta say it didn't improve FPS in all cases but in some cases I'm seeing more effects than a CPU upgrade and ram upgrade combined showed.

Considering I was using one of these 500gb's as my primary HDD and the other was in my other halfs computer (which I originally stole this HDD from...hey look I bought the damn computer she can live with a spare 80gb damnit lol) there has been more improvement than any other effect.

Rather than a constant 27fps in Trial by fire mission I get 27 to 32 FPS which is a huge change!

Question to start asking now is...

As this game only uses 530mb of my ram wouldn't performance increase with better utilization of my ram??

IS the HDD really accessed this much? and if so...Why is that?

Some people have commented that having the games files mod foldered and on a seperate HDD helps...Well this is a call to BIS... Work on ram optimization now...

Right now the meat of the post.

If anyone has a SSD (Solid State Drive) HDD can they test on that then possibly a SATA II 3gb/s drive? and maybe some others?

Also could I see some posts with ram usage whilst the game is running?

Thanks guys...The plot thickens!

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

I don't see how faster/newer HD will improve pure FPS. It will reduce (maybe even remove) lag due to loading texture and other stuff to memory though.

[lee_h._oswald 0]

As this game only uses 530mb of my ram wouldn't performance increase with better utilization of my ram??

Very good question!

For what reason do I have 4GB ram, some people here have 8GB, some 16GB !!

The -maxmem=xxxx switch does not really work for me.

Any idea how to use more ram with arma?

MfG Lee

[cchance 10]

how big is the arma2 install? if its under 8 gigs maybe ill try creating a ramdisk and installing it into a ramdisk to remove HD speed from the entire picture LOL

[=silver= 0]

AFAIK the initial install is about 8Gb, but when you'll start to use mods - you can order new HDD at least 250Gb capacity :)

[Masterfragg 10]

I don't see how faster/newer HD will improve pure FPS. It will reduce (maybe even remove) lag due to loading texture and other stuff to memory though.

Faster/Newer or better setup of Hard Drives can increase raw framerates in games with piss poor pathetic optimization.

As the game is constantly loading information from the ram but only uses a stupidly small bit of the ram in Arma2's case it'll be constantly ripping files from the HDD's (Pagefile most probably) that could explain why placing the pagefile on a seperate HDD has increased performance for some?

Basically it's a matter of fast access I guess.

Either way if I am wrong it doesn't change the fact that it did in fact increase my performance slightly lol.

And interesting case, through my time fucking about with arma2 not once have I had lag loading textures or anything and that was Pre-RAID0 (s)

I'm seriously considering reverse engineering the game a bit and seeing if I can stop the problem lol It has to be an .exe(cutable) problem.

Still only ever see 23 threads or in that area which limits CPU usage.

The biggest question is this, is this problem hard coded into the engine? if so can BIS fix it? if not...Will Arma 2 ever be playable?!

I'm going to test Arma 1 in a sec see how many threads and how much ram that can use, if it's any improvement I guess I could learn to mod again and just chuck Arma 2's contents into Arma 1 and play the campaign through that.

Ok maybe it won't have the advanced AI but it'll have more than 27fps won't it?

If thats even possible and if modding Arma 1 with Arma 2's contents that'd mean I have to buy the cocking game again and I really don't want to do that until BIS fix it.

*Walks out of room holding head screaming into hands*

---------- Post added at 02:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:39 AM ----------

Got another problem here!

This game, I've been watching via Perfmon how many Hard Faults per second the Arma2.exe issues.

It's a big fat 0 for me.

That means the game does NOT issue any calls to the page file as far as I am aware hard faults = request pagefile (google it)

That could be another issue considering this game uses F all ram.

Also highest I've seen threads is still 23 but it was actually only using 19 on Trial by Fire.

Another interesting fact.

My HDD was being accessed way to much we are talking it had more HDD usage than anything I've witnessed on this computer since installing RAID0

also another useless fact.

I opened 200 different firefoxes and uh...still got 27/29 fps!

Doesn't matter how much CPU firefox takes up as Arma2 only uses 40% I can open anything (except crysis I guess but I'm actually going to test that theory!)

[Masterfragg 10]

Very good question!

For what reason do I have 4GB ram, some people here have 8GB, some 16GB !!

The -maxmem=xxxx switch does not really work for me.

Any idea how to use more ram with arma?

MfG Lee

I don't think it's a problem we can sort ourselves mate, I think it's just playing the waiting game.

Although interesting thing here.

Last night I had Arma 2 open and perfmon told me it had 19 threads open.

Firefox was using more threads at 32 lol

I also had another interesting experience, I underclocked my graphics card to seriously slow speeds and it didn't slow down fps at all....Strange stuff...Dunno whats with that.

[galzohar 31]

So many pages and still no idea what 3D_Performance does?

[Masterfragg 10]

Hahahahaha

I've just seen the announcement about the "Standalone Expansion Pack" being made.

Screw BIS.

You bring out useless videos before essential patches, you are now working on another money maker which you'll fix the bugs along the way or maybe at least a few of them.

But instead of that maybe you should of been focusing on a playable FIRST edition of Arma 2.

Fucking awful...You know PC gaming is going downhill when a backwater developer starts acting all Electronic Arts on our arses...

---------- Post added at 06:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:50 PM ----------

So many pages and still no idea what 3D_Performance does?

Dude BIS don't even know what 3D_performance does...They apparently don't know what "Performance" MEANS!

But no sorry on a more helpful note OFP had something like that I think it's something to do with object and geometric detail but I can't be 100%

[Skeptic 10]

Very good question!

For what reason do I have 4GB ram, some people here have 8GB, some 16GB !!

The -maxmem=xxxx switch does not really work for me.

Any idea how to use more ram with arma?

MfG Lee

Current Arma2 engine is limited to -maxmem=2047, anything above reverts to default and will never use above 2047.

---------- Post added at 07:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:26 PM ----------

Yes i can explain it :d . (i think)

You basically set your render resolution lower, then stretched it out over a bigger number of pixels (interface res or displayed res, what you see on screen)

So your computer actually renders less, and then smears it out over more pixels.

I THINK that is how it works.

I play the other way around, 3d res at 2000 and displayed res at 1600. Makes for 125% 'filtrate' setting. Looks very nice and does not impact performance that much. (5 frames of 75 fps) .

I think what you did is some sort of pixel doubling, though not exactly doubling it.

But i am not sure if what i say is correct though.

You got that right. 3D Res<Interface Res=Faster FPS but crappy image.

[galzohar 31]

Isn't it 3D res < monitor res rather than 3D res < interface res? After all, what's making things ugly is running things at a lower resolution than your monitor is capable of handling.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

Interface Resolution is your Regular Resolution like in any game, 3D on the other hand as I understand it is the fillrate level, it's not the resolution setting per se, more like a negative Anti-Aliasing that doesn't render the whole scene. :D

Always Match your 3D Res to Interface Res.