ArmaHolic ArmA 2 Optimization

[Masterfragg 10]

Ok odd happenings here.

Reinstalled Arma 2 on a clean Vista x64 and uh...well...I would normally get 50/60 FPS in a menu and I'm getting 15 if that...

I did update my bios as my processor was coming up as "AMD Processor Unknown Model" but it's a Phenom II x4 940 black edition...

Dunno if the bios update killed something but it's not looking too great...

I'll test on another game see if its' just arma

---------- Post added at 05:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:53 PM ----------

Oddly Fallout 3 (only other game I've tested as of yet) gets the "fall" (excuse the dodgy pun thing) 60fps (vsynced) at ultra so...

Guess it's either a driver problem or just Arma 2 has decided it hates my guts :p

[hotel 10]

I did some extensive testing last night with setting between the Demo (non Steam) and the Steam retail version of the game. Even though they read the same version there was huge differences in performance. In the demo I managed to put everything to High with no AA and medium AF and to my surprise was getting 26 FPS average in the Arma 2 benchmark mission. This was a lot to be happy about because the first time i did the test i got 13 FPS average. I used textpad to edit the arma 2 profile and set the shader down a few steps along with the world detail to 250k.

I used a cleaner program to clean my video drivers and also cleaned other related drivers such as sound and chipset. Then I reinstalled everything and found that none of that helped my performance. In fact i lost 1 FPS in the test afterwards which actually irritated me to the point I broke my mouse when i threw it against the wall. I also did various things in the operating system to help performance as well. I used 2 different programs to kill processes which I found to be a total waste of time as it made the performance even worse. Now that alone is just weird because the less processes you have to better but not for Arma 2 apparently or at least in my situation. Also in my Cat Control Panel everything is set to App controlled and no Vsync. I tried with Vsync with a performance decrease of only 2 FPS.

After getting 26 FPS in the demo test i figured I would change my steam retail version to my demo settings (take in mind i did not copy the profiles over as they are laid out completely different). Afterall 26 FPS in this game is actually playably smooth. I played the same single player mission (Trial by Fire) and on the chopper flight in i got 20 FPS less than in the demo!! In the little small village i would get 5 to 10 FPS less as well. I checked over my profiles and resolutions and everything matched. This mind boggles me as to why the demo is outperforming the retail version by that much.

I did some monitoring of my GPU and CPU and notice only 80% of my CPU was being utilized. The GPU was being fully used. I went through the Trial by Fire mission to see if the enemy and vehicles were the same and I couldn’t tell any difference in the mission that would suggest there was more CPU intensive things at work. I wish the benchmark mission was in the retail version! Seams it was left out because the retail version is worse performance.

MY OPINION:

This game is beyond cool and it would be the only game i played if there wasn't such a bad scope on performance. I have gone through EVERY page of this forum and just about tried all logical techniques to get the game at a playable level. The single missions seem to be fairly playable but the campaign is ridiculous. There was a mission where i was in a big city and my frames dropped to single digits with everything on low. In all honesty there should not be such a difference in the demo performance to the retail. I am not going to compare this game to any other linear FPS because this game simply is milestones ahead of other game as far as open world goes. I also don’t want to be flamed because someone can max the game and they have no understanding as to why I can’t. I have seen this repetitively in this forum and it’s ignorant to think that way due to differences in systems and also if you read this forum it almost seems as if the game was tailored around certain hardware.

I am totally disappointed in the games performance and I know many other people are as well. I have seen performance improving patches for games but there is a limit to increasing performance with patches. This game was said to be optimized in the advertisement. As of right now I feel like I have been lied to. I understand it could very well be optimized in future patches but that’s not what the game advertised. On another note I feel like we as consumers should not have to do all the tweaking we do for increased performance. I am a computer guru and I like knowing how to tweak and stuff but in the end its much nicer experience when you can adjust and feel difference in the game options. This game shows hardly and difference when I set it to low or high or medium. Draw distance effects it but who wants to play at 500 draw? I feel like I am messing around with Linux with this game to be honest. Configuration after configuration to make it run at its best.

I am thinking this game was released so early because they feared competition from Operation Flashpoint 2. I watched some videos of OF2 and noticed the game play looks a little more arcadish but if it runs smooth then the enjoyment will be higher. I am tactical gamer but I cannot keep buying super machines to run arma. Building a machine just to run a certain game is where we all get suckered. We want a game so badly we go to extreme to run it. I for one am stopping myself and a CPU upgrade to AM3 Phenom Black Ed and that’s it. The only thing justifying this is also the fact i need performance for my work and DVD editing software.

Is anyone here curious as to what kind of machines they used to quality test this game? I am dead serious here! Nobody is asking and nobody is answering. I sure would like to know because it could not have been some machine like mine they tested the campaign with (Manhattan running 20 FPS in open fields and 13 to 15 in towns). I used to work for Novalogic and there QA testing machines were all lower end machines. I am not sure how they could QA a game like this with only one computer and multiple computers of whatever they used would not be cost efficient. I heard they were taking this game to Xbox 360. I don’t see how the Xbox could handle this game. My PC handles any port from a consol game and looks better than consol due to AA and AF.

P.S. Don’t flame me or my post. This is my opinion and I don’t want some goblin running his mouth negatively.

My System

AMD AM2+ 6400 3.2 ghz Dual Core

HD 4890 1 Gig OC to 950 core and 1150 Mem

DDR2 PC 1066 Dual Channel 4 GIG

West Dig 500 gig 16 meg HDD

Gigabyte board with 780G chipset and SB700(i think)

650 watt BFG PSU

[xmongx 0]

The game is bound by CPU, running in low details will have little effect on peak FPS at busy times unless you have a very poor GPU. You need to try to be able to understand how the engine works to accept it (which is why you see two polar opinions on the forums, those who appreciate the engine and those who do not). The performance issues people experience seem to occur with two common factors AI and Buildings, i would hate to see AI scaled down but believe that the performamce issues with buildings will be resolved and ai functions streamlined with future patches.

You cannot beat this game by optimizing your hardware/reinstalling/defragging etc etc, they will all help but we're only talking a few fps here and there, the engine is too demanding. Its eight years since ofp was released and i am still battling with that revision of the engine to sustain good performance when running large battles with many AI and many scripts (or running ffurslx and the like).

The campaign is over ambitious and not the reason to buy/use this product, try to forget about it.

Open the editor and create your own war at your own pace tailored for your own machines capabilities, I can almost guarantee you would be amazed by the results. If you do not wish to put the effort into learning how to do that then play something a little more simple, project reality is a decent alternative and sits at a good mid point between twitch and cerebral gaming or as you mentioned wait for OFP2 to see where that sits.

[Masterfragg 10]

@Hotel

You won't receive any flames here mate, in some way or another we all feel the same.

@Xmongx

Saying that the campaign isn't the reason to buy this game is true.

However, any game that comes with a single player campaign that cannot be played is a "fail" really isn't it?

I mean they will fix this game including the campaign hopefully but even Arma 1's campaign still has bugs in.

Overall I am also disappointed in this game and I have already advised other friends and family against this game which they found unbelievable as I was raving about it for so bloody long.

Truth is this game is a joke at the moment and even with a Quad Core is still runs like a one legged blind man in a marathon without a guide.

So even if this game is CPU bound it is just pathetically optimizied to the point where BIS might of actually shot themselves in the foot by releasing it.

HOWEVER, I will still work on getting this game running mainly for the single player campaign for the reasons you stated.

It's over ambitious and that pulls me towards it. Although I'm starting to feel like they only have one single person working on a patch....

[hotel 10]

I too fell like if it comes with a campaign it should be playable. I remember Ghost Recon days where the missions were rather tough but the balance in the missions kept the game from requiring heavy guns. I also remember when my buddy's were making maps and adding hundreds of AI to them then I would experience lag. Shouldnt BIS balance the levels so they are not killing the computer while playing. The one particular mission where your in a huge city of warehouses and such it was shocking to see the performance How in the world did that map actually pass Quality Assurance?

I am slightly making a point that maybe BIS didnt put a whole hell of a lot of time in testing the game. Bugs are one thing and performance is another. Its impossible to test these size maps for bugs other than the obvious due to the shere size of them. The performance on the other hand should have been an "Obvious" thing to work on.

They released a game that is actually costing the consumer hundreds of dollars. People are buying computer hardware and its not helping the performance issues. Buying hardware when in fact the game is badly optimized. I want people to know this berfore they start spending money they probably dont have in the first place to cater to 1 game.

A couple of nights ago I was on newegg with like 500 bucks worth of computer upgrades in my basket and I cancelled because I came to the realization I would be wasting my time, money and sanity. Im not going to junk myself into a buying frenzie to make this run. My system spec exceed recommended and it should be playable on the campaign. Gonna take a wild guess and say it will be atleast 1 to 2 years before the game is actually running optimized.

[Masterfragg 10]

@Hotel

I totally agree with everything you have said.

I also remember the days of the original Ghost Recon...Ahhh a simple time for games :cool:

Truth is I got sucked into the "Upgrade for Arma2" trap and got myself a AMD PII 940BE"

This helped performance a bit but to be honest totally bloody useless and my new troubles with a BIOS update has left arma running so badly that it's actually quite humorous.

I've spent all night looking over the new BIOS set features and nothing has really changed all that much so I may have overlooked a setting in windows during formatting so I'm going to retest later.

Speaking of QA testing though I do know BIS released Arma 1 early in CZ and Germany and they were basically beta testers. A mate of mine imported it back then. He got it running "Acceptable" but by the time the UK release hit the shops it had already been patched to 1.05 which was much more playable and the US got the game at 1.08 I believe.

I remember this because the UK didn't get the 1.08 patch until a week or so after the US release which prevented UK/US playing with each other.

Arma 2 will get running eventually but don't bother upgrading for this game yet. Give it until patch 1.05 min (if they release a 1.05 that is) and personally I don't think I'll ever get it running properly but thats due to my own oversight of my computer.

Seems I may have gotten myself a dud motherboard.

And even though I can't run Arma 2 I can still play Fallout 3, Crysis (High settings at that), Arma 1/OFP, Company of Heroes and most probably OFP2 so I'll be happy.

Even though OFP2 is looking to be more arcade-like than Arma 2 it still looks like a very promising title so come September unless Arma 2 is fixed I'll be distracted with OFP2 which might not be a bad thing. By the time I'm bored of OFP2 Arma 2 might be really playable.

It's a pity really because dispite the differences between Arma2 and OFP2 there will be people that compare the games for obvious reasons and just as me and my friends expected Arma 2 looks like it may not cut it.

On top of everything else I am now refusing to piss about with CFG files and what not to get the game playable as I am starting to see that my brother was right with something he said.

He is a console gamer, he said the only reason he refuses to get into PC gaming is that with a console he puts the disc into the console and it runs.

No worrying about upgrading or fiddling with .cfg files or windows services or startup processes etc he can just play and without worrying about framerate.

If his framerate suffers he knows in multiplayer other people will suffer the same thing.

Very smart move on his part and from this point on I'm not fiddling with anything other than driver versions to get games running!

But hey, as long as it's working properly before Arma 3 is released I don't mind and as long as they don't do a Crytek and stop supporting Arma 2 so they can start a new game I don't mind.

It's all about support and we know that BIS does their best when it comes to community support so it's just a waiting game I guess. Although I wouldn't mind seeing some unofficial patches to fix some of the issues but I'm guessing only BIS know truely what the problems are.

Although it wouldn't hurt for them to point out what the issues are and what they know so far and what they have fixed for the next patch (if they have a wiki up or anything I'm unawares of it so a link would be awesome)

Masterfragg

Edited July 12, 2009 by Masterfragg

[hotel 10]

@ Masterfragg

I updated my BiOS and it didnt change anything. Hell I updated anything worth updating on my machine. I played the SpecOps Mission from the Mission creation tool and the FPS in the game were good. Im not sure what there exact rate was but the game ran smooth. I didnt play on Utes with it, was the more intensive map.

I agree with the XboX thing. Unfortunately XboX games are mostly linear which is so crappy to play now that I have seen Open World potential. I watched a few OFP2 videos on youtube. the environments and explosions looks great. The Solider models and running animations are so stupid that I felt like I was in BF2.

Anyway I am going to play the specops missions tomarrow with fraps running and see what im averaging. I will report back my findings.

[Masterfragg 10]

Just reformatted again took away all partitions to rid the hard drive of any potential partition table errors.

Nada, things are worse with sound skipping and 7/15 fps in default settings in the first menu.

Sadly, it looks like something that changed in the bios had a negative effect in the game. Really strange as like I said perfect performance in all other games, I'll have to research the problem some more and look at downgrading the BIOS back to an earlier flash.

I'll continue to experiment over the next week but after that I'm finished.

[Masterfragg 10]

Ok, back to my age old XP Pro disc.

I have not used this in about a year now, can't remember where ANYTHING is lol but I'm going to test arma 2 shortly.

I'll post back with results although I'm pretty sure it's going to be the same...I wonder what happened...

Does anyone know anything about BIOS downgrading?

When you update a bios does it just wipe the ROM or does it just add code?

If it wipes the EEPROM then I'm guessing it'd be safe to reflash back down to a previous version of the bios.

[droezelke 10]

As this is a sticky thread, I suppose a community leader is following this topic (Dwarden?). I have read a lot on this troubleshooting forum, and many people ask just 1 thing: some sort of answer from BIS of a community leader. Not a solution for the many problems, but an answer that BIS acknowledges the problems and is working on it. I don't understand that until this day, nobody from BIS has posted anything. This does not show any respect to all the consumers who have bought this game and we are the ones that make it possible that people at BIS still have a job and a company to work for.

So in behalf of everybody:

Please, post something, just to show BIS has respect for it's consumers.

Thank you.

[datter 0]

Does anyone know anything about BIOS downgrading?

When you update a bios does it just wipe the ROM or does it just add code?

If it wipes the EEPROM then I'm guessing it'd be safe to reflash back down to a previous version of the bios.

To my knowledge a downgrade is the same as an upgrade in that it should completely wipe and replace everything in the BIOS with whichever one you are installing.

[von_paulus 0]

Usually there is no problem in downgrading to an anterior version of the BIOS.

But sometimes you cannot do it. Go to your maker motherboard site and see if there is any special recommendation towards downgrading your motherboard BIOS to an anterior version.

[Masterfragg 10]

Ok had another problem, suddenly frame rate on everything just tumbled to 1/2 of what I was getting.

In the end I decided to take my computer apart and clean everything and discard any unneeded hardware etc such as unused ethernet cards.

As I was taking my graphics card out I noticed that the little PCI-e graphics slot clip had pretty much popped out of the slot enclosure. This happened because I had foolishly only put 1 screw in the top of the graphics card into the case. The weight had pulled the card to an angle that snapped the clip and caused poor performance I suppose because I repaired the clip and screwed it in properly and I'm now getting 50/60 FPS in the menus again.

I know not screwing it in was a "n00b" mistake but at the time it only needed 1 screw as I had the computer laying down as I was working on it.

Doh!

Solved though thanks everyone for the help

[hotel 10]

Ok had another problem, suddenly frame rate on everything just tumbled to 1/2 of what I was getting.

In the end I decided to take my computer apart and clean everything and discard any unneeded hardware etc such as unused ethernet cards.

As I was taking my graphics card out I noticed that the little PCI-e graphics slot clip had pretty much popped out of the slot enclosure. This happened because I had foolishly only put 1 screw in the top of the graphics card into the case. The weight had pulled the card to an angle that snapped the clip and caused poor performance I suppose because I repaired the clip and screwed it in properly and I'm now getting 50/60 FPS in the menus again.

I know not screwing it in was a "n00b" mistake but at the time it only needed 1 screw as I had the computer laying down as I was working on it.

Doh!

Solved though thanks everyone for the help

Hey bro what frames you getting in the campaign on the city mission and Manhatten

I went into the Mission editor and made a mission without any Civilain AI and no enemy or objectives. Before in the campaign I was getting 6 to 10 FPS at time in that industrial city. Forgot what the mission was called but if you played it you would know what I mean. Now with all the crap out of the mission I am getting no less than 40 to 50 FPS. So either the game cannot use the CPU efficiently or there is just too much for it to handle in the first place. I am going to start adding tanks and such to the mission little at a time to see where at what level the bottleneck starts. I will report back my findings.

I am also going to hit Fry's Electronics and buy the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz cpu and see what kind of boost it gives me. Fry's has a no limit return policy so I can just return it after the test. I will be going from AMD athalon 6400+ @3.2 AM2+ CPU

Edited July 13, 2009 by Hotel
Tired of Reposting

[Masterfragg 10]

Hey bro what frames you getting in the campaign on the city mission and Manhatten

I went into the Mission editor and made a mission without any Civilain AI and no enemy or objectives. Before in the campaign I was getting 6 to 10 FPS at time in that industrial city. Forgot what the mission was called but if you played it you would know what I mean. Now with all the crap out of the mission I am getting no less than 40 to 50 FPS. So either the game cannot use the CPU efficiently or there is just too much for it to handle in the first place. I am going to start adding tanks and such to the mission little at a time to see where at what level the bottleneck starts. I will report back my findings.

I am also going to hit Fry's Electronics and buy the AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz cpu and see what kind of boost it gives me. Fry's has a no limit return policy so I can just return it after the test. I will be going from AMD athalon 6400+ @3.2 AM2+ CPU

To be honest mate I didn't get that far through the campaign, I think I got to the 2nd or 3rd mission and when the framerate hit low to mid 20's I shut the game off as I refuse to play a game at anything below 30fps (Which I think is a bare min FPS for enjoyable play.

As far as the CPU goes this game does not benifit from quad core much by the looks of things with only around 40% usage on each core on dual cores it seems to get about 60/70% usage but still thats quite poor optimization.

This has been discussed in this topic before in this thread go back a few pages you'll see what we figured out. Also mate you might benifit from checking out the Steam forums as well.

In the mission editor in thick forest with only me in the mission I get around 50/60fps (vsync on) and in the largest city I get around 30/50 depending on how the game feels. I'm going to piss about with making a few intesive missions later.

Although funny thing is...On youtube you may have seen that "Massive air battle" video? basically about 100 planes on each side and all flying into each other really cool vid actually but I actually re-created that with around 100 to 120/130 aircraft and got a solid 30fps so it can't just be AI causing the hellspawn-pisspoor-optimization-that-a-3-year-old-could-beat.

Try it see how it works out for you and let us know how it goes (Utes Island btw)

[David1054 10]

Im getting around 25 FPs in woodland or open fields

I get 40+ FPS though :D!!!!!!

when i look at the floor ._______.

Its those buildings man

I overclocked my phenom 8750 from 2.41 to 3.12 stable. I even did the video card a GTX 260 and still same FPS.

And i run relatively low resolution compared to other 1280 x 1024

And still get the same FPS

8- 24 highest is around 34 to 40+ like i said earlier looking at the ground.

I tried all the things they poster here and nothing =[

Im thinking of getting a Phenom 2 x2 550 BE and overclocking it.

But i dont want to spend 100$ just so i can play a game with decent FPS

Houses, Smoke kill FPS by a LOT

and for some reason my Video card stutters ._. on the game when flying...

only in this game......

[hotel 10]

To be honest mate I didn't get that far through the campaign, I think I got to the 2nd or 3rd mission and when the framerate hit low to mid 20's I shut the game off as I refuse to play a game at anything below 30fps (Which I think is a bare min FPS for enjoyable play.

As far as the CPU goes this game does not benifit from quad core much by the looks of things with only around 40% usage on each core on dual cores it seems to get about 60/70% usage but still thats quite poor optimization.

This has been discussed in this topic before in this thread go back a few pages you'll see what we figured out. Also mate you might benifit from checking out the Steam forums as well.

In the mission editor in thick forest with only me in the mission I get around 50/60fps (vsync on) and in the largest city I get around 30/50 depending on how the game feels. I'm going to piss about with making a few intesive missions later.

Although funny thing is...On youtube you may have seen that "Massive air battle" video? basically about 100 planes on each side and all flying into each other really cool vid actually but I actually re-created that with around 100 to 120/130 aircraft and got a solid 30fps so it can't just be AI causing the hellspawn-pisspoor-optimization-that-a-3-year-old-could-beat.

Try it see how it works out for you and let us know how it goes (Utes Island btw)

On Utes Island I get Solid 60 FPS dipping to mid 40's sometimes it doesnt go below 50 so Utes Island is definately a smoother map than the other one.

With no AI lol

[Masterfragg 10]

Few tests.

Firstly this is all done on the Trial by Fire mission.

640x480 with fillrate 50%

Textures: Normal

Object Detail: Normal

Terrain Detail: Normal

AA: Normal

AF: Normal

Post Processing: High

Shadows: High

Average fps 27

CPU usage all cores average around 40%

next

1280x720 with fillrate 100%

all same settings

Average fps 27

CPU usage all cores average 40%

This brings into the picture how much of a bulls up this game is.

Shadows off increasing FPS making that somehow CPU bound.

Terrain low detail increases FPS making that somehow also CPU bound.

Considering this game never uses more than about 40% of each core sometimes with CPU #3 (4th core) hitting around 60% and it only ever has 23 threads open on the CPU at any one time this should show how bad this problem actually is.

HOWEVER this is purely fixable as long as they can switch the shadows from being CPU bound to being GPU bound.

Also I find that Terrain Detail feels very CPU bound but the main F***ING issue is that there ain't enough threads to be considered multi-core optimized.

Look BIS seriously...Sort out this goddamn game I didn't pay money for a joke! I'd prefer to wait like I did for Duke Nukem Forever (Love the ironic nature of that name) than buy a game that doesn't BLOODY work.

Over clocking doesn't help at all I had the CPU up from 3Ghz to 3.8Ghz this morning...Stable...No improvement

I've also OC'ed the Graphics card with no bloody improvement.

Also another bloody factor is RAM...

At this current time Arma2 is running whilst I am writing this I'm mid mission (Trial By Fire) and 1.11GB of my 2GB ram is being used... Arma 2 is using 430,312k of that...In other words around 430MB...Is that some sort of joke?

Crist Crysis used all my ram for crying out loud and begged for more but at least it USED it...This could be why having the game on another HDD has helped people it's because of high rate of data access due to improper usage of RAM

If AI is such a factor why isn't there a core for AI/Physics/Pathfinding/Geometry or something...

Well...If anyone wants pictures with FRAPS overlaying a FPS on the pic let me know...

I'll also take some pics of my CPU usage and Ram usage if needed...

Although ain't it about time someone in the BIS forums talked to us?

We don't even know if a patch is being worked on ffs

--------------------------

1280x720 with fillrate 125%

Textures: Normal

Object Detail: Normal

Terrain Detail: Normal

AA: Normal

AF: Normal

Post Processing: High

Shadows: High

Average FPS 27....No...I am not joking...

Ok I have some picutres...

1280x1024 Fillrate 125% @ 27FPS (vsync forced off)

1280x720 Fillrate 125% same FPS

640x480 Fillrate 25% (320x240) same FPS

Anyone got any ideas?

Edited July 13, 2009 by Masterfragg

[David1054 10]

i know how you feel.....

im also getting pissed off...

[Masterfragg 10]

i know how you feel.....

im also getting pissed off...

Well mate you ain't heard the best yet...

1280x1024 Fillrate 125% all settings the same as above recording the game with FRAPS at full quality at guess...27 FPS lol fraps doesn't slow the game down...Now thats screwed up...BIG time...

Thats new levels of whatthehell!!

I've actually upgraded to 4GB ram (2x2 Corsair XMS2 Dominator ram PC2-8500 1066mhz)

***I removed this part of my post as it was frustration talking and not me...***

I know we should support BIS but at the same time...Alot of us feel like we have been slightly cheated here...

Edited July 13, 2009 by Masterfragg

[hotel 10]

Ok guys I have some interesting testing news. I uninstalled the demo (been using it for testing) and reinstalled it on my second HDD. I ran the benchmark and still 26 Average. Masterfrag can you tell me what your getting in the demo benchmark?

I began to play the Trail by Fire mission and notice my frames have not changed. To my suprise I forgot to change my graphics card back to my gaming clocks. I have HD4890 at 950/1150 for games and use 240/490 for desktop to keep things cool in my case. Well At 875/490 I was getting same frames as i do with it at 950/1150.

After having my memory clock down by more than 50% I still get the same frame rates as I was with my gaming clocks. So in conclusion our graphics cards are not really helping as much as they should be with the game. Take in mind this isnt the GPU fault and is more related to the poor optimization of utilizing our machines in a balanced manner.

I agree with Masterfragg. The shadows and maybe even some other things should be GPU exclusive and that would give headroom for the CPU. The problem here is that people with i7 and Phenom X4's are not getting any better performance than me in my 6400+. Sure seemed like my game ran a lot smoother after putting it on seperate HDD even though my frames didnt change. im not totally sure how i could put steam version of arma on seperate HDD though as its located in it own little spot in the actual steam folder.

I am still going to give the CPU change a shot. I have no intention of actually keeping the CPU and will be returning it after my tests are completed. As I said in previous post I cannot justify buy a heap of new hardware to run ArmA2.

I should sell my car and buy a super computer so that i can get 30 FPS in this game ;)

[damixu 0]

As this is a sticky thread, I suppose a community leader is following this topic (Dwarden?). I have read a lot on this troubleshooting forum, and many people ask just 1 thing: some sort of answer from BIS of a community leader. Not a solution for the many problems, but an answer that BIS acknowledges the problems and is working on it. I don't understand that until this day, nobody from BIS has posted anything. This does not show any respect to all the consumers who have bought this game and we are the ones that make it possible that people at BIS still have a job and a company to work for.

So in behalf of everybody:

Please, post something, just to show BIS has respect for it's consumers.

Thank you.

My toughts exactly!

[jaundiced 10]

My toughts exactly!

Dwarden has stated repeatedly that they are watching this board closely and fixes / improvements are in the works.

Just because you didn't stumble upon his comments doesn't mean they don't exist ;)

[Masterfragg 10]

You know I started thinking about things...

This game...Lets face it, it runs like the engine was ported over right?

Well...Is it possible that BIS ported this modified Arma engine from the 360? They were talking about a X360 release wasn't they?

Then again I guess if it was ported over they'd of released Arma 2 on the 360 before the PC version.

I know it's a bit out there just a thought and a very long shot.

Just after seeing quite a few console to PC ports over the years it screams port doesn't it? And it'd also explain the lack of CPU usage and GPU usage and also explain why only 430mb of my 2gb ram is being used in a heavy battle scene.

Just another crack pot theory from yours truely

---------- Post added at 05:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:13 PM ----------

For the record I have some more high grade ram coming tomorrow 2x2gb sticks to replace my 2x1gb sticks.

I'll post back with performance decrease/increase but considering the current trend of upgrade = no bloody difference I'm guessing it won't matter much.

On the bright side at least my brother-in-law with his single core CPU and his 9600GT will be able to run this as well as I do :p

[InFireBaptize 0]

We shouldn’t really need to resort to alter the config. file, if we needed to then it would mean that whatever feature you’re altering should be made accessible from within the game. I re-installed the game, catalyst control centre, left everything on default settings, increased the cpu frequency to +3 using EPU 6- Engine from Asus and finally uninstalled fraps. Since then I’m enjoying this game like never before and never once got distracted by FPS number on my screen. Oh, forgot to mention that i set the priority of this game to high through the task manager. I increased the texture details to high and disabled post processing (planning on setting it back to low) and the game remained playable, stable with minor lag once or twice during the mission.

Edited July 13, 2009 by InFireBaptize