ArmaHolic ArmA 2 Optimization

[GLeek 10]

any advice on best ATI flip queue size value ?

[moosenoodles 0]

any advice on best ATI flip queue size value ?

I can tell you now, if you go altering that and other settings with the ATT application eventually you could be removing ATT and resetting your arma profile...

I found in testing with ATT and FQS, that there was marginal if any diff. The issues are driver/game locked down with vsynch, even using the work around for vsynch can work temporarily, but if your a fiddler to get maximum all the time from playing various scenarios etc then my experience is the game shaders/cache or anything else for profile and running wise of said game seems to spit it all back at you after a while..

Of course if your up for messing about with it then its no biggie...

[LeftSkidLow 1]

I just set a 1.5gb ramdisk, and loaded all the chernarus, trees, and building pbos into a mod folder on the ramdisk.

I didn't notice any increase in performance on the ground but flying was a little smoother. The FPS isn't really affected, I just got less stuttering.

I only have 4gb of ram, but someone with more could try to load the whole addons folder.

[Placebo 28]

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

There's no need at all to quote the original 846 word post just to add one line from yourself.

[ginger mcale 11]

That means the game does NOT issue any calls to the page file as far as I am aware hard faults

Excellent post Masterfragg.

Ive made the same observation. I had started filemon (a tool from the sysinternals suite to see hard drive access). I wanted to check what Arma 2 was doing with the hard drive. While flying around or when turning around in cities there is always a pause/lagg (caused by hard drive access). I checked task manager and saw that Arma 2 used only 650 MB of ram. Then i started filemon to record hard drive usage.

Here you see one second of three minutes record (i was flying over the big island during multiplayer (warfare session)):

34850	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 142905344 Length: 4096	
34851	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 325636096 Length: 4096	
34852	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 325521408 Length: 4096	
34853	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 325197824 Length: 4096	
34854	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\misc.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 59895808 Length: 8192	
34855	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\misc.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 59547648 Length: 4096	
34856	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\misc.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 58626048 Length: 4096	
34857	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 98406400 Length: 4096	
34858	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 615821312 Length: 4096	
34859	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 233078784 Length: 4096	
34860	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 615333888 Length: 4096	
34861	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 528830464 Length: 4096	
34862	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 528547840 Length: 4096	
34863	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 556793856 Length: 4096	
34864	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 556740608 Length: 4096	
34865	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 556613632 Length: 4096	
34866	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 901545984 Length: 8192	
34867	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 29425664 Length: 4096	
34868	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 134316032 Length: 4096	
34869	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 634851328 Length: 8192	
34870	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 901529600 Length: 12288	
34871	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\wheeled.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 41787392 Length: 4096	
34872	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 32911360 Length: 4096	
34873	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 634847232 Length: 4096	
34874	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 28663808 Length: 73728	
34875	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 132648960 Length: 151552	
34876	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 901513216 Length: 16384	
34877	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 901664768 Length: 4096	
34878	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 894345216 Length: 4096	
34879	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 894566400 Length: 4096	
34880	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 325009408 Length: 4096	
34881	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\sounds.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 82489344 Length: 4096	
34882	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 358920192 Length: 8192	
34883	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 295882752 Length: 12288	
34884	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 635510784 Length: 24576	
34885	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 357548032 Length: 4096	
34886	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 357728256 Length: 4096	
34887	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 358232064 Length: 4096	
34888	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 357605376 Length: 4096	
34889	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 357765120 Length: 4096	
34890	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 358313984 Length: 4096	
34891	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 357560320 Length: 4096	
34892	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 357650432 Length: 4096	
34893	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 402472960 Length: 40960	
34894	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 402464768 Length: 8192	
34895	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\structures.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 634986496 Length: 73728	
34896	04:05:05	arma2.exe:2936	READ 	G:\ArmA 2\AddOns\buildings2.pbo	SUCCESS	Offset: 295878656 Length: 4096

As you can see there is much data that is read from the hard drive, nothing from the pagefile, arma2.exe is using also only a fractional part of available system RAM. Here is the complete three minutes hard drive access log made by filemon:

http://static.tsviewer.com/stuff/arma/Arma2_fly.LOG

Edited August 21, 2009 by Ginger McAle

[hamis 0]

That shows we really need patch.The game should first use all available ram,then use pagefile and as last resort read from game directory.Otherwise there is no smooth gameplay for any of us ever.

[Potatomasher 0]

You can hear your HDD crunching almost all the time when moving around. Only time it's quiet is when your completely still and all the textures are loaded, but as soon you start to move crunching begins.

What about Arma1 ? Does it load as much from HDD aswell. I don't remember my HDD was so frigging noisy when i last time played it.

[sniper pilot 36]

Yeah I would really like an official statement on this, as this is a major issue imho.

[hamis 0]

What about Arma1 ? Does it load as much from HDD aswell. I don't remember my HDD was so frigging noisy when i last time played it.

Well,i'm playing A1 yet and it is very noticeable.Especially when turning around.And it's not about my hardware,i have Raptor 10000 rpm,4870x2 and E8600 @3.6 Ghz.Also i keep view distance just enough for the mission,mostly 500-1500.

[Masterfragg 10]

You can hear your HDD crunching almost all the time when moving around. Only time it's quiet is when your completely still and all the textures are loaded, but as soon you start to move crunching begins.

What about Arma1 ? Does it load as much from HDD aswell. I don't remember my HDD was so frigging noisy when i last time played it.

Hi Potatomasher

Yes Arma1 does load all data from the HDD and nothing from the pagefile but it is not nearly as much as Arma2 loads.

Thats why Arma1 gives such better fps, although both games run on a pretty much exact engine (graphically minus the new HDR effects and motion blur...I'm a fan of neither sadly) Arma2 just trys to force feed everything to be read from hdd.

Also the HDD noise that you hear mainly where moving is due to the Arma2 engine loading a terrain grid, as you move it's ripping more data from the hdd and loading dynamically.

---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:36 PM ----------

Excellent post Masterfragg.

Ive made the same observation. I had started filemon (a tool from the sysinternals suite to see hard drive access). I wanted to check what Arma 2 was doing with the hard drive. While flying around or when turning around in cities there is always a pause/lagg (caused by hard drive access). I checked task manager and saw that Arma 2 used only 650 MB of ram. Then i started filemon to record hard drive usage.

As you can see there is much data that is read from the hard drive, nothing from the pagefile, arma2.exe is using also only a fractional part of available system RAM. Here is the complete three minutes hard drive access log made by filemon:

http://static.tsviewer.com/stuff/arma/Arma2_fly.LOG

Thanks Ginger, I'm unsure if the engine can now be edited to use the Pagefile and/or ram more.

As with BIS we could be waiting until Arma3 before they'll give a statement on this matter, either that or they'll suddenly fix it although I'm unsure as Arma1 has the same issue.

Heres a tip for everyone just to triple check it.

Remove your pagefile completely and see if it makes any difference to the game.

If it doesn't you are now allowed to throw shoes and gloves at the BIS staff! :p

---------- Post added at 06:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:40 PM ----------

Yeah I would really like an official statement on this, as this is a major issue imho.

You are not the only one mate, but an official statement on this issue from BIS I would say is unlikely.

Or they would say something along the lines of

****THIS IS A MOCK BIS REPLY NOT REAL****

"We have many satisfied customers and are sorry that there are a "Few" that can't enjoy the game due to hardware limitations, sadly not all hardware configurations are able to play this game but only 1% of the units sold have experienced issues"

I'm not putting words in their mouth or anything but this is starting to feel very Electronic Arts and thats their default response :P

Just kiddin' lol

BIS won't give an official statement though hopefully they'll start beta testing on a closed team (Btw BIS if you want a good beta tester just message me I'll send you my CV and I'll work a 2 week free trial! :cool: and!!! I'll even stop bitching! because if I miss a bug I'll hit myself in the bawls!)

Edited August 24, 2009 by Masterfragg

[kondor999 10]

Wow, I can't believe they're asserting that "only 1%" of customers are having problems with this system-crusher.

And, frankly, the game (on playable settings) looks terrible. If you increase the settings to something that looks OK (for a game about 1 year ago), it runs terribly.

I've got a Tri-SLI rig (GTX280's), a 4.5Ghz OC'ed E8600, 8gb, twin 300gb Velociraptors RAID 0 + Intel X-25m SSD. Not exactly entry-level.

But now I'm really worried because they're not even *acknowledging* there's a problem - much less getting to work fixing it.

I certainly won't be buying an expansion to a game I can't even play right now with settings that make it look better than games of 3 years ago. I'm concerned that the graphics engine is just horribly inefficient and can't be fixed - other than via a ground-up rewrite.

I'm not sure why small companies like this don't just license the Cryengine2 (or something similar) and concentrate on what they do best: the only serious military FPS out there. I love the concept and the gameplay. But technically, it's clearly got major issues.

[Karhis 10]

Wow, I can't believe they're asserting that "only 1%" of customers are having problems with this system-crusher.

They are not, it was just humorous remark by Masterfragg what BIS response _could_ be :)

[Masterfragg 10]

They are not, it was just humorous remark by Masterfragg what BIS response _could_ be :)

Thanks for clearing that up for me mate lol I didn't want to have to start editing posts and what not...Although maybe I should make that clear hehe

I have just created a thread requesting the developers to inform us of their system specs, this may point us in the right direction.

Seeing what hardware the game was created on may shed some light on this sordid affair.

If you could look it up and post on there and just leave a message to say that you agree (if you agree) i'd be grateful...Maybe we can finally squeeze some information out of these gits! lol

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1418059#post1418059

Edited August 24, 2009 by Masterfragg

[kklownboy 43]

nevermind

Edited August 24, 2009 by kklownboy
tired of it all

[Fox '09 14]

Back, hehe.

I have a Core i7 920 @ 4.2 GHz with HT, and 2 GTX 275s. The game runs like butter now..

I guess a monster really is needed.

[iHarri 10]

It's strange that dual cards is running game better 'cause nothing helps fps in campaign. 800*600 all low=under 30 fps, 1920*1200 very high=same.

[InFireBaptize 0]

That shows we really need patch.The game should first use all available ram,then use pagefile and as last resort read from game directory.Otherwise there is no smooth gameplay for any of us ever.

only windows manage pagefile. I don't understand why the RAM limitation in the game? was that because BI thought about people with less RAM, the game might have been ported from xbox360 "speculation". I noticed last night on my performance monitor that RAM usage was steady around 1.4GB but pagefile kept increasing. I hope BI will make the game utilize more RAM.

[kklownboy 43]

only windows manage pagefile. I don't understand why the RAM limitation in the game? was that because BI thought about people with less RAM, the game might have been ported from xbox360 "speculation". I noticed last night on my performance monitor that RAM usage was steady around 1.4GB but pagefile kept increasing. I hope BI will make the game utilize more RAM.

32bit is 2048 tops but need a lil room for buffer..2047mb Its the nature of the 32bit. There are hacks but wont help this game as it stands. Go look up Suma's or other Devs posts.

[InFireBaptize 0]

32bit is 2048 tops but need a lil room for buffer..2047mb Its the nature of the 32bit. There are hacks but wont help this game as it stands. Go look up Suma's or other Devs posts.

what i understood by googling this subject is that only developer "BI" can make arma2 large-address-aware when building 32 bit application to use more that 2 GB of RAM, so by doing that you can make 32 bit application access more than 2GB of ram.

Edited August 25, 2009 by InFireBaptize

[Raptor309 10]

Did anyone find a fix for the low fps (27-28 in my case) ,low or high settings doesn't metter ?

the mouse acceleration i manage to fix with the "mousesmoothing=0", but no luke with the low fps problem.

[kklownboy 43]

Did anyone find a fix for the low fps (27-28 in my case) ,low or high settings doesn't metter ?

the mouse acceleration i manage to fix with the "mousesmoothing=0", but no luke with the low fps problem.

fix what? what are your specs? Most low frame issue are too much Display rez, and or not enough CPU , then if your talking about the Campaign or some SP missions.. well they are just pigs.

[Raptor309 10]

sorry my specs are phenom II x4 955 at 3600mhz 4gb ocz ram nvidia 285gtx

[kklownboy 43]

sorry my specs are phenom II x4 955 at 3600mhz 4gb ocz ram nvidia 285gtx

what are your ingame specs and your Display rez?

[Fox '09 14]

Wow, I can't believe they're asserting that "only 1%" of customers are having problems with this system-crusher.

And, frankly, the game (on playable settings) looks terrible. If you increase the settings to something that looks OK (for a game about 1 year ago), it runs terribly.

I've got a Tri-SLI rig (GTX280's), a 4.5Ghz OC'ed E8600, 8gb, twin 300gb Velociraptors RAID 0 + Intel X-25m SSD. Not exactly entry-level.

But now I'm really worried because they're not even *acknowledging* there's a problem - much less getting to work fixing it.

I certainly won't be buying an expansion to a game I can't even play right now with settings that make it look better than games of 3 years ago. I'm concerned that the graphics engine is just horribly inefficient and can't be fixed - other than via a ground-up rewrite.

I'm not sure why small companies like this don't just license the Cryengine2 (or something similar) and concentrate on what they do best: the only serious military FPS out there. I love the concept and the gameplay. But technically, it's clearly got major issues.

your CPU is bottlenecking your GPUs so much. I've got a E8400 and an E8600, and no matter what clockspeed, (lets use 5GHz with my E8600) it would not matter. However, my Q9550 would run it quite smoothly, and getting my i7 really brought things on their feet again.

The reason (afaik) is that the GPU finishes whatever it needs to do, and then it has to wait for the CPU to do whatever it needs to do, which can take a bit of time. (just a theory)

Anyway, everyone stop saying BIS isn't acknowledging it, they are, but not on this forum. If you have read articles about the expansion, you would of seen that they won't do much with the expansion until the engine is fixed in the original ArmA II.

But hold on, they stickied this thread, so indeed yes they have acknowledged it.

[Raptor309 10]

no matter what rez 800*600 or 1680*1050 low,normal or high alwayas the same27-28fps