Horrible Graphics/FPS

[SpiralOut 10]

I saw a lot of screenshots before I bought the game, and the game looked incredible. But it's a total different story after I installed. I'm getting very low FPS, and the only way to make the game playable is to put everything on very low, which makes the game look like nintendo.

The shots in the screenshot thread look great. Are you guys using supercomputers or what? Even the average screenshot or video I see around looks much better than what I'm getting on my end.

Very Low

Normal

Very High

Even those screenshots don't do any justice. It actually looks a lot worse on my end during gameplay and movement. Is there anything I can do to make the game look somewhat decent and still get playable FPS?

Computer Specs:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @ 3.2GHz

4GB OCZ DDR800 RAM

Asus P5Q Pro Motherboard

EVGA GTX 260 Superclocked Core 216

[cyzz 10]

i have exact the same system/fps

no idea......

[usmc123 1]

Could be the resolution that is killing you. What kind of filtrate are you using? Also try fiddling around with settings, turn some things on low and others on high instead of everything at once.

[pogoman979 10]

mate i have the same problem and i know a few other who do as well. you can put everything on very high and it still looks like crap. my specs:

8800gt 512mb

e6750 duo @ 3.4Ghz

etc

i got the impression from some people that 512mb is not enough video memory these days so i think i may need to upgrade my gfx card.

how much memory does your gfx card have?

wrt to resolution im running at 1280x1024 (max for my lcd), so is that res too low or something?

[Maddmatt 1]

Even on the "very high" screen I can see your fillrate setting is less than 100%. Set it to 100% to make it look sharp. Only go higher if your PC can handle it.

As for the low FPS, no idea. All I can say is make sure you have the latest drivers, but that might not be helpful.

Strange, looks like your performance is similar to mine, but I have a 256MB Geforce 7800GT and an AMD 64 X2 3800! My PC is only slightly above the minimum requirements.

Edited June 10, 2009 by Maddmatt

[Richieb0y 0]

mate i have the same problem and i know a few other who do as well. you can put everything on very high and it still looks like crap. my specs:

8800gt 512mb

e6750 duo @ 3.4Ghz

etc

i got the impression from some people that 512mb is not enough video memory these days so i think i may need to upgrade my gfx card.

how much memory does your gfx card have?

wrt to resolution im running at 1280x1024 (max for my lcd), so is that res too low or something?

You should be able to play it some on high and normal

try these settings if you want

Tex High

videomem High

Ansiofilter High

terain normal

objects normal

shadow high

PostP Verhigh

viewdistace 4000

i play whit these settings on 1440x900 and its very playable it almost stays everwhere between 60fps/25fps

Edited June 10, 2009 by Richieb0y

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Most curious Richie. I have a 9600GT which is barely slower than your 8800GT in most games, and get 15 to 25 FPS at mostly low settings (textures normal, shadows normal) with a VD of 1200, at 1920x1200 (higher res, but not so much higher) You have an 8800GT, and run it at 25 to 60 with high details? Even if I put the game down to your res I get barely above 30 frames anywhere, and on less detail.

Something doesn't compute here.

Edited June 10, 2009 by Helmut_AUT

[SpiralOut 10]

Okay, the quality problem was definitely the fillrate. It still doesn't look as good as some of the screenshots on here, but just putting the fillrate from 88%(very high) to 100% made a huge difference.

The bad thing is that I can't put it any higher than 100% without the FPS dropping like crazy. The GTX260 has 896MB of RAM and really isn't that bad of a card. I'm running at 1920x1200, so this might be the problem, but I get no problem with other games at this rez with max settings.

I'm currently running:

Viewing Distance 1600

Fillrate 100%

Shadows Disabled

Ansio Disabled

Textures and Video Memory on Normal

Everything else as low as it will go

With that I get somewhere around 10-45FPS, usually never going above 25. Even though its avg is 25, it still feels very choppy, and whenever medium-to-high action is going on it drops to under 15FPS. Is this normal for my specs? Richie I have pretty much the exact same system but with a much better video card, and get nowhere near that with everything on low! Cyzz or anybody else with a similar system, what settings/rez do you use?

Edited June 10, 2009 by SpiralOut

[Helmut_AUT 0]

1) Check in your Arma2 config (in your documents-folder/Arma2) there's two lines concering rendering size and screen resolution. Putting Fill rate at 100% in game does not exactly match these values, so you should open the Arma2.cfg and do it by hand, setting both to 1920x1200.

2) Make sure you are testing frames in an empty editor map, to exclude CPU influences.

But yeah, as I wrote above: Something is really weird with this engine. Your 260 is a much newer card than mine, and you have the same problems.

[maddogx 13]

@SpiralOut,

anything above 100% fillrate pretty much kills my GTX285 aswell in 1080p. I can set it to 125% if I want, but I prefer to play with 30-50fps instead of 20-35.

Fillrate is very dependent on resolution though. If I set resolution to 1280x720, I can easily use 150% fillrate.

Edited June 10, 2009 by MadDogX

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Fillrate is dependent on resolution since it changes the amount of total pixels rendered by the card. 1920x1200 with 150% fillrate means the card actually renders 2880 x 1800 pixels, and then resizes, that is more than what 30" displays use native. It also explains why fillrate is a very bad substitute for FSAA.

[maddogx 13]

Fillrate is dependent on resolution since it changes the amount of total pixels rendered by the card. 1920x1200 with 150% fillrate means the card actually renders 2880 x 1800 pixels, and then resizes, that is more than what 30" displays use native. It also explains why fillrate is a very bad substitute for FSAA.

Correct. In fact I just did the math:

1280x720 with 150% fillrate will in fact render at 1920x1080, except that the image is scaled down.

I personally see the fillrate optimizer as kind of a future-proofer for Arma2. In a few years there will probably be gfx cards out that beat the crap out of our current hardware. People using those cards can then squeeze even more visual quality out of the game.

[Richieb0y 0]

Most curious Richie. I have a 9600GT which is barely slower than your 8800GT in most games, and get 15 to 25 FPS at mostly low settings (textures normal, shadows normal) with a VD of 1200, at 1920x1200 (higher res, but not so much higher) You have an 8800GT, and run it at 25 to 60 with high details? Even if I put the game down to your res I get barely above 30 frames anywhere, and on less detail.

Something doesn't compute here.

put 1 more 9600GT and you must past my settings oh and i do have some stuff in the NV panel enabled like Sync it renders right now 8 frames ahead im still testing this.

mabye try Windows 7 it runs alot better then winxp or vista atleast it did for me

[OrdeaL 10]

Im also having the same problems with my 9600GT 512MB XT version.

maybe maxmem target line would help..what do you guys suggest if i have 2 gigs of Ram?

[dmarkwick 261]

I saw a lot of screenshots before I bought the game, and the game looked incredible. But it's a total different story after I installed. I'm getting very low FPS, and the only way to make the game playable is to put everything on very low, which makes the game look like nintendo.

The shots in the screenshot thread look great. Are you guys using supercomputers or what? Even the average screenshot or video I see around looks much better than what I'm getting on my end.

Very Low

Normal

Very High

Even those screenshots don't do any justice. It actually looks a lot worse on my end during gameplay and movement. Is there anything I can do to make the game look somewhat decent and still get playable FPS?

Computer Specs:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 @ 3.2GHz

4GB OCZ DDR800 RAM

Asus P5Q Pro Motherboard

EVGA GTX 260 Superclocked Core 216

I note that you're playing on a high resolution. Have you tried the same thing on lower resolutions?

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Ordeal, what driver are you using? I'll test the new beta tonight. Maxmem shouldn't make a difference. Really can't belive they are stating an 8800GT as recommended and still our 9600GTs (depending on benchmark only ~10% slower) are killing themself at low settings.

[OrdeaL 10]

Ordeal, what driver are you using? I'll test the new beta tonight. Maxmem shouldn't make a difference. Really can't belive they are stating an 8800GT as recommended and still our 9600GTs (depending on benchmark only ~10% slower) are killing themself at low settings.

Im using 181.20 Drivers, Yourself?

[Helmut_AUT 0]

Older - 178 or something. I really need to try newer ones, they claim performance increase up to 20% in some games with the 185 compared to the 182. I don't usually believe in such kinds of magic, but I guess here it's time to try it.

[11aTony 0]

Maybe you gain performance on windows7 on lower end PCs but I have Q9450, 4GB RAM and 9800GTX 512vram on 22" screen and I have abolutely NO performance increase what so ever. Only thing is that windows7 is much more stable then vista. Vista is like if it doesnt like something then it starts to behave weird or even crash to blue screen. In XP you just got some error message and you delt with it. My nforce and gfx drivers are up to date. Anyway, my settings in A2 are:

1680x1050@60 (lowering it to 1200 doesnt make much difference + its ugly)

Fillrate: 100%

terrain: 40

vdist: 10.000

texture: normal/1

objects: 250.000

shadows: 1

shader detail: 4 (this makes huge difference if you lower it)

Maybe I forgot something but this should be it. I dont know how meny FPS I have but its running smooth. Although it runs quite better on Utes then on Chernarus.

[Törni 0]

9600 GT here too and the game won't run in full HD. You have to lower resolution. If I lay down to grass I get something like 8-15 fps. Forests and urban areas also cause a massive fps drop.

[funkee 0]

mate i have the same problem and i know a few other who do as well. you can put everything on very high and it still looks like crap. my specs:

8800gt 512mb

e6750 duo @ 3.4Ghz

hmm... :icon_rolleyes: as I read the forum and see all the complains and issues, I afraid that we again got a crap like ArmA1 was at it's first release, that BI will be patching for next 3 years, so finally (when nobody already remember what was ArmA2), we'll get one of 16 beta patches (so we can test it for another 3 years), that will devide rest of the community in half.

I really loved trailers, screenshots and all that promotion stuff, but if real ArmA2 performance/quality is like ppl says, I'll never more buy BI product.

[Helmut_AUT 0]

The shame is that they have one of the best AI implementations and additional features I've ever seen in a military sim. And these improvements are not tied to the graphics, so if I could swap the renderer of A1 into A2, still keep the new AI, editor modules and stuff, it would be a most perfect game. Or in other words, I can't go back to A1 now after seeing all the good things, but A2 needs playable framerates first.

[pogoman979 10]

Ordeal, what driver are you using? I'll test the new beta tonight. Maxmem shouldn't make a difference. Really can't belive they are stating an 8800GT as recommended and still our 9600GTs (depending on benchmark only ~10% slower) are killing themself at low settings.

if thats the case then my 8800gt runs arma2 like crap, so maybe its something else.

[funkee 0]

I bet this is AI/CPU usage (not graphics) bring down ArmA2 framerate. Look at this thread: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=74096 (the more AI the lower CPU-Usage). Im pretty sure this is the thing what cause performance problem in ArmA engine.

[Scrub 0]

This is wierd, I play at 1200x960, normal to high settings, 100% fillrate, 2.5kmVD, and have beautiful visuals, and pretty smooth gameplay. Some stutters here and there as it loads the textures or something, during a quick spin, but nothing huge.

Phenom x3 2.1ghz

ATI 3850

4gb ram