Best windows for Arma 2: XP / Vista / Seven ?

[vento 10]

I'm currently running Arma II on this sweet rig:

I7@3.2Ghz

GTX 295

6Gb ram

Vista 64

I did all the -winxp/no blur/crysis.exe tricks and gain a lot of fps, but still some players reports better perf on older system.

From what I heard, XP makes Arma 2 runs much better than Vista, so I got a few questions:

- can I have a solid confirmation that XP > Vista ?

- If yes is there any chance for perf under Vista to be improved by a future patch ?

- How about Seven ? I could consider upgrading, but I really don't want to go back to XP.

- Finally: 32/64 bits, wich is the best ? I know Arma 2 doesn't exploite 64 bits system, but it would be a shame if it ran slower on them.

Thanks for your answer and all apologies if this subject has already been discussed in a particular topic.

[von_paulus 0]

People who seems to complain more are Vista users, specially the quad owners. But there is no scientific prove. Maybe there are more Vista users than the others.

[Binary 0]

I'd so go 7. With a system as new as your own, I don't think you'd see a positive FPS gain from going to XP.

[Binkowski 26]

Go Seven. For the same reason Binary said. I did that, and my FPS improved from Windows XP.

[vento 10]

Thanks for your answers guys, I'll go for seven and give my feedback.

[Binkowski 26]

Oh I must add, I have 64-bit, because of all of my RAM. If you have large quantities of RAM (4GB and above) go 64bit.

[mosh 0]

Windows 7 works great for me too.

[FraG_AU 10]

I recently tried RC 7201 64bit and latest drivers on GTX295, now I get micro (hell i;ll call it macro!) stutter.

SLi wouldnt work for me under vista, seems to under 7 however the stutter is worse then running on single GPU mode. I may be a lone one here, but been having massive probs getting my GTX295 to behave with every driver going back to 181's..

PS> I have i7 system as well

EDIT: If you want 6Gb ram, you need 64bit.. 32bit will only use 3gb ram :(

[Defunkt 431]

I know of three people now who have reported a large increase in framerate by reverting from Vista to XP.

[An Fiach 10]

From my understanding it seems most games run better with XP than with Vista

[-)rStrangelove 0]

XP uses 4 GB RAM, minus the RAM you have on your gfx card btw. Which is still used of course. So 4 GB all in all.

Ppl with 8 GB RAM reported problems but its the only reason to go for W7, so i'd stay with 4GB on XP. That's only my opinion of course.

[scottw 0]

Ive run both XP and 7 and after loads of testing ive stuck with XP, I had pretty much the same framerates but 7 gave me a lot of stutters when turning quickly, whereas XP is smoooooth as you like!

[bangtail 0]

I recently tried RC 7201 64bit and latest drivers on GTX295, now I get micro (hell i;ll call it macro!) stutter.

SLi wouldnt work for me under vista, seems to under 7 however the stutter is worse then running on single GPU mode. I may be a lone one here, but been having massive probs getting my GTX295 to behave with every driver going back to 181's..

PS> I have i7 system as well

EDIT: If you want 6Gb ram, you need 64bit.. 32bit will only use 3gb ram :(

Like the 9800 GX2 before it, the 295 is plagued with the usual problems. I had 2 9800 GX2s and I will NEVER buy a "1 card, dual GPU" solution again as a result. I remember the helpful 3 month wait for drivers that actually worked properly for Far Cry 2 (among others).

What I find so annoying is that I now run 3 x 280 GTX and I have 0 problems with SLI. With the 9800GX2, I was constantly having problems. I have friends with 295s and they aren't happy either (especially with ArmA 2). Whenever customers ask me about the 295, I point them in the direction of 2 x 280 GTX which can be had for under $500.00 these days.

I truly feel your pain.

Eth

Edited June 16, 2009 by BangTail

[ryan80 10]

dang i'm on vista sp2 now. should i go back to xp just for this?

[FraG_AU 10]

Like the 9800 GX2 before it, the 295 is plagued with the usual problems.

....

I truly feel your pain.

This is my 3rd dual card (9800GX2, 4870x2, now GTX295).

Now 9800GX2 was a shocker, some games it would just eat up, others it would run slower then my 8800GTS 512 before it.

The 4870X2 was perfect for all the games I used it on, never had one problem however I wanted a change and went to the GTX295 (I wanted physX to be honest for Mirrors edge lol!)..

Gtx295 has been absolutely problem free except for ARMAII and Empire TW, both of which seem to have issues running SLi, and both of the games came out with more bugs then a side alley.

However when DX11 hardware comes out I plan on ditching dual GPUs in favour of one just for the simplicty. I am sure in next few weeks most the issues will be sorted out, heck the game has been out in one country for a few weeks so we are jumping the gun but damn been waiting on this game for ages.. (PS> Stopped playing Arma when i got the 9800gx2 as it not possible due to SLi problems as well and I didn't have time or patience to fix it as not too many were playing MP)..

Anyway sorry for the off topic, I too am about to install XP 64Bit so I will report my findings then.. LOL I am thinking of installin XP on a 32G thumb drive and only having Arma II on there as I don't want to mess up my 2 other important OS'es :(

[bangtail 0]

This is my 3rd dual card (9800GX2, 4870x2, now GTX295).

Now 9800GX2 was a shocker, some games it would just eat up, others it would run slower then my 8800GTS 512 before it.

The 4870X2 was perfect for all the games I used it on, never had one problem however I wanted a change and went to the GTX295 (I wanted physX to be honest for Mirrors edge lol!)..

Gtx295 has been absolutely problem free except for ARMAII and Empire TW, both of which seem to have issues running SLi, and both of the games came out with more bugs then a side alley.

However when DX11 hardware comes out I plan on ditching dual GPUs in favour of one just for the simplicty. I am sure in next few weeks most the issues will be sorted out, heck the game has been out in one country for a few weeks so we are jumping the gun but damn been waiting on this game for ages.. (PS> Stopped playing Arma when i got the 9800gx2 as it not possible due to SLi problems as well and I didn't have time or patience to fix it as not too many were playing MP)..

Anyway sorry for the off topic, I too am about to install XP 64Bit so I will report my findings then.. LOL I am thinking of installin XP on a 32G thumb drive and only having Arma II on there as I don't want to mess up my 2 other important OS'es :(

Same, will be switching to one GT300 when they arrive. Unfortunately that now looks like late 2009, early 2010.

/back on topic.

Eth

[sickboy 13]

Quick little side note; AFAIK it's exactly DirectX 11 that should improve multi-gpu rendering...

DX11 should imo rather be THE time to actually GO multi-gpu ;)

[vento 10]

Ive run both XP and 7 and after loads of testing ive stuck with XP, I had pretty much the same framerates but 7 gave me a lot of stutters when turning quickly, whereas XP is smoooooth as you like!

I see what you're talking about, I also have those stutters. But they are only noticeable when looking 360° after the loading of the map.

My prime motivation to change my windows is to have a playable and enjoyable game in battles without turning the rest of the game in a ugly + 200fps graphic desert.

And also maybe, getting FPS that are related to the price I paid for my pc, but this is secondary ;)

Edited June 16, 2009 by vento

[Tailgate 0]

yea im in the same boat too :(

I have identical specs to the op.

have tried windows 7, i found unstable an a 2fps increase

vista 64 i get average 23-26 fps with ..

view distance - 2236

fillrate - 100%

terrain - very low

shadows - disabled

video memory - very high

post process - high

textures - high

and the last on cant remember what its called set to low

A bit annoyed coz I upgraded my pc for this game :(

anyone that went from vista64 to xp 32 or 64 got any feedback?

really dont want to revert but if its a good increase guess ill have to :)

[vento 10]

That's very low FPS, same as me before a few tweaks.

You should try:

- rename Arma2.exe to Crysis.exe / add -winxp at the end of your Arma2 shortcut's target

- disable Vsync and triple buffering in your nvidia drivers

- install the no blur/bloom program http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=5851

Massive FPS gain ! But still I find battles hard to play with medium/high settings, especially when using a sniper scope.

[ahmedjbh 0]

I hope the mods dont lock this thread, because so many people want to know the answer.

I am fortunate that im about to build a new system and im going to dual boot and see which works best, xp64 or win7-64.

[Nutlink 10]

ArmA 1 was the same way. When I went from XP to Vista 64 my ArmA FPS went down by around 20% overall. I'd hate to have to dual boot XP just for one game.

[echo1 0]

I've seen posts in various parts of the forum where people got performance boosts from upgrading from Vista, or even XP to Windows 7. That said, just about anything is better than an almost decade-old OS, and... Vista... :banghead:

[nzjono 10]

My exact system specs are:

Cpu: Intel Core i7 920 running @ 3.8GHz GPU: Nividia GTX 295

Mobo: ASUS P6T X58

Ram: Kingston 6GB 1333MHz DDR3

HDD: Weston Digital 300GB Velociraptor and Weston Digital 1TB HDD

Im running Vista 64bit Home edition fully updated

Drivers are the lastest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 185.85

My command line is: "E:\Games\Arma\Bohemia Interactive\Crysis64.exe" -winxp -nosplash -world=empty -profiles=profiles -mod=@EN -maxmem=2047

OK just finshed my first Arma 2 trials with my new rig. My settings should work for some of you.

On first running Arma I was getting a very poorly 25 to 35 fps running at these exact settings.

Playable yes but hardly worthy of my new PC and a GTX295.

After reading through a few posts about Vista being crap with Arma I did see some people getting results with the Crysis renaming trick. The online explanations are often vague as I found with just renaming the desktop shortcut to crysis.exe did nothing. You must of course rename the Arma.exe in your main game folder not just the shortcut. Ok that done no improvement...hmm

I had a look in my Nvidia advanced settings ...Choosing crysis .exe did nothing here but on choosing crysis64.exe and then renaming my arma.exe to CRYSIS64.EXE my framerate instantly doubled! Im now running a constant 40 to 60 FPS at the same video settings as the top image.

:D

Edited June 16, 2009 by nzjono

[FraG_AU 10]

^^ Good work. I just did the same and saw an "increase" in fps, from 30-35 to 35-40.

Just installing vista x64 again as I have done so many driver swaps I may have screwed something up but definately had an effect on mine :)

I'll report back soon, if it works I may kiss you in a non gay way (not there is anything wrong with that :eek:)