i7 + GTX295, what's the deal?

[Philll 10]

i7 920 @ 3.6ghz

GTX 295

6GB DDR3

Asus X58 P6T Deluxe

Ok. Here is everything I have tried.

Windows 7 x64 fresh install:

- Updated all drivers to current version, MB, gfx, audio etc.

- Installed DX9 + DX10.

- Installed German version digital download.

- Tried crysis.exe as main executable to enable SLI, no change.

- Tried crysis64.exe, a little change but still a lot of slow downs.

- Tried crysis64.exe with -winxp, seemed a bit better, still slow downs.

- Tried changing memory configs in the arma config file, as my GTX295 has a lot of VRAM but it appears not all is being used. No change.

- Updated to 1.02 in the morning, no change.

- Tried putting all options to normal with post effects to disabled, shadows low, FSAA off @ 1920 x 1200 fillrate @ 100%, still choppy.

- Set all options to low, amazingly still choppy during 3rd mission of campaign. Seems to crash a lot too.

- Tried some more suggestions, Farcry2.exe and a few others found on forum. No change.

- Overclocked my CPU to 3.8ghz instead of 3.6, no change. Went through a few more overclocking options to see if it would change anything, it didn't.

- Took advice from someone and installed Vistax64.

Windows Vista x64 Fresh install:

- Updated all drivers to current version, MB, gfx, audio etc.

- Installed DX9 + DX10.

- Installed German version digital download.

- Tried crysis64.exe, a little change but still a lot of slow downs.

- Tried crysis64.exe with -winxp, all options to normal with post effects to disabled, shadows low, FSAA off @ 1920 x 1200 fillrate @ 100%, seems to have worked best so far. But still, there are major pauses when running around in towns.

^^^ This does not include all the other times I reinstalled it between making changes or reinstalling just for new patches. It's generally really slow on the campaign missions, single missions and night missions are a treat to play. I realise it's easy to just blame nVidia and say they should update their drivers, but couldn't BIS have optimized for the drivers that were available? How is nVidia supposed to know, yet BIS would have had something to work with.

Then this from a BI Developer via PM:

I believe it will help. With SLI, this is question for NVIDIA, support in game depend on driver, not on application. NVIDIA must turn it on for ARMA2 in their drivers.

So in other words, to everyone who says IT IS working without user intervention, there you have it.

I would also like to know what PC specs the developers are using. Surely they have some machine that runs this thing properly, can you please tell us all so we know what would work best? Or are you having the same problems? I noticed you removed my single thread asking this without even combining it, seems pretty sneaky to be honest.

Anyway I think it's absolute crap that the game runs like this with the gear I have. BIS are doing themselves no favor releasing a game in this state as the same thing happened with ARMA and it is well known for needing a lot of patches. SETTLE DOWN fanboys, it's a fact, and all I am after here is a playable version of the game. I paid for it after all.

[Cobalt_UK 0]

Don't know if it's just me, but the crysis.exe doesn't seem to be working since i updated to patch 1.02 - so i'd say if anything the performance has got worse.

I'm getting between 23 - 40fps in single player - average high 20's. With everything set to high except Shaders and Post Processing. Resolution of 1920 x 1200 - Q6600 oc'd to 3.0Ghz - 4gb DDR 2 Ram - 295Gtx oc'd - Nvidia 185.85 drivers - Vista 32bit.

I'd also like to know exactly what system Bohemia tested this game on as well.

[Chill xl 10]

Core I7 cpu's are a bad combo with NVIDIA gpu's, there seems to be a bottleneck that holds back performance.

I think, especialy with the latest patch BIS released a game which altough has some flaws here and there is pretty playable to me.

My fps is generally between 40 and 60 depending where the player is located, forest / city seems to be around the 40-45 fps.

Settings: VD: 2400, All others high, except pstfx is disabled, low terrain and normal obj detail.

In SP and sometimes in MP aswell there are some situations where i see fps around 30, not sure at all but might be relared to AI, scripts or something like that.

Anyway, my C2D E8400 @ 3.85ghz + Gtx 280 works pretty well.

Edited June 20, 2009 by Chill xl

[Philll 10]

It's not the FPS I'm complaining about. It hangs at around 60FPS in SP missions, but in the campaign it's the massive slow downs that occur every few seconds that make it impossible to enjoy. It'll be 40fps, 5, 30, 40, pause for 3 seconds, 40 etc.

[shadowze 1]

Dont worry about FPS in MP its controlled by the server

[SaBrE_UK 0]

It's odd that some people with mammoth PCs are getting great performance, and others are getting poor performance. I think it's something BIS will address, however frustrating it is at the moment.

I heard rolling back drivers has helped some (can't find thread, it's here somewhere).

[Philll 10]

Doh, forgot to list that. Tried the last 2 drivers for Windows 7 and the last 4 for Vista, made no difference whatsoever. It would be good if we had a thread just of configurations that people are getting good performance with, with driver versions.

[bangtail 0]

It's not the FPS I'm complaining about. It hangs at around 60FPS in SP missions, but in the campaign it's the massive slow downs that occur every few seconds that make it impossible to enjoy. It'll be 40fps, 5, 30, 40, pause for 3 seconds, 40 etc.

I was getting the same thing on a similar system - XP 64 solved it.

I know this is a serious pain but BIS have a tendency of blaming your hardware, drivers etc rather than admitting it might actually be THEIR engine. I'm used to it as I love their games but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow. The Vista/Win 7 performance will be improved over time, it's not what I want to hear either especially since both patches have done little to fix performance issues but BIS do support their products, I can definitely vouch for that.

Win 7/Vista 64 detect all my video settings erroneously (256 MB of VRAM as opposed to 1GB and 256 MB of Non local RAM when I have 12 Gigs). Switching to XP solved these problems as the RAM now detects correctly and some of the settings that are missing with the newer Nvidia drivers in Vista/Win 7 are now available in XP.

i7 975

Asus P6T6 Revo

12 Gigs mushkin 12800 DDR RA

2 x Intel X-25 160 GB

2 x WD 1 TB "Black"

3 x GTX 280

Auzentech Forte

Win XP 64 (SP2), Win 7 Ultimate 64 (7232), Vista Ultimate 64 (SP2)

Etc

Eth

[Philll 10]

I'll give that a go now, but I won't expect much from it. I'll post back in a few hours.

[bangtail 0]

I'll give that a go now, but I won't expect much from it. I'll post back in a few hours.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I almost fell out of my chair.

Eth

[shadowze 1]

You guys with i7 , are you using HT on or off ?

[bangtail 0]

You guys with i7 , are you using HT on or off ?

On

Eth

EDIT - Just turned it off and ArmA is smooth as butter in Win 7 and Vista. Nice call dude although disabling a significant feature of my CPU is not really a "fix". Ill take it for now. Tx again.

Edited June 20, 2009 by BangTail

[Supernova 0]

On

Eth

EDIT - Just turned it off and ArmA is smooth as butter in Win 7 and Vista. Nice call dude although disabling a significant feature of my CPU is not really a "fix". Ill take it for now. Tx again.

You bought an 'extreme' chip and aren't even overclocking it. I say thats a real waste of money.

[brit~XR 0]

Core i7 920 (D0) @ 2.67ghz

GTX 275

6gb ram

Asus rampage 2 gene

os 64bit vista

I get around 35fps in mp using normal to high settings with fillrate set to 100% and 1920 x 1200 res. core i7 HT is also on. I would overclock but need better cooler :) Think i do a test with HT off

[bangtail 0]

You bought an 'extreme' chip and aren't even overclocking it. I say thats a real waste of money.

Luckily, no one asked for your opinion :)

Edited June 20, 2009 by BangTail

[FraG_AU 10]

Philll - fancy seeing you here :) Still no go..

MAKE SURE YOU deactivate somehow tho! Or you will be like me and doing nothing except reading forums while I wait for key to get unbanned.

Core I7 cpu's are a bad combo with NVIDIA gpu's, there seems to be a bottleneck that holds back performance.

Obviously you mean in respect to this game yeah? But 4870x2's run like dogs too.. Only one other game I have had problems with aside from this, and thats Empire TW (Came out buggy as hell).. but that I can stomach as 40fps+ is sufficent in that game genre.

Did the HT on OFF trick work for anyone? I did try CPU COunt=2,3,4,8 and it didn't have a significant impact that made me sit up.. HT is handled by the OS, but I would have thought Vista/Win 7 would be better at this then win xp by now.. bugger knows. PS> New Intel INF has come out, i doubt that will fix anything tho.

Obviously 1.02 patch didnt solve this issue yet, but having software run like a dog on state of the art machines is something that should be looked into. It will be a few years before my system is considered mainstream so the game will be playable for the average jo in 2-3 years unless they accept running thigs in resolutions from 5 years ago.

I still think (hope!) its something that BIS (Nvidia/ATi) will fix soon, but I guess if I was in their shoes i'd be fixing the problems that affect the most first and narrow down from there. Ie crash bugs, campaign bugs etc...

But as someone said earlier, if I was a dev and wanted to show off my new game, I'd ensure that people can jump on the game and be able to enjoy it in all its glory. Now we can compare this to crysis, where people were happy to run that game at 40+ (Motion blur anyone!), but crysis scaled well with hardware. And someone that a top 1% rig, enjoyed top 1% performance, wheras in ARMA2 performance is really in a narrow scatter..

I have a copy of win xp 64, so its the next on the list of things to try.. anyone want to give me another key :P

[Supernova 0]

Luckily, no one asked for your opinion :)

LMAO. More money than sense/wits.

[bangtail 0]

LMAO. More money than sense/wits.

I don't have any need to overclock but Im equally happy I can if I want to.

I dont really understand why you felt the need to comment as it has no relevance to the thread.

I spend the money I earn as I see fit and you don't HAVE to overclock to make good use of an "extreme" processor. You're just a show off who gets angry when people have better gear than you do.

Keep your opinions to yourself in future, I really dont care what you think about my implementation of hardware or my spending.

Eth

PS : Keep it ON topic.

Edited June 20, 2009 by BangTail

[sickboy 13]

Can't help on the SLI front. Just some general experience, with 1.02, on Windows 7 build 7201 and Nvidia 186.18, the performance has increased quite a lot, and graphics problems have seriously become less.

I've seen full 4 core usage on my i7, hyperhtreading enabled (~52% load/8 cpu)

Texture settings on "Default" does make problems, but this is probably related to the 1.7 GB detected vram in the ArmA2.cfg :P

On

Eth

EDIT - Just turned it off and ArmA is smooth as butter in Win 7 and Vista. Nice call dude although disabling a significant feature of my CPU is not really a "fix". Ill take it for now. Tx again.

Awesome!

Would you be interested to give it a go with HT enabled, but as parameter: -cpucount=4

?

Cheers in advance!

[bangtail 0]

Can't help on the SLI front. Just some general experience, with 1.02, on Windows 7 build 7201 and Nvidia 186.18, the performance has increased quite a lot, and graphics problems have seriously become less.

I've seen full 4 core usage on my i7, hyperhtreading enabled (~52% load/8 cpu)

Texture settings on "Default" does make problems, but this is probably related to the 1.7 GB detected vram in the ArmA2.cfg :P

Awesome!

Would you be interested to give it a go with HT enabled, but as parameter: -cpucount=4

?

Cheers in advance!

Ill give it a whirl after dinner mate and let you know the results :)

Eth

EDIT - Still producing that weird stutter using that flag and Im equally sure that the fact that the game is misreading the video and non video memory in my case is also a factor. Tx for trying though. Ill just stick to playing it in XP 64 for the moment as it runs perfectly without the need to switch HT off :)

Edited June 20, 2009 by BangTail

[echo1 0]

LMAO. More money than sense/wits.

Core i7 920 (D0) @ 4.0 , Gigabyte EX58 Extreme (F8b) , eVGA GTX 295 Quad-SLI (with backplates) , TR3X6G1866C9DF 6GB DDR3-1866, Armorsuit PC P-80B , Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W , X-25E 64GB Raid 0

[kklownboy 43]

Philll - ...

Obviously you mean in respect to this game yeah? But 4870x2's run like dogs too....

Stop it. mine run great. I7 is the best system to use multi GPUs, any other fud is pure fud, no matter what web dooshbag "benchmarker" site says... A 4gz I7, with 1600 speed DDR3 allows the full usage of your multiGPUs. There isnt a better platform.

I have run into the same issues with my old 9800x2, it wasnt always supported right in a Nvida Driver, had to usually wait a out a few betas, and or finals. Then a game patch would come and mess up my 9800x2 ..usually really bad strobe, much worse than my 4870x2s EVER get, but then a new beta from NVDA would eventuality fix it, I find NVDA is better with SLI on two slots/cards than on one package. Guess ill have to install ARMA2 on the 9800x2 V64 system... And yes turn HT off ,you already have a quad if I7.

Edited June 20, 2009 by kklownboy

[echo1 0]

Stop it. mine run great.

That doesnt make it some kind of universal truth. But there seems to be some more people with problems with SLI/Crossfire with this game than there are people who have no problems with it. So it's a reasonably fair generalization to make.

[ubermachtig 0]

Wow, people with this kind of systems experiencing difficulties with the game? I'm now highly in doubt if my system would run it:S

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit Service Pack 2

Nvidia GeForce 9600GT Point of View 512MB

Intel E6400 Core 2 duo processor @ 2.13GHz (Not overclockable)

2GB DDR2 800MHz Ram

300GB Seagate 7200RPM Harddisk

19" monitor, maximum resolution at 1280 X 1024

[bangtail 0]

Wow, people with this kind of systems experiencing difficulties with the game? I'm now highly in doubt if my system would run it:S

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit Service Pack 2

Nvidia GeForce 9600GT Point of View 512MB

Intel E6400 Core 2 duo processor @ 2.13GHz (Not overclockable)

2GB DDR2 800MHz Ram

300GB Seagate 7200RPM Harddisk

19" monitor, maximum resolution at 1280 X 1024

Actually, you may have better luck than us as our problems are directly related to SLI and i7. Forunately, you won't have to deal with these :)

Eth