An open letter to BIS Devs re: GTX 295 rigs.

[nzjono 10]

I'm presently using the Crysis64.exe workaround.. I've got 6gig of RAM, so how do I use '-maxmem=2047 -winxp' ? (And should I?)

Do I just add it after the .exe, or is it part of the .cfg file?

And does it help?

Crysis64 trick only works for a limited time, run Fraps and see for yourself. Basically like the rest of us you are stuck with poor performance on high end rigs until someone readies up with some decent drivers and/or a mega patch from the publishers themselves :mad:

As per Arma 1 it will happen...eventually..........:j:

[FraG_AU 10]

^^ Eventually.. if its not sorted in the next 2-3 weeks I will have given up on this game and BIS. After the nightmares I had in ARMA I am not going through all that again!

[Styxar 0]

Hi guys. Does this discussion apply to GTX 280 GPUs? I ve got a GTX 280 SLI (2 cards) - and it seems like nothing I do has an effect on FPS. No matter whether I set normal or high quality setting I still get 20-30 FPS (20 in Chernogorsk) in campaign mode. Tried Crysis64.exe workaround also with no effect.

I'm running Vista64 with 4Gb DDR3 RAM and q9550 quad core CPU (@2.83 Ghz, also tried overclocking to 3.2Ghz again with no noticable difference in FPS)

I'm running UK DVD version of the game released on 23rd of June.

Thanks.

Edited June 24, 2009 by Styxar

[scottw 0]

Im using two 280 GTX in SLI and I have it running, are you runing a 64-bit OS, if not you need to call the .exe crysis.exe

[neurojazz 10]

Well, I've just done exactly what this post, http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1324488&postcount=14, said.

Lo and behold, the game is now playable. Gone are all the odd artefacts, I get solid, fast, performance across the board and most of the problems I originally cited are now gone. Textures are solid and consistent and ive not had a single lack of texture load problem.

Lack of AA is still right in your face but i'm now actually able to play the game as a fluid experience. Thumbs up from me...so far....

Dudes, leave your config alone (and the shortcut) if on vista64 - just delete the old config and take the steps listed in that link.

Basically you'll solve all your glitches with the roll back to 182.50 and the other stuff will give you fast fps so you can play while BIS refine this game...

It's not even a bodge fix, i'm finding i'm running around in game mouth agape and looking forward to each patch day and a cheaper second 295 in a year or two ;)

I get 140 fps in the opening screen, no lag in game with those fixes - stick your head in a bucket of water as you'll need a bit of focus to sort it :)

BTW : I only found this out recently, but Vsync is a card killer - disabling it means that your FPS isn't averaged - so instead of the engine going 60,59,58,57,etc when load increases - it goes - 60, 40, 30 ,20 = judders - so roll back driver, delete your cfg file, disable vsync and glhf :)

[Alienfreak 0]

I tried all that you wrote. Even more. And it doesn't help. At all.

Also please post what graphic details you use. And what ArmaMark II gives you with those settings.

[nzjono 10]

Dudes, leave your config alone (and the shortcut) if on vista64 - just delete the old config and take the steps listed in that link.

Basically you'll solve all your glitches with the roll back to 182.50 and the other stuff will give you fast fps so you can play while BIS refine this game...

It's not even a bodge fix, i'm finding i'm running around in game mouth agape and looking forward to each patch day and a cheaper second 295 in a year or two ;)

I get 140 fps in the opening screen, no lag in game with those fixes - stick your head in a bucket of water as you'll need a bit of focus to sort it :)

BTW : I only found this out recently, but Vsync is a card killer - disabling it means that your FPS isn't averaged - so instead of the engine going 60,59,58,57,etc when load increases - it goes - 60, 40, 30 ,20 = judders - so roll back driver, delete your cfg file, disable vsync and glhf :)

Do you have some screenshots to back this up? No one else except you seems to have these results.

If it works then could you write up a step by step guide on how to do it with screenies.

[goldkid80 10]

it's true in the main menu with crysis.exe you can get up to 130 FPS max

but once ingame it's a whole different story with max 47 FPs average 22 and min 7 resilt huge lag and weird textures doesn't matter if you using 182.50 or 185.xx or 186.xx same crap. it's the first problem we got with our gtx295 all other games work perfect except arma 1 but it's still playable.

arma 2 isn't

[private plowjoy 0]

Do you have some screenshots to back this up? No one else except you seems to have these results.

If it works then could you write up a step by step guide on how to do it with screenies.

All it really comes down to is a wind back to the older drivers, deleting the ArmA2.cfg, making sure that v-sync is disabled on the Nvidia control panel (in fact, make sure that you dont override any application settings) and then not messing about with the in-game graphics settings apart from maybe lowering them.

I must have doubled my frames by doing just that. Things started to go wrong when I tried to up the settings (playing on Normal is just so wrong when using an Nvidia 295) and also when getting close to cities or built up areas. The first few missions were glorious in their performance and speed but it started to dip the more I progressed, as thats where the built up areas come into play.

[nzjono 10]

If its this simple why havent BI release something to advise us to do that?

No offense but in-menu framerate doesnt mean anything.

Again in my situation the frame rate is LOCKED/CAPPED at 30 FPS in game. In the menu screen its locked at 60. Older drivers or v-sync settings wont change this, its software activated.

Again I have yet to see any screenshots of above 40 ingame framerates running at 1920 by 1200 with i7 920 and GTX295 cards with most other settings at high/medium on Vista 64.

If someone can do that, please, please please show us and explain exactly what settings/drivers you are running.

I think Im kicking a dead horse on this one.

Goldkid an avg of 22 is pretty low.

Edited June 24, 2009 by nzjono

[DieterWeber 0]

Nzjono i've run at 80fps at times. High/very high settings. GTX275.

[nzjono 10]

Nzjono i've run at 80fps at times. High/very high settings. GTX275.

Thats great. :) I presume that is ingame, not just in the menu screen.

Can I ask:

What screen resolution?

What Operating system?

We know Win Xp seesm to be enabling SLI on the GTX295

Vista 64 is giving some trouble.

[DieterWeber 0]

Vista 64

1360x728 display res/1700x900 real rendered res. Makes it looks the same as 1080, but runs better.

Don't worry, they will fix most of the performance issues.

[FraG_AU 10]

All it really comes down to is a wind back to the older drivers, deleting the ArmA2.cfg, making sure that v-sync is disabled on the Nvidia control panel (in fact, make sure that you dont override any application settings) and then not messing about with the in-game graphics settings apart from maybe lowering them.

I must have doubled my frames by doing just that. Things started to go wrong when I tried to up the settings (playing on Normal is just so wrong when using an Nvidia 295) and also when getting close to cities or built up areas. The first few missions were glorious in their performance and speed but it started to dip the more I progressed, as thats where the built up areas come into play.

Plowjoy, I have tried every driver between 186 - 181.

I have tried every setting in the video options and every combination of these. Tried every flag, and tried every possible name of .exe and using nhancer to mod driver settings

I have tried 3 diff OSs including 2 clean installs, and I did get the game running well on my last attempt, however when I went into MP the game turned to shit.. My key is banned as a result (was reloading OS to try again)

.. So I KNOW its possible to have the game running properly, but its like a friggin unicorn. When I had the clean install on VIsta 64 with 186 drivers razor two avg fps was high 50's.. played it for about 30 mins.. then went to MP and FPS dropped to 30 max.. went back to SP and my max in same mission was high 30;s.. so I do think there is something in the .cfg files thats causing massive probs, however being banned i can't do any more testing.

I know there are a few lucky people who have the game running, i just want to be one of them =)

[nkenny 1057]

The funny thing is. on my 285 GTX. While standing on the same spot. The differenc ebetween everything maxed out, and everything set on lowest is only 5 fps.

There's something really wrong with this game.

I have a 285 combod with a PhenomII (3.2ghz quad) and I've experienced the same. I notice very few performance changes accompanied by tweaking settings. (now I play with everything on high)

[ambroisec 10]

hello excuse me for my english but i m french

i have exactely the same problem with arma 2 my system is following:

-core 2 duo x6800 extreme 2.93 ghz

-asus striker 2 extreme

-graphic card :gtx 295

-4 go ddr3 12800 ocz

running windows vista 64 with last driver 186.18

and the game is not fluid at all the fps are 15 to 28 max

i dont understand at all

have an idea

i bought this config for play arma 2 and i m very furious.....

i try with crysis64.exe no change

my processor it is good or i must change it?

[Punisher5555 0]

Has anyone tried changing your flat panel scaling in the Nvidia Physx properties to "Use My Display Built-in Scaling"?

I have heard this in other graphics forums that this helps Windows 7 x64 and others.

[Milamber 10]

May as well add me to this, spent so much cash on my system and the performance is shocking with Arma II.

I have heard a Bohemia rep say, the drivers are the cause and "we have contacted the respectable companies, ATI and Nvidia". I'm not sure if this is a typical "pass the hot potato stunt" were Bohemia don't want to accept ownership of the problem or not. I'd like to see some more input from the devs on this please.

[nyran125 10]

crazy, im gettng 35-60 fps consistently without many problems :> with this rig 8800gts 512mb single card, Intel core 2 duo 2.66Ghz, 3gb ram. windows xp. NO issues here accept i have to run it on medium - high instead of all very high. MAybe ask the developers what kind of crazy computer specs did they make the game on?

I have learnt one thing from experience of gaming on pc's , only upgrade if you need to, and secondly dont get the hardware on the year of the game release always upgrade full computer specs the year AFTER a heavy resourced game comes out. Sad but stupidly true. This isnt the only game that has had these problems. I remember when Oblivian came out and the card that was released at the time was the 1900xt Ati and it ran the game ok but pretty poorly, the 8800's however a year later kicked the crap out of the game and ran it smoothly. Same will happen for this game next year. However BIS is Destroying thier new customer base very quickly. I already know people that have upgraded to a 295gtx and dont ever want to touch arma 2 again. They are currantly waiting for Operation flashpoint dragon rising to come out to see if it will perform alot better. YEP BIS loses customers over this, its sad. But everyone here is correct you should easily be able to run this game with your specs without any issues. Personally i think BIS rushed it because of the operation flashpoint 2 release. Maybe it was a better idea to wait and release it after operation flashpoint dragon rising, because the people that arent happy with Arma 2 will return it and go play OFP Dragon rising without hesitation and forget Arma 2 exists as a bad experience for them.

BIS wont lose me theres already a ton of content that allows me to enjoy the game even without the single player experience , bu tmost people that arent like me just wont want to play the game long enough for the other content to matter because of the bugs and thier computers not being able to run it. :(:(:(:(

Edited August 2, 2009 by nyran125

[Milamber 10]

After a whole day of testing with different drivers and Vista builds, x86 , x64 as well as Windows 7 I have found the fix. And although I am getting 70+fps in some cases, its still not good enough.

I have posted screenshots of in game fps with fraps. The settings are all 2500 view distance with high detail at 1920x1200. Please double click the thumbnails to make the pics bigger. Sorry for the large amount of screenshots, I wanted to show just how much fps has improved with varying sections of the game with landscapes etc.

EDIT: Just discovered we can only have 5 pics per post

Detail settings:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0217-37-40-55.jpg

In game shots:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0117-40-19-95-1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0119-29-57-68.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0119-30-18-27.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0119-31-13-22.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0119-32-15-33.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0117-33-07-38.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0117-37-25-19.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0117-37-50-55.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0117-39-52-87.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v452/warpy_au/Arma%202/arma22009-08-0117-42-25-02.jpg

Solution was simple... Installed Nvidia 190.38 offical drivers and set vsync to "OFF" forced, I didn't touch any profiles and whats funny is, if I installed nhancer it made things worse, so don't install that or any SLI patch.

Here are my Nvidia settings:

EDIT: posts only allow 5 images changed to URL's. Also added PC specs!!

Q9550 @3.6Ghz

Gigaybyte UD3P

GTX 295 (stock)

4Gb 1066 RAM

Auzentech Forte Sound Card

Windows 7 x64

Edited October 13, 2009 by Milamber

[LondonLad 13]

Solution was simple... Installed Nvidia 190.38 offical drivers and set vsync to "OFF" forced, I didn't touch any profiles and whats funny is, if I installed nhancer it made things worse, so don't install that or any SLI patch.

I believe the 190.38 has a SLI profile/fix included for ARAM II so nhancer shouldn't need to be used. To confirm that just review the 'readme' from the nVidia 190.38 drivers.

Edited August 2, 2009 by LondonLad
Snipped the original message down for easier reading

[neurojazz 10]

I believe the 190.38 has a SLI profile/fix included for ARAM II so nhancer shouldn't need to be used. To confirm that just review the 'readme' from the nVidia 190.38 drivers.

Those 190.38 drivers murder other games .... can't use them :(

[Milamber 10]

I believe the 190.38 has a SLI profile/fix included for ARAM II so nhancer shouldn't need to be used. To confirm that just review the 'readme' from the nVidia 190.38 drivers.

Yeah and it doesnt work for me that profile. VSYNC int he profile is off but without vsync off globally i get a fps cap of 6, so the profile doesn't work... that's with steam version of Arma.

[Bulldogs 10]

For those wondering, when BIS says they contacted nVidia, etc, it's not passing the buck, it's actually quite the opposite. They send the report to the respective companies then talk with the companies to see what end it can be fixed on. If it's on BIS's end then nVidia (or whoever) give them information regarding the problem so they can fix it with a patch, if it's on nVidia's end then nVidia releases the fix in their next driver update. Read the patch notes for the nVidia drivers and you'll see that a lot of games companies have to do this.

Your best bet is to hope it's on BIS' end, in which case it'll be patched by BIS in a few weeks, maybe 1 month. If it's on nVidia's side then they'll wait until there are enough issues with other games and programs before they release it as an entire patch.

[Fansadox 0]

I dont have a GTX295 but my GTX285 in combination with i7 is running almost at the same performance as when i tested the game with my 8800GTX that was lying in a dusty corner.

God knows why.....