NVIDIA video card(s) owners read here!

[monkman 2]

What I would like to know is what spec of PC do Bohemia Interactive use to play.

They must be stable and have little or no problems, so why doesn't someone from BI post their specs.

(that is of course assuming I am naive enough to know that the game was released so that we the Public can beta test it, while giving BI our money or the Publishing house who now doubt wanted this game out on the market asap)

I love this game, it's just let down by buggy code.

[Baxalasse 10]

Can someone with a GTX260 give some input on the new drivers?

I got 2x260, but overall game experience feels smoother, got around 5-10 fps more in the campaign. Also texture loading feels faster...

Have for the first time experience that the computer hangs a couple of times...

Edited July 18, 2009 by Baxalasse

[David1054 10]

i got a few FPS boosts with the drivers not much i can play a whole lot smoother in cities though.

[Tex Zero 10]

Can someone with a GTX260 give some input on the new drivers?

GTX260 here. New beta drivers installed. Around 5+ fps improvement in MP and maybe a little more in SP. Graphics are smoother, less texture lag and has reduced tearing for me. I can run on higher settings without the stutter or texture issues I was having with the previous drivers.

Edited July 18, 2009 by Tex Zero

[9800GTX+ MAN 10]

can this be done on win 7 64

[SgtMjr 10]

190.38 Drivers upped my FPS to 40 :D I average 33-34 now which is pretty good I reckon.

8800GTX stock, Q6600 3.0Ghz, Vista 32

[nuggetz 0]

I think people that have cards that are more like 2 GPU's in one might be having the same problems as those running 2 physical cards. All I know is that turning SLI off makes the game a lot smoother to play and I don't get the dreaded "FPS degradation with time" issue that I experience while SLI is enabled. Plus, I get the same FPS with SLI on or off so maybe I have a crap CPU but still, I haven't seen ARMA2 even challenge all 4 cores on my Q6600 so I'm waiting for a patch before I shell out cash for an upgrade that will get me nowhere in terms of A2.

Edited July 18, 2009 by nuggetz

[datter 0]

I think people that have cards that are more like 2 GPU's in one might be having the same problems as those running 2 physical cards. All I know is that turning SLI off makes the game a lot smoother to play and I don't get the dreaded "FPS degradation with time" issue that I experience while SLI is enabled. Plus, I get the same FPS with SLI on or off so maybe I have a crap CPU but still, I haven't seen ARMA2 even challenge all 4 cores on my Q6600 so I'm waiting for a patch before I shell out cash for an upgrade that will get me nowhere in terms of A2.

There is something going on with you. My 8800GT's show a marked difference running in SLI or not. Also, you should look into overclocking that Q6600, mine runs wonderfully at 3.7ghz (specs in sig) and it cost me all of $40 for a CPU cooler and a few evenings spare time. Q6600 is a fantastic overclocker.

[nuggetz 0]

There is something going on with you. My 8800GT's show a marked difference running in SLI or not. Also, you should look into overclocking that Q6600, mine runs wonderfully at 3.7ghz (specs in sig) and it cost me all of $40 for a CPU cooler and a few evenings spare time. Q6600 is a fantastic overclocker.

I hear ya. In Windows XP I over clock easily to 3.2GHZ. If I even try that and try to boot in Win 7, I get a blue screen and cant even make it to the login prompt. Same OC profile in XP has been good for a year now and never locked up, crashed, etc so I know the OC was at least stable in XP, but not in Win7. In terms of SLI, maybe there's a slight FPS increase at first but like I said, it degrades for me and never returns unless I restart the game. You know what, I take back some of what I said. If I start the game with SLI enabled, the main menu with the carrier shows 135FPS. I start with the world=empty option so the GPU is just drawing an ocean. But without SLI, its more like 65FPS. I wish I had that type of FPS increase in game but it just doesn't happen. Same FPS. Are you saying that you get double FPS in game with SLI enabled cuz I'll cry.

Edited July 18, 2009 by nuggetz

[datter 0]

Not double, but greatly improved. With my current settings I'm getting around 40 in a typical single player mission (even "Battlegrounds" which is rather busy). Down in the mid 20's without SLI. The 190.38 drivers helped a lot for me.

[merlin851526 10]

I tried the the old 178.series drivers and have found they have given me a huge boost in fps as opposed to the current crop of recent nvidia drivers.I don't know if this will help anybody in general but i tried everything else and this for me has worked better than any other solution.May work for some may not.Im using 9800gt 512mb DDR3.

[Killg0re 0]

i used the 190.38 and did not notice any performance boost.

It seems am stuck at 28-30fps

[droezelke 10]

Not double, but greatly improved. With my current settings I'm getting around 40 in a typical single player mission (even "Battlegrounds" which is rather busy). Down in the mid 20's without SLI. The 190.38 drivers helped a lot for me.

First: that is double :)

I have a GTX295 graphics card. The battleship menu screen gives me 130 fps. Ingame during campaign, it varries between 25-60 fps. I'm pretty sure my 2 gpu's are not used as in single gpu-mode I have the exact same frame rates. Hearing your story makes me believe that the game doesn't support sli for recent graphic cards (gtx200 series), but maybe for older cards it does. Or that there is a limitation in the game engine that limits the usage of all hardware resources. My grapics card only reaches 60°C during intense gameplay. That proves something.

The 190 driver does not change anything for me (not in xp, vista or win7).

I'm pretty sure that there is still a lot of optimisation to be done by BIS. The question is: will people be patient enough, knowing that Operation Flashpoint 2 is coming in september and will run well on PC and consoles as it uses an engine that has been optimised since it was used in Dirt (the race game)?

[Emryse 2]

First: that is double :)

I have a GTX295 graphics card. The battleship menu screen gives me 130 fps. Ingame during campaign, it varries between 25-60 fps. I'm pretty sure my 2 gpu's are not used as in single gpu-mode I have the exact same frame rates. Hearing your story makes me believe that the game doesn't support sli for recent graphic cards (gtx200 series), but maybe for older cards it does. Or that there is a limitation in the game engine that limits the usage of all hardware resources. My grapics card only reaches 60°C during intense gameplay. That proves something.

The 190 driver does not change anything for me (not in xp, vista or win7).

I'm pretty sure that there is still a lot of optimisation to be done by BIS. The question is: will people be patient enough, knowing that Operation Flashpoint 2 is coming in september and will run well on PC and consoles as it uses an engine that has been optimised since it was used in Dirt (the race game)?

I had dual 8800 GTXs and just upgraded to dual 275 GTXs... you know how much of a difference it made in the demo benchmark? 3 stinkin' FPS!!! And I'm still averaging 38 FPS... I'm running a killer, top-of-the-line system, and I can't get more than 38 FPS on avg at 1280x1024???

You know... both Gamestop and Best Buy decided not to carry this game in store... I was going to buy it... but now I'm not so sure...

I don't care how cool the features of the game are - if a company can't take the efforts needed to fully and optimally utilize the hardware of today, then I'm going to go play some games that do.

It's really sad that ArmA 1 runs better on my rig than ArmA 2 does... it's the same damn engine - if anything, they should have improved the performance HUGELY over ArmA 1 - not the other way around.

Oh - and for those who say "just turn SLI off", or "reduce your settings"... I run Far Cry 2 and Crysis at max settings on this rig and get NO LESS than 59 FPS no matter what is going on or how intense the scene... don't insult me by implying that perhaps the problem is with my rig or settings on the game are set too high... this game should FULLY utilize SLI and muchly improve multi-core processing (not just for 2 cores, but for as many as 8 cores, or whatever the case may be) - and BIS should make whatever in-roads / relationships / development necessary jointly with NVIDIA to ensure that this happens (as far as game GPU utilization / optimization and SLI); not make excuses or put the blame all on NVIDIA, who by the way gladly releases updates to their drivers when companies work with them.

I just wish that BIS would give a very clear, straight-forward, no-BS, FULL, COMPLETE explanation for exactly what steps have been taken along these lines, how persistent the engagement, and exactly all reasons why this is still a problem, and state exactly their intentions. But I guess that's too much to ask?

I'm really sorry about my angst on this... I've been a huge fan of ArmA 1 - I've been looking forward to ArmA 2 for SO long; and I'm just really disappointed with how BIS has handled this whole thing... I don't want to hear (no offense) from just a bunch of other users whose level of experience and competence in these issues are varied - I want to hear from the experts, and hear the truth.

Edited July 19, 2009 by Emryse
Adding some additional thoughts...

[Yapab 10]

There seems to be some problems with the 200 series of cards I think.

My friend noticed a 50% improvement in the demo running in SLI vs single card.

Core2Duo 4ghz, 2GB DDR1066, 8800GT SLI.

However my friend with two GTX280 in SLI got less than 10% improvement with SLI.

Q6600 @ 3.4ghz, 4GB DDR1066 GTX280 SLI

I have to admit the point made above about Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising... its only about 2 or 3 months away and if it runs fast, has similar features to ARMA2... I think it will take many people away.

Yapa

[BLSmith2112 0]

Dumb question because I edited out an even dumber question as I didn't read the main post correctly: Does Physx acceleration help improve gameplay at all in terms of how physics preforms in your game? I mean will your car bounce around as much, etc in terms of physics? What about if you spawn 144 cars on each side and bombed them - that would seem like a situation in which physics acceleration would come into play. Now if you talk about a situation like that and its impracticality, well... you don't know me and the editor :D

I have to admit the point made above about Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising... its only about 2 or 3 months away and if it runs fast, has similar features to ARMA2... I think it will take many people away.

BIS4Life.

Edited July 20, 2009 by Victor

[Steakslim 1]

No. Physx acceleration if I remember correctly is something that the game has to be coded to support, and even today I think only a handful of games are supporting it (granted a bigger handful than before Nvidia bought the PhysX tech from Aegia), and since ArmA2's physics engine is not that much different from ArmA1, I doubt you'll find any increase in performance for what physics the game does have.

If you bombed 144 cars, most of them would explode nearly identical with limited movement. No big flashy 2 ton spinning pieces of metal flying about, tumbling all over the place like you'd see in more physic heavy games like Crysis or CellFactor: Combat Training (Cellfactor had full PhysX support, and is quite spectacular to watch).

[BLSmith2112 0]

Alright cool. Also, I dont have a physx control panel like Dwarden talks about... What then? I went to Nvidia's website and looked up the Drivers for PhysX and went to install them but my PC said I have them installed and it asks to uninstall. I uninstalled and reinstalled.

Any idea how to get that menu so I can complete this process fully?

[droezelke 10]

Alright cool. Also, I dont have a physx control panel like Dwarden talks about... What then? I went to Nvidia's website and looked up the Drivers for PhysX and went to install them but my PC said I have them installed and it asks to uninstall. I uninstalled and reinstalled.

Any idea how to get that menu so I can complete this process fully?

If you have an nVidia card from 8000, 9000 or 200 series, then all you have to do is download the latest GRAPHICS driver from nVidia. The physX drivers are included in the video-driver, so you don't have to do anything.

In the control panel from nVidia you will see a tab where you can enable or disable physX. But it is enabled by default, so no worries there.

[MaXyM 10]

I've checked latest beta drivers without any fps change.

Hover strange is, that on my config results don't depend on resolution nor fssa/aa.

I have tested with scene in the forest and get 19-21 fps for both drivers (most settings on normal, postprocessing disabled). When I changed resolution from 1920x1280 to 1600x1024 - nothing changed with fps. Postprocessing low eats about 5-7fps.

So.. My idea is, that bootleneck is the cpu. May C2D 6400@ 2.7GHz be too weak?

my config:

C2D 6400 OC 2.7GHz

Asus P5KC, 4GB DDR2/900 MHz

8800 320 GTS OC 600/950

[jaundiced 10]

I've checked latest beta drivers without any fps change.

Hover strange is, that on my config results don't depend on resolution nor fssa/aa.

I have tested with scene in the forest and get 19-21 fps for both drivers (most settings on normal, postprocessing disabled). When I changed resolution from 1920x1280 to 1600x1024 - nothing changed with fps. Postprocessing low eats about 5-7fps.

So.. My idea is, that bootleneck is the cpu. May C2D 6400@ 2.7GHz be too weak?

my config:

C2D 6400 OC 2.7GHz

Asus P5KC, 4GB DDR2/900 MHz

8800 320 GTS OC 600/950

are you using FRAPS? it doesn't work with ARMA if you are.. at least not for many here. some people think it might be counting the patched screen overlay for the Steam version.. which might explain why all of us with steam seem to get 21fps back regardless of settings.

just a thought.

[nzjono 10]

are you using FRAPS? it doesn't work with ARMA if you are.. at least not for many here. some people think it might be counting the patched screen overlay for the Steam version.. which might explain why all of us with steam seem to get 21fps back regardless of settings.

just a thought.

What a load of missinformed nonsense. It works perfectly fine with both Arma 1 and 2.

What you are referring to would be using FRAPS to record video at the highest settings which does have an effect on FPS. Using FRAPS as a screen overlay to show FPS in game has no discernable impact on the game.

Edited July 21, 2009 by nzjono

[Indecisi0n 10]

No. Physx acceleration does NOTHING for Frame rate, i checked with FRAPS.

[lt.white 10]

I bought arma 2 from steam and im having a stutter problem at the main menu and in the game. Some times its so bad i cant even start the game up. Im getting 30-60 FPS for 2 min than it drops lower than 10 and just locks up and keeps doing it. Not playable for me right now. I have the latest patch. I also have 4gb ram but i guess this only says 2gb bc i have win vista 32bit. i would really like for people to give advice

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 7/20/2009, 22:07:11

Machine name: GAMERSGLORY

Operating System: Windows Vistaâ„¢ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.lh_sp2rtm.090410-1830)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: XFX78I

System Model: XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI

BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG

Processor: Intel® Core2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz

Memory: 2046MB RAM

Page File: 849MB used, 3487MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 10

DX Setup Parameters: None

DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode

[Indecisi0n 10]

I bought arma 2 from steam and im having a stutter problem at the main menu and in the game. Some times its so bad i cant even start the game up. Im getting 30-60 FPS for 2 min than it drops lower than 10 and just locks up and keeps doing it. Not playable for me right now. I have the latest patch. I also have 4gb ram but i guess this only says 2gb bc i have win vista 32bit. i would really like for people to give advice

System Information

------------------

Time of this report: 7/20/2009, 22:07:11

Machine name: GAMERSGLORY

Operating System: Windows Vistaâ„¢ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.lh_sp2rtm.090410-1830)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: XFX78I

System Model: XFX nForce 780i 3-Way SLI

BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG

Processor: Intel® Core2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz

Memory: 2046MB RAM

Page File: 849MB used, 3487MB available

Windows Dir: C:\Windows

DirectX Version: DirectX 10

DX Setup Parameters: None

DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode

Welcome to arma where your system spec don't mean anything ! :bounce3: