Unplayable lag spikes, reboot crashes, loading screens

[maturin 12]

I have so many problems that I don't even know where to start, so I'll post them all here.

First of all, Chernarus seems to be unplayable. After a few minutes my frame rate drops precipitously and my screen simply stops moving. It's not a slideshow so much as the whole game just stops. Then the game starts losing track of what it is supposed to render, grass turns white, and the entire ground disappears. At this point, I can do nothing but quit.

This is often preceded by grid loading screens. The map is supposed to load in the background, yet I get spontaneous "receiving screens."

And after that, many objects don't even load for another minute or two. I often walk up to vehicles and buildings that are still clothed in the textures that appear from two miles of. Sometimes a transparent camo mesh is huge blurry polygon that is opaque and deformed. I have to stare at these objects for a while before they remember that they are supposed to load their textures.

Once or twice the screen has frozen without warning, no control, no sound, no nothing. I can't Alt-Tab, cntrl alt delete or anything, and have to reboot.

More worrisome are the blue screen of doom crashes. These are similarly spontaneous and consist of a Windows blue screen covered in white text. It disappears too soon to read, but I caught something about lack of memory. Then the computer reboots automatically. The error report did mention that Windows restarted to protect itself from possible damage, likely from my video card.

When I installed the game, I was using year-old drivers for an ATI Radeon 3800 series card (I can't figure out which one). Today I upgraded my drivers and I haven't experienced the two reboot crashes, yet my performance problems are worse, if anything. I play the game on XP and High settings, and by rights my rig should be able to handle them.

Bits of a dxdiag:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.090206-1234)

Language: English (Regional Setting: English)

System Manufacturer: System manufacturer

System Model: System Product Name

BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG

Processor: AMD Phenom 8450 Triple-Core Processor, MMX, 3DNow (3 CPUs), ~2.1GHz

Memory: 3070MB RAM

Page File: 521MB used, 4433MB available

Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS

DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

DX Setup Parameters: Not found

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

Display Devices

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

Card name: ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series

Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.

Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9501)

DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)

Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9501&SUBSYS_00000000&REV_00

Display Memory: 1024.0 MB

Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor

Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200

Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll

Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6962 (English)

DDI Version: 9 (or higher)

Driver Attributes: Final Retail

Driver Date/Size: 5/15/2009 23:38:15, 335872 bytes

WHQL Logo'd: Yes

WHQL Date Stamp: n/a

VDD: n/a

Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys

Mini VDD Date: 5/15/2009 23:58:45, 4069888 bytes

Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-D641-11CF-8278-0A20A1C2CB35}

Vendor ID: 0x1002

Device ID: 0x9501

SubSys ID: 0x00000000

Revision ID: 0x0000

Revision ID: 0x0000

Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_C ModeMPEG2_D ModeWMV8_A ModeWMV9_A

Deinterlace Caps: {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch

{335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch

[maturin 12]

err, help

I want nothing more than to play this game, but it just doesn't work.

[Bulldogs 10]

Try different ATI driver versions and update Directx

That may not help but it's worth a try.

I should mention that I run a 9800gt, which is a little better than 3870/3850's and I struggle on high at your same resolution.

Try taking all settings to low (turn Anti-aliasing and Anistrophic filtering off) then raise one at a time to see how your performance fairs.

Make sure you have Fraps installed to test out your framerate with each change.

[maturin 12]

Doesn't Arma have a console? If so, I bet they have a dev command that shows fps.

Btw, does anyone know a good place to find outdated ATI drivers? I upgraded from a June '08 driver to a June '09 and can't find anything inbetween.

[Hans Ludwig 0]

Doesn't Arma have a console? If so, I bet they have a dev command that shows fps.

Btw, does anyone know a good place to find outdated ATI drivers? I upgraded from a June '08 driver to a June '09 and can't find anything inbetween.

Try FileHippo

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ati_catalyst/

[von_paulus 0]

Doesn't Arma have a console? If so, I bet they have a dev command that shows fps.

Btw, does anyone know a good place to find outdated ATI drivers? I upgraded from a June '08 driver to a June '09 and can't find anything inbetween.

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/previous/Pages/radeonaiw_xp.aspx

[maturin 12]

Little improvement, if any. It is possible that I got rid of the blue screen crashes, but there is now way to be sure. Does Windows keep logs of the text in its error messages?

While fiddling with resolution and video settings I irritated my graphics card somehow and crashed the game. Then it crashed on startup every time, something about a Device Lost and my Video Card not supporting the (very small) resolution.

I rolled back my drivers to nothing and then reinstalled the latest. It got me back into the game but now my choices of resolution are different from my options for desktop resolution. It looks like widescreen or something. I'm scared to fiddle around with it because it may crash again.

[maturin 12]

Certain problems seem to be resolving themselves over time. The Armory and Editor often have near flawless performance, yet a busy, complex map with lots of AI like Manhattan is almost a slideshow.

It seems like there is almost too much of a performance range. This can't be SOP, can it? What am I lacking if greenery is well-optimized but AI brings the game to a halt?

[mr_centipede 31]

erm... how much power does your PSU have? and how much does your vid card requires? once in ARMA i always have this with my old AGP radeon 2600XT... then i install new hard disk and after a while the whole PC shutdown and refuse to reboot. i had 450watt PSU that time...

[maturin 12]

I'm not sure about my power source, but it's not the trees and buildings that are lagging up the screen, it's the campaign and AI.

I'll have to double-check all that stuff. I take for granted that it is sufficient since Oblivion and Empire ran on high settings.

[MadTommy 0]

Looks like your cpu is the bottleneck.

I'd guess changing your graphics settings make no difference?... if so it'll point to your cpu.

Upgrade needed. :(

And/or maybe your system is clogged with crap.. fresh install on OS or a good clean out might help.

[kremator 1065]

Just because you can run another game at high settings doesn't mean that you have a good rig. This game is a BEAST (thankfully!) and therefore you need to examine every component to see if it's up to the task. Hell, I updated my WHOLE PC so that I could play A2 and I'm sooo glad I did. No crashes (except on poorly designed maps) and no major graphics glitches that can't be fixed by flushing the video RAM.

[Bulldogs 10]

Arma 2 currently has an issue full addressing more than 1 core (hopefully will change in future update)

For people getting confused by this I'll try define it a little more.

2 CPU's shown as an example :

E7300 - 2.66GHz (stock) - 2 Cores - 3mb L2 cache

Q6600 - 2.40Ghz (stock) - 4 Cores - 8mb L2 cache

Now we have these 2 different CPU's. The Q6600 being the more expensive one due to additional cores/extra cache. On most games the Q6600 will run far above and beyond, but we're not looking at most games.

Arma 2 - This game doesn't fully utilize mroe than one core on full load, that said, the game is also a lot more CPU intensive than most other games.

The end result being that 2 factors will play a part in being the successful CPU. The speed of the processor and the amount of cache.

The 8mb cache on the Q6600 will allow the CPU to store up more information before processing it therefor streamlining the processing, whereas the E7300 will process faster.

In essence this means that the Q6600 will have less chance of freezing (buffering a new area) but the E7300 will have a higher overall frames per second count.

In other words, if you are below 2.4GHz (or even slightly above) then I'd suggest overclocking to get the most out of it.

That said, Arma 2's processing method puts extreme pressure on the CPU so watch the heat gauge very carefully, and if you start getting crashes or artifacts, then you may want to look for methods to gain extra cooling. Or at least lower the overclock and slowly raise it (5MHz at a time) until you find the crash, then lower it again and stress test.