Fast PC, but Bad FPS Regardless of What I Do - HELP!?

[Brew Crew 10]

Hi all - 1st post here, but I've been reading A LOT here since launch as I've seen many with similar issues. I have a pretty beefy pc and shouldn't be seeing such issues. I can play Crysis on Very High settings with all the eye candy and get a consistent 40-45 fps. This game kills my pc - even on normal and low settings.

System specs

Processor: i7 920 Factory Clock

Memory: 6 GB DDR3

Video: 2X Nvidia GTX 295 in SLI

OS: Windows Vista64

Downloaded via Steam

Issue:

Low FPS - ranging from an average of 21 - 26 depending on the video settings.

When the issue occurs:

- Single player campaign, city areas are the worst. I have to drop my view distance down to 650 meters in order to get any type of playable frame rate with normal-high settings.

- 1st night mission: Into the Storm - get about an average of 33-35 fps on high-very high settings and view distance of 3500 meters. Little lower than I would have thought, but still runs smooth as it doesn't dip below 25 fps at all.

- 3rd mission in the capital city: Harvest Red - fps drops to an average of 22. The only setting that appears to make any sort of difference is view distance. When I drop this down to 650 meters, I get an average of 26 fps. Not very playable though since it dips into the mid-teens fairly often and is choppy.

When the issue does not occur:

- In the Armory mode I have well over 60 fps on all Very High settings and AA maxed out with the view distance set at 3500 meters. Game looks great and runs silky smooth.

- In the Scenarios mode I get about 29-31 fps on Very High settings with AA maxed out and a view distance of 3500 meters. Still very playable as it holds the mid-upper 20's fairly consistantly.

- In my very brief multiplayer venture, I was getting about 27 fps on Very High settings with AA maxed out and view distance at 3500 meters. Again, not super high, but seemed very playable as it normally stayed above the 24fps mark.

Fixes Tried:

I've tried nearly all the fixes mentioned in the forums.

- Disabling the Physx setting in the Nvidia Control panel

- Installing the EVGA SLI enable patch

- -winxp

- -maxmem 2047

- older Nvidia drivers

- adjusted all combination of video settings all the way down to low and 600x800 resolution

- added SLI profile (copy of Crysis) with nHancer

- plus others that I can't think of off the top of my head

Benchmark Score:

I ran the dowloadable ArmaII Mark test and had a score of 2450. I've seen people post scores in the 5000+ range with computers that should be much slower than mine.

What gives? Has there been any break through? Why would my pc not run this game at all - even at low settings? And why do I see many people with lesser pc's stating that they're playing this game just fine with 40+ fps? Clearly I shouldn't be bottlenecking in my cpu and certainly not my gpu. This game appears to be a blast to play. I just wish I could find out first hand.

Hope anyone can give me some insight that I may not have tried. I've heard that Vista may be part of the culprit - but haven't seen much evidence of that yet. I don't have any other operating systems that I could load to test the theory. So if anyone has found Vista hampering their performance, please feel free to share your results.

Regards

[HaVoK-G2 0]

I just bought a second GTX 280 and tried it out with the EVGA SLi Enhancement 13 and 186.13 drivers. Tried renaming the exe to crysis64.exe aswell and no difference really.

SLi seems to work in the menu but in Singleplayer for me it seems to stick around 17-22 FPS no matter what I do, it doesn't matter if I put low terrain, low object or low AA, or even turn everything all the way up in a town. (I could run at all very high with a single GTX 280 and get similar performance)

Especially in a town such as Chernogorsk, I got SLi thinking it'd at least boost FPS 25%+ in towns but I guess not for now? With a single GTX 280 I was getting the same FPS in / around Chernogorsk. View distance 1600.

Forcing vsync off seems to have no effect either. This is :(

Specs:

Processor: q9450 @ 2.4ghz (stock, I've tried OC'ing 3.6ghz but it makes no difference in arma 2)

Memory: 4GB DDR3 1600

Video: 2x GTX 280 SLi

OS: Windows Vista 64

DL via Steam

Edited July 3, 2009 by HaVoK-G2

[Kenjineering 10]

I feel your pain.. I have the same issue and in the same areas and I have tried the exact same things. And I don't think we are experiencing the dreaded Micro-Stutter phenomenon.

I tried overclocking my CPU from 2.8Ghz (Stock + Turbo) to 3.5Ghz and got maybe a 2 FPS increase haha.

System Specs

Core i7 920 @3.5Ghz (Hyperthreading + Turbo Enabled)

6GB RAM (1333Mhz) Kingston

Intel DX58SO "Smack Over" Motherboard

2x GTX280 1G Sli

Nvidia Drivers: 186.18 + EVGA Sli Enhancer

PhysX: 909.04.28

Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 64bit

1000W PSU

Video Settings

All on Very High (but no AA)

Draw Distance I put down to 2.1 km.

1900x1200

Other Anomolies

The following has only occurred in the mission where you have to locate the escaped terrorists and only in the camp where there is the intelligence guy. Everything initially loads fine and looks as it should on Very High settings, as soon as I run a short distance they all turn to low settings. But if I zoom or go prone into the grass then it changes to a higher setting. If I just stand there and look at an area and wait for a bit more than a minute it will change to very high quality. Also the trees in the distance become blocks.

Trees in the distance and trees in the foregound are bad quality:

All the while chugging at <22 FPS with spikes of 13FPS

I changed all settings to their lowest settings and got a constant 29FPS. (Which is baaadd)

It is as if my computer is unable to handle the loadings required.

Honestly, I have spent more time fiddling with settings than actually playing the simulation/game. On the positive side, I have learnt a lot.

Edited July 3, 2009 by Kenjineering

[flake 10]

Please could you look at this thread?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=74401

Check your DPC.

choppy loading can be *eased*. check out the dpc stuff.

[binkster 0]

vista is both of your problems

[Kenjineering 10]

choppy loading can be *eased*. check out the dpc stuff.

Thanks for the link.

That forum was information overload! I read all 10 pages of that forum. And yes I should have just done as you said (check the DPC Stuff). I do not know how to interpret that forum. I feel it is more aimed at the black arts of ATI

I downloaded the DPC software and my idle latency is around 120μs ±20μs.

I also downloaded the D3Dbandwidth test and got:

VM to SM = 1409.7 Mb/s

SM to VM = 1658.46 Mb/s

Now, what that means... who knows.

I noticed you found a driver that caused a spike. Was this in idle mode or did you play a game and then minimise it to see what was going on with the DPC?

[shadylurker 0]

vista is both of your problems

thats why I can play every other game just fine in vista?:rolleyes:

[flake 10]

I noticed you found a driver that caused a spike. Was this in idle mode or did you play a game and then minimise it to see what was going on with the DPC?

idle. was spiking a lot. i just disabled everything in device manager that wasnt needed such as second LAN, floppy etc. i still see spikes but not as much and the latency hovers <20. i also stop every service and process that i can :cool:

[bangtail 0]

Thanks for the link.

That forum was information overload! I read all 10 pages of that forum. And yes I should have just done as you said (check the DPC Stuff). I do not know how to interpret that forum. I feel it is more aimed at the black arts of ATI

I downloaded the DPC software and my idle latency is around 120μs ±20μs.

I also downloaded the D3Dbandwidth test and got:

VM to SM = 1409.7 Mb/s

SM to VM = 1658.46 Mb/s

Now, what that means... who knows.

I noticed you found a driver that caused a spike. Was this in idle mode or did you play a game and then minimise it to see what was going on with the DPC?

You havent read much quite obviously or used the search function.

HT causes problems (stuttering) in Vista/Win7 and 186.18 is not a good driver for Vista/Win7 and A2.

182.50 solves alot of the problems. Turning HT off will likely get rid of the stuttering.

Eth

Edited July 3, 2009 by BangTail

[Kenjineering 10]

You havent read much quite obviously or used the search function.

Eth

LOL! Break me down and insult my intelligence before lending a hand. (Reminds me of bad engineering lecturers at uni!!!):rolleyes:.. but it's help none the less.

I never read anything explicitly linking or stating those facts in such a compact form. One of the first things I did was turn off HT and it didn't make any difference. I saw 182.5 as a solution but did not try it because some of these later drivers gave me slightly better performance in other games.

However now after reading your post I will give it a go.

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

vista is both of your problems

Vista is not the problem. It might not be helping much but to blame these things solely on just one OS is daft.

[Kenjineering 10]

I installed 182.5 and disabled HT. Re-installed the EVGA Sli Enhancement patch. Then worked my way through the other tricks I did before.

And there was no change in performance.

And those series of pictures I took are only localised to that 100m2 of land so forget them.

I am at the realisation that my PC mustn't be good enough for ARMA2 in those certain areas meantioned in the first post of this thread. In those same areas I get pretty similar performance with SLI enable and disabled. But at the menu screen with the air craft carrier I have seen it spike to 180FPS with Sli enabled and only maybe 100 with Sli disabled (so sli is definately working).

This makes me beleive that my problems are either:

1) Micro Stutter. (sli phenomenon of limiting frames)

2) Or something to do with that VM -> SM.. SM->VM stuff which I do not understand.

3) Some bad programming in ARMA2 (but I doubt it).

4) Crap computer.

I'm going to stop doing the campaign, too depressing. Thanks for the help!

Edited July 3, 2009 by Kenjineering

[rowdied 44]

I installed 182.5 and disabled HT. Re-installed the EVGA Sli Enhancement patch. Then worked my way through the other tricks I did before.

And there was no change in performance.

And those series of pictures I took are only localised to that 100m2 of land so forget them.

I am at the realisation that my PC mustn't be good enough for ARMA2 in those certain areas meantioned in the first post of this thread. In those same areas I get pretty similar performance with SLI enable and disabled. But at the menu screen with the air craft carrier I have seen it spike to 180FPS with Sli enabled and only maybe 100 with Sli disabled (so sli is definately working).

This makes me beleive that my problems are either:

1) Micro Stutter. (sli phenomenon of limiting frames)

2) Or something to do with that VM -> SM.. SM->VM stuff which I do not understand.

3) Some bad programming in ARMA2 (but I doubt it).

4) Crap computer.

I'm going to stop doing the campaign, too depressing. Thanks for the help!

Also try disabling PhysX and setting textures to normal and vid ram to very high.

The campaign is buggy for all of us and yes the game does need to be optimized alot more especially for the newer i7 cores.

[AwesomeWalrus 0]

I'm running a laptop with a 1.83 Ghz processor and I am getting 24 FPS constant with spikes of 19 here and there on the demo on normal. It kind of makes me feel good that my modest laptop is running this game better than some people with $2,000 machines modeled after the monolith from 2001. I might actually buy the game now if there's a chance that there's just some issues that need to be eased out before people can play this game at playable levels, because it's honestly getting kind of ridiculous if this game was released with such an insane level of hardware dependencies. It's like the whole game was designed and tested on the same computer, which obviously was not running any nVIDIA cards. I love BIS and think ARMA 2 is fantastic, but I can't understand all these problems with these supercomputers running this game.

Good luck fixing this problem though, guys. Some people have spent 400 bucks on a new video card just for this game and have had no luck, that must be an awful feeling..

[Kenjineering 10]

Also try disabling PhysX and setting textures to normal and vid ram to very high.

The campaign is buggy for all of us and yes the game does need to be optimized alot more especially for the newer i7 cores.

Yeah that fell under "other tricks" hehe, there are too many tricks to write down lol.

[bwf1975 10]

i've cured the fault, i went to trading standards with printouts of the forums and explained that the game store will not refund, they stepped in and told the store under the 1974 sale of good act, any product bought in the uk must be fit for the purpose it is sold for, that is law and the game store had no choice but to refund it, i am happy now and i hope many others follow suit, as this is the only way to show theses companys we will not tollerate crap, unfinished products.

[Kenjineering 10]

i've cured the fault, i went to trading standards with printouts of the forums and explained that the game store will not refund, they stepped in and told the store under the 1974 sale of good act, any product bought in the uk must be fit for the purpose it is sold for, that is law and the game store had no choice but to refund it, i am happy now and i hope many others follow suit, as this is the only way to show theses companys we will not tollerate crap, unfinished products.

Nicely done! However, mine is from Steam. I suppose you had to return the product aswell.

[bangtail 0]

Nicely done! However, mine is from Steam. I suppose you had to return the product aswell.

Your PC is fine.

I'm not sure what the problem is TBH. For myself, I really didnt like the performance under Win7/Vista 64 and I play it under Win XP 64.

It ran ok under the Win7/Vista but I find Win XP 64 much better.

Sorry if I was a little terse with you, CNN's MJ coverage is starting to melt my brain :(

If you use nhancer, try setting your Frame pre render to 8. And setting textures to normal makes a huge difference in performance. I have found that putting it any higher causes stuttering etc. Obviously this needs some work.

Eth

Edited July 3, 2009 by BangTail

[Brew Crew 10]

Basically it appears that there is no good fix. And it seems as if there aren't any good answers either.

I don't mean to keep comparing performance to Crysis, but Crysis requires a beast of a pc in order to play on very high. And I can achieve that at a consistant 45 fps and the game looks and plays fantastic. But this game doesn't even work on normal/low settings (23-25 fps with spikes into the mid teens) on the very same pc that tames Crysis, which is abosolutely ridiculous.

And the part that puzzles me the most is that some people with much slower computers can run this game with higher settings and get better frames than I can. I don't even know what to say. Guess I'll go play some Project Reality until there is word on the cause of poor performance on high performing machines.

[Rhodite 3]

Just hang in there chaps, while it may be very frustrating to have a superduper pc that cannot seem to run the game very well, I am well aware BIS are working very hard to iron out the issues.

Please do continue to feedback but keep it constructive and informative.

Thanks

[bangtail 0]

Basically it appears that there is no good fix. And it seems as if there aren't any good answers either.

I don't mean to keep comparing performance to Crysis, but Crysis requires a beast of a pc in order to play on very high. And I can achieve that at a consistant 45 fps and the game looks and plays fantastic. But this game doesn't even work on normal/low settings (23-25 fps with spikes into the mid teens) on the very same pc that tames Crysis, which is abosolutely ridiculous.

And the part that puzzles me the most is that some people with much slower computers can run this game with higher settings and get better frames than I can. I don't even know what to say. Guess I'll go play some Project Reality until there is word on the cause of poor performance on high performing machines.

Ridiculous comparison that I wish people would stop making. There are very few similarities between Crysis and A2 apart from the fact that they are both PC games.

I'm getting between 35-90 FPS in A2 (thats in the mission I am designing). No performance issues to speak of.

i7 975

Asus P6T6 Revo

12 Gigs Mushkin 12800 DDR3 RA

2 x Intel X-25 160 GB

2 x WD 1 TB "Black"

Plextor PX-B310SA

3 x GTX 280

NEC 2690WUXi Monitor

Auzentech Forte

Razer Mako speakers

X-52 Pro

Track IR 5

Windows XP 64 182.50 WHQL drivers

Resolution - 1920 x 1200

View distance - 3000

Texture detail - Normal (This helps alot. Having it any higher increases the chances of "texture lag")

Video memory - Very High

Anisotropy - Very high

Antialiasing - Normal

Object detail - High

Terrain detail - High

Shadow detail - High

Post processing - Off

Fillrate - 100%

Hyper Threading - Off

Eth

PS : I'm not trying to rub salt in the wound. I'm just pointing out that it does work for me, and others as well.

Edited July 3, 2009 by BangTail

[7 0]

ethne, a system like your's and still being unable to run at a constant 50-60 FPS is bad. Even in graphically/computationally intensive areas.

[bangtail 0]

ethne, a system like your's and still being unable to run at a constant 50-60 FPS is bad. Even in graphically/computationally intensive areas.

No it's not at all. Your beloved Crysis wont hit that with no AA or AF at the same Resolution using an i7 965 and 3 x GTX 280.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-gaming,2061-7.html

You l33t kiddies always get upset if you're not getting 200+ FPS. For me it plays well, or it doesn't. A2 performs exceptionally well for me WITH AA and AF.

Cheers,

Eth

Edited July 3, 2009 by BangTail

[Kenjineering 10]

Just hang in there chaps, while it may be very frustrating to have a superduper pc that cannot seem to run the game very well, I am well aware BIS are working very hard to iron out the issues.

Please do continue to feedback but keep it constructive and informative.

Thanks

ok thanks for sharing! I saw the ArmA II 'Basic Controls' Dev Diary, and the guy who was presenting that seemed like somone who cared

---------- Post added at 03:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:01 AM ----------

That's a very nice computer you have there Eth.

What does it run like in the main cities in campaign missions?

What is it's performance when everything is cranked up? (I would have thought you would be running it with max everything)

[Brew Crew 10]

No it's not at all. Your beloved Crysis wont hit that with no AA or AF at the same Resolution using an i7 965 and 3 x GTX 280.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-gaming,2061-7.html

You l33t kiddies always get upset if you're not getting 200+ FPS. For me it plays well, or it doesn't. A2 performs exceptionally well for me WITH AA and AF.

Cheers,

Eth

I'm either not communicating my point clearly, or you just don't get it.

A - The only reason I brought Crysis into this was to state that my pc is fast enough to run what was considered the most resource demanding game (perhaps it's now in second place) on very high settings. I am very well aware that they are two very different animals. I was just trying to set perspective.

B - With a pc that could run what was the most resource demanding game with all the eye candy on very smoothly, one would simply think that I could play Arma 2.

C - I never said I'm looking for 200 fps. But a consistent 35 fps would be great. And I don't even care if I can't get that on Very High settings. But not being able to get that at normal, or even low settings? THIS IS MY POINT. If you must, reread the very first post in this string.

So before you go off and insult some of us who would just like to play the game, try to comprehend the point being communicated rather than only seeing the word "Crysis" and minimizing the problems some of us are having with non relevant banter about how it's nonsense to compare the two. Or maybe you just need to turn the MJ coverage off already! ;)

---------- Post added at 12:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:40 PM ----------

Just hang in there chaps, while it may be very frustrating to have a superduper pc that cannot seem to run the game very well, I am well aware BIS are working very hard to iron out the issues.

Please do continue to feedback but keep it constructive and informative.

Thanks

Thanks for the info. I figured they are working hard on it and hope it's something that can get fixed in a reasonable amount of time, cause it looks like they have a gem of a game here.

Regards.