Some tips for those experiencing performance issues...

[Eugefunk84 10]

Hey all,

I've been reading these forums since I got the game, so I thought I should contribute. When I first installed the game, I was VERY unhappy with the performance, but with a lot of tweaking, I now have it running very well, very stable (No exact figures here, I can just tell that its running much better). I will start off with my system specs...

Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Intel Core i7 920

6GB Ram

2x GTX285 in SLI

Here are the game settings I am using...

Visibility = ~2000

Interface Resolution = 1680x1050x32

3D Resolution = 1680x1050x32

Texture Detail = Very High

Video Memory = Default

Anisotropic Filtering = Normal

Antialiasing = Normal

Terrain Detail = High

Object Detail = Very High

Shadow Detail = Very High

Postprocessing = Very High

Obviously I am running the latest version of the game, and I am using Nvidia's official 186.18 driver. In order to use SLI, I am using Nvidia's driver patch. I WAS using EVGA's but I actually find that it runs a little better with the Nvidia one. (Probably doesnt make a difference since it's just a profile, but there are probably some other settings that it affects in the control panel). You can find the SLI patch here....

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/nvidia_sli_profile_patch_uk.html

Next step is changing the settings in NVidia's control panel, so fire that up. The relevant setting I used are as follows...

Antialiasing Mode = Application Controlled

Force Mipmaps = Trilinear

That was a big one for me. Before I used to get lots of texture loading stops where the game would just pause for several seconds to load up textures. Also, the LOD would change very slowly, so I was seeing a lot of close up textures in very poor resolution. This setting seems to have corrected those issues. (Bilinear would probably work as well, but I havent tried that).

Maximum pre-rendered frames = 0

This was also a biggy in regards to mouse lag. It's almost entirely gone now, I dont een notice what little there is now.

SLI Performance mode = Nvidia Recommended

Vertical Sync = Application Controlled

I also turned OFF Hyperthreading in my BIOS, as I dont use any programs that make use of it really, and I saw a big performance boost from that.

For my startup parameters, I have -winxp -nosplash.

I think thats about it. Two caveats though...

I have never had any crashing/lock-ups/BSOD problems, so these settings probably arent going to fix that if you ARE having those issues.

Secondly, as with all PC gaming, your mileage from these settings WILL vary depending on HW, so while I saw a big performance boost from these settings, you may or may not. However, I should mention that I AM running Vista 64, with SLI and a core i7, all things that apparently respond very poorly to this game, and have managed to salvage the performance.

I'm sorry I dont have any FPS numbers to post side by side. They may not be very conclusive anyways, since the FPS is still definitely not where it should be but it IS better, and the gameplay is MUCH more fluid, especially in towns. If anyone wants to compare FPS, please post them here as I would be curious what they are.

Sorry for the long post, but hopefully this will help out some of you. Feel free to ask any questions you'd like. Good luck!

[kylania 567]

Maximum pre-rendered frames = 0

It's interesting that you set that to 0 when the troubleshooting thread said to set it to 8.

I'll be upgrading to pretty much your specs here in a week or so, but dual 260s. Hopefully my performance will be good too! :)

[EDcase 87]

I tried it on 8 and that does introduce mouse lag.

I set it on 4 and seems to be better.

[Eugefunk84 10]

I never tried it with 8, but 0 works very well for me

---------- Post added at 09:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:53 PM ----------

anyone having any luck with these settings?

[TheXRatedDodo 10]

It seems that the lower you set that value, the less mouse lag you get but the higher you set it, the better performance you'll get.

[jaundiced 10]

It's interesting that you set that to 0 when the troubleshooting thread said to set it to 8.

I'll be upgrading to pretty much your specs here in a week or so, but dual 260s. Hopefully my performance will be good too! :)

troubleshooting guide is based on shooting fish in a barrel... it appears dwarden just plucks things from threads and posts them as solutions.

no offense - but this appears to be the method. not real solutions - just things that people claim work for them, despite nearly all of them giving myself and everyone i know zero performance boosts.

[B-oodThorn 10]

These guides may be usefull to you guys -

Nvidia Forceware Tweaking - http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html

Graphics and Display Guide - http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_1.html

[Eugefunk84 10]

troubleshooting guide is based on shooting fish in a barrel... it appears dwarden just plucks things from threads and posts them as solutions.

no offense - but this appears to be the method. not real solutions - just things that people claim work for them, despite nearly all of them giving myself and everyone i know zero performance boosts.

I agree with that to an extent, as I mentioned in the OP, it's pretty hit or miss depending on everyone's different configurations. However, be they methods or solutions, I can undoubtably say that after taking the steps above, my performance improved drastically.

That said, BIS has their work cut out for them. They have obviously released an unfinished product. We should not have to compensate for bad software with powerful, tweaked hardware. I'm sure a lot of the performance issues will be sorted out with time and patches, but until then, all we can do is apply these "methods" to mitigate some of the performance degradation.

[jaundiced 10]

I agree with that to an extent, as I mentioned in the OP, it's pretty hit or miss depending on everyone's different configurations. However, be they methods or solutions, I can undoubtably say that after taking the steps above, my performance improved drastically.

That said, BIS has their work cut out for them. They have obviously released an unfinished product. We should not have to compensate for bad software with powerful, tweaked hardware. I'm sure a lot of the performance issues will be sorted out with time and patches, but until then, all we can do is apply these "methods" to mitigate some of the performance degradation.

in short - what i was saying, or hinting at, is that these tips here are likely more useful than the official ones. which did jack **** for me and everyone I know.

looking forward to testing these out when I get home - thanks TC for sharing :)

i also found that using readyboost gives me a slight performance boost (vista feature, need a fast USB device) likely because I still use an IDE drive and have Arma installed on the same drive as the OS. might not benefit those with a different HDD for games, or faster HDD.

[Eugefunk84 10]

in short - what i was saying, or hinting at, is that these tips here are likely more useful than the official ones. which did jack **** for me and everyone I know.

looking forward to testing these out when I get home - thanks TC for sharing :)

i also found that using readyboost gives me a slight performance boost (vista feature, need a fast USB device) likely because I still use an IDE drive and have Arma installed on the same drive as the OS. might not benefit those with a different HDD for games, or faster HDD.

Ahh ok, I mistook your post, disregard. Let us know how the changes work out for you when you can, I'm interested to see if they benefit others systems as much as mine.

[kylania 567]

Well, I set mine to 0 last night and it was an entirely different experience! While I still got mouse lag in menus, but much less, general gameplay was fantastic! Smooth as silk and that's WITH Post Processing turned on (I'd had it off).

Currently using 2.13GHz Core2Duo, 2GB RAM, 8800GT.

Now, this might very well be caused by my computer realizing I'm about to replace it and trying to impress me. :)

[jaundiced 10]

i went through and used all of your suggestions TC.

i'm not sure what it was exactly that made the difference (HT disable, or trillinear change) but things are definitely smoother.

you should have a job at BI. you obviously are able to do more than they can - all of their suggestions have been useless so far to me :) not to mention their attitudes.

[deltron 10]

EXCELLENT, my man! I was getting about 30-40FPS in the editor mode (what I spent most of my time in), now after trying all your settings, I get a steady 50-60!

Intel Q6600 @ 3.0GHz (cooled with Tuniq Tower 120)

8GB RAM 4-4-4-12

BFG nVidia GTX 260 OC Maxcore 896MB

ASUS P5N32-E SLI Mobo

2x500GB Seagate HDDs 7200RPM

PCP&P 750w Power Supply

[nuggetz 0]

Ok, I just tried this and it made the game unplayable because of all the mouse lag it introduced. Not sure what's up with this profile but it screwed up my game. I'm reverting back to my old profile which at least made the game playable. Figured it was worth a try but no dice for me. Must be the bios change that made the difference cuz implementing everything else onto the latest nVidia profile for A2 SLI really broke the game for me.

Those of you that got better results, what did you change exactly? Everything down to disabling hyperthreading in the bios? What profile did you build off of? Was it a new one? I think it all boils down to luck as there are too many variables and based on my testing, a single parameter in your nVidia profile can make or break performance.

Edited July 11, 2009 by nuggetz

[jaundiced 10]

i disabled HT for CPU/GPU in bios.

i also disabled spread spectrum after reading that can cause issues.

i changed nvidia mipmap to trilinear.

seems to have worked a charm ;)

if the mouse lag is your issue then i would just play around with different 'max frames rendered ahead' until you get a setting you like. i find that has the most impact on mouse lag. you may also want to turn off pointer acceleration if you use this with you mouse (some mice give the option) as i've read in the past that this can cause mouse lag in certain applications.

Edited July 11, 2009 by jaundiced

[jaundiced 10]

just wanted to give this thread a bump for the weekend warriors.

it has drastically increased the performance / enjoyability for me :)

[stun 5]

I have never seen it recommended to set Maximum pre-rendered frames to 0. For those wanting to reduce mouse lag try with 2 and if that doesn't work try 1. Reducing it will increase FPS and hopefully reduce lag, but it will make the game less smooth.

[jaundiced 10]

I have never seen it recommended to set Maximum pre-rendered frames to 0. For those wanting to reduce mouse lag try with 2 and if that doesn't work try 1. Reducing it will increase FPS and hopefully reduce lag, but it will make the game less smooth.

it was recommended, and worked, for Far Cry 2.. but i haven't noticed much of anything changing for this game when adjusting it personally.

[Eugefunk84 10]

glad to hear that a lot of you are seeing improvements from these changes. As far as building off of a profile, after installing the NVidia SLI patch, just use the built in Arma2.exe profile, thats what the patch added.

As far as disabling hyperthreading, you should bite the bullet and do it, it was one of the best performance improvements for me, and chances are none of the stuff you run really show any noticeable improvements from having it on.

good luck!