Windows 7

[spork 10]

i have seen a couple of people on the forums saying that windows 7 increases fps with arma 2, so i thought i would try it myself. I installed windows 7 RC build 7100. It definitely feels like a stable and polished vista. i can also confirm that it did increase fps in arma2. when i had vista i got an arma mark score of 2800, then 3200 on the second try. with windows 7 i got 3200 then 3800 on the second try. just thought i would post this to help anyone whose thinking of changing from vista to windows 7.

also does anyone know if you can easily upgrade to a newer RC build? thanks :P

[Cpt.Goose 10]

Windows 7 is the next best thing since Windows XP. I love it and it's not even out of beta stage yet... Microsoft finally got it right again!

[Greg 0]

Running the demo benchmark, I get almost 20% (5-8fps) speed increase running in Windows 7 (64 bit) compared with Vista (32 or 64 bit).

I'd like to hear from BIS or the community exactly what is going on with the game because those figures are reproducible but make no sense. No other games or applications show a speed increase between Vista and Win7, in fact most games are slightly slower with Win7 64 compared with Vista 32.

I do not have WinXP on the same computer or I'd bench XP, Vista, Win7.

[R34P3R 11]

I have also running Win7 64Bit RC1 and i love it to !! No problems found yes.. only my Powersupy of 500W is to low for my new Videocard.

[Fabregas 10]

Mine also went up from using 7 over Vista, but if you've installed a nice clean version on a new partition might it just be that the system is less cluttered?

[mcallon 10]

The clean install will definitely help with general OS efficiency, but it's also important to note that Windows 7 is less of a resources hog than VISTA, and that's probably making the larger difference.

Just my two cents.

Mike

[datter 0]

How to frame rates in Win7 compare to Win XP I wonder? I'm contemplating an eventual move from Win XP 32 bit to Win 7 64 bit. I'll only do so if there's a good real world performance reason to of course.

[wooly-back-jack 10]

I'd like to know that too as I am on xp Pro 32bit

[bangtail 0]

Windows 7 is the next best thing since Windows XP. I love it and it's not even out of beta stage yet... Microsoft finally got it right again!

Actually it's at the release stage now, the RTM is floating around. You won't see it in retail form until October but it is going to be officially RTM before the end of July.

[wooly-back-jack 10]

has anyone been getting the same CTD or BSOD's with windows 7 I wonder?

[bangtail 0]

has anyone been getting the same CTD or BSOD's with windows 7 I wonder?

There is a known issue with the Hyper-threading, i7's and A2. That is why I play A2 in XP 64 and not Win 7. Turning HT off helps but the performance is still better under XP 64 for me and I don't have to turn HT off.

Eth

[wazandy 10]

There is a known issue with the Hyper-threading, i7's and A2. That is why I play A2 in XP 64 and not Win 7. Turning HT off helps but the performance is still better under XP 64 for me and I don't have to turn HT off.

Eth

Is this a patchable issue? I've had pretty constant issues with my i7 and 295, and I'm very reluctant to roll back my OS.

I'm running Vista64, if I go to BIOS and turn off HT - will that improve A2 but hinder other games or is it just a rarely used feature?

Cheers.

[bangtail 0]

Is this a patchable issue? I've had pretty constant issues with my i7 and 295, and I'm very reluctant to roll back my OS.

I'm running Vista64, if I go to BIOS and turn off HT - will that improve A2 but hinder other games or is it just a rarely used feature?

Cheers.

HT generally won't affect gaming at all. In some cases switching it off it will actually speed up certain games. It's real power is in apps that are specifically written to take advantage of it.

So, in summary, it won't do you any harm and you probably wont notice any negative side effects.

Eth

[wazandy 10]

HT generally won't affect gaming at all. In some cases switching it off it will actually speed up certain games. It's real power is in apps that are specifically written to take advantage of it.

So, in summary, it won't do you any harm and you probably wont notice any negative side effects.

Eth

Great. Thanks mate.

[bangtail 0]

Great. Thanks mate.

My pleasure :)

[flake 10]

i found 32vista and 64Windows7 equally crap for fps

[Greg 0]

i found 32vista and 64Windows7 equally crap for fps

That is interesting. If you could back that up with figures and system spec we might be able to narrow down what causes the apparent speed up on some systems. I presume you are making a general statement that the game performs poorly.

[MaXyM 10]

I can confirm that A2 works stable on Win7 64bit with 4GB of ram.

[wooly-back-jack 10]

would I be ok with 2gb u reckon? I have it downloaded and am thinking of making a partition and trying it out dual boot.

[-s!Gm4- 10]

I can confirm that A2 works stable on Win7 64bit with 4GB of ram.

At least for you.

Here are quite some other folks around - including me - who suffer from CTD's, BSOD's and stuff like that frequently.

I'd be nice to know what hardware you are running :)

[Bad Pilot 0]

I'm fine with Win7 64-bit and 4GB.

Ref further RC versions of Win7, there won't be any. The RC1 was released 99.999% ready.

[MaXyM 10]

At least for you.

Here are quite some other folks around - including me - who suffer from CTD's, BSOD's and stuff like that frequently.

So, it is not about W7 but about drivers for your hardware.

BTW: I've checked A2 on W7 with 2GB of RAM and it works also. However it turns the system to memory swapping which affects graphics (textures loaded with the delay etc). After installing 4GB it works almost perfect. Almost because FPS too low as for my system spec. But it is another tale.

[echo1 0]

At least for you.

Here are quite some other folks around - including me - who suffer from CTD's, BSOD's and stuff like that frequently.

I'd be nice to know what hardware you are running :)

BSODs are more of a hardware/driver thing. Unless you're running Windows 95 the odds of software causing one is pretty negligible. What sort of hardware are you running?

[-s!Gm4- 10]

Obviously, you dont read sig's too often, do you ? ;)

No, I never said that this _definitely_ was a Win7 Issue. But it may be. As well was a RAM-Issue. Or a game issue. I even go so far to say that nobody knows what kind of issue this is. Here are enogh ppl around who litterally tried everything but no solution worked for them. Now, they're sitting it out, waiting for the next patch.

Right atm I deinstalled 4 Gigs of RAM to not encounter the 8GB RAM-Problem. I tired of all those workarounds, patching stuff and so on. But at last I tired of'em.

I still got my frequent CTD's, BSOD's (Playing-time between crashes: 5-180 min). Even when clocking the CPU to stock, clocking my gfx-card down from stock-oc to 285-basic clocks and all this stuff.

I installed Win several times anew, updated my BIOS, tried ALL variants of the nvidia drivers for Vista and XP starting from 179/180 to the up-to-date ones (ofc with a clean deinstall/install) and checked my RAM. I'm always monitoring my CPU/GPU temps, and I bought a new PSU even when none was necessary but, ofc, I learned that _after_ installing the new one ;) ).

Yes, I could do a more _systematic_ troubleshooting - but at the moment I haven't got the time. And, I think, something has to be faulty in the game itself when all other applications run fine.

Hell, I dont blame the guys from BIS. Errare humanum est. I think this "incompatibility" or ..."lacking tolerance" for some hardware-configurations will be fixed with some of the next patches.

Now, hand me another cup of tea, will ye? :)

[Steakslim 1]

decided to give Windows 7 32bit a test run today. I have to say I like it a lot, but more noticably, its performance with ArmA2 increased greatly. Before on Vista, I couldn't break 35fps max in all low settings in MP, even if I turn my resolution down to 1280x720. Now at my native 1680x1050 res, I can play on all very high, minus Objects which is set to Normal, and AA disabled, and get spikes up in the 60's. While the framerate isn't exactly stable (can drop into the 20's when looking at big cities and heavy amount of particle effects while zooming in), it is a very enjoyable, playable experience granted my previous experience was tolerable, but damn.

Unfortunately this may not be the same for everyone as it seems evident from other posts, but for anyone having terrible troubles with performance in Vista, I'd suggest trying out Windows 7 to see if you get an increase.