I'm so extremely !*#%@% tired of Windows Vista... Poor you, BIS.

[laggy 0]

OK, good for you, but you have a VERY high spec computer.

I'm not talking about the owners of 5 year old laptops, that installed Vista on their ancient machines. I'm talking about people who bought a new computer with Vista pre-installed.

Why would you make an OS that is resource hungry to the point that 75% of the users suffer from it, because they don't buy a high-end computer?

This is me (dual core 2 @ 3.0 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 8800GTX) moving two windows around, nothing else. I don't think its acceptable.

Edited August 1, 2009 by laggy

[Nutlink 10]

Why are they releasing Windows 7 only two years after Vista, it doesn't make sense if it really was a good product, does it?

People really are spoiled by XP. Look at every single OS prior to OS and how long MS took to release them. 2-3 years is average between releases with XP to Vista being the exception.

[Fiya 10]

Why are they releasing Windows 7 only two years after Vista, it doesn't make sense if it really was a good product, does it?

Because of slanderous, complaining, unknowledgeable and perhaps frustrated people that create these stupid rumors and spread this crap. It really is a good OS. You need to know how (And when) to use it though. Also Arma 2 is the only game I've had issues with, and its not just the fault of Windows. I wouldn't go back to XP, I have an a older computer and I have Vista on it. Its fine.

Also most OS' were released around 2 years from eachother.

Defrag your system well, find yourself a good defragging program. Or rollback the changes if you want to.

I sympathize for BIS (and all developers) because of the variety of hardware, manufacturers, and vital software relevant to gaming and computers these days. That is ludicrous. Oh and don't forget the public. That is the most terrible thing in the industry.

[laggy 0]

Defrag your system well, find yourself a good defragging program. Or rollback the changes if you want to.

OK, this will be my last rant in this direction, since I/we are getting off-topic... kind of.

You have two kinds of OS users:

1- Like me, I buy something and just want it to work. I don't care about the latest effects and options that are forced upon me. I have no interest in putting endless hours of work into something I shouldn't have to. The results are never satisfying or long lasting anyway and I don't have time for it.

2- Users that enjoy tweaking, customizing and spending days of finding the ultimate solution for their system. This also requires a good deal of knowledge.

A good parallel is motorcycles: You have people who love Harley's and people who hate them. If you want to be a satisfied Harley owner, you have to enjoy fixing it continuously. If you don't enjoy fixing and tweaking, you most likely get another bike, or buy a new one every two years, just like in the insane computer world.

I guess I wouldn't get a Harley if I was into motorcycles, but at least bikers have an option.

Edited August 1, 2009 by laggy

[harryohh 10]

To the OP,

Don't blame Microsoft because BIS can't make a game play as it should.

[Alex72 1]

Just a side note. I installed Win7 RC and i got a huge boost in performance compared to XP. I can up the graphics and still have the same FPS as i had in XP.

If you want to test just make a dual boot. Keep vista if you want and install Win7 on the side and install ARMA2 on it.

Im all Win7 now and it works awesome. Even with Aero and all "Lull lull" it takes around 450-500MB (XP took for me 360-80 with classic - no lull lull at all). So its worth a try.

Alex

[laggy 0]

To the OP,

Don't blame Microsoft because BIS can't make a game play as it should.

Well, must be quite hard to make/keep your program compatible with an OS that cloogs up on itself.

No wonder, however unfortunate, that many gamers go to concole instead, at least they are not "evolving" all the time... or is that incorrect too?

Edited August 1, 2009 by laggy

[private plowjoy 0]

OK, good for you, but you have a VERY high spec computer.

I'm not talking about the owners of 5 year old laptops, that installed Vista on their ancient machines. I'm talking about people who bought a new computer with Vista pre-installed.

Why would you make an OS that is resource hungry to the point that 75% of the users suffer from it, because they don't buy a high-end computer?

This is me (dual core 2 @ 3.0 GHz, 3 GB RAM, 8800GTX) moving two windows around, nothing else. I don't think its acceptable.

But how is that Microsofts fault? The manufacturer of the computer has decided whether Vista or XP gets deployed. If they decide to underspec the PC for the OS, how is that anyones fault but theirs?

Don't blame Microsoft, blame the likes of Dell.

Prebuilt PCs are notorious for manufacturers cutting corners or underspeccing to meet the demands of the marketplace sweet-spot prices. Thats why if you got a custom job from Alienware for example, you wouldn't have the same trouble.

---------- Post added at 02:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:28 PM ----------

Well, must be quite hard to make/keep your program compatible with an OS that cloogs up on itself.

No wonder, however unfortunate, that many gamers go to concole instead, at least they are not "evolving" all the time... or is that incorrect too?

I've now been running Vista 64bit for the last 2-3 weeks. I've customized the settings to tune things as much as I can.

I've got only anti-virus resident. Nothing else 3rd party is clogging my system.

I use Ultimate Defrag regularly to clean up all my drives and i've optimized frequently used files to high performance areas of my drives.

In 3 weeks, after installing my games collection back in it takes no longer to boot than it did fresh and it takes exactly the same amount of time to power down. As in, 4-5 seconds, max.

Nothing in my Vista 64bit install is 'bogging' my system down. The main reason being that I take responsibility for my rig and make sure it's maintained and running optimally for my purposes. Mainly gaming.

[Bulldogs 10]

It's true. Pre-builts should always be avoided if you have enough knowledge to build your own (or a friend to do it for you). Pre-builders usually use older parts, or lesser parts unsafely overclocked. They also have a bad habit of convincing people that bare minimum is enough. There's still some in my area that try to sell pre-built PC's with Vista and 512mb of Ram.

---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 PM ----------

I should also add that if you get the most powerful PC, then open performance monitor and move it around rapidly, any CPU will go to 100% (unless throttled)

[echo1 0]

I find it odd when people talk crap about Microsoft. I installed Ubuntu on a machine the other day and put windows right back on because it simply is NOT user friendly whatsoever. Dont get me wrong I like the fact there is a community of people working on Operating Systems like Ubuntu but in all actuallity Windows is straight forward from installation of the OS to installing applications.

...

If you want to praise Linux then your more than welcome to work mostly in terminal environment. Sure its got a desktop but in all honesty if you want to take advantage of installing new programs to configuration of the OS then you need the terminal. I run an Asterisk server at work and i connect to it via ssh and command line everything i need to do. Its annoying but the freepbx interface doesnt cover all the configs. Not to mention if you want to install something there is like a 75% chance your going to need some sort of damn dependency software to go with it. RPM or YUM commands here i come. The number of times im in Command Prompt window a year is maybe 10 to 15 times and that is to ping google to make sure im on internet. Occassionally ipconfig /release and /renew

I can see where you are coming from, but I don't agree. When you move over to a Linux/UNIX system, you gain certain complications and lose some other ones compared with Windows. Configuring certain things may be a pain, but you don't have to worry about things like anti-virus or anti-spyware etc. The software installation thing is an odd example, I think this is one area where Linux shines. You give the RPM/YUM example, which is fair enough if you are used to Linux in a corporate settings, but generally YUM is considered to be a pretty crappy package manager, and there are much better ones, like APT in Debian or Ubuntu which handles dependency issues pretty well.

Consider what happens if I want to install Firefox on Ubuntu compared with Windows -

Windows: I have to open a web browser, surf to the right page, pick the right language, download the thing manually, install, go through the installation program, and then I'm done.

Ubuntu: Open a terminal, type 'sudo apt-get install firefox, type my password and press 'y'. Few seconds later it's ready to use.

You wouldn't think twice about the Windows route because it's what you've been doing for 10-15 years (at least for me anyway) but if you showed both options to someone who never had to install a software package before, and I'd bet they'd say the Linux one sounds nicer. The terminal seems intimidating or whatever, but it's just another way of doing things, in fact, I'd go as far as saying that it's a way of doing it efficiently. Even from a tech support point of view, it's easier to tell someone to punch a series of commands into a terminal then it is to click on various different things. Also, Linux tends to give an awful lot more information than Windows when something doesnt work. Ever install something and find that that nothing happens when you click the icon on the desktop? With Windows, you have to play the guessing game. With Linux, you try running the app in the terminal and you generally get a specific error which tells you why it isnt running.

User friendly-ness is a very subjective thing, and it's generally influenced by what we are used to. If you suffered from mass memory loss tomorrow and you had to relearn how to use Windows tomorrow, you would find it no more easy to do that than to learn how to use Linux. If you go to Linux and expect it to be Windows, it's not going to work for you. If you are prepared to appreciate that it's not the same you can find that running it takes an awful lot less effort on your part than keeping Windows up and running.

Edited August 1, 2009 by echo1

[walker 0]

Hi all

Dual boot with a version of XP just for ArmA.

Kind regards walker

[Murklor 10]

Well, since Nvidia drivers weren't changed when it happened, I guess they aren't to blame?

Could be wrong, I'm not a programmer or computer specialist, just a simple mission designer.

Tried driver 190.38 with physX OFF, but ArmAII still stutters like crazy and many of my old missions are now unplayable.

Your own words :rolleyes:

I had the same Vista update several optionional updates. 190.38 driver was one of the options. No, I didnt choose it.

So the real question is: have you rolled back to a previous driver yet?

[Alex72 1]

Hi all

Dual boot with a version of XP just for ArmA.

Kind regards walker

I say again: I was on XP PRO SP3 and installed Win7RC and i got a huge boost in performance. To me that have been on XP forever and tested Win7 to see what the fuzz was (mates saying it was great) were amazed over the performance i got.

So anyway. XP will get you working for sure. But test Win7RC (its free for a while longer) and see if you get the same yihaa moment as i got. Even do a XP/Win7 dual boot maybe? But skip the failure hog Vista.

Just an idea.

Alex

[pj[cz] 2]

Not here to bash vista, never had troubles with it but i also just tried win7. And ill never go back, ArmaII now runs 30% better (FPS and armamark went from 3k to 4k), also many other games now runs better as CS-Source is now totally locked at 100FPS and in vista it sometimes drops to 60s. So I would say, if you can, win7 is the gaming choice. Other than that vista was just fine, but you know 30% better performance for updating my system is definitely cheaper than upping my pc, as im right at the time ill have to go from scratch :S and that would be kinda colstly

[laggy 0]

Tried driver 190.38 with physX OFF, but ArmAII still stutters like crazy and many of my old missions are now unplayable.

Your own words :rolleyes:

I had the same Vista update several optionional updates. 190.38 driver was one of the options. No, I didnt choose it.

So the real question is: have you rolled back to a previous driver yet?

Why should I try going back to the 186.18 drivers?

The stutter problem started again when they WERE my GPU drivers.

I only upgraded to 190.38 to see if that would help, and it didn't.

My PC doesn't update the GPU drivers unless I do it manually.

Before the da*n Vista update, turning physX OFF was the solution, now... NO!

It makes no difference if I use 186.18 OR 190.38 drivers.

You really should read my post with the Harley metaphor.

Laggy

Edited August 1, 2009 by laggy

[Bulldogs 10]

Could be the security update. Turning off physx is a workaround (basically prevents it from accessing certain areas of the system that may be causing problems)

I've noticed a lot of people saying that turning off physx doesn't help them. There's a good chance that a security update modified it to prevent the game from accessing the system a different way and as such it now runs through the same area that it would with physx on.

Basically, my theory beehind it is that with Physx on it attempts to access most physics based things through the GPU. If it's not programmed to access the GPU that way then it go's back to the CPU to handle the physx (should note that games that don't use physx usually only access physic based information on the GPU for some small things like grass). Disabling Physx tells it that it doesn't have to check the graphics card so it sends it straight to the CPU (like taking a shortcut through the alley instead of walking al the way around)

Of course, the path that was being accessed with physx off may have been blocked in the security update forcing it to go via the GPU now.

At least, that's my theory on the situation.

---------- Post added at 10:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:01 AM ----------

Add : as a side note I should mention that the security update for Visual C++ is for the 2005 edition, which wasn't ever meant for Vista, it was never updated properly on compatibility.

try going here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9B2DA534-3E03-4391-8A4D-074B9F2BC1BF&displaylang=en

and download the 2008 version.

[njmatrix 2]

I find it odd when people talk crap about Microsoft. I installed Ubuntu on a machine the other day and put windows right back on because it simply is NOT user friendly whatsoever.

Well that's too bad I have uninstalled Ubuntu on probably 100 systems and it is well recieved. Rarely do I have a windows person bawk. Gamers are harder to please tho due to Linux not being supported by most games(this includes me) But I have 2 laptops that run Ubuntu sweetly and have yet to have a problems, in contrast my window machine has been thru 2 reformats since I did those Ubuntu installs.

Edited August 2, 2009 by njmatrix

[nuggetz 0]

People need to understand that simply rebooting their PC can change the performance of your game. You could have a nVidia profile issue. I once had the game running so smooth that I was afraid to reboot because I knew it would be gone. Sure enough, I never got it back. Between profiles, config file changes, graphic settings, and the game autodetecting shit, you're almost never guaranteed the same performance. You may have even changed an ingame setting without knowing it, installed an update, rebooted and cried. I can't count how many times I set scenecomplexity in the config file only for it to get overwritten after changing settings within the game. You never know what you're running unless you make backups of all those config files and profiles.

[mrcash2009 0]

Textures Normal and video memory High is done, made it slightly better. Thanks!

Don't get this part. You lowered view distance to 1600 and then you could for some reason put it on 3000 ???

I still don't get how the performance can be affected over night, after Vista has done one of its "fantastic" updates. Still feel sorry for BIS.

Laggy

Too explain, i was saying to you to test your rig via setting it to 1600 then upping it each time. I did the same, after sorted my graphics settings then moving to XP I could then set it to 3000 in those area and it did not jitter and plutter half as much.

Hi all

Dual boot with a version of XP just for ArmA.

Exactly the setup I have and I could directly compare using same profile (and sharing same install folder with some folder swapping) and XP came out on top (for me).

Edited August 2, 2009 by mrcash2009

[laggy 0]

Thanks Bulldogs and MrCash!

I'll try all the ideas so far, but I have little hope of solving this, maybe next patch... :banghead:

[laggy 0]

Interesting observations regarding my stutter problem:

Like I mentioned in the first post, the stutter problem originally went away with physX turned OFF, until my wonderful Vista updated itself. Then my problem returned again and now there is no solution.

I have created a "Lag test" mission in Chernogorsk, with many groups.

1- The stutter has absolutely nothing to do with number of units on the map (within viewDistance), so it is not an "overload" lag. One single unit in the same place makes no difference. Also, it only happens when moving, like every 20 meters or so in any direction, almost like some kind of invisible grid. The stutter reoccurs with even intervals if I keep moving in the same direction.

2- While playing around with physX ON or OFF before starting the game + turning video memory to Normal or Very-High, I have noticed this: The game can all of a sudden run great with no stutter. Steady FPS between 17-23. I then turn off ArmAII and restart with the identical settings... stutter hell. Terrible FPS drops down to as low as 6... unplayable.

There is obviously something with the settings that doesn't stay after turning off ArmAII.

When the game runs great I have just turned physX ON or OFF, before starting up, but the good FPS status no longer last for more than that particular ArmAII session.

Any ideas?

Laggy

Edited August 5, 2009 by laggy

[Fiya 10]

Interesting observations regarding my stutter problem:

Like I mentioned in the first post, the stutter problem originally went away with physX turned OFF, until my wonderful Vista updated itself. Then my problem returned again and now there is no solution.

I have created a "Lag test" mission in Chernogorsk, with many groups.

1- The stutter has absolutely nothing to do with number of units on the map (within viewDistance), so it is not an "overload" lag. One single unit in the same place makes no difference. It only happens when moving, like every 20 meters or so in any direction, almost like some kind of invisible grid.

2- While playing around with physX ON or OFF before starting the game + turning video memory to Normal or Very-High, I have noticed this: The game can all of a sudden run great with no stutter. Steady FPS between 17-23. I then turn off ArmAII and restart with the identical settings... stutter hell. Terrible FPS drops down to as low as 6... unplayable.

There is obviously something with the settings that doesn't stay after turning off ArmAII.

When the game runs great I have just turned physX OFF, before starting up, but the settings no longer last for more than that particular ArmAII session.

Any ideas?

Laggy

You have edited a profile or config, then marked them as 'read only' perhaps. This prevents the game from overwriting them, therefore keeping them till the next session.

[laggy 0]

Thanks,

So what solution do you suggest?

[novafluxx 10]

Dear BIS,

I can only sympathize with your most likely frustrating efforts, trying to make a program run well under Windows, especially the infamous Vista.

My story:

Patch 1.02 (newest) and driver 186.18 with physX OFF made my 8800GTX run ArmAII better than acceptable. It was running great.

Then of course Windows Vista starts its annoying routine to "update" itself and there is no way of knowing if these new updates are good or bad for your system. You are just recommended to do it.

After this so called "update", ArmAII now runs WORSE than ever and it has nothing to do with your work, not your fault what so ever. I'm just seeking for some mutual understanding here.

Tried driver 190.38 with physX OFF, but ArmAII still stutters like crazy and many of my old missions are now unplayable.

Poor you that have to deal with this crap, and on top of that, get blamed for it. I can't tell you how much I sympathize with your situation.

I think it would be a good idea to make your games for Mac as well. I would buy one just for ArmAII, and your future releases. At least then, all this bullsh*t with Windows and the compatibility issues would be much less of a problem.

Have you thought about this yourselves?

Sincerely,

Laggy

You want to let Microsoft control your computer? You just let it install any/all updates it wants? Then you sir, don't know how to take care of your own computer. So sorry for your problems.

[laggy 0]

You want to let Microsoft control your computer? You just let it install any/all updates it wants? Then you sir, don't know how to take care of your own computer. So sorry for your problems.

Thanks! very helpful indeed :lecture: