Poor performance...

[Bulldogs 10]

Yet he still comes on the forums to insult the developer every chance he gets...

Anyways, he's semi right, it's the games fault but in many (most) cases a few tweaks and workarounds help if not remove the problems, but for some people it doesn't help

My suggestion would be to make sure you have view distance below 1600, force v-sync off in nvidia control panel, and turn hyper-threading off under Bios.

Also try starting the game with -winxp, you may also want to try in windowed mode to see if you get better performance (start the game with -window)

[bangtail 0]

Take everything people say here with a pinch of salt, it's not your system that's at fault here, it's the game that's the problem! You will find that hours of tweaking lead to nothing. Also, it's also quite obvious that reinstalling a new OS will improve performance! I mean, what program doesn't run better after a new reinstall? And if a reinstall is really what this game needs to get it running better, then you will be reinstalling a new OS every couple of months. I gave this game away to a friend because I got that sick of it, I will never buy another Bis product again.

Or you can listen to this guy who has the distinction of NEVER having offered any kind of constructive information in over 100 posts.

It's always the same rant. Don't listen to the people who are trying to help; instead listen to this bitter malcontent who seems to be in need of a 40oz of his namesake (and doesn't even own the game anymore).

Seriously Jack, we get it, you don't like A2. Now that you've given the game away, go play something else and enjoy life.

Eth

Edited August 16, 2009 by BangTail

[Jackdaniels 10]

Yet he still comes on the forums to insult the developer every chance he gets...

When I pay for something I have every right to comment about it for as long as it takes to be fixed. You might be foolish enough to let someone rip you of but I don't take it lightly. Also, if you like the game so much I suggest you go and play it, instead of spending all your time in these forums pretending that you can fix it. I was trying to save the poster wasting his time here. There is nothing wrong the his computer >IT'S THE GAME!!< What is so insulting about saying a game is broken when it is????

[bangtail 0]

When I pay for something I have every right to comment about it for as long as it takes to be fixed. You might be foolish enough to let someone rip you of but I don't take it lightly. Also, if you like the game so much I suggest you go and play it, instead of spending all your time in these forums pretending that you can fix it. I was trying to save the poster wasting his time here. There is nothing wrong the his computer >IT'S THE GAME!!< What is so insulting about saying a game is broken when it is????

How do you know anything about his PC? It could well be his PC, it could, equally, be the game. The simple fact is that you bring nothing to the table. You offer no helpful advice and have one diagnosis - "It's the game", which isn't always the case.

All that sticking around here complaining and potentially misdiagnosing people's problems proves is that you appear to have an abundance of spare time.

There are plenty of people here who have been helped by the advice they have found here. I have received several "thank you" PMs and I'm sure I am not alone.

Eth

PS : If I felt ripped off (which I don't), I'd state my case and move on. I wouldn't act like a lunatic even after I'd uninstalled the game and sold it.

Edited August 16, 2009 by BangTail

[Jackdaniels 10]

How do you know anything about his PC? It could well be his PC, it could equally be the game. The simple fact is that you bring nothing to the table. You offer no helpful advice and have one diagnosis - "It's the game", which isn't always the case.

All that sticking around here complaining and potentially misdiagnosing people's problems proves is that you appear to have an abundance of spare time.

Judging by all the comments in these forums I would say that it's the game and not his pc. Why don't you ask him if it's happening in all his games before telling him to reinstall a new OS for just this one? That is if you want to diagnose a problem correctly.

LOL - please don't talk to me about an abundance of spare time when it appears to me that you live in this forum.

Edited August 16, 2009 by Jackdaniels

[bangtail 0]

Well, Judging by all the comments in these forums I would say that it's the game and not his pc. Why don't you ask him if it's happening in all his games before telling him to reinstall a new OS for just this one? That is if you want to diagnose a problem correctly.

LOL - please don't talk to me about an abundance of spare time when it appears to me that you live in this forum.

Even though you're wrong about the amount of time I spend here, I :

A : Play and enjoy the game

B : Try to help people with problems

You, by your own admission, don't play or own the game and offer the same "Don't listen to anyone but me, it's the game" "solution" in every post.

Your logic leads me to believe you don't have a lot of experience with PCs as it's very easy for the majority of games to work while one doesn't and for the problem to be directly related to hardware, the OS or any number of other factors that are not caused by the game itself. I'm NOT saying it's always the case, but it's quite plausible.

I don't mandate installing a new OS. There is a time and a place for that but not for 1 game. The same thing goes for the suggestion of OCing to solve problems. OCing can cause more problems than it solves, especially if you don't have the requisite experience.

I think you'd be a lot happier if you went and did something you enjoyed as opposed to copying and pasting the same response to anyone who has a problem. If nothing else, it's unhelpful.

Cheers,

Eth

PS : One other thing, you said something about "judging by the comments on this forum", compared to the amount of copies this game sold, the amount of complaining is relatively insignificant. There are definitely problems but they are nowhere near as extensive as you seem to think they are.

Edited August 16, 2009 by BangTail

[Kirq 0]

My 2 cents on this subject:

My rig

c2d e6550 (2.3 GHz)

3 GB RAM

GF260

300 GB sata 2 HD

Arma performance on my rig is just awful. I have solid 15-25 FPS no mater what settings. The FPS is almost same with everything on Medium and everything on V High. Of course I have better FPS on editor with empty island, but when I launch sp campaign my FPS goes way under playable level. I hope Arma2 will receive huge performance/tweak patch because it would be damn shame if game with such a huge potential would fail because bad otimisation.

[Jackdaniels 10]

Your logic leads me to believe you don't have a lot of experience with PCs as it's very easy for the majority of games to work while one doesn't and for the problem to be directly related to hardware, the OS or any number of other factors that are not caused by the game itself. I'm NOT saying it's always the case, but it's quite plausible.

Well your logic has deserted you, I actually know a hell of alot about computers, enough to know that this game is broken. I mean, isn't this why we are getting patches for the game.. to try and fix it?

Edited August 16, 2009 by Jackdaniels

[bangtail 0]

Well your logic has deserted you, I actually know a hell of alot about computers, enough to know that this game is broken. I mean, isn't this reason why we are getting patches for the game.. to try and fix it?

Doesn't seem like it but at any rate, all PC games get patches (and they address many different things). As you can see, the patches so far have had little to do with performance and more to do with AI and other gameplay related stuff.

Again, sorry it didn't work for you and good luck finding a game you enjoy.

Eth

[Masterfragg 10]

Judging by all the comments in these forums I would say that it's the game and not his pc. Why don't you ask him if it's happening in all his games before telling him to reinstall a new OS for just this one? That is if you want to diagnose a problem correctly.

LOL - please don't talk to me about an abundance of spare time when it appears to me that you live in this forum.

Dude it is the game not the computer lol

Right about now I'm ready to hang up my gloves and just declare Arma2 DOA.

As for Ethne saying "If OFP2 keeps the Dullards away from this" I stopped reading that as he put him self on a mighty high horse.

Right so players that enjoy Arma 2 are better than normal gamers? get over yourself boy...I enjoy the BF series, I enjoy the Resi series, I like COD I like OFP and Arma 1.

Just because us gamers enjoy other games doesn't make us any less intelligent or any less of a gamer does it?

Realism isn't everything and this game has proven being realistic doesn't make the game good or in this case playable.

Fuck me this game is FAR from realistic!!! People POP INTO CARS!!! Hands don't move on steering wheels!!! It may be cosmetic to some but think about it! Arms and hands that move on a wheel can make the difference between a 9mm hitting you in the chest or deflecting! Or your lining up a shot as someone is getting into a jeep or something and as you take the shot...they disappear and are suddenly Harry f-ing Pottered into the damn jeep! (You watch as the players on arma 2 servers suddenly hit rock bottom on that bombshell :P) But it's FUN! thats why you play it! RIGHT!?

I hate retarded people that bash players of other games! Or consoles for that matter whats wrong with console games? and don't give me that crap about keyboard+mouse=>controller because on a console everyone is on a damn controller so it doesn't matter.

Consoles gamers are no less gamers than us after all I went from PC gaming to console gaming and back! it's just all about where the games are and PC gaming is a very dying breed as piracy raped it to death.

You+highhorse=epicfail....Also you say out of the box it worked pretty well for you? LOOK AT YOUR COMPUTER.

Some of us can't spend that much on computers and that spec computer is certainly not on the Recommended system requirements are they?

So saying you get 50/60 and you've seen 120fps is completely bloody terrible considering your rig.

Although it is true what you say about FRAPS people do tend to watch that a little too much but I don't. I just can't play games that run jerky...Well I can I just point blank refuse to...After all if a game doesn't run at around a steady 40fps on all the lowest settings then it's just a really badly made game...

---------- Post added at 01:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:32 AM ----------

The thread count is interesting, I would have also expected that a game which takes advantage of multicore CPUs would use more threads. I checked it quickly and there were something like 17 threads being used, can't remember the exact amount though. Maybe this is the reason for relatively low CPU utilization on my quad core rig - that there is not enough parallelism going on. I might be wrong though - I'm and amateur programmer as well. (However I did took one course of parallel programming in school and I know what a pain in the ass it can be to do stuff in parallel instead of sequentially.)

I _guess_ that this is where the age of this Real Virtuality engine shows. It was not designed for multicore CPUs in the first place. With multicore GPUs the situation is similiar. For example with my ATI 4870x2, the Crossfire is working (both GPUs are utilized) but in the campaign (again in mission "Razor Two" which I'm using as a reference) disabling one GPU (by disabling Catalyst AI in Catalyst Control Center) does not affect FPS at all.

Yes, of course improvements have been made in the game engine over time, but I have a gut feeling that in order to get proper multicore (CPU and GPU) support the engine needs major overhaul or needs to be written from the scratch - which is too big of an operation to be released as a patch. I really hope that I'm wrong though :) (and that wouldn't be the first time)

Well said. That is how it should be. But as Ethne stated, this sadly isn't the case with PC gaming anymore. In my opinion, Internet changed that since it's possible to easily distribute patches. Sorry about derailing :)

Yes sadly it is a problem with the engine by the looks of it.

And to be honest I wouldn't be so annoying with my comments if BIS stopped releasing the "How to use WSAD for dummies" and "What is a mission editor...For dummies" until they fixed the game and the announcement of the standalone EXP is just salt into the wound.

I mean I wouldn't have any problems at all I'd get on with not playing the game if BIS just turned round and said "YES! we have located the problem! it's our CODE!! Sorry guys! we'll give you a rebuilt engine in a year or so until then we are sorry" That would make me very happy as we'd have an ETA on a damn fix!

I don't mind companys making hugeeeeee errors releasing a game before it's ready if they only be honest and feed us real information rather than tidbits of bullshit masked in purfume! At least they released 1.03 to stop nades knocking down houses on impact (didn't even know that bug exsisted) and no...that isn't me being sarcastic I'm actually serious...

And yes I guess Ethn was right when he said games just arn't released in the states they should be most of the time. But at least most are playable.

I mean come on...You guys see the machine in my sig...There is no reason that it shouldn't run properly (Albeit AMD are the weak link nowdays)

It's actually the same with console games as well now...I own all 3 current gen consoles and I cannot explain how many patches every single game I have has to download when I install new hdd's or whatnot it's ....Sick...to say the least.

But background devs like BIS really need to keep things going, at this rate they are hugely isolating the player base due to technical...Hitches...We'll call them hitches....

But hey lets drop this subject I'm actually going to work on seeing what I can find out...Rather than moaning my arse off...which doesn't solve anything.

I am sorry guys I just...get really frustrated you know? Sorry BIS and you guys.

Edited August 17, 2009 by Masterfragg

[Bulldogs 10]

Facts :

- There's some optimization issues with the game that make it run bad for many people.

- Many people have fixed their issues with many fixes and now run the game perfectly.

- Many people could not fix the problems.

Every user here has the right to post if they have problems, every user here can also post if they could or couldn't fix the problems. If you couldn't fix the problems, then telling everyone else that you couldn't fix the problems is fine, telling everyone else that they're lying when they said they fixed their problems is just arrogant.

In the end, this is a Troubleshooting Forum let's keep it to troubleshooting and keep the pointless rants for Barrens chat.

[Jackdaniels 10]

Facts :

- There's some optimization issues with the game that make it run bad for many people.

- Many people have fixed their issues with many fixes and now run the game perfectly.

- Many people could not fix the problems.

.

If there are optimization problems with the game itself then how people are suppose to fix this on their computers? Surely if it's a problem with the game then only the developer can fix it. You guys that say you are helping others really need to make your minds up. You have ethne saying that there isn’t a problem with the game and you half saying that there is. Don't get me wrong, hats off to you for helping people, but wich one of these is it, people's computers or the game itself?

Edited August 17, 2009 by Jackdaniels

[lee_h._oswald 0]

You all will see..

In 4-5month, after 3-4 more patches, the game will run better.

It's the same story like we had with arma1.

Released in a very poor condition and "patched to death", now it works.

It's sad, it's ridiculously and it's BIS-like.

I will sit and wait, and maybe one day, I can finally begin playing the campaign, which I didn't touched since I got the game(german release day).

As long as no other game company is making a game like OFP/A1/A2, I have to wait for patches instead of playing, waiting for the "final day".

MfG Lee

[mr reality 0]

I'm another one who has to sit ArmA2 out until more patches come along.

I can't even run chernarus in the editor, nevermind play the campaign.

Armed assault ran perfect for me just before the release of arma2, but i uninstalled it, thinking BIS surley couldnt fuck another release up, but boy was i wrong.

I had years of enjoyment out of flashpoint and armed assault, but arma2 just sucked the fun right out.

At least with dragon rising, i'll have a game that works. One thing you have to commend them on is the fact they are making it for consoles, something arma2 never in a million years would work on.

[Karhis 10]

Ok, did some testing today, tried every possible trick that I found through light search over this troubleshoot forum. Again, testing was done in campaign mission "Razor Two" and performance was measured by using FRAPS.

In ingame settings I have everything set to normal (except shadows on high and postprocess on low), view distance to 1600, both resolutions at 1900x1200. Performance in the aforementioned campaign mission is somewhere between 25 to 28 FPS with these settings. Setting everything on low, I gain maybe 1-2 fps. FPS seems capped at somewhere around 30, the similiar phenomenom that others have experienced as well as I quickly skimmed these boards. In editor, I get better FPS and the ingame detail settings actually have an effect to performance.

Things I tried to improve campaign performance:

Command line switches

=================

-maxmem=2047

-winxp

-noCB

-cpuCount=2

-cpuCount=4

=> No effect in campaign performance.

Renamed .exes

===========

-Crysis64.exe

-fear2.exe

-frustrated.exe

=> No effect in campaign performance. For those unfamiliar with this .exe -renaming thing, it is used to make the game use different driver profile and therefore might help with multi-GPU related problems (or cause more of them :))

Config Files

========

- Changed 3D_Performance to negative number

- HDRPrecision 8 / 32

- SceneComplexity=300000 / 100000

=> Very little to no effect in campaign performance. Setting SceneComplexity to 100000 helped to gain maybe 1 FPS. But this is really difficult to measure really.

Other

====

- Forced vsync off using ATI Tray Tools

- Changed Flip Queue Size to 3 / 5 / undefined

- Tried the game with stock CPU speed (2,66 GHz)

=> Again, no effect in campaign. The 60 fps cap (caused by vsync) in the menu screen was removed after I forced vsync off, so it did work. However in campaign, 31 was the maximum I got even after I set everything to low, view distance to 500 and so on. So the "frame rate limit" in campaign is not caused by vsync. And yes, I restarted the game after I altered the ingame settings so vsync was off all the time. When I loaded the game with parameters -nosplash and -world=empty and all ingame settings low, I was able to get 500+ FPS in the menu screen.

Underclocking the CPU from 3,2 GHz to 2,6 GHz also had no noticeable effect - this was the only thing that come as a surprise to me. I really though that my CPU just didn't have any horsepower to run the campaign properly, but if an 600 MHz overclock doesn't seem to have any difference I don't think that is the case anymore.

So, conclusion: Based on my testing, I think the FPS in campaign is somewhat artificially limited. Minor CPU "underclocking" had no effect. Major changes in graphic settings and forcing vsync off only gained me 1 to 2 FPS. There is no other way I can explain this.

But maybe some of you can, so if you have any ideas, feel free to tell me. Also if I missed some optimization tips, please fill me in :)

Edit

===

Did one additional test using the editor as suggested in another thread. Adding many AI controlled groups brings the performance down to the same

30ish FPS as experienced in the campaign. So my conclusion of artificially limiting the FPS in campaign seems false. But where does this magic number 30 come from (it shouldn't be related to vsync since in my test the vsync was forced off)? Does the game somehow scale the AI so that the performance remains in acceptable levels? That would be the only logical conclusion I can think of.

Edit2

====

One more clarification. When I'm referring to "campaign performance" in this post, what I really mean is the performance during one particular campaign mission ("Razor Two"), not the entire campaign. The following mission for example runs pretty fine. Some missions in this game seem just to be too heavy for my CPU.

Edited August 17, 2009 by Karhis
Clarifications

[Bulldogs 10]

Someone put a good post in another thread about how nVidia control panel actually forces V-Sync off but ATi forces it off unless an application overrides it. My guess is that the override only kicks in certain places (like the campaign)

Try raising your refresh rate to 75 (higher if possible) and see if that has any effect.

---------- Post added at 08:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:14 AM ----------

Also make sure you have triple buffering on (not sure if Arma 2 supports it but it's worth a try)

[kklownboy 43]

as for Vysnc+XP+ATI=works, on or off.

Vista+XP+ATI= fail, same for win7

I concur with the "cap" in Campaign. I run into it on some MP missions too. Some say its a warfare module issue... But nonetheless for me the Campaign is not how the game runs or is how i play ARMA2.I play user missions, some work great, great frames ect, others blow. Domination with way to many players doing what way too many players do in Domination(can be complete wack) i get fine frames at good settings VH H ect. but then dedicated server missions run better than local editor missions...hmmm. 90% of performance issues are running the game at settings your computer is unable to run, 10% is having the H/W but are having technical difficulty.

Bugs... duh, yeah, whatever i just got done testing/playing SP "Counter attack" and saw 71fps and lots of 60s. I did my tweaking. (2X4870x2)

Hey [H] multigpu that;)

[Bulldogs 10]

Try lowering all settings to very low, then if Fraps still says you're getting 20 or 30 fps in campaign but the gameplay is extremely smooth then Fraps is likely to be wrong.

[Masterfragg 10]

Try lowering all settings to very low, then if Fraps still says you're getting 20 or 30 fps in campaign but the gameplay is extremely smooth then Fraps is likely to be wrong.

This is a possible factor which I have experienced before, however... It doesn't really chance much for me.

Personally I'm sticking with just wait for the next patch to see if BIS fix the problem. If they don't fix it within 2/3 more patches then just take it as a DOA game and move on to something else until they redesign.

I say this as Arma 1 has the same thread count etc as Arma 2 which says engine limitation although maybe we can find a way around that.

I have found that I don't lose any performance by setting the affinity to 3 cores rather than 4 but anything below 3 cores and the game becomes a mess so it's more than likely a CPU problem for most of us.

What I would suggest is NOT overclocking the CPU just for performance in this game that could lead to hardware failure if you do not know what you are doing.

Another thing I'd like is information from BIS on their systems which it is unlikely that we would get that.

I mean some information from BIS on their system setup and performance (exact FPS on X SP mission would be perfect) so we know if it's our computers or their programming.

I don't expect this from BIS but it would save on people upgrading just for this game. I'll see about sending BIS an email asking them nicely for it as it would be a nice sign of faith and trust...Again don't expect it.

What I would like to see from everyone on here is performance on underclocked graphics card, because I think I mentioned this but the other night I actually seriously underclocked my graphic card and I mean a MAJOR underclock and I didn't receive any performance hit...And to make sure it had infact underclocked I tested Fallout 3 and it was unplayable.

Odd little tidbit of info there but hey might help someone!

If you guys wanna try underclocking just to see it might help shed some much needed light on this dark cave of a situation.

[Masterfragg 10]

Does anyone know of a way to increase a .exe's thread count? how hard would it be to use a bit-hack to mod the code as it excutes to increase a thread count?

I used to do resource hacking for educational purposes but that was a very long time ago and I can't remember sweet FA lol

I don't want to reverse engineer anything as thats tipically against the EULA but modding the code as it excutes on my computer isn't as the program will be excuting original code until it hits a filter.

It's a long shot but I'm currently looking it all up

[Karhis 10]

Someone put a good post in another thread about how nVidia control panel actually forces V-Sync off but ATi forces it off unless an application overrides it. My guess is that the override only kicks in certain places (like the campaign)

The way I understood it is that you _cannot_ force the vsync on or off using ATI Catalyst Control Center in Windows Vista / 7. The application always has the last word.

Like I mentioned in my post, I used ATI tray tools which is a third party program that _can_ be used to force vsync on or off.

Regardless, I don't think this poor performance on certain missions is vsync or graphic related at all. I think that even a decent quad core CPU can be limiting performance on certain missions although the CPU is not necessarily 100% utilized when you check it from task manager etc. Maybe there will be optimizations in future patches so the game utilizes multicore CPUs better.

Try lowering all settings to very low, then if Fraps still says you're getting 20 or 30 fps in campaign but the gameplay is extremely smooth then Fraps is likely to be wrong.

I'll try this.

Does anyone know of a way to increase a .exe's thread count? how hard would it be to use a bit-hack to mod the code as it excutes to increase a thread count?

I don't see how you could increase the thread count without modifying the actual code. And even if you could create more threads, you would have to explicitly specify what sort of calculation you want to do there.

[GLeek 10]

After installing a Corsair H50 I had the temps down to 66 but that's still not an acceptable temp for ~ 5 or 6 FPS gain (Not when Im running at 49 @ stock under load).

Vista = Bad

hey man, the cpu temp. doesn't matter as far as it doesn't reach throttle trigger. my old atlhon64 ran at 80° 3 years non stop 24/24 7/7 .

it still works .

[bangtail 0]

hey man, the cpu temp. doesn't matter as far as it doesn't reach throttle trigger. my old atlhon64 ran at 80° 3 years non stop 24/24 7/7 .

it still works .

It does matter, it can degrade the life of the chip and contributes to the overall heat in the case. 3 Vcards produce a fair bit of heat without the CPU running at 80.

I know people who run their i7s at 85-90. It's their money :D

Eth

Edited August 18, 2009 by BangTail

[ICE-Raver 10]

It does matter, it can degrade the life of the chip and contributes to the overall heat in the case. 3 Vcards produce a fair bit of heat without the CPU running at 80.

I know people who run their i7s at 85-90. It's their money :D

Eth

Mine is overclocked to 4.2 and it never exceeds high 50's while gaming. Thats on air only. The only time it got close to 85 was running prime.

[GLeek 10]

It does matter, it can degrade the life of the chip and contributes to the overall heat in the case. 3 Vcards produce a fair bit of heat without the CPU running at 80.

I know people who run their i7s at 85-90. It's their money :D

Eth

timelife of cpu is about 40 50 years. degrade this to 10 , i still don't see the problem ...