Windows 7 cut frames by 50% and introduced microstuttering

[OUT FOX EM 10]

Well just like the title says, I "upgraded" to Windows 7 x64 (retail version from MSDN, not the Beta) expecting to get even better performance in ArmA II, since many users are getting a nice increase in framerate, and instead I was greeted with disappointment.

On the menu alone, my framerate dropped from the 120's to below 50. In-game was almost as big of a drop, going from 60-80 down to 30-40, and even lower when things get hectic. Not only that, but microstuttering is now a problem, making the game pretty much unplayable. It's like watching a movie while pressing pause every 2 seconds. It's enough to make one go bald in 5 seconds flat.

I've tried different drivers, from 182.50 to 190.38, and everything in between. Everytime I've changed drivers I've used Driver Sweeper to get rid of any of the leftovers. ArmA II was the only thing I installed after the upgrade, so it was definitely a clean install. I know it's not a "supported OS" yet :rolleyes: but that just means the developers won't troubleshoot it, not that it shouldn't work.

Anyone else seeing similar problems to mine? Any solutions?

[nyran125 10]

this is a horrible truth in pc gaming, but XP is really the gaming operating System. You will get an increase of 20-50% FPS using xp and there isnt any reason to use windows 7 at all, for any reason what so ever, at the moment. Why are you people using windows 7?. That is the big question. Matter of fact, why did any of you even upgrade to Vista?, what a joke DX10 was. I played with Vista for ages(well a month) and DX10 was a massive waste of time(yay cool looking lighting ,awesome, and a 10-30 fps drop in performance) destroyed performance in a big way. Back to xp , performance is awesome and all games run great. And DX9 looks fantastic. You guys that upgrade your computers with every little upgrade that comes along are insane. I run a 8800GTS 512mb, intel core 2 duo 2.66Ghz, 2 GB ram. NO issues with Arma2 apart from textures going blocky and graphic glitches on windows on buildings, no big deal, and I get consistant 35 fps throughout single player mode. and 60-70 fps in editor mode. Unless i run 365 infantry, 35 tanks and 25 planes on screen at once, THEN the games FPS goes down to 5 - 10 fps. Which is understandable considering tomorrows hardware in 2 years time will run this game fine. As expected like any or every other pc good graphic game that has come out in the past. Nobody could run Crysis properly until the magic 8800 series graphic cards came out then, hey presto, Crysis ran fine. Same thing will happen with arma 2 but in a year or 2 years time.

Secondly run game on normal graphic settings regardless of what your hardware is because no CPU or graphic cards combined can run this game properly at the moment, and kill SLI mode + dont worry about little texture pop ups , they arent much of a big deal, you get use to it. This game is amazing , its a shame that people cant get passed very minor graphic issues and silly design decisions that MOST of these problems arent even bugs , we just dont have the hardware to run this game properly yet on full speed. Yes even the beloved Nividia 295gtx will not run this game smooth. I have to ask those people why they bothered in the first place if all the other games previously to Arma 2 ran great. Why upgrade ?

Edited August 10, 2009 by nyran125

[Baxalasse 10]

SLI working? Missing custom configs?

[Gaizokubanou 0]

Secondly run game on normal graphic settings regardless of what your hardware is

Do not listen to this advice. ARMA2 is cpu intensive game, not gpu intensive. That means your framerate is much more likely to be limited by your processor instead of your graphic card.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ARMAII_gpu_performance/

If you want to see it for yourself, simply run armory mode... and crank up your graphics setting higher. You will see that there is hardly any framerate issues at all as long as AIs are not present.

However, if you run with lowest setting with tons of AI... you will see a huge dip in framerate.

[-TwK-Danny 0]

Do you get lowered performance + microstuttering in all games?

Do you use the -winxp flag in the shortcut to get sli working (if thats needed in 1.03 + latest drivers)?

[b00ce 160]

Do not listen to this advice. ARMA2 is cpu intensive game, not gpu intensive. That means your framerate is much more likely to be limited by your processor instead of your graphic card.

I think an x1550 is enough to kill any attempt to play this game, regardless of my AMD Athalon x2 2.7Ghz and 4 gigs of ram. :p

I have a question, would having a HORRIBLY fragmented drive be enough to cause a 1-2 second lag "spike" every minute or two? (Provided I'm flying (Looking around makes it happen a lot))

(Dad's comp; mine is all around better, 'cept the GPU power of course :( )

Either way, I'm defragging this slum bitch. :rolleyes:

[nyran125 10]

i didnt meen just graphic cards i meant cpu's aswell. And your right it IS cpu intensive more so than graphic settings. Its like Rome total War when it first came out and Intel core 2 duo's came out later, no one could run Rome properly without the advanced CPU's of the future. NOW they can run masses of amounts of units on screen purely because of CPU. Pc Gaming definately has its large pitfalls. If we want to play Arma 2, we are almost better off waiting for a year or 2 with the next generation of CPU's and graphic cards.

I also agree that this game should of been released AFTER codemasters Operation Flashpoint 2 Dragon rising to get rid of as many bugs as they could.:):):):)

Edited August 10, 2009 by nyran125

[bangtail 0]

soyy i didn tmeen just graphic cards i meant cpu aswell. And your right it IS cpu intensive more so than graphic settings. Its like Rome total War when it first came out and Intel core 2 duo's came out later, no one could run Rome properly without the advanced CPU's of the futur. NOW they can run masses of amounts of units on screen purely because of CPU. Pc Gaming definately has its large pitfalls. If we wan tto play Arma 2 we are almost better off waiting for a year or 2 with the next generation of CPU's and graphic cards.

WTH are you talking about? Your first post is filled with fabrications (and to be perfectly candid, nonsense).

we just dont have the hardware to run this game properly yet on full speed

I run the game @ "full speed" (and so do many others) despite your contention that we'll all have to "wait 2 years".

And before you try to point out my rig as being very high spec, you said the technology is not available that will run A2 "properly". Secondly, it runs fine on my other machines that are not as high spec as my main box.

8800? If you play @ 1280 x 1024 that's an excellent card. Try playing Crysis @ 1920 x 1200 (Enthusiast settings w/ AA/AF) with an 8800 and enjoy the slideshow. In fact, most current games at higher resolutions/settings will struggle on an 8800. The 280/285 is over twice as fast with more shader power and a faster/wider memory bus. There are your "reasons" for upgrading. You should also keep in mind that there will be even faster cards (by some accounts the flagship GT300 card is twice as fast as a 285) in the very near future.

Finally, XP was a great OS but 20-50% faster than Win 7? Obviously you made those numbers up as they have absolutely NO basis in fact. Win 7's gaming performance is generally on par with XP (and sometimes faster). A2 has a specific problem with Win 7 and the i7. This can be solved by turning off Hyper threading (until BIS fix it properly). Win 7's overall performance demolishes XP in virtually all areas (load times, file transfer, compression and the list goes on and on).

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236&page=2

Eth

---------- Post added at 03:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:17 PM ----------

I think an x1550 is enough to kill any attempt to play this game, regardless of my AMD Athalon x2 2.7Ghz and 4 gigs of ram. :p

I have a question, would having a HORRIBLY fragmented drive be enough to cause a 1-2 second lag "spike" every minute or two? (Provided I'm flying (Looking around makes it happen a lot))

(Dad's comp; mine is all around better, 'cept the GPU power of course :( )

Either way, I'm defragging this slum bitch. :rolleyes:

Very bad fragmentation can cause big performance issues so the short answer is yes.

Best to run O&O or Ultimate defrag, you'll probably have to leave it on overnight if you havent defragged for a while.

Eth

---------- Post added at 04:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:46 PM ----------

Well just like the title says, I "upgraded" to Windows 7 x64 (retail version from MSDN, not the Beta) expecting to get even better performance in ArmA II, since many users are getting a nice increase in framerate, and instead I was greeted with disappointment.

On the menu alone, my framerate dropped from the 120's to below 50. In-game was almost as big of a drop, going from 60-80 down to 30-40, and even lower when things get hectic. Not only that, but microstuttering is now a problem, making the game pretty much unplayable. It's like watching a movie while pressing pause every 2 seconds. It's enough to make one go bald in 5 seconds flat.

I've tried different drivers, from 182.50 to 190.38, and everything in between. Everytime I've changed drivers I've used Driver Sweeper to get rid of any of the leftovers. ArmA II was the only thing I installed after the upgrade, so it was definitely a clean install. I know it's not a "supported OS" yet :rolleyes: but that just means the developers won't troubleshoot it, not that it shouldn't work.

Anyone else seeing similar problems to mine? Any solutions?

Turn off HT and use 182.50. The newer Win 7 driver sets from Nvidia are problematic.

Eth

Edited August 11, 2009 by BangTail

[Cionara 10]

Yea 185.85 is alright but later drivers suck.

[bangtail 0]

Yea 185.85 is alright but later drivers suck.

TBH, those were OK but I still prefer 182.50. I wish Big Green would sort their act out and get some fully functional drivers going for Win 7.

To be fair though, they have until the 22nd of October for a decent set ;)

Eth

[ICE-Raver 10]

I just did a bunch of testing swapping back and forth between Windows 7 64 and Vista 64.

The results blew me away. Windows 7 blew Vista out of the water.

Results of my Arma Mark testing here page 54:http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610&page=54

[bangtail 0]

I just did a bunch of testing swapping back and forth between Windows 7 64 and Vista 64.

The results blew me away. Windows 7 blew Vista out of the water.

Results of my Arma Mark testing here page 54:http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610&page=54

For sure.

Win 7 is easily the best thing to come out of MS for a LONG time. It is the undisputed king of Windows based operating systems.

There aren't that many tests that directly compare XP and Win 7 yet, but from what I've seen and in my own experience, XP finally has a worthy successor.

Eth

Edited August 10, 2009 by BangTail

[OUT FOX EM 10]

SLI working? Missing custom configs?

Yes. No.

Danny;1399895']Do you get lowered performance + microstuttering in all games?

Do you use the -winxp flag in the shortcut to get sli working (if thats needed in 1.03 + latest drivers)?

No. Yes.

Turn off HT and use 182.50. The newer Win 7 driver sets from Nvidia are problematic.

Eth

I'll try that' date=' since that's about the only thing I haven't yet done.

I just did a bunch of testing swapping back and forth between Windows 7 64 and Vista 64.

The results blew me away. Windows 7 blew Vista out of the water.

Results of my Arma Mark testing here page 54:http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610&page=54

Look at our computer specs. They're almost identical, and yet you have no problems in Windows 7. I definitely don't understand what's going on here, which is exactly why I created this thread. I want that same boost you've gotten.

[ICE-Raver 10]

Look at our computer specs. They're almost identical, and yet you have no problems in Windows 7. I definitely don't understand what's going on here, which is exactly why I created this thread. I want that same boost you've gotten.

Just an FYI I am running drivers 190.38.

I also have both 280's overclocked running 650/1404/1163.

I also installed this:http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/

Plus in your NV Control panel I changed my SLI performance mode from "Recommended" To "Force alternate Frame Rendering 2" This had a pretty big impact on my machine.

Also I run HT off on the CPU

Hope that helps a little.

Edited August 10, 2009 by ICE-Raver

[OUT FOX EM 10]

Just an FYI I am running drivers 190.38.

I also have both 280's overclocked running 650/1404/1163.

I also installed this:http://www.evga.com/articles/00463/

Plus in your NV Control panel I changed my SLI performance mode from "Recommended" To "Force alternate Frame Rendering 2" This had a pretty big impact on my machine.

Also I run HT off on the CPU

Hope that helps a little.

Thanks, I actually just came back to ask you the very questions you just answered. I disabled HT which put a stop to the microstuttering, thank God. I can deal with a lower framerate, but the jumping every other second was driving me insane. Now I just gotta work on getting my framerate back to where Vista was at the very least.

I'm going to try out the EVGA patch and AFR2. Will be back shortly.

[bangtail 0]

Thanks, I actually just came back to ask you the very questions you just answered. I disabled HT which put a stop to the microstuttering, thank God. I can deal with a lower framerate, but the jumping every other second was driving me insane. Now I just gotta work on getting my framerate back to where Vista was at the very least.

I'm going to try out the EVGA patch and AFR2. Will be back shortly.

Stay away from 190.38. They don't downclock properly and they break user AA profiles (among other things).

If you use nHancer, just copy the settings from the crysis profile into a new profile and set your pre-render to 8 and disable v-sync. I'm now getting the same performance under Win 7 as I do with XP (with HT off).

Eth

Edited August 10, 2009 by BangTail

[OUT FOX EM 10]

Ok, so I installed the EVGA patch, and it did help my framerate quite a bit. However, it's still not on par with Vista. I experienced something odd with AFR2 -- the framerate in the menu would start off over 100, and I thought I was home free, since that's how it was in Vista. Then once I closed in on the carrier it dropped to 50's and 60's. In-game I was getting less than 20 though, so that was a no-go. I tried all modes, and the default seemed to do the best for me.

Also, ICE... what command line switches do you use in your shortcut (if any)? I've tried with and without -winxp, and it doesn't seem to affect anything for me personally.

Stay away from 190.38. They don't downclock properly and they break user AA profiles (among other things).

If you use nHancer, just copy the settings from the crysis profile into a new profile and set your pre-render to 8 and disable v-sync. I'm now getting the same performance under Win 7 as I do with XP (with HT off).

Eth

I don't use nHancer but I will try the 182.50 drivers once again and see what happens.

[ICE-Raver 10]

Also, ICE... what command line switches do you use in your shortcut (if any)? I've tried with and without -winxp, and it doesn't seem to affect anything for me personally.

None, I just use the default shortcut.

[bangtail 0]

Ok, so I installed the EVGA patch, and it did help my framerate quite a bit. However, it's still not on par with Vista. I experienced something odd with AFR2 -- the framerate in the menu would start off over 100, and I thought I was home free, since that's how it was in Vista. Then once I closed in on the carrier it dropped to 50's and 60's. In-game I was getting less than 20 though, so that was a no-go. I tried all modes, and the default seemed to do the best for me.

Also, ICE... what command line switches do you use in your shortcut (if any)? I've tried with and without -winxp, and it doesn't seem to affect anything for me personally.

I don't use nHancer but I will try the 182.50 drivers once again and see what happens.

I don't use -winxp anymore and I had that 20 FPS nonsense with 190.38 and 190.56 as well. There are pages of complaints over on Guru3d about them.

Eth

[bravo 6 0]

Maybe people should compare WinXP and Win7 instead.

[ICE-Raver 10]

I don't use -winxp anymore and I had that 20 FPS nonsense with 190.38 and 190.56 as well. There are pages of complaints over on Guru3d about them.

Eth

Whats wrong with the 190.38's? Which ones do you run and where can I get them? I'm always up for some testing.

[bangtail 0]

Whats wrong with the 190.38's? Which ones do you run and where can I get them? I'm always up for some testing.

What's right with them ;)

Downclocking broken, user AA profiles broken, refresh rate bug (that's been around since 186.08) etc etc.

Hey, it's all good! Win 7 isn't retail yet so Big Green still has time to fix the problems.

I've been using 182.50 for ages now with no issues to speak of.

Eth

Edited August 10, 2009 by BangTail

[ICE-Raver 10]

What's right with them ;)

Downclocking broken, user AA profiles broken, refresh rate (that's been around since 186.08) bug etc etc.

Hey, it's all good! Win 7 isn't retail yet so Big Green still has time to fix the problems.

I've been using 182.50 for ages now with no issues to speak of.

Eth

Hey, I just switched max pre-rendered frames to 8 like you suggested on this thread and I blew Arma Mark wide open with 7000+ scores back to back.

Check it out. Page 54. My old scores with Max Pre Rendered frames 3 are on there on a previous post (same page). http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610&page=54

[bangtail 0]

Hey, I just switched max pre-rendered frames to 8 like you suggested on this thread and I blew Arma Mark wide open with 7000+ scores back to back.

Check it out. Page 54. My old scores with Max Pre Rendered frames 3 are on there on a previous post (same page). http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610&page=54

Nice one :)

Eth

[OUT FOX EM 10]

Damn it this is so frustrating. It's like ArmA 1 all over again... though what else should I have expected?

The 182.50 drivers give me the exact same framerates as the 190.38's did, so I don't know what to do here.

Hey, I just switched max pre-rendered frames to 8 like you suggested on this thread and I blew Arma Mark wide open with 7000+ scores back to back.

Check it out. Page 54. My old scores with Max Pre Rendered frames 3 are on there on a previous post (same page). http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73610&page=54

It's even more frustrating knowing this is where my computer should be! :mad: I was getting 6000+ on Vista.

I'd be willing to bet if two systems were built exactly the same, with all the same components, ArmA would still perform differently on them. :icon_rolleyes:

Well, I'm not going back to Vista just for ArmA, and I'm not going to partition and dual-boot for it either, so I guess I'll just keep on tinkering. I'm out of ideas here.

Thanks for all the help guys. I got a lot more useful replies than I was expecting.