BIS - help us help ourselves!

[jw custom 56]

some people think very high is for 512MB GFX CARDS)

Really?? when in 2003??

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

Honestly I'd be more happy if they worked on a patch that will solve performance issues rather than having them babysit the forum for people who try workarounds for the same issues.

Don't get me wrong I'd try anything that will make the game smooth (and btw that doesn't necessarily mean high FPS, there is a difference). But in the end I want a patch that fixes it instead of 99 opinions about parameters in game and in gfx drivers.

[jw custom 56]

Honestly I'd be more happy if they worked on a patch that will solve performance issues rather than having them babysit the forum for people who try workarounds for the same issues.

Don't get me wrong I'd try anything that will make the game smooth (and btw that doesn't necessarily mean high FPS, there is a difference). But in the end I want a patch that fixes it instead of 99 opinions about parameters in game and in gfx drivers.

Well thats exactly what they are working on for next patch!!!! Please do not read the forum is forbidden :eek:

[=wfl= sgt bilko 10]

Not sure what you mean, I'm not saying that devs should not read the forums.

But if you rather have them put all their energy on answering questions on parameters that might not even make any difference than working on the patch. Then I guess we will never see a patch.

[jw custom 56]

But if you rather have them put all their energy on answering questions on parameters that might not even make any difference than working on the patch. Then I guess we will never see a patch.

If you rather put all YOUR energy in posting whine posts then go ahead.... BUT if you actually read a little around the forum you would know that what your asking for is EXACTLY what the devs are working on... PERFORMANCE and "mouse lag" :eek:

[ProfTournesol 956]

Really?? when in 2003??

He meant "people think that the setting "very high" for video memory in ArmA2 video settings is suitable for 512MB cards".

[jw custom 56]

He meant "people think that the setting "very high" for video memory in ArmA2 video settings is suitable for 512MB cards".

I know but who the hell think 512mb is VERY HIGH when you can chose normal or high!!!!

That been said, i dont think it will do much difference but only let you be able to chose higher settings for stuff like textures etc ;)

[shuurajou 10]

I know but who the hell think 512mb is VERY HIGH when you can chose normal or high!!!!

That been said, i dont think it will do much difference but only let you be able to chose higher settings for stuff like textures etc ;)

It's actually Bohemia that defined 512MB as 'Very High' in Arma 1 and in v1.08 of Arma 1, they created the 'Default' setting for people with more than 512MB video card RAM. Change log is quoted below.

Summary

* New texture detail "Default" that autodetects the amount of VRAM. Recommended Texture Detail setting for users of cards with more than 512 VRAM.

Nobody knows what 'very high' or 'default' means for Arma 2 (apart from the devs), however, it may be reasonable to assume BI didn't change this in Arma 2 so you should still use default in Arma 2 if you have more than 512MB RAM on your video card.

However... there are still bugs in auto video card RAM detection in Arma 2, so if you're impacted by these bugs default might turn out to be worse for you. If you have a video card with more than 512MB RAM, default is likely the right setting for you, but only if you're not affected by the VRAM auto detection bug where Arma 2 incorrectly detects your VRAM.

In Arma 2 patch v1.02 BI did attempt to fix the VRAM bug (change log quote below) but it seems to not have been entirely successful as I (and others) still suffer from incorrect VRAM autodetection.

Engine

* Fixed localVRAM detection on Vista x64 systems with 8 GB RAM and more

That's what I think... but nobody can say for sure apart from devs.

Edited August 27, 2009 by shuurajou

[jw custom 56]

It's actually Bohemia that defined 512MB as 'Very High' in Arma 1 and in v1.08 of Arma 1, they created the 'Default' setting for people with more than 512MB video card RAM. Change log is quoted below.

Nobody knows what 'very high' or 'default' means for Arma 2 (apart from the devs), however, it may be reasonable to assume BI didn't change this in Arma 2 so you should still use default in Arma 2 if you have more than 512MB RAM on your video card.

However... there are still bugs in auto video card RAM detection in Arma 2, so if you're impacted by these bugs default might turn out to be worse for you. If you have a video card with more than 512MB RAM, default is likely the right setting for you, but only if you're not affected by the VRAM auto detection bug where Arma 2 incorrectly detects your VRAM.

That's what I think... but nobody can say for sure apart from devs.

Yes it's impossible to spent a little time tweaking to find out whats best for your computer and yet so many people are playing and having fun :confused:

[shuurajou 10]

Yes it's impossible to spent a little time tweaking to find out whats best for your computer and yet so many people are playing and having fun :confused:

I've spent hours tweaking and trying different things, but, there's on setting I can't tweak because it is totally reliant on Arma 2's auto detection.

Default 'video memory' should be best for my computer (going on the only guidance available on this setting) but auto detection of localVRAM is still broken as you can look in your ArmA2.cfg file and see what Arma 2 thinks you have. I know Arma's getting mine wrong, and Arma only READS from that part of the CFG, it doesn't write to it, so you can't change it manually.

Not everyone has the bug as it seems to depend on 4 variables - OS (must be 64bit), RAM (should be 8GB), drivers & gfx card.

Some people only have 32bit so don't seem to get impacted. If you have under 4GB RAM on a 32bit OS it seems autodetection of VRAM works...

I've tried hard to do as much tweaking and analysis as possible; it's taken hours, and this is what I've found.

Edited August 27, 2009 by shuurajou

[jw custom 56]

I've spent hours tweaking and trying different things, but, there's on setting I can't tweak because it is totally reliant on Arma 2's auto detection.

Default 'video memory' should be best for my computer (going on the only guidance available on this setting) but auto detection of localVRAM is still broken as you can look in your ArmA2.cfg file and see what Arma 2 thinks you have. I know Arma's getting mine wrong, and Arma only READS from that part of the CFG, it doesn't write to it, so you can't change it manually.

Not everyone has the bug as it seems to depend on 4 variables - OS (must be 64bit), RAM (should be 8GB), drivers & gfx card.

Some people only have 32bit so don't seem to get impacted. If you have under 4GB RAM on a 32bit OS it seems autodetection of VRAM works...

I've tried hard to do as much tweaking and analysis as possible; it's taken hours, and this is what I've found.

Updated #5 - 27th August 2009 - 11:40 UTC:

Sadly, BI official support feel that my questions are as a result of my own personal frustration and seem reluctant to assist.

Seems like they were right :rolleyes:

[shuurajou 10]

Seems like they were right :rolleyes:

JW Custom, if you are only here to try and add unhelpful, valueless, throwaway comments then feel free to stop. You aren't helping anybody at all in doing that. I'm just trying to do something to help people.

This thread has over 7,900 views and over 91 posts with people trying to understand how to correctly use the video memory option because there's no guidance with it. This clearly demonstrates a need for assistance from an official source to explain how to use this setting appropriately. As you can clearly see, this thread isn't just me - so clearly this isn't my own 'personal frustration' but the frustration of every post in that thread.

This thread has over 26,100 views and 177 posts. Many people in this thread are advising each other to change their localVRAM & nonlocalVRAM settings without actually understanding truely what they are there for and how to use them to help diagnose an issue. This also, clearly demonstrates that the community at large has issues here and needs assistance from an official source. I am aware that in 1.02 BI attempted to fix this issue however it's not completely fixed yet. As you can also clearly see, this thread too, isn't just my frustration.

I suspect that the localVRAM setting is where ArmA 2 will update your cfg file with what it has autodetected your video card memory to be. It is not user configurable. If this could be confirmed as true then many users would be in a position to provide BI with data around when ArmA 2 does and does not correctly auto detect their video cards RAM. As it seems the 'Default' video memory setting is linked with this auto detection, if auto detection is broken then users with more than 512MB video cards won't be able to get ArmA 2 to run optimally.

Edited August 27, 2009 by shuurajou

[datter 0]

100% behind shuurajou on this. Broken in that way for me too, but only since upgrading to Win7 64bit with 8GB.

I've spent hours tweaking and trying different things, but, there's on setting I can't tweak because it is totally reliant on Arma 2's auto detection.

Default 'video memory' should be best for my computer (going on the only guidance available on this setting) but auto detection of localVRAM is still broken as you can look in your ArmA2.cfg file and see what Arma 2 thinks you have. I know Arma's getting mine wrong, and Arma only READS from that part of the CFG, it doesn't write to it, so you can't change it manually.

Not everyone has the bug as it seems to depend on 4 variables - OS (must be 64bit), RAM (should be 8GB), drivers & gfx card.

Some people only have 32bit so don't seem to get impacted. If you have under 4GB RAM on a 32bit OS it seems autodetection of VRAM works...

I've tried hard to do as much tweaking and analysis as possible; it's taken hours, and this is what I've found.

[Dwarden 1125]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1295579&postcount=1

i have edited and added some descriptions to the commandline in first post in past ... you may find them useful or so ...

[shuurajou 10]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1295579&postcount=1

i have edited and added some descriptions to the commandline in first post in past ... you may find them useful or so ...

Thanks for your contribution Dwarden.

[SylverFyre 10]

I have an ATi X1950XT 256Mb and my localVRAM config is 265662464

(256Mb * 1024 * 1024 = 268435456 so its pretty likely that this line is the game reading the amount of RAM on the card in bytes - maybe some is reserved by the cards firmware so that the game sees a little less than the true amount?)

Does that tie in with other peoples video RAM and config file contents?

The text itself implies that its the amount of RAM on the card, but the developer response of "resources" implies that my thought above may be true, that it's what's left available on the card after any firmware has allocated some.

My nonlocalVRAM is showing as 795791360, or a little under 759Mb when divided by 1024 twice. I'm on a 2Gb machine running Vista32 and my thought on this is that maybe there are around 759Mb available in system RAM after the game engine is loaded to use to cache graphics into? The use of nonlocalVRAM certainly implies that too, ie VRAM that is not locally on the card itself.

I think the -winxp switch, while a bit of a misnomer, has been cleared up. Reference the link in Dwardens post "use it in Vista/W7 to enable multi-GPU support", that shows that whatever code the switch activates also enables the Vista/7 graphics system to use multi-GPU with the ArmA2 engine

[datter 0]

Yes, thanks for the effort Dwarden. Any feedback or help about these issues is very much appreciated. Nothing is working so far, but your contribution here has not gone unnoticed.

[shuurajou 10]

I have an ATi X1950XT 256Mb and my localVRAM config is 265662464

(256Mb * 1024 * 1024 = 268435456 so its pretty likely that this line is the game reading the amount of RAM on the card in bytes - maybe some is reserved by the cards firmware so that the game sees a little less than the true amount?)

Does that tie in with other peoples video RAM and config file contents?

The text itself implies that its the amount of RAM on the card, but the developer response of "resources" implies that my thought above may be true, that it's what's left available on the card after any firmware has allocated some.

My nonlocalVRAM is showing as 795791360, or a little under 759Mb when divided by 1024 twice. I'm on a 2Gb machine running Vista32 and my thought on this is that maybe there are around 759Mb available in system RAM after the game engine is loaded to use to cache graphics into? The use of nonlocalVRAM certainly implies that too, ie VRAM that is not locally on the card itself.

I think the -winxp switch, while a bit of a misnomer, has been cleared up. Reference the link in Dwardens post "use it in Vista/W7 to enable multi-GPU support", that shows that whatever code the switch activates also enables the Vista/7 graphics system to use multi-GPU with the ArmA2 engine

You can use SLI setups without the -winxp switch since newer 190 nvidia drivers. Which are a multi GPU setup of sorts. It seems '-winxp' forces Arma 2 in vista/win7 to use XPs version of Direct3D 9, the GPU enabling on some setups seems to be just a side effect.

It sounds like your VRAM detection is working fine. Again, you have 2GB RAM so I'd expect no issues with your VRAM detection.

If you run dxdiag, and 'save all information' to your desktop and look at the dxdiag.txt file. Scroll down to the 'display devices' section, then, look at 'dedicated memory' I believe this is what localVRAM should translate to (after you've done bytes - megabytes conversion). I believe 'shared memory' is what your nonlocalVRAM value should translate to.

[SylverFyre 10]

dxdiags Display section reports 1012Mb total graphics memory - combine the local and nonlocal VRAM reports from the ARMA config file (and do the divide by 1024 twice) and that comes out as a match. Thats gotta be the VRAM section of config explained, apart from I cant think of any good reason to tweak this manually unless the game has managed to mis-detect the amount of RAM on your graphics card.

[Eppidemic 10]

the game is broken guys. stop waisting your time in the forums (for "fixes") and just play the game with lower settings. If you cant play at all. just put it down for now. This is just advise. An official patch is the only things that might solve you problems. save yourself the headache.

[Nazul 10]

Eppidemic is right. Even if you find the correct settings its not going to make the game run any better. It will always be stuttering and run bad.

[shuurajou 10]

dxdiags Display section reports 1012Mb total graphics memory - combine the local and nonlocal VRAM reports from the ARMA config file (and do the divide by 1024 twice) and that comes out as a match. Thats gotta be the VRAM section of config explained, apart from I cant think of any good reason to tweak this manually unless the game has managed to mis-detect the amount of RAM on your graphics card.

The thing is you can't actually manually change the VRAM in the config - ArmA 2 writes those values, it doesn't read them - so even if you change them to 2MB it doesn't make a difference, they were made for debug so developers could validate what VRAM ArmA 2 was detecting. You can't change them sadly :(.

[W0lle 1052]

Eppidemic is right. Even if you find the correct settings its not going to make the game run any better. It will always be stuttering and run bad.

My ArmA2 runs pretty well without any stuttering (except when in and around Chernogorsk or Elektrozavodsk.

But I play the game and don't spend the whole day trying to find the perfect setting and changing all kind of values in configs which are not supposed to be modified. I also don't have Fraps running all the time to check where I lose a couple of frames per second.

Maybe just play the game as it is right now and enjoy it where possible.

[datter 0]

At this point I'd be content with lousy frame rate, but I can't play longer than 10 min without texture corruption and a crash. That's the difference with my situation anyway.

[shuurajou 10]

FYI for me, if I removed 4GB of RAM from my comp, performance improves dramatically as VRAM detection then functions and the 'default' video memory setting allows me to take advantage of my 1024MB RAM on the video card.

So this is certainly a bug linked with 8GB RAM. BIS attempted to fix this in 1.02. Hopefully they'll try again!

On that basis though the game won't 'always' be bad, and isn't 'always' bad now. Just depends what bugs impact you.

Edited August 29, 2009 by shuurajou