ArmA2 / OA (low) performance issues

[InFireBaptize 0]

Hello BIF users!

My rig:

Phenom II 940 BE 3.00 Ghz

Radeon 4890 OC 1GB

4GB DDR 2

I have under 20 FPS on default settings. I mean WTF! Are you BIS f***g kidding me!?! :mad:

The best part is that you can not see the difference between very low setting and very high settings. LOL. My FPS is all the time horrible low.

1) Reset your GPU to normal factory settings and test.

2) What version of the game you're running?

I have lower performance system than yours but game runs just fine except for texture loading, stutter which are getting attention now in the beta patches. I don't pay attention to frame rate as long as it's not a slide show. Try to enjoy the game instead.

[Infam0us 10]

Kristof: try these tweaks and, if you're confident, try overclocking your CPU: start gently, i.e. no more than +2% (+5 FSB) each time.

Is Defraggler better than Diskeeper 2010?

[Lemansky 10]

Hello

I bought a new computer not too long ago, and wanted to try arma 2 again.

I've been playing the campaign with a friend, and we have been trying the different tweaks we found on the forum, but we still get pretty low fps.

My hardware

I7 950

Nvidia 480gtx

6gb DDr3 1600

HDD is Samsung sata2 7200, dont know the model.

Using Windows 7 64bit

We got to the mission Manhattan, but we stopped there. My fps seems to be locked to 25-30 fps, changing settings dosent do anything at all.

25 fps isent a lot, but it dosent feel smooth, playing for a while just gets me a headache. The missions before that one was a little better, but still pretty low fps.

What I tried is -cpucount=4, different settings in the .cfg file, new drivers, 1.05 and the latest beta patch.

Tried to run arma from two disks, but it dident work with just adding -mod=F:\CA;@mod2;@mod3 to the shortcut, changing the folder of course.

I have the steam version, maybe thats why it dident work

It did work with a program I found in the same post as I read that, think it was called link shell extension, but dident really notice a difference.

I have been changing everything to see if it makes a difference, and turning down the graphics settings actually gave me less fps sometimes.

Any help would be appreciated.

After reading some more I found this post, really hope the expansion will be better.

Edited June 17, 2010 by Lemansky

[halop 10]

Hello! Can someone help out?

I'm getting appalling performance in Arma2. I have everything on very low/disabled except video memory which is on default. View distance 1300

I get frequent small freezes. VERY laggy in cities even when in Chernarus alone. It even lags in the main menu with the Aircraft carrier :confused: And the LOD is messed up as well.

AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+

ATI Radeon 3870 x2 1gb

2 Gb of RAM

Win7 64bit

Running at my native resolution of 1920x1200, lowering the resolution doesn't help at all. Tried to defragment my drives, didn't help.

Latest betapatch installed. Also tried -exThreads=1/2/3 and didn't notice performance increase.

HELP

[shecky53 10]

I will preface this question by saying I am about as dumb as it gets when it comes to processor types, video cards, OSs and the like. That said I cannot get the game to display anything in a way that does not appear 2Dish. People, trees, vehicles, (well nothing really) has any features. Listed below are the stats on my Dell. What am I missing that would make this game work?

XPS 435T

Studio XPS 435T, Intel Core i7-920 processor(8MB L3 Cache 2.66GHz)

9GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz

1024MB ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5

750GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

Thanks.

[raserisk 12]

GTX 260's SLI

I7 920 Quad core

6GB Ram

WIN7 64 Bit OS

To be fair, I don't have simple 5v5 squad battles, the AI in my missions usually goes up to about 50-70 with some waypoints and triggers that about it. I did the benchmark tests and it said I was at 15 FPS. If I can play Crysis maxed out, why cant I play ARMA 2 on med/low settings with fair fps? :(

[Flash Thunder 10]

are you playing at like 500% fillrate

jesus I can get 30fps easy on high settings on my rig

9800gtx

9750 quad core amd 2.4ghz

750gb 7200rpm HDD

8gb ddr2 ram @804mhz

I run it on 1680x1050 on a fillrate of 125%

AI can limit the framerate its a problem with the engine vote for a fix on devheaven

"frame rate limited by AI"

You dont need Anti Aliasing if your playing the game with a 150% or 200% fillrate FYI, please post your ingame settings and your shortcut properties your post is to vague.

My settings are

3500VD

Normal terrain

High Post process

Very High Object

Very High Shadows

Very High Textures

Very High AF

No AA

Fillrate 125

I use these shortcut commands: maxmem=2047 and cpuCount=4

The low FPS on your rig is no doubt all from the heavy scripting you're using in your missions and the amount of AI, even when I have 20 AI my framerate will be stuck at around 22fps its a huge bug or flaw with the system, please vote for it use (username)guest/guest(password) if you dont want to create an account their.

Edited June 22, 2010 by Flash Thunder

[raserisk 12]

That's weird my settings changed, anyways with no MODS whatsoever my fps was still 15-25. I use STEAM and checked my shortcut commands and i had "-winxp" i think thats from a time when i kept having a graphic issue.

Also i don't use scripts in my missions, im not smart enough to know how to!

3600 VD

Quality - Very High

PP Effects - High

Terrain - Normal

Texture - Low

Video M - Very High

Anisotropic - High

AA - High

Objects - High

Shadows - High

What is Fillrate? I didn't see anything about that in settings

[Flash Thunder 10]

Well now its called 3D Resolution its right underneath interface resolution (If you have patch 1.05 installed)

it upscales the games resolution to whatever you have the 3d res set to for an example:

150 3d res whatever the pixels are 2256xwhatever the game upscales to that but its still really only your native res on your monitor so this makes textures look alittle better and it gives really good anti aliasing.

So if you have 3d res set to more than 150% turn off AA completely since HIGH AA is about 20fps loss from ive tested.

These settings kill performance:

AA low about 10fps HIGH 20 veryhigh 22fps

Post process is about 10fps loss when set to HIGH

Terrain Very high is about 15fps because it increases polycount in the terrain and draws the grass farther and grass is really heavy on framerate.

I would also set your Shadows to very high instead since they're calculated on the GPU instead of the CPU.

So turn off AA but set 3d resolution to like 125 or 133% and tell me your results after some through testing. :)

[raserisk 12]

I disabled AA, and put PP at a LOW setting. Then increased that 3d resolution to 125% and it still maintained a 15 FPS. Hahaha wow.

Afterwards, I kept same settings but cranked 3d resolution to 133% and what do you know it was 15 FPS again.

This was all done on the #2 benchmark test since im more or less used to missions like that. The #1 benchmark test I got around 30 but there isn't much action going on

[Flash Thunder 10]

Just play the damn game yourself, mess around in the editor.

Everyone on here cant get more than 20fps average on the benchmarks it sickening.

[raserisk 12]

Hahaha will do, I think the 3d resolution tip will help now that I know its pointless to have AA on. thanks!

[Haystack15 10]

I Don't think that normal man... You might want to take your computer to the hospital to get it check out.

[domokun 515]

Do yourself a favour and try these tweaks.

Then be so kind as to let us know how you get on.

[ast65 10]

Use latest beta without shortcut- commands.

Just one question btw.: why is your texture- resolution on low?

With two gpu´s you should have more than enough video- memory to crank it up to "very high"; should take basically no hit on performance and game will look much better, though.

[jw custom 56]

Try play with only one graphic card, not sure if ArmA likes SLI.

[EDcase 87]

I thought SLI works with latest ARMA patch and Nvidia drivers but not sure.

I get 30-45fps 1920x1200 with these settings: (Using latest BETA)

Nvidia Control Panel

Max pre-rendered frames: 0

Triple Buffering: ON (makes fast turns smoother)

Edit your Username.cfg (do a c: search) to include these lines...

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=0;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=0;

Ingame

Texture detail: MEDIUM (You should use HIGH or VERY HIGH) <<< This makes a BIG difference as it uses lower res textures for the trees in the distance.

Vid Memory: DEFAULT

Filtering: HIGH

AA: OFF

Terrain: medium

Objects: HIGH

Shadows: VERY HIGH

PP: HIGH (I like it as it softens the edges and I love the DoF effect)

Viewdistance 6000

System

Win 7 64

i7 920@ 3.36GHz

GTX 285 1Gb

6Gb

30Gb Vertex SSD just for ARMA

Edited June 22, 2010 by EDcase

[ast65 10]

@EDcase: I don´t think you get 30 - 45 frames in benchmark #2, which he refers to, do you?

Edited June 22, 2010 by @ST

[EDcase 87]

Ah, no I haven't used that. I'm basing on general play.

I don't like the benchmark missions because they rely too much on HD rather than CPU & GPU.

Can you give me a link to Bench#2 and post result here...

Edited June 22, 2010 by EDcase

[ast65 10]

Link? He means the bench #2 under single player/ scenarios (pretty useless for current- gen- machines:p)

[EDcase 87]

Oops, yeah. Never tried that until now.

It seemed smooth enough but I get 15fps so it shows how useless it is to get an idea of actual gameplay. I've never played a mission with that much going on in one place.

Edited June 22, 2010 by EDcase

[rangoon 0]

Nvidia Control Panel

Max pre-rendered frames: 0

Hi EDcase - I have also read that setting this to 8 (the opposite direction) increases performance. But you have found setting to 0 is best? I will try this out...

[otrebla_snake_ita 2]

If you set it to 0 your CPU should work less. If you set it on 8 your CPU should work more so you have to know if your bottle neck is the CPU or the GPU: if it's the CPU set that value to 0, if it's the GPU, set that value to 8 (or less if you want)

[rangoon 0]

That makes sense, thanks.

[styxx42 0]

I have pretty good FPS and my settings are as follows:

-Resolution 1280x1024, 3Dresolution:100%, View Distance:2500m.

-All settings in game on HIGH except PPE:LOW and Terrain Detail:NORMAL.

-Nvidia CPL set to Performance.

-ARMA2.CFG both Detected and Max Frames both set to either "2" or "1". Test this to find best feeling.

-A good addon to make Chernarus flow better regarding the grass is SAP Clutter wich only lowers it and make it more scarce. The grass is what steals most FPS from me when vanilla so this is a good one.

Keep your system tidy when playing the ARMA series wich means to defrag your HDD properly with a good defragger and make sure you got no websites or other services running in the background that shouldnt be there. I noticed some websites make the game lag badly when they are updating themselves so turn it all off while playing. I understand my resolution is a bit low but you have to do something to get the game to play good as im after the experience of a good game with friends rather than trying to go as high as possible just because. The game looks great when i play and flows really good so im happy. I want the grass and the heaviest trees optimized however as that would probably give me more room for upping the settings.

So the above is working for me personally so test it if you havent. And remember that all BIS titles gets better over time like a good wine or a cheese going green... :D Dont know why but all BIS titles were the same on my systems. They start out rather cranky but get better after tweaking and time. Both because of patches and maybe perhaps magic. Not sure.

System:

i7 quad 930

GTX 275

P6X58D Premium

OCZ 1600mhz 6GB Tri Channel

WD Black 500GB 7200RPM 32MB Cache

Alex72 that post was a pleasure to read and informative.

Funny as I have got it stuck in my head I had to run it at 1920X1050 res resolution because that is what my 23 dual Flats use.

I am going to try out your suggestions they may not be the be all and end all for me but it is a good start to the low FPS I am personally expercing with 1.07. I totally agree about the fine wine age thing. IT was Skunky to begin with but now I can't stop myself. I am converted once again buy BIS once again.

Thanks for the great post.