ArmA2 / OA (low) performance issues

[Leon86 13]

http://pix.wefrag.com/i/a/0/3/b/a/34871a45a8250f0a38f4045dbdab0fc7.jpg

37FPS on that screen

That's a scenario made by BIS

is it the campain?

[Risbosix 0]

nop a scenarion, the on with the mecanized assault (russian side)

[Leon86 13]

They are faster than 1.5x, well maybe not 2x as I wrote, but 1.7x for sure. So he could get up to 50fps.

And of course, you can spend 200€ if you want. A HD 6870 costs only 140€ and it's maybe 5-10% slower than a 560TI or HD 6950.

It's about 30% faster and 30% more expensive.

---------- Post added at 05:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:01 PM ----------

nop a scenarion, the on with the mecanized assault (russian side)

what result do you get if you run the benchmark mission?

[Risbosix 0]

58 FPS on Benchmark 01 on very low preset

[Leon86 13]

Maybe vsync is on?

anyway, I get 43 fps on the settings I play at, 2000 vd, low model detail, low terrain detail. shadows high.

I have a dual gtx260, so I run at 1920x1200, 115% vd, low aa. Rest is pretty low as well. I think it's perfectly playable but I did put the prerendered frames off to have more direct control on low fps.

[Risbosix 0]

I ran another bench 01 with following preset

2400M

memory vidéo = high all details = normal aa = low

ani = middle post treatement = high 3D reso = 1920*1200

Got 38 FPS, any résults with similar conmputer?

[birtuma 28]

It's about 30% faster and 30% more expensive.

Not true!

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2011/test-19-grafikkarten/2/#abschnitt_leistung_ohne_aaaf

[pendragonuk 0]

They are faster than 1.5x, well maybe not 2x as I wrote, but 1.7x for sure. So he could get up to 50fps.

And of course, you can spend 200€ if you want. A HD 6870 costs only 140€ and it's maybe 5-10% slower than a 560TI or HD 6950.

Sure, but an overclocked Phenom is a really strong CPU, and in most situations it won't limit. On the other side with a 4870 you can't really set higher settings, activate postprocess effects, activate antialiasing etc...

I have two 6870's and a 6 core CPU running at 4GHz and I say it's the CPU not the GPU!

Run a program that can show you real time GPU usage and CPU usage. When I do I can see that my GPU's are running a 25% each. The CPU has four cores running at around 20% one core running at 40% and one core running at around 90%. The game dose share it's workload around the cores but not very well. I still have one core running at 90% and that is the limiting factor not the GPU. Even running with one G/Card it gets the same fps but the one card will be running at 50%.

As I said earlyer once your G/Card is powerful enough to render the screen it has the sit there waiting for the CPU to hand off the next chunk of data for the next frame. If you look at the CPU/GPU load when running the second ArmA2 benchmark, the one with the big battle at the airfield. It's a CPU killer that one. My CPU (single core) is maxed the frame rate is under 20 but the GPU load is almost zero!

The CPU hands a chunk of data to the GPU, it renders it and puts it on the screen. That frame is then held until the next one is rendered. With most games the limiting factor is the GPU's ability to render the next frame. With ArmA of course you get that but at some point when you have more and more powerful GPU's to limit becomes the CPU's ability to supply the GPU with data to render.

This is the issue most of us are now facing, Our GPU's can render each frame more quickly than our CPU's can generate the information to render the next one.

We measurer our games performance by how many frames our GPU's can render per second. With ArmA our GPU's are sitting there spinning their wheels waiting for the CPU to give them the next bit of work to do.

So if you find yourself in this situation, your fps has hit the buffers no matter what settings you use. Even ultra low makes no improvement then it's time to look at your CPU. Even a small improvement in CPU power will see a big improvement in fps. I over clocked my CPU by 25% and got a 25%+ improvement in FPS.

Sometimes it's that simple, the image on our screens isn't that hard to display, figuring out where everything is and what it's doing is a nightmare!

[Leon86 13]

Not true!

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/grafikkarten/2011/test-19-grafikkarten/2/#abschnitt_leistung_ohne_aaaf

another link

[NeMeSiS 11]

What is your GPU?

Sorry, didn't see "4870". No, in your case it's the GPU limiting. You could buy a HD 6870, they are pretty cheap now and you could double your performance.

Dont tell my i dont know my own PC mate, ofcourse, if i walk alone in the editor my GPU will limit me, but any mission with AI walking around will be limited by my CPU.

I recently stuck another 4870 in my PC (It was free), and the difference in FPS in such situations is negligable. Benchmark 1 ofcourse went up, but is hardly relevant.

(On a sidenote, the second 4870 is usually turned off, i cant ventilate my PC enough on hot days without having to clock it down)

Edited July 10, 2011 by NeMeSiS

[birtuma 28]

Does Arma 2 support Crossfire? Probably not. With a stronger GPU you will get by far more fps.

[Leon86 13]

while crossfire can be a bit problematic sometimes it does seem to work for some. And there is no such thing as a game that supports crossfire/sli. Ati and nvidia make drivers and they determine what games have good crossfire/sli support.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Does Arma 2 support Crossfire? Probably not. With a stronger GPU you will get by far more fps.

I had no problems. (The HDR is sometimes unreasonably bright at the start of a mission, then immediately goes down to normal levels)

Anyway, since i am CPU limited in most situations turning down settings barely gives me any FPS, so i wont upgrade in the near future since i am happy with the current performance. The second GPU may enable me to increase my settings a bit but i havent even tried that yet. (Except for upping the viewdistance in TakHO, but that is not completely GPU dependant)

[-=seany=- 5]

And there is no such thing as a game that supports crossfire/sli. Ati and nvidia make drivers and they determine what games have good crossfire/sli support.

Actually that's not true. I would have agreed with you until I saw what the Development team for Rise Of Flight ( WW1 Flight Sim) did with with their last major update.

There was already a SLI profile added for Rise of Flight by nvidia not too long after RoF's initial release, which worked and gave an FPS boost that I was pretty happy with.

Then I heard that the Dev team where going to add "MultiGPU" support. Which I thought was rather odd and guessed perhaps it might be just for Crossfire or some thing. But upon trying it out when it was released it blew me away.

With the nvidia profile I would gain about 5-6 FPS. After the Developer added MutiGPU support I am getting 15-20 FPS increase.

It would seem that all these game developers telling us we have to wait for Nvidia/AMD to add MultiGPU through driver updates and profiles is complete rubbish.

If developers would spend some time on actually adding specific engine optimizations to work with MultiGPU we would get much better bang for buck out of our SLI/Crossfire setups.

[Leon86 13]

I thought the only thing the developer has to do is make sure the current frame isnt dependant on the last frame.

[pendragonuk 0]

I thought the only thing the developer has to do is make sure the current frame isnt dependant on the last frame.

I'm not sure about SLi but with CrossfireX there are several different systems. There is the alternating frame, top half bottom half, Tiles where the screen is split up into tiles and another I can't remember the name where the screen if divided in to sections using radial lines from the centre. The last is a sort of super anisotropic filtering where the work is shared by the available GPU/s the last one dose nothing for the fps but make it all look real nice.

By setting the cards to run in CrossfireX mode the driver chooses a mode to use. This may be influenced by the game or the game profiles you download with your drivers.

Most game I play you can clearly see an almost doubling of fps by turning CrossfireX on. Some of the more complex benchmarks like Heaven the increase is not quite as large, an fps of 50 will jump to 70, not 100! So will all games apart form ArmA CrossfireX gives around an 80% bump to fps. In ArmA it make no difference at all! I can see that both GPU's are in use but the raw fps doesn't move more than one or two fps. It's all very disappointing.

The more your CPU is doing the less your GPU has to do as they sit and wait for the next chunk of data to be generated by the CPU...

[Leon86 13]

you can load up the gpu's quite easily, just blow something up or throw a smoke grenade, smoke is an absolute gpu killer.

[r20 10]

Hello. I am new to the forums but old to the engine. Been playing BIS games for 10 years.

My computer is getting dated but I can still run almost every new game maxed out at playable FPS: (30FPS+). But unfortunately one of my favorite game runs bad. I have Combined Operations. I run OA benchmark and get average 25 FPS. Sometimes it goes up to 40, sometimes it drops down to 20. I updated my both games. Updated my NVIDIA drivers. I noticed that most lags are caused by higher AA, higher 3D res. and higher Post Proc.. View Distance also cause some lag, but it's essential to me. Lowering Objects detail makes game look ugly.

I wish I could get steady 30FPS+ and be able to use some AA to remove stair effect.

What could possibly save me?

1. Overclocking CPU to 3GHz? Or maybe more?

2. Installing both Windows and ARMA2 on SSD?

3. Instaling Windows and ARMA2 on seperate drives?

4. Installing ARMA 2 on windowx XP?

5. Renaming something to Crysis.exe?

6. Out of options. (Stop playing ARMA2, throw PC over window, suicide) :p

My PC:

GTX285

Q9400 2.66GHz

CHIEFTEC PSU ATX 700W

1TB HDD

2X2GB DDR2 800MHz

22X DVDRW

Windows 7 x64

My in-game settings:

View Distance: 3600

Video memory: Default

Antialiasing: Disabled

Interface Resolution: 1280x1024x32

3D Resolution: 1280x1024

Postprocess effects: Low

Vsync: Disabled

Everything else: Very High

My NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Ambient Oc: Off

Cuda GPU's(Physx): Off

Texture filtering - negative LOD bias: Clamp

Power: maximum performance

Max Prerendered Frames: 8

Everything else: Off or aplication controlled

[Riffler 10]

Hello R20+

my suggestion:

Everything else: Very High <= not good :D

try this:

HDR = default

shadow details = high (normaly=CPU | high/very high = GPU)

texture details = default

landscape details = very low (eats a lot of power)

post effects = disable (a matter of taste - i hate this effect)

looks not worse then befor and the game should run smoother i think

nvidia settings i can not comment, im a ati slave

[r20 10]

Hello R20+

my suggestion:

Everything else: Very High <= not good :D

try this:

HDR = default

shadow details = high (normaly=CPU | high/very high = GPU)

texture details = default

landscape details = very low (eats a lot of power)

post effects = disable (a matter of taste - i hate this effect)

looks not worse then befor and the game should run smoother i think

nvidia settings i can not comment, im a ati slave

But there's no HDR Default setting, there's only Normal, High, Very High.

[Riffler 10]

HDR: normal i mean ;)

[pendragonuk 0]

That covers the game side as for the hardware:

1. Overclocking CPU to 3GHz? Or maybe more? Yes if you can, keep it cool!

2. Installing both Windows and ARMA2 on SSD? Definitely, an SSD is the biggest upgrade you can give your PC! Makes running windows a dream :bounce3:

3. Instaling Windows and ARMA2 on seperate drives? No real difference

4. Installing ARMA 2 on windowx XP? Could work but clutching at straws

5. Renaming something to Crysis.exe? To answer that you will need to talk to an nVidia fanboy I'm the wrong flavour

6. Out of options. (Stop playing ARMA2, throw PC over window, suicide) don't do it!!!! :eek:

[domokun 515]

I wish I could get steady 30FPS+ and be able to use some AA to remove stair effect.

What could possibly save me?

1. Overclock your CPU as it should deliver tangible benefits

2. Prolly deliver increase but not how you expect (try other tweaks first)

6. Know how you feel ;)

7. Lower your View Distance (from 3600m to 2000m)

8. Defrag your hard drive (Defraggler does a good job and is free)

9. Minimise the number services running (Gamebooster good and free but watch out for other software it offers to install)

Edited July 12, 2011 by domokun

[r20 10]

Ok thanks guys. I think I'll consider overclocking CPU.

How much should I overclock it? Will 3GHz get rid of all that lag? And what about the temperatures? What are the last safe temperatures for PC?

BTW: Its Q9400 2.66GHz.

[r20 10]

Hey guys. Today I was trying to overclock. Seems like my motherboard has some kind of protection from that. My pc is custom built and the m-board is rated good for overclocking. I even tried to overclock with gigabyte given software. But when I change voltages, FBS, multiplyers etc... I save everything in BIOS and exit. PC shuts down, suddenly reboots 3 times and everything is reseted to default. I've tried different timings, bigger voltages, smaller FBS, but its nothing.

Oh well, looks like I'll have to fork some money for SSD now later for new monster rig.

My dream rig (i7-990X 3.46GHz and 6 cores. GTX 580. Real fast and expensive any SSD. 8GB DDR3) Something like that. But I think hexa core cpu's arent really usable.