ArmA2 / OA (low) performance issues

[dar 12]

I will try this, thank you.

But PP effects definitly need to stay on setting low as disable would also kill the awesome ingame effects ace provides so this is not an option.

I thought the setting "default" for Video memory is recommended so that I can use the full power of my GPU?

I also experienced a higher performance loss on shadow quality "high" than on "very high". I will try both settings.

Another question: Would more GHz (for example 3.5Ghz on an ivy bridge i7 3770k cpu) mean better performance in Arma? Im thinking about a new cpu for a while now but that fact would drive me to buy one soon.

And: Would more RAM increase the Arma performance? For example 16GB Ram with 1600Mhz instead of the 8GB RAM with 667Mhz I use now?

Edited December 18, 2012 by Dar

[chrisb 196]

PP, of course that’s down to personal preference, I am against pp myself, but understand that many love it to some degree..

Vid mem at very high gives me over 5fps more, if you monitor your in-game vid mem use, with it set to both, then see.

Shadows on high or very high gives me very little difference, but I am happy with high so that’s where it is, I get the benefit of any improvement, that’s if there is any of course..

Upgrading anything is a good thing, upgrading to the best you can afford is good advice, I would say, well always has been when I have had such advice given to me, especially with pc’s..

There is talk of SSD, which I have in my new pc but not used yet, its waiting for the big day (Arma 3), so I’m looking forward to the hype.

Some say more Ram, but I’m not convinced, I have 4gb and it runs A2 fine, your pc is much stronger than my A2 pc so should be running the game well. I asked for the comparison just to see if it gives a score the same or less than mine, which if it did, would seem to suggest a problem somewhere. It should be scoring higher than my A2 pc in the bench mentioned..

Do you have lots of ‘running processes’ going on in the background whilst playing ?, another problem causer in my own experience.

Also online playing, whilst every other program is trying to update, can be another issue.. Many things effect the running of a pc, of which you are no doubt aware..

[dar 12]

New tests:

Chernaus Benchmark 1: 1st run: 20fps, 2nd run: 24fps, video memory high/default is equal, Shadows high/very high is equal.

For obvious reasons I didnt dare to run benchmark 2 again.

No other backgroundprograms running than Sixupdater and Skype.

Actually, because you mentioned it - that SSD thing sounds interesting to me so I searched a little bit and figured out it could really make a difference. Any suggestions which manufacturer is good? There are huge price differences.

And to come back to the rest of the hardware stuff I mentioned - I know that new hardware is always good but the point is - does it make the difference for arma? Or is it just nice to have when you look to the future?

[nettrucker 142]

Having similar issues here.

When was the last time you defraged the hard drive Arma is installed on? Patching and installing, moving and removing can slow down your hard drive significantly and it will create lag in game if your hard drive is heavily fragmented. I believe you tried that already but who knows it might be that you didn't. Hope you get this sorted.

An SSD will not increase your fps significantly but when playing on an SSD the gameplay feels smooth and the annoying lod switching and textures loading late, have nearly vanished.

ArmA is CPU hungry. The more powerful your processor is the higher FPS you get. There's no doubt about that to me. I currently bought a new rig and it's a complete different ballgame right now. Nothing compared to my low end Dualcore. You can't compare ArmA with other games IMHO, ArmA stresses whatever system you are running. If you running with an old system ArmA brings it down to it's knees.

Edited December 18, 2012 by nettrucker
added comment

[dar 12]

just defragged the HD Arma is installed on about 2h ago. Also cleaned up the whole PC using advanced system care 6. Theres nothing left that could matter now.

[nettrucker 142]

So no improvement huh? Than I'm at wits end here. If you can . . . do an upgrade. I bought myself not a long time ago an I7 3770K 3.5 ghz - NVIDIA 560 GTX - 16 GB RAM - 120GB SSD Agility.

Man that changed my ArmA experience completely. Never played that game in such a smooth manner. AI reaction time is incredibly short compared to my old rig.

[dar 12]

So I guess there are some major investments to do in near future. That agility SSD sounds like a good idea to me and will be my first step the next days. Hopefully it helps.

Anyway I found a reason that costs me about 10-15fps: Its a bunch of mods I use. Mainly PVPscene tweaks and ASR_AI mods. Without them I get around 35-39 fps which is acceptable but still far below the level I could expect with my specs.

[chrisb 196]

Actually, because you mentioned it - that SSD thing sounds interesting to me so I searched a little bit and figured out it could really make a difference. Any suggestions which manufacturer is good? There are huge price differences.

And to come back to the rest of the hardware stuff I mentioned - I know that new hardware is always good but the point is - does it make the difference for arma? Or is it just nice to have when you look to the future?

Did you check task manager for running processes ?

There is a thread regards SSD on here somewhere, might be a good place to ask how they perform from players using them now for Arma 2.

Mine are 120gb HyperX Kingston x2 so I really have 240gb. Its untried at present as said earlier, not putting anything on it other than A3, so not sure, but I have confidence in the machine, it was well researched and advised by friends.. Just waiting for A3..

Lots online about ssd, youtube is good to see results from tests etc.

Regards does upgrading help Arma 2, well upgrading a machine that is not performing now could be costly, where do you begin or stop, if you don't know why its under performing. Buying a completely new upgraded pc, would imo be well worth it. Depends on what you want to spend on gaming. This series is really my hobby so I don't mind spending on it a little. My A2 pc has never been a problem from the start off, so I got a really good pc at a reasonable price. The second A3 machine I got recently cost a fair bit more, however I did wonder regards the AMD FX 8150 which was a lot cheaper, that also performs really well, a friend who plays in our group has bought one very recently and it breezes A2 with no problem (it has a 7970 gpu 3gb), playing the missions and ongoing game we play, but I went with the one I did, but there are choices out there.

I can’t answer if it will work better for you for A2, it is really that hard to predict unless the pc is a gaming pc (solely gaming), then its easier to hit the mark with suggestions..

Edited December 18, 2012 by ChrisB

[dar 12]

Thanks for your help anyway. I guess I'll have to figure out which mod especially lowers my fps. Furthermore I just ordered an agility 120GB SSD for A2 and hope it will help a little bit soon a new cpu will follow.

[domokun 515]

Dar: an SSD is definitely going to help but in the meantime, try these tried and tested tweaks:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-%28low%29-performance-issues&p=2081466#post2081466

[dar 12]

In fact, changing any graphic settings like AToC or AA gives me +1 or 2 fps at its best, I tested a lot of scenarios. As those options are what my gpu does, I think it is powerful enough and not the reason for low fps. I really think its the cpu/HD thats strained too much by the game. I will test it anyway, thanks.

[runforrest 10]

hey Dar i know exactly what u mean, it had to wait 3 years until i could run ArmA 2 like i should, and still theres enough situations where i get below 30 fps.

The CPU definately has the largest effect on performance in most cases, the more Ghz u can have the better. (OCing my CPU from 2.7 Ghz to 3.3Ghz helped alot)

But it also depends on the the mission, something like domination or warfare will NEVER run very fluent, u will notice when u are at start on a domination and u look into the sky ur FPS should be higher than when u look forward. If ur FPS is nearly equaly low in both cases theres much likey nothing u can do to change that. And there can be several reasons to it why it is like that. Most likely its a domination edit with lots of vehicles and objects at base and every object will eat FPS even if u are far away and cant see it. Or the server is not good enough. So only thing u should do is disconnect and find other server and see if FPS is better. But domination or warfare will never run with good FPS (30+) like a small 8 player coop mission. And as i said in missions like that NO grafic setting will give u better FPS, quickest way to see that is always look in sky (50-60 FPS) and lower viewdistance, if that doesnt increase FPS nothing else will do it either ( if ur connected to a server).

Also when u play singleplayer or host a game urself performance will be not so good as if u connect to a dedicated server and play the same mission there. And of course addons like ASR_AI or especially twpc_ai_supress have quite a hit on ur FPS. (on ArmA 2 Benchmark 01 twpc_ai_supress eat 10 FPS !!!).

Theres one thing for me that gives me stable +5 fps (or even more depending on ur settings in IVD):

use SAP_clutter (short grass,sadly only works on Chernarus clutter) combined with Instant Viewdistance. In the userconfig of IVD play around with settings for terraindetails, 48 is what should give u 5-7 stable FPS more than usual

Viewdistance in missions should be around 2000, in towns go down to 800m or crowded Zargabad or Fallujah down to 500m and u will have nice FPS

one more thing: play around with rendered frames ahead in ur driver settings and GPU_MaxFramesAhead in ArmA2OA.cfg. Try setting both to 0,1,2 or 3 and see what gives u best results

*edit i just saw the link above, it says it all :) gdt grass maybe is better choice than sap_clutter as is has better blending in of grass

some notes to AA and stuff

always make sure ur driver is set to application controled

with NVidia AA off and in arma fxaa=low gives me best results

for comparison see my signature, with JSRS, Blastcore and tons of other addons i get 40fps in ArmA2 Benchmark 01

Edited December 20, 2012 by RunForrest

[MAVEN 1]

This whole thread is going so fast.

I would like to ask.

Where can I post my own thread on how to optimize gaming systems?

I made a really good thread for another community, it been a sticky for over a year and helped many, maybe it can help BI members as well.

[sagehorn 1]

Hi there

I've got the problem, that Arma 2 constantly lags every ten seconds, obviously only on wasteland servers.

Seems, that it hasn't to do anything with my graphic settings. When I set them down, the lag is also there.

By contrast, on a full warfare server the lag doesn't exist.

In sp-missions made with the editor the problem doesn't occur, too.

I tried different arma.ru wasteland-servers: The lag is on full as well as on empty servers.

Strangely, other players seem not to have it, and I asked several..

Any ideas or experiences, how this problem can be fixed?

Sounds like a connections problem, not?

[runforrest 10]

@MAVEN

i agree, ONE very well structured post with all facts regarding optimization would be nice

@Sagehorn

hm is it lag (connection problem - no FPS drops) or is it stutter (FPS drop from time to time)

Did u check ArmA2 logfile file? (arma2oa.RPT at Win7 64bit located at C:\Users\urUserName\AppData\Local\ArmA 2 OA - open it with default wordpad/notepad or better notepad++) does it get spammed by errors?

To check that close ArmA, delete the file, start ArmA, wait until ur in main menu, alt+tab out of the game, open the file, check how many lines are written in the file, alt-tab back into game, join the server, wait until u are in the mission, alt-tab again, check how many lines are written this time(how many more), alt-tab back into game, play until lag happens, after lag alt-tab out of game, check again how many new lines are written since the last check.

If the stutter is caused by errors, that are written to the RPT, it has to be many errors (a few hundred or thousand lines in short time). Note that it is quite normal to get a few errors in the file but it depends on how many addons u load. Also note SSD hardrives can reduce/elimate that stutter even when the RPT gets spamed like crazy.

Im just guessing here the cause may also be something totaly different

[sagehorn 1]

thx for your reply. i dont think, it has to do with the connections, though i assumed it first. the frames are affected by the lags..

I followed your advise, and found some error messages that are repeating very often. Examples:

-Invalid sample format, channels: 1, frequency: 0.000000

-Cannot load sound 'ca\sounds\vehicles\wheeled\bus\int\noise3.wss'

-Warning Message: Cannot load texture \.

Unrecognized texture type '': '\'

First one was more interesting to me. I set down the samples to 96 and on next start, there were no new lines.

I'll check now, if this could influence the game..

edit: Okay, still stuttering. Maybe it has to do with that audiofile.. Could it be, that the game retrieves/requests "something" every 10 seconds?

edit2: While testing on server, the following messages (content partly changes) appear regularly:

Observer O 1-1-E:1 (Mr.Hide) REMOTE (opfor22) in cargo of O 1-1-E:1 (Mr.Hide) REMOTE (opfor22); message was repeated in last 60 sec: 0

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Network simulation, time = 12458.855

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group R 1-1-H (0x30b99900) - network ID 2:4774

- no main subgroup

Group O 1-1-F (0x30b9b400) - network ID 2:4778

- no main subgroup

Edited December 20, 2012 by Sagehorn

[MAVEN 1]

Ok guys, I just posted the guide I was talking about.

Try it - http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?143792-General-System-Tweak-Guide

Also note that I'm not looking for views or whatever, I just hope it will help at least some of you.

Cheers.

[sagehorn 1]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThtORRjL48A

Here is a video with that lags

They appear on 0:05 - 0:15 - 0:25 - 0:35 etc..

[chrisb 196]

[They appear on 0:05 - 0:15 - 0:25 - 0:35 etc..

What’s your fps like ? Do you have v-sync enabled ?

[runforrest 10]

@Sagehorn

im sorry i have no idea what those errors mean :confused: maybe others can help u

[MichaelZFreeman 20]

Just thought I'd put this here as some general advice. I upgraded to Vista. Vista should be recommended as essential for something like ArmA as it has a completely different model in the OS for handling memory, drivers and hardware. I did not realise until I looked into Vista (beyond the "lol vista" silliness) and found what a fundamental advance it is over XP. There are also a lot of misunderstandings about game performance on PC's, especially when it comes to something as system testing as ArmA. People often don't want to hear this advice as they want it to be easy (hey, I'm the same!) and just want to flick a few settings to make things better. But that rarely works unless you have already ironed out the problems in your system. I suggest reading Tweakguides, especially the Tweaking Companion (this is not an advert BTW) as I highly rate this fellow Koroush Ghazi. It's not for everyone as he is saying something that sadly, many PC users just don't want to hear. You will also hear truths about PC troubleshooting that some can't handle ... "you can't handle the truth!". But he won't feed you a line of useless lies about "fixing your PC" that the net is full of. The bottom line is that a PC is like a customised racing rig (the "fast and the furious", eh?). A PC is not really a turn key solution like a family saloon. The user has to get under the "hood" and get their hands dirty. It is essential to do this is you want to compete in the high speed race that is ArmA.

[desfocado 1]

EDIT 5: I played Takistan Insurgency and some DayZ both with the 100296 beta (if that matters). GPU usage was at least 80%, CPU was a bit better (some peaks at 70% though not at full power). My FPS was above 40 easily in some outskirt areas. FPS had highs and lows and was much better overall. In DayZ, using binocs over the cherno military tents from the west treeline at about 450 meters I was at 27 FPS (and that's DayZ). I'm looking into this.

I have:

-AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.8 GHz (C2 Stepping)

-XFX OC HD 6850 1GB + extra OC @ 875/1100

-4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM (OCZ Reaper HPC)

-Gigabyte GA-MA780G-UD3H

-Seagate 500GB 16MB (ST3500418AS)

-Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

-[NEW] Windows 8 x64 Pro on different 120GB IDE drive (performs the same)

-100Mbps DL/20Mbps UL Internet (~50km server in Speedtest)

-Avast! Home edition 7 / Windows Firewall off

and I've tried with all of my 3 soundcards:

-ASUS Xonar DS

-TASCAM US144 MKii

-Onboard

My fps in Wasteland is always between 20 and 30 FPS and lowers to 15-20 in any enormous base/city. Changing the settings will only add/subtract give or take 3 to 5 fps (if it does) and looking at the sky/ground will add very little FPS.

And I have tried:

-Every different config, from low to very high, to sceneComplexity "x,y,z", to "x,y,z" rendered frames and whatnot;

-Every startup parameters including but not limited to -winxp, -cpuCount 4, -cpuCount 2, -exThread 7;

-Razer Game Booster (little side note, if you want to use it download it from Razer's website, not IOBit);

-Running from Steam with extra params, without params;

-Running from .exe shortcut with extra params, without params;

-Uninstalling games which translates to going from 20 GB of HDD space to 60+ out of 430GB usable;

-Redownloading and reinstalling the game and quite possibly many other things I can't recall.

Also note that I've monitored everything:

-RAM usage is normal;

-VRAM doesn't matter since even with tex. detail at low it gives me the same FPS yet about a third of the 930 VRAM it usually takes off my 1GB;

-HDD I/O doesn't seem to show any problems. I don't think it's related to the HDD since I tried in 2 different HDD's with different OS's;

-GPU usage in SP is higher in most other forms of gameplay (DayZ, SP, Takistan Insurgency) 80%+ in scenario 1 (Trial by Fire) from Arma II, usually under 40% (varies) in wasteland MP, 20% to 30% even;

-CPU usage in both MP and SP is around 40-55% IIRC, (and no, it is not bottlenecking since CPU usage at the most used core hardly ever reaches 60-70%, so do not recommend me getting 4 Intel Xeon E7's because my CPU/GPU are "bad", "old" or "from AMD");

I can't think of anything to add right now. If you want to know something else I forgot or know some tweak I should try just reply anytime.

Edited January 6, 2013 by desfocado
Update

[domokun 515]

Guys save yourself a lot of time and hassel:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-%28low%29-performance-issues&p=2081466#post2081466

And as far as I can see Razer's version of Gamebooster offers nothing more than IOBit's except that it requires that you register with them, i.e. they have your email address for marketing purposes.

Good suggestion? I doubt it...

[desfocado 1]

Guys save yourself a lot of time and hassel:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-%28low%29-performance-issues&p=2081466#post2081466

And as far as I can see Razer's version of Gamebooster offers nothing more than IOBit's except that it requires that you register with them, i.e. they have your email address for marketing purposes.

Good suggestion? I doubt it...

http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/iobit.com

Just register with a temp mail address then. Iobit is know for being "dodgy" at the very least.

Let's go back on topic though. I've tried those. Not all mods because my bad performance mainly affects multiplayer.

[beckyolt 1]

I'm still getting low fps. On that scenario where you're a Russian soldier storming Elektrozavodsk ( Counterattack? ) I only get ~30fps average... and I have 8gb ram, i5-3570k and a gtx 670 2gb...