ArmA2 / OA (low) performance issues

[doveman 7]

I haven't checked with ArmA yet but I found that HwInfo64 was the cause of the intermittent stuttering I was getting with DCS World, so I'll see if it causes any issues with ArmA.

[kklownboy 43]

I have had quite a few logging apps give stutter. You can try to set the "affinity" and a lower "Priority" to there .exe. But usually setting the polling rate to more than 5sec will work okish.

[doveman 7]

I have had quite a few logging apps give stutter. You can try to set the "affinity" and a lower "Priority" to there .exe. But usually setting the polling rate to more than 5sec will work okish.

It doesn't appear to let me adjust the polling rate but hopefully the authors will be able to fix it, otherwise I'll try lowering the affinity and priority as you suggest. Or just not run it whilst playing ;)

[kklownboy 43]

I think you have to buy the adjustable version? But yeah i only run them when testing, and off when playing with players. I still prefer Adia64, 20$? Not sure if GPUz is stuttering while logging?

[doveman 7]

The author of HwInfo has pointed me to the Known Issues, which says:

"3. Higher system load or latency during sensor monitoring.

Description: When performing sensor monitoring, on some systems (depending on sensors present), the user might experience higher system load or latency (including DPC). This can be caused by certain sensors, especially sensors of the "EC" type, "DELL SMI", or disk SMART sensors (depending on controller and disk driver used).

Workaround: Disable monitoring of particular sensor items (right-click and "Disable monitoring") until the latency/load is reduced."

I'm not sure this was my problem as I checked my latency before and did so again and it's mostly 15-25 with the occasional spike to 50, 80 or 120 but those happen whether HwInfo is running or not. I also tried disabling monitoring on all the sensors apart from my GPU one and I noticed stuttering in DCS World (running from HDD) that seemed to no longer happen after closing HwInfo but I'll have to do some more testing to confirm.

Just to be clear, I haven't been logging (i.e to a csv file) with HwInfo or anything else.

[doveman 7]

I've now put all of OA and A2-Free/Addons (there isn't room for A2-Full) on a 11GB RAMdisk now but I'm still getting stuttering.

With the settings below I get 51fps on E08 (35fps at the start of scene 2 and drops to 35fps at the end of the last scene).

1920x1200, VD 2000, Texture Detail - V.High, Video Memory - Default, AF - V.High, AA - Disabled, ATOC - Disabled

Terrain Detail - Normal, Object Detail - V.High, Shadow Detail - Disabled, HDR - Normal, PPAA - SMAA V.High

PP - Disabled, Vsync - Disabled

However, I tried the demo PMC000: Inception and noticed a lot of stuttering running around. It's mostly 45-60 although sometimes it seems to drop to around 38, which would still be fine if it wasn't stuttering.

There's also a problem with Vsync as if I enable it, my mouse doesn't work properly in the menus and it feels like it's sticking in treacle! I have to put Mouse Smoothing to 1/2 way or higher as otherwise the gun-sights jumps all over the place when panning, so maybe Mouse Smoothing causes this problem with the mouse in the interface with Vsync on but I obviously can't turn MS off and I want to use Vsync to prevent the annoying tearing.

I've just tried setting

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;

and that appears to have fixed the problem with the mouse and Vsync but it hasn't stopped the stuttering.

[Sakowski 1]

Well I gotta agree that ArmA 2 makes your PC test its strength and sometimes I wonder if it hates quad or dual cores for example my PC setup is:

AMD Phenom II X4 3.2 GhZ

8GB GeLi RAM

GTS 450 1GB Nvidia Graphic Card

And yet I gotta play on low settings D:

[kklownboy 43]

well a 450 is less than a 250. Your Vidcard is equal to a GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. I would assume your playing on a 1912/1080 Display too?

So yeah you would play on low...

[Sakowski 1]

well a 450 is less than a 250. Your Vidcard is equal to a GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. I would assume your playing on a 1912/1080 Display too?

So yeah you would play on low...

Nope you are wrong, 1024x720 or what ever it is.

[doveman 7]

I've noticed the framerate is pretty bad when looking at the map as well, which doesn't make much sense.

If fully zoomed out, it drops to 11fps, medium zoom around 25fps and fully zoomed (on some maps) up to 60fps. I'm not even talking about maps with lots of men/vehicles being tracked, just me on my own in the editor.

[kklownboy 43]

That does happen, the 2D slowdown on maps and other Dialogs... And not all the time?

@ Sakowski

Well thats even worse. Time for a new card. A used 275 would be twice the power you have and they must be used for $50 or less?

[NeMeSiS 11]

I've noticed the framerate is pretty bad when looking at the map as well, which doesn't make much sense.

If fully zoomed out, it drops to 11fps, medium zoom around 25fps and fully zoomed (on some maps) up to 60fps. I'm not even talking about maps with lots of men/vehicles being tracked, just me on my own in the editor.

I have a feeling that the editor/map is drawn on the CPU, this started for me when i changed to a 1080p monitor and it only happens when zoomed out, when i was still on a 1024×768 CRT it never happened.

[doveman 7]

That does happen, the 2D slowdown on maps and other Dialogs... And not all the time?

Yeah, all the time.

---------- Post added at 22:44 ---------- Previous post was at 22:43 ----------

I have a feeling that the editor/map is drawn on the CPU, this started for me when i changed to a 1080p monitor and it only happens when zoomed out, when i was still on a 1024×768 CRT it never happened.

Even so, seems strange that my CPU would have trouble displaying a 2D map. I'll have to look at the CPU load whilst viewing it sometime.

[NeMeSiS 11]

Even so, seems strange that my CPU would have trouble displaying a 2D map. I'll have to look at the CPU load whilst viewing it sometime.

We have the same CPU.

[doveman 7]

Well it seems strange that your CPU would have trouble drawing a 2D map as well then ;)

[doveman 7]

I just tried markb's Apocalypse mission and only got around 18-22fps (sometimes 10-15fps) with that on Lingor.

I then tried Warfare Rubber Build Takistan and got 50-60fps on that. Then I tried the Harvest Red campaign, the level where you're hunting the two war criminals, and got around 28fps.

I don't think my settings have changed but just to remind you, this is what I'm currently using

1920x1200, VD 2000, Texture Detail - V.High, Video Memory - Default, AF - V.High, AA - Disabled, ATOC - Disabled

Terrain Detail - Normal, Object Detail - V.High, Shadow Detail - Disabled, HDR - Normal, PPAA - SMAA V.High

PP - Disabled, Vsync - Disabled

I didn't try on Apocalypse but on Harvest Red, the only setting that seemed to make much difference was dropping Object Detail down to Low, which gave me an extra 4-6fps. I've bumped up Shadows to V.High now as it looks pretty awful in the forests with no shadows. I've also set

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;

I've just tried clearing out the ATI drivers and installing the 12.6 SB and GPU drivers (was on 12.4) but it hasn't helped.

I just tried Apocalypse again whilst monitoring the CPU and GPU usage and the weird thing is the Total CPU is around 40%, with one core on 60% and the others around 30% and the GPU is also only hitting around 40%, so it's not like my system doesn't have the juice to power this.

EDIT: I thought I'd try booting to XP and with that I get slightly better 20-22fps with the same settings, as is normal with XP vs Win7. The strange thing is though, I was playing around with the settings and set them all to Disabled or as low as they go and then HwInfo showed that my GPU was being used 0.0% and I still got the same 24fps as I got with some of the settings on higher. Further testing showed that upping Texture detail and Video Memory to V.High and Terrain Detail to low doesn't get the GPU utilised at all. Only setting Video Memory to Default (17%), not V.High or Below, or Terrain Detail to Normal or above (17%+) or Object Detail to Low or above (18%, 24%, 31%, 40%) causes GPU usage to go above 0.0%. With Video Memory - Default, Terrain Detail - Normal, Object Detail - V.High it goes to about 45%. So it seems that the GPU isn't being used at all for a lot of the graphics work and whilst one core rises from about 60% to 70-80% with the graphics settings turned right down, it's not running at full pelt and the other 3 cores remain around 40-50%, so I don't understand what's limiting the framerate to 21-24fps.

Although I couldn't get much improvement with Apocalypse, I also ran E08 with the following settings and it scored 66fps, compared to 44fps, with the end of the last scene being 55fps, whereas before it was 28-35fps, so quite a difference.

VD 1600, Texture Detail - Normal, Video Memory - Normal, AF - Normal, AA - Disabled, ATOC - Disabled

Terrain Detail - Normal, Objects - Normal, Shadows - Normal, HDR - Normal, PPAA - SMAA V.High

PP - Disabled, Vsync - Disabled

These settings are obviously much lower than those I tested with in Win7 before (below), although I also tried with VD 2000 and that still scored 66fps. AF doesn't make any difference and Video Memory Normal is probably worse than Default, so the main things that account for the difference are probably Texture Detail, Objects and Shadows. I'll have to see if they make the same difference in Win7.

VD 2000, Texture Detail - V. High, Video Memory - Default, AF - V. High, AA - Disabled, ATOC - Disabled

Terrain Detail - Normal, Objects - V.High, Shadows - V.High, HDR - Normal, PPAA - SMAA V.High

PP - Disabled, Vsync - Disabled

I also have shadingQuality=0; in Win7 compared to =10 in XP but if anything that should make Win7 better.

Edited October 16, 2012 by doveman

[doveman 7]

Been playing Harvest Red today and that was only using about 40% GPU and 50% CPU whilst giving me 17fps (sometimes it was higher, around 25fps, other times it would drop even lower, mainly when zooming in from the helo).

Seems crazy that it won't use the CPU and GPU that's available!

[Vilman 10]

Hi there !

After a crashing to desktop i get this error message :

"ErrorMessage: Out of memory (requested 0 KB).

footprint 621084672 KB.

pages 32768 KB."

My pc is :

Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E6600 @ 3.06GHz proc.

Gigabyte G31M-ES2L motherboard 64 bit- all system memory is 4.0 GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5650 - vcard 1GB

DirectX 10

Any idea guys ?

[Tankbuster 1733]

Hi there !

After a crashing to desktop i get this error message :

"ErrorMessage: Out of memory (requested 0 KB).

footprint 621084672 KB.

pages 32768 KB."

My pc is :

Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E6600 @ 3.06GHz proc.

Gigabyte G31M-ES2L motherboard 64 bit- all system memory is 4.0 GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5650 - vcard 1GB

DirectX 10

Any idea guys ?

Mmmm. An ancient laptop. :) That's probably not helping. Is pagefile turned off?

[Vilman 10]

Not a laptop, its a two years old machine. ;)

Do i have to turn pagefile off ?

[Tankbuster 1733]

2 years? They were cutting edge in 2006. I know - I had one.

But your GPU is way down on power as well as your CPU. This really isn't a good machine for this game.

You need to have pagefile turned on.

When I did a midlife upgrade on my machine, I went from a E6600 to a Q9550 on the same mobo. See if your motherboard supports the Q9550.

[Vilman 10]

Thanks Tankbuster. Well here in Hungary it is a common pc hardware config for our pockets you know...

[maschmaschmasch 1]

Hey all - anyone mind checking something over with me?

I'm running:

i5 480M

Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (Catalyst 12.8 - could this be an issue?)

6gb RAM

I realise with that GPU I'm gonna be running everything on low (although I'd like to be able to squeeze out 1920x1080 res).

Settings:

*Everything* that could be on very low or off is set to that.

View distance ~1500m

Res: 1920x1080

VRAM is set to default

So here's the thing using those low settings (and in fact I can turn a few up) - I can fly a helicopter around Chernogorsk and comfortably manage ~25 fps. But - I stick a sniper out on a steep hill, and scope look at some trees and I'm seeing approx ~10 fps no matter what I try. It's always cos of the trees, and is massively affected by the scoping. This seems a bit weird to me - anyone got any thoughts?

Cheers!

Edited October 22, 2012 by maschmaschmasch

[kklownboy 43]

your Laptop is not up to your Resolution. You could try a desert map.

[doveman 7]

I'm running the system in my sig and still only get 13-17fps playing Harvest Red under OA, so don't expect much. Changing the settings to low/disabled doesn't make any difference, as it seems the CPU is not used properly (only one core is running at about 60%, the other three at 40% or lower) so the GPU is irrelevant and is only used about 30%. I can increase the GPU usage to 60%+ by sticking PP on but it doesn't affect the fps at all.

Playing online I can get around 50fps though, so it seems that it's just the SP that's poorly designed.

Edited October 23, 2012 by doveman