ArmA2 / OA (low) performance issues

[maschmaschmasch 1]

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

No, that's not what I'm asking.

I can fly a helicopter high above Cherno - so it's drawing hundreds of buildings and thousands of trees - and I get ~25 fps.

I go on the ground and run around the tree line looking freely - I get ~25 fps.

I go on the ground, take out a sniper rifle, scope and look at a big forest, and suddenly I'm down at ~10 fps.

Why are the zoomed in trees causing so much of an issue? Does anyone else have this problem? I turn everything down to low or off; textures, no ATOC, objects etc.

[domokun 515]

No, that's not what I'm asking.

I can fly a helicopter high above Cherno - so it's drawing hundreds of buildings and thousands of trees - and I get ~25 fps.

I go on the ground and run around the tree line looking freely - I get ~25 fps.

I go on the ground, take out a sniper rifle, scope and look at a big forest, and suddenly I'm down at ~10 fps.

Why are the zoomed in trees causing so much of an issue? Does anyone else have this problem? I turn everything down to low or off; textures, no ATOC, objects etc.

First up lower your VD to 1600m or lower.

Next disable Anti-Aliasing.

Change Shadows to High (it will shift calculation onto your GPU)

Keep Terrain on Normal

Set Memory to Default

Apply the latest beta bar 1, i.e. 98148 (I usually recommend the latest but 98220 is suffering from bad feedback)

These settings will get you most gains.

Other tweaks are described here:

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

Let us know how you get on!

[kklownboy 43]

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)....

Or HR is just a slow over scripted usual bad performance Campaign mission( it is). SP missions NOT of the Campaign(user made) run good, well except for the bad ones that lag up etc like the Official Campaign.

---------- Post added at 11:11 ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 ----------

...I go on the ground, take out a sniper rifle, scope and look at a big forest, and suddenly I'm down at ~10 fps.

Why are the zoomed in trees causing so much of an issue? Does anyone else have this problem? I turn everything down to low or off; textures, no ATOC, objects etc.

Its the nature of your hardware and the game. Zooming in Scope can drop your Frames. Its good to find the best frames while zoomed, then the rest of the game will be fine~. But your hardware is not up to the task.

[doveman 7]

Or HR is just a slow over scripted usual bad performance Campaign mission( it is). SP missions NOT of the Campaign(user made) run good, well except for the bad ones that lag up etc like the Official Campaign.

Maybe, although it's pretty bad if BIS can't create a mission/campaign that runs well on their own software. I haven't had a chance to test with many missions but Apocalypse http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?135304-SP-Apocalypse-Invade-Control-Conquer is just as bad as HR whilst Warfare BE2 Rubber Ed http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?133358-WARFARE-BE2-*Rubber-Ed* was OK I think. Battlefield 3 http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?110582-Battlefield-3-its-my-oil-36-coop-tdm-cti didn't work very well for me though.

[maschmaschmasch 1]

First up lower your VD to 1600m or lower.

Next disable Anti-Aliasing.

Change Shadows to High (it will shift calculation onto your GPU)

Keep Terrain on Normal

Set Memory to Default

Apply the latest beta bar 1, i.e. 98148 (I usually recommend the latest but 98220 is suffering from bad feedback)

These settings will get you most gains.

Other tweaks are described here:

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

Let us know how you get on!

Thanks fella. The beta seems to have made a bit of a difference; now I'm only seeing under 20fps when I scope look at really complicated views (multiple building and trees, or a huge clump of trees from up high).

For what its worth, I looked at GPU/CPU utilisation and the bottleneck is certainly on the GPU. I still don't really understand how I can fly through Cherno and not have an issue, but then have the computer start to splutter when 20 trees get drawn at close range, but at least this is gonna be playable in all but 95% of situations.

[Guess Who 10]

Maybe, although it's pretty bad if BIS can't create a mission/campaign that runs well on their own software. I haven't had a chance to test with many missions but Apocalypse http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?135304-SP-Apocalypse-Invade-Control-Conquer is just as bad as HR whilst Warfare BE2 Rubber Ed http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?133358-WARFARE-BE2-*Rubber-Ed* was OK I think. Battlefield 3 http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?110582-Battlefield-3-its-my-oil-36-coop-tdm-cti didn't work very well for me though.

Doveman, Chernarus itself is a hardware hungry map. Can you run it without anything AI? Start the editor and place your avatar inside Chernogorsk and look at your performance indicators. If you can't run that a a stable 50 to 60 fps, something is not right at your end. Seeing you were running from a ram disk, maybe it's your RAM that is not up to the task? But clearly it's not your GPU.

On a side note: All missions in the HR campaign are script heavy. Don't expect them to run at 60 fps unless you have a high end system. Same goes for "Apocalypse"; it is the worst mission performance wise I ever tested running at less than 20 fps on my system and I can run warfare twice as fast. I am running Arma:OA on a three year old i7-920/5870 system overclocked to 3.3 GHz and it runs just fine. But Arma is not known to run well on Phenoms.

[doveman 7]

Thanks, I'll try that test and see what I get.

I don't really expect it to run at 60fps but 30fps would be nice. I don't feel so bad if you're having similar problems with Apocalypse on your i7 system though. I was testing the OA campaign (2nd or 3rd mission, where you land at and have to take the airfield) and was getting 27fps before landing and 23fps on the ground, although it did pick up a bit to around 34fps once I'd finished clearing the airfield and moved on.

As for Arma not running well on Phenoms (or AMD at all as others have suggested), I'd say if that's the case, then the Optimal System Requirements shouldn't list the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (unless there's some defect in the Phenoms that makes Arma run worse on them then that CPU but I don't think that's the case).

[Minoza 11]

I'll repost here since this is sticky regarding performance issues, maybe it catches some attention:

OK, update... I noticed something very interesting, look my GPU usage graph during MP gameplay:

http://imageshack.us/a/img560/6238/gpuusage.jpg

First half of the graph is during normal MP gameplay, running around, looking around, etc... (zero usage was Alt-Tab) Now, see when it goes up? It happens whenever I zoom in, the more in the distance I see, the more the usage goes up, but only when zoomed in... In scoped view, usage goes to 99% and stays that way most of the time, I still get drops in usage, depending where I look at... I would understand that there might be less for GPU to work with when usage goes down, but my framerate goes to like 22... that is unacceptable, in scoped view, same direction, I get 60 lock...

@doveman

Could you try that? Try zooming and looking through scoped view and monitor gpu usage to see if it goes up. We may finally narrow this down if you experience same thing...

edit

Woah! Another one with exact same issue, same card as me, SLI actually, but nvm...

In DayZ at 1920x1080 maxed out with FXAA I get about ~100fps with my 2 670s, usage sits around 75% normally and jumps to high 90s when I zoom in. Do have random drops down to 40fps sometimes though, still playable though. When playing arma2 OA single player missions though I get absolutely horrid performance! Tried to do the shooting range one and it was like a slideshow.. I hope arma3 is better optimised.

Devs?

[maschmaschmasch 1]

I'll repost here since this is sticky regarding performance issues, maybe it catches some attention:

OK, update... I noticed something very interesting, look my GPU usage graph during MP gameplay:

http://imageshack.us/a/img560/6238/gpuusage.jpg

First half of the graph is during normal MP gameplay, running around, looking around, etc... (zero usage was Alt-Tab) Now, see when it goes up? It happens whenever I zoom in, the more in the distance I see, the more the usage goes up, but only when zoomed in... In scoped view, usage goes to 99% and stays that way most of the time, I still get drops in usage, depending where I look at... I would understand that there might be less for GPU to work with when usage goes down, but my framerate goes to like 22... that is unacceptable, in scoped view, same direction, I get 60 lock...

@doveman

Could you try that? Try zooming and looking through scoped view and monitor gpu usage to see if it goes up. We may finally narrow this down if you experience same thing...

edit

Woah! Another one with exact same issue, same card as me, SLI actually, but nvm...

Devs?

Hey up - see my comments a few posts up. I get the same problem - I can fly about / run around and everything is fine - but zoom in through a scope and everything runs at half-speed - I'm on an ATI card as well.

[chrisb 196]

You could try the zeus ‘zeu_oa_c_fov’ pbo, slide it in somewhere with another one of your mods and see if it helps any. It slightly zooms in your perspective, not much, but it can help give a slight fps boost.

Other than that, I get really good fps on the whole and when using a scope, my fps goes up further not down..:p

[doveman 7]

@doveman

Could you try that? Try zooming and looking through scoped view and monitor gpu usage to see if it goes up. We may finally narrow this down if you experience same thing.

Unfortunately I wasn't watching GPU usage at the time but as I noted in this post http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-(low)-performance-issues&p=2230207&viewfull=1#post2230207 my framerate went down a bit when zooming/scoping on PMC Desert in the editor. On Bystirica though, the framerate almost halved from 45 to 28 when zooming in, as noted in this post http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-(low)-performance-issues&p=2230009&viewfull=1#post2230009

When testing with E08 I've noticed that on the last sequence the GPU runs at 99% whether I have AA Disabled or on High and if I have Shadows Disabled or on V.High, which can't be right unless these features use less than 1%, so that with them disabled it's running at say 99.1% and with them enabled 99.9% but that seems unlikely. When paused, OA causes the GPU to go to 99% as well so it seems it's not a great way of monitoring (not to mention it's bad that it fully loads my GPU, causing it to heat up and wearing it out, whenever it's paused!)

EDIT: As ChrisB mentions, his framerate goes up when zooming in so I don't know why mine does the opposite.

I should also point you to this reply from Fireball on CIT, which is not good news but might save you wasting your time trying to find the correct thing to do to make OA work properly, as it seems the engine is just not up to the job.

https://dev-heaven.net/issues/59932#note-17

Edited October 25, 2012 by doveman

[Minoza 11]

Hey up - see my comments a few posts up. I get the same problem - I can fly about / run around and everything is fine - but zoom in through a scope and everything runs at half-speed - I'm on an ATI card as well.

I'm afraid you misread my post. I have completely opposite issue, my FPS increases when I zoom in. I get random stutter with 40-50% GPU usage, where zooming helps and brings usage up to 99%.

...

I should also point you to this reply from Fireball on CIT, which is not good news but might save you wasting your time trying to find the correct thing to do to make OA work properly, as it seems the engine is just not up to the job.

https://dev-heaven.net/issues/59932#note-17

Thank you for this link! Yes, that is exactly the same issue I'm having... So, it is engine problem after all...

Edited October 26, 2012 by Minoza

[doveman 7]

I was playing Warfare on the WASP server last night and it started fine around 50fps and 80% GPU usage but after a couple of hours my framerate dropped to 8fps, so I had to give up. Playing Co-Op missions with 8-10 people I don't think I've had this problem though and they stay around 50fps.

[DaViSFiT 21]

I have more then 1 problem.

I go to eyefinity but now i have more problems then bevor.

My Specs: 3770K@4,2Ghz / 16GB RAM / 7950@950OC / SSD / 3x27 auf 5760x1080

My first one: I have all on max except AF and AA and PostP.

http://www.abload.de/img/arma2oa_2012_10_13_13umr68.jpg

http://www.abload.de/img/arma2oa_2012_10_08_22bcxdh.jpg

I have big problems on all textures that most are the wrong LOD's. I have only 60% grafic load and still washed out textures. It looks sometimes (most of the time) like lowest settings you can get with arma.

Then i have some grafic errors. I dont use OpenGL 3xpuffer, no AA / AF (cause the trees have strange white pixels). If i change ingame the settings sometimes the grafic errors are gone, 20min. later they appear again.

http://www.abload.de/img/arma2oa_eyegrakaerrorl2ukh.jpg

http://www.abload.de/img/arma2oa_eyegrakaerrormwugm.jpg

Newest grafic driver, Win7 X64, all uptoDate! :( Please help, like this Arma2 is horrible.

[doveman 7]

Then i have some grafic errors. I dont use OpenGL 3xpuffer, no AA / AF (cause the trees have strange white pixels). If i change ingame the settings sometimes the grafic errors are gone, 20min. later they appear again.

http://www.abload.de/img/arma2oa_eyegrakaerrorl2ukh.jpg

http://www.abload.de/img/arma2oa_eyegrakaerrormwugm.jpg

Newest grafic driver, Win7 X64, all uptoDate! :( Please help, like this Arma2 is horrible.

I've been getting this weird white stuff on the trees lately too. I've only started using AA recently so maybe that's what it is, I'll try disabling that. I'm running Cat 12.6.

[RubberSlug 1]

Hey guys. I have serious FPS issues in ArmA II, and was wondering if you have any advice. First of all, I'm running a Radeon HD 5850 and a quadcore i5-750 CPU (2.66 GHz). I meet the recommended requirements for ArmA II, but it runs like crap, even with all the graphics at their weird obscure "optimal" settings. It also runs the same on high settings. The weirdest part is that if I alt+tab for a second and then come back, it runs fine for a few seconds.

Someone was telling me that he fixed his issues (which were similar) by disabling hyper-threading, but online a lot of people are saying the problem with hyper-threading was fixed in the beta patch a long time ago. Plus, I can't figure out how to disable it anyway (can't find the option in my BIOS and the Task Manager method doesn't work because I don't have "authorization" or something like that.)

Again, I have the recommended specs (or fairly close anyway--processor is 2.66 while recommended is 2.8) and get a buttery smooth FPS for a few seconds after alt+tabbing, but it's otherwise awful!

Edited November 14, 2012 by RubberSlug

[domokun 515]

Hey guys. I have serious FPS issues in ArmA II, and was wondering if you have any advice. First of all, I'm running a Radeon HD 5850 and a quadcore i5-750 CPU (2.66 GHz). I meet the recommended requirements for ArmA II, but it runs like crap, even with all the graphics at their weird obscure "optimal" settings. It also runs the same on high settings. The weirdest part is that if I alt+tab for a second and then come back, it runs fine for a few seconds.

Someone was telling me that he fixed his issues (which were similar) by disabling hyper-threading, but online a lot of people are saying the problem with hyper-threading was fixed in the beta patch a long time ago. Plus, I can't figure out how to disable it anyway (can't find the option in my BIOS and the Task Manager method doesn't work because I don't have "authorization" or something like that.)

Again, I have the recommended specs (or fairly close anyway--processor is 2.66 while recommended is 2.8) and get a buttery smooth FPS for a few seconds after alt+tabbing, but it's otherwise awful!

Try these tweaks:

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

And let us know how you get on

[BlackADD3R 1]

Hi guys, I noticed you touched on this topic on some of these posts; regarding CPU and GPU usage with arma2.

I applied all the tweaks on this thread, page 144.

However even though I am running most missions at 60 to 100 FPS, there are some scenarios where i am getting 20 FPS maximum. I noticed on those that my GPU usage is zero %. It's all running off of my processor, a Phenom x4 965 @3600.

Any idea why the graphyx card is not contributing? The missions are the Apocalypse by MarkB50K.

[doveman 7]

Yeah, it's the same for me with a Phenom X4 955 @3.8Ghz. In fact Apocalypse goes down to 11fps sometimes for me. It seems that ArmA just doesn't like AMD processors, see the link in my post #1912 above.

[lee_h._oswald 0]

Phenom II X4 945 3.0GHz here.

Framekillers for me are: clutter, trees and I think shadows.

Any special settings for us AMD/Phenom/X4 users?

MfG Lee

[doveman 7]

It's actually an engine problem with AI that causes the most problems, for AMD users at least, I've no experience with Intel.

Trees certainly causes quite a hit though, which is bizarre considering the islands that are at the core of ArmAII have a lot of trees. Again, maybe this is not an issue for Intel users.

I don't think I've noticed much difference with Shadows. I think High or V.High runs them on the GPU, so if you notice a big hit at those settings, it could be your GPU that's struggling.

[crazyshadowdami 1]

acer aspire 5553g + game booster + lowest settings = 20 fps

+ highest settings = 5 fps

isnt my rig supposed to do better?

[Minoza 11]

More details, view distance, etc...?

[chrisb 196]

A 2.0ghz with a 5470 will probably hold you back a little..

If that’s your specs?

[Tankbuster 1746]

lowers the life of the drive drastically

Drastically? Depends on your definition, I suppose. You aren't noticeably going to reduce the life of a modern SSD by defragging it occasionally. Not that you need to, of course.

Wasting your time? Yes. Shortening the life of the drive? Not really.

*Oh dear. I'm replying to a 3 year old post. LOL. Damn these 'smart' phones and their tiny screens.