Upgraded RAM = No FPS Improvement

[Joseph Archer 10]

Have a look http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-graphics-card,review-31675.html for new graphics card advice. Prices may well drop in the next few weeks with the launch of the new DX11 cards though.

Edited September 11, 2009 by o0Jedi0o

[desertjedi 3]

Yeah, Stugwi, don't apologize - you're correct. As stated, a 32-bit OS can only address 4GB of RAM and your VRAM amount does affect how much system memory can be addressed.

To the OP, you may find that 2GB in dual-channel might run faster than 3GB in "non-dual-channel".

You have very good cpu horsepower but you're greatly lacking in video card power.

Newegg currently has a couple of "refurb" GTX 260s going for $135-140. Coming from a 9500GT, that would rock your world. Just an idea.

Edited September 11, 2009 by DesertJedi

[Stugwi 0]

Well, then just keep your hands off the keyboard before you try to post! Will help us alot! thx!

Bah at least i research and then post.

I got an extra 2gb kingston still sat in its box waiting for Windows7 purchase to arrive. W7 cost me £50.00 no bad at all. XP to W7 missing out all the crap OS inbetween :bounce3:

[mchide 0]

RAM dont calculates data it only stores it, CPU is for calculation mate.

[Maddmatt 1]

I got boost when i went from 1gb - 2gb (quite obvious). But since i hear ARMA2 doesnt run more than 2gb(?) i cant see that 3gb would help. Unless you run other stuff at the same time maybe.

Windows itself along with software like anti-virus and so on can use up to 1GB of RAM, so having a bit more than 2GB helps.

[Rhammstein 10]

Hey all.

I was wondering if anyone had an idea as to what is going on here.

I'm running a E8400 @ 3.95ghz, Nvidia 9500GT, Vista 32bit, and 3Gb of DDR2 Ram.

I bought some ram and upgraded from 2gb to 3gb of ram, but it has not changed the FPS one little bit. I was expecting to see some sort of increase, but no joy.

I tried to run Armamark, to get a comparison. But for some reason after updating to 1.03, it now just crashes to desktop halfway through loading.

I ran another benchmark (provided with Company of Heroes) and I also noticed that my FPS didn't increase with that either.

25-27 FPS - Normal settings, AA & AF Off, 1280x800 res

Any ideas?

I've got my MCSE and so I guess I know a little bit. I'll keep it real simple. "If" you have "enough" ram to run the game, adding ram will not increase performance, except that there's a small possibility if something in the background suddenly tries to use a large amount of system ram, having that extra ram won't effect you, or won't effect as much.

Upgrading to "faster" ram is the key to gaining performance, when it comes to "FPS". Keep in mind what I've discussed so far only addressed FPS, not load times, or anything else. For example if you had PC5300 667mhz ram, and you upgraded to PC6400 800mhz ram, you would actually see "some" improvement, but only 1-3% at best, considering your frame rate you're severely GPU limited/bottlenecked. Also keep in mind most programs will rarely use "all" of your memory bandwidth, although a game can, especially newer hardcore games, such as this game. Extra ram is never a bad thing, but, I'm concerned with (I didn't really read through the thread thoroughly), whether you were running your memory in dual channel, and adding that third gig disabled that feature. Hopefully this didn't happen, it will degrade performance.

My point is, I hope you've doubled up your dimms, in pairs. I just fear you had 1 2GB dimm and added a 1GB dimm, or had two 1 GB dimms and added a 1GB dimm.

If you had two 1GB dimms and added 2 512MB dimms, then you're running dual channel, otherwise you may have hurt yourself.

Regardless of that, I'm making too many assumptions, take it with a grain of salt, "more" ram will never produce more FPS, possibly a more stable FPS if your system is not a good, clean (system/as in OS/registry, etc etc) Gamer's Rig like mine and many other picky and knowledgeable hardcore gamers like myself. The speed of your memory is, in "this" case, more important, than the amount, but not in all cases. Again I'm basing some of this on assumptions.

In your situation there's no way you're gonna get even 1 extra frame, not with the "severe" Gpu (video card) bottleneck you have. In layman's terms, your video card can't even keep up with your Cpu, Ram cannot be an issue because your Cpu isn't processing info as fast as it could, or should, leaving your Ram a bit of a non issue.

I would download CPUID aka CPUZ, make sure your memory is running in dual channel. On the memory tab check the details on each dimm in each slot.

Worst case scenario, right now, for you, I would prefer 2 GB of fast ram rather than 3 GB of slower ram. Oh I guess I should have mentioned, you must get the same speed memory, if you happened to get memory of a slower speed, all of your ram will downclock to that lower speed.

My bad if you already know all of this, I just assumed by your question that you dunno much about PC's in general, because it's a bit of a nooby question, no offense.

I'm really tired my bad for such a lengthy post, but it should cover any issue you have. Get Windows 7 64 bit with 4GB ram minimum and never look back.

[James22 10]

Rhamstein;

Unfortunately it is running in Flex mode now. I was running Dual Channel before, but I have a uneven chip now.

Originaly I had 2 x 1gb chips,

now i have 1 x 1gb and 1 x 2gb, making it uneven.

The original 1gb chip is 800mhz/pc6400 and the new one is the same speed.

System is really clean, and I can't pump anymore FSB into it without getting a aftermarket cooler.

I'll try to tighten my ram timings up a bit, becuase they are still a bit messy. I loosened them for stability when I was testing the 439 FSB clock.

So the general consensus is that my CPU is fine (E8400 OC'd to 3.95ghz), but my graphics card (9500gt-512mb) is the problem?

If thats the case, I'll just make do with what I have for the time being, and wait for the prices to come down with DX11 cards release.

Anything else I can do to increase frame rate? Already disabled PhysX. And pre-rendered frame are at 3, anymore than that and I start getting mouse lag.

Edited September 12, 2009 by James22

[Bulldogs 10]

You could try setting the max pre-rendered frames to 8 and put a beta patch on then disable mouse smoothing, not sure if it'll help much though. Other than that, make sure you're running under Win XP (seems to be better for the 9xxx series) and tweak the video settings (lower view distance mainly, and disable AA), other than that, as you said, wait til cards get cheaper.

---------- Post added at 11:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 AM ----------

As Rham mentioned, getting more ram won't increase your fps, kinda. If your game studders from having trouble loading (in other words it's spending time reading off the page file rather than the ram) then getting more ram will help get rid of that, but you have to remember that Arma2 only uses 2gb of ram, so 3gb should be enough (4gb if running Vista/Win7) that way windows has 1-2gb to utilize with the other 2gb going to Arma 2.

[binkster 0]

See what happens with a different OS

[Rhammstein 10]

Your frame rate is fine and typical for your system. If you can tweak a few things to get a steady 30fps, you'll be good. Before I built my present rig a few weeks ago I was running a system similar to yours but with a much better video card, and I ran low to medium settings, and it looked great, ran smooth even tho it said it was running between 35-40fps, it seemed like 60. That's one thing about this game I like, it does produce a kind of smoothness other games can't. Another example of this is the racing game Grid. 30fps feels like 60.

Anyways, great Cpu, hopefully the really good OC will make up for the loss of the 128bit memory controller (the dual channel). The new ATI cards drop very very soon, you should be able to grab a ATI 4870 for around $100, not sure about the 4890, but I'd shoot for "it" if you can afford it. I prefer Nvidia right now because I love games that support hardware physics, it looks so dope, I just hope it takes off a bit more and many more support it until it becomes mainstream. It really does take a load off any Cpu and allows for much better AI, among other things.

Anyways 25+ fps isn't too bad, IMO. It shouldn't be hard to mess around with a few settings to get 30fps, I think 30 is the sweet spot and you should have no problems playing. Be certain AA is off, post process effects low as possible, HDR is really awesome, the way they use it in this game, but if you have to, you may be able to turn that off, I don't think there's an option but you may be able to force it through your catalyst CP, I dunno I haven't owned an ATI card since '05, I can't remember. But it's so badass how the lighting changes through tree lines, and the other HDR effects, they're incredible and keep he game looking real from a lighting standpoint, but this type of overuse of HDR is a real FPS killer, but it looks so damn good! Try other stuff to get the 5fps before resorting to anything major like that. Draw distance is a good place to start, by default it is pretty damn far, bringing it down some IMO will have no negative affect on gameplay, but will certainly free up a few frames. Good luck!

[m5holmez 10]

Rhamstein;

Unfortunately it is running in Flex mode now. I was running Dual Channel before, but I have a uneven chip now.

Originaly I had 2 x 1gb chips,

now i have 1 x 1gb and 1 x 2gb, making it uneven.

The original 1gb chip is 800mhz/pc6400 and the new one is the same speed.

System is really clean, and I can't pump anymore FSB into it without getting a aftermarket cooler.

I'll try to tighten my ram timings up a bit, becuase they are still a bit messy. I loosened them for stability when I was testing the 439 FSB clock.

So the general consensus is that my CPU is fine (E8400 OC'd to 3.95ghz), but my graphics card (9500gt-512mb) is the problem?

If thats the case, I'll just make do with what I have for the time being, and wait for the prices to come down with DX11 cards release.

Anything else I can do to increase frame rate? Already disabled PhysX. And pre-rendered frame are at 3, anymore than that and I start getting mouse lag.

Have you tried OC your 9500? In my old system i overclocked the 9600GT which gave me a few more frames in certain games and was quite stable with mid range temps. If you havent done so already its probs worth a shot.

Also if you are getting a new gpu maybe the ati 4890 would be the best bang for buck considering the 275 is a bit more expensive with not much gain.

Other than that there is not much you can do as there are others with better rigs suffering the same performance issues inc myself, we can only hope the next patch or 2 will bring some relief.

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

I think it's the Vista getting in the way. Vista is way worse to play on than XP or Win-7.

And Rhammstein's explaination is spot on.

The main trick to increasing FPS is to find the bottleneck(s). It will be different for every user. Go after the biggest bottleneck first and work backwards. I would say place to start - the OS. Then I would say Processor, and followed closely behind Graphics card.

[binkster 0]

Luhgnut;1436856']I think it's the Vista getting in the way. Vista is way worse to play on than XP or Win-7.

And Rhammstein's explaination is spot on.

The main trick to increasing FPS is to find the bottleneck(s). It will be different for every user. Go after the biggest bottleneck first and work backwards. I would say place to start - the OS. Then I would say Processor' date=' and followed closely behind Graphics card.[/quote']

I agree I didnt want to get into detail and offtopic but most people figured out VISTA has big problems with ArmA2 within the first 2 weeks ArmA2 was out.

I would search some old topics about OS and ArmA2 or even look through the ArmA2 Mark thread. I know my FPS doubled from vista to xp.

[hamis 0]

If you want to disable hdr,there is "gdtmod_hdr" in "Addons&Mods:complete" section.

[James22 10]

Installed xp on the weekend. Formatted the hard drive and partitioned for XP and Vista.

Havn't tried arma2 yet. I didn't want to start a new game. But crysis fps has increased by around about 10fps, so hopefully i'll see some sort of improvement with arma. I'm only aiming for 30fps for christs sake, shouldn't be too hard lol

[Bulldogs 10]

Crysis always gets an immediate frame rate increase due to the fact that under Vista Crysis uses Dx10 where under XP it's forced to use Dx9. Looks a little worse but always runs better.

Arma 2 doesn't have the same issue, but in most cases it runs worse under Vista (it just really doesn't like Vista). All depends on setup but in most cases XP should give you a frame rate increase.

[James22 10]

The thing that gets me is; Crysis has better graphics - but is smoother and way better FPS than arma.

Arma2 honestly looks like crap next to cryengine, but can't even get half the framerate.

There's gotta be a problem in their engine somewhere.

I can get better FPS in crysis on max in Dx10, than I can in arma on low and using DX9 (of course)

Patch, Patch, Patch lol

[Rhammstein 10]

Some people still don't realize DX10 doesn't just bring some better graphics, it improves performance as well, especially DX10.1. Arma II runs better in Vista for me, and runs best of all in Win 7, by a full 10%. I don't like XP and haven't used it in almost two years, except to benchmark, and some of my Audio apps won't run under Vista, they were never patched. Regardless, I can't speak for everyone, but I've read an awful lot about DX10, and I understand it, and the changes to GPU's because of it. If people want to continue to use XP forever so be it, but I got fed up with malware/spyware a long time ago. I haven't had one serious issue with Vista, and I've been running it since the day it was released, dual booting until the first service pack, but found myself never booting into XP, even tho at first games took a small FPS hit.

At the end of the day, people should always consider the possibility the game itself could be the cause of any issue. Be it frame rate differences between different OS's, or any issues at all.

Edited September 14, 2009 by Rhammstein

[Pyronick 21]

The thing that gets me is; Crysis has better graphics - but is smoother and way better FPS than arma.

Arma2 honestly looks like crap next to cryengine, but can't even get half the framerate.

There's gotta be a problem in their engine somewhere.

I can get better FPS in crysis on max in Dx10, than I can in arma on low and using DX9 (of course)

Patch, Patch, Patch lol

CryEngine 2 isn't as stressed as Real Virtuality 3, as the latter has to render more polygons due to higher draw distances.

Whereas CryEngine 2 is a streamlined engine specifically rebuilt for SMT for both CPU and GPU, stream processors and Direct3D 10 support.

The small draw distance in CryEngine 2 greatly increases performance, as the only distant objects it has to render are shader-based trees.

It would be nice to has a few features from CryEngine 2 though, deferred rendering and ambient occlusion would be nice.

Edited September 14, 2009 by SgtH3nry3

[Bulldogs 10]

I'm sorry for mentioning Crysis and starting this again, but since I did I'll just say this part about it. Crysis is a linear game. It loads what it needs to around it. If Crysis was the same as Arma 2 (a full virtual world) then Crysis would run very slow. Plus the whole different rendering methods (personally I think Arma 2 looks better)

[desertjedi 3]

I'm only aiming for 30fps for christs sake, shouldn't be too hard lol

Good luck with that. I'm running an E8500 at 4.18Ghz and an overclocked GTX 260 on Normal settings and I'm getting in the 25-35fps range on Windows XP with plenty of DDR2-1066 RAM and a fast hard drive. I find the game almost unplayable in the range because its incredibly choppy.

[kklownboy 43]

well a OC 260 is a 1600/1200 resolution at most, and will have the city slow downs. if you can use 1400/900 it would be better?

[bangtail 0]

I'm sorry for mentioning Crysis and starting this again, but since I did I'll just say this part about it. Crysis is a linear game. It loads what it needs to around it. If Crysis was the same as Arma 2 (a full virtual world) then Crysis would run very slow. Plus the whole different rendering methods (personally I think Arma 2 looks better)

QFT

Doesn't matter how many times this is explained, people still insist on trying to compare.

Apples and oranges.

Eth

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

Installed xp on the weekend. Formatted the hard drive and partitioned for XP and Vista.

Havn't tried arma2 yet. I didn't want to start a new game. But crysis fps has increased by around about 10fps, so hopefully i'll see some sort of improvement with arma. I'm only aiming for 30fps for christs sake, shouldn't be too hard lol

Just copy the save game from your Documents/arma2 folder to a pen drive. Launch XP and copy it back to the same directory. Carry on soldier.

[Rhammstein 10]

This is strange, on my laptop it runs like exactly 25fps all the time, but it never feels choppy. The first time playing it took a little getting used to the kind of, blur when moving around the mouse. But it really feels smooth, and very very playable. It's feels nearly as good as my new PC. I don't know if it's me, or if some people are more sensative, but oen thing I know for sure is; certain game engines certainly seem smoother than others at the exact same frame rate and I think there's a reason for it, like how they make movies seem smooth when they're only what, 29.97fps or something.

Example: 25fps in the racing simulator I compete in feels like an absolute slide show, horrible, and the input lag from it is so bad you simply cannot race. However, Arma II at 25 fps feels just fine...I dunno, it feels smooth, it feels like 45fps to me, I have NO problems aiming quickly (which would be one of the problems you would face with a low frame rate), and big explosions and when lots of stuff happen, the fps doesn't fall. This shows they've certainly spent a lot of time optimizing the game, just not absolutely everything. Especially AI. With time and patches it'll be great I think, but the really stupid AI needs fixing!

SO, I feel like this graphics engine is designed to run at 30fps for most people using some kind of technique, because lets face it if they wanted it to look truly amazing with the draw distances they want, only me and like a handful of other people could...."maybe" even run it.

And please everyone, leave DX10 out of this. If this game were built on a DX10.1 optimized engine and everyone had DX10 GPU's and supporting hardware up to speed, in a DX10 OS, this game would run 30% better, I don't think this I know it. DX10.1 is incredible compared to how limiting DX9 is, but thank god for DX9 Shader Model 3.0, at least we get most of the good looks, just not the performance, or "stable" fps we'll be getting in a few yrs when everyone is running Win 7 and DX10.1/DX11 hardware!

Sry to go slightly off topic, but OS's and DX version's can't always be the "only" thing to blame. Each and every game will run differently under different OS's because we have 3 OS's main OS's out for PC right now and optimizing drivers for a trillion different things while maintaining backward compatibility is damn hard.

Edited September 15, 2009 by Rhammstein