Game CPU-Optimization - no troubleshooting !

[SylverFyre 10]

There is nothing to indicate that having 40 threads is better then having 20 threads.

+1 threading is only adding granularity as is not an automatic benefit or performance boost

[Masterfragg 10]

Ok - I thank you very much for your learned comments on this and your test data.

Lemme try, if I got it correctly and for this continue with the most "explosive" example ;) , like you did it:

As DR threads the work to be done in 40 different channels - does this mean it doubles (at least the) possibility to get the work much faster done than when its threaded into 20 channels?

(Not sure whether it's correct to speak of channels here - pls gimme better word?)

I found two possible reasons why this might not be straight right:

and what I could imagine as an "overhead" or "backoffice" problem:

So why can we be sure Arma2 would run faster with 40 threads?

Another question:

As Masterfragg has shown the amount of threads did continously increase over OFP, Armed Assault and Arma2: Isn't this a true hint for that the engine was overhauled or optimized?

Basically, with such as small amount of open CPU threads (They aren't channels they are threads :D) your bottlenecking your own system.

Thats why so many people saw a benifit from overclocking, with overclocking those threads are clearing data at a faster rate.

It's a double edged blade with having more threads it can be good or bad dependant on the skill of programming. I mean firstly you need to program what data goes through which thread so you never bottleneck yourself (The problem with Arma 2) secondly you need to have as many threads as logical.

I mean you wouldn't have a thread for every single instruction but you would for couples. Physical collision would be possibly spread over a few threads to prevent slow down during action scenes with heavy collision data being processed. Or multiple threads for A.I in a game such as Arma would be fantastic.

The way to think of it is like this.

A thread is an instruction line to the CPU that gets queued but if you have too many instructions on a single thread you'll suffer with program stablity and slow down due to bottlenecks (ala framerates and crashes)

However, if you open up a few extra threads to allow that data to streamline a bit more you create less queing and thus better CPU optimized software.

Think of a square and a thin line going through it, only so much can travel through that line. But if you make the line thicker it'll allow more to travel through. It's like narrowband to broadband.

Don't get me wrong I'm no expert but I'm getting more into programming everyday and thats my current understanding of the situation. After all there are many multithread optimized programs out there that run perfect on a single core.

The programs we take for granted every day!

Like Firefox! at the moment firefox has 17 threads open, I've seen firefox with 38 threads open. With firefox doing nothing more than web browsing shouldn't a game that is 1000 times more complex be using a few more open cpu cycles? I mean I've never played Arma2 and had my CPU with more than 40% being used ever yet my framerate is stuck at 27 no matter what.

My CPU ain't great but a AMD Phenom II x4 940 Black Edition clocked at 3.52ghz is pretty effing mean ain't it? (I downclocked since my sig was written thanks to a teeny weeny overheat :P)

And for your last question.

Yes it does show that Arma and Arma 2 was overhauled and/or (apparently) optimized.

But ask yourself this, how can you "overhaul" and engine that's from 2001 and keep it working with todays hardware? Unless it's the quake 3 engine it won't happen. The truth is OFP wasn't a fantastically made game, but back then we didn't care about framerates, we accepted it as the gameplay rocked.

I was on a Geforce 440 MX 128mb AGP graphics card with an AMD Athlon 1800+ playing that game and I was happy with my high framerate, but soon as I upgraded to a Geforce 6200 I was pretty much unable to play the game (NO matter how you look at it GF6200>>>>GF440MX) and that was with a CPU upgrade.

My worry is that the engine has retained it's problems with scaling with new hardware even though it's a new game it does seem to have this problem this could be due to a number of reasons, it could be the CPU thread count or it could be the lack of optimized use of RAM or lack of pagefile use or simply the game just hates gamers!

But it would be interesting if the developers would drop us a message with details on how these threads are used, just so the community can take a look at how they are used and we could give them some tips on how to optimize. Don't get me wrong I'm no games developer and BIS have done a reletivly good job over the years, maybe not on game releases (Arma 1 was...just...oh dear) but in general they do make the best Milisims out there however they are going to have to fix this otherwise lets face it.

The genre will die lol because I can't afford an i7 chip and sadly I'd have to refuse to upgrade even if I could which from various forum posts I'd say the i7 can have a tough time with this game as well.

Well I've typed so much that me coffee's wearing off but heres a hint guys!

Don't drink coffee at 23:30hr's....I'm WIRED!!!!!

[HandBanana 10]

Ughhh my head hurts. I want to play Arma2 without problems but i;ve been fiddle-fudging with the video options for over 2 hours and it is getting on my frikkin' nerves. Toshiba x300 9700gts, duo p7350 2ghz.. Is there ANY help to make the game more responsive or is it my computers fault for being crap?

[plundera 10]

Hi Guys,

For what it's worth, I run ATItool to keep an eye on CPU utilisation, process memory and GPU utilisation. I have noted low FPS while all three indicators have significant capacity! So I don't understand where the bottleneck is? When CPU's are 80% (verified in task man), mem only ever to a max of 600mb and GPU's barely over 50% but frames = max 30-35 on some missions it suggests the game is poorly optimised for modern computers with some limitation in the engine kernel or something. My basic stats are:

Win XP

Core 2 Duo 3.2ghz (OC)

ATI 4870x2

2gb ram

[Herbal Influence 10]

Ughhh my head hurts. I want to play Arma2 without problems but i;ve been fiddle-fudging with the video options for over 2 hours and it is getting on my frikkin' nerves. Toshiba x300 9700gts, duo p7350 2ghz.. Is there ANY help to make the game more responsive or is it my computers fault for being crap?

Sorry - for you having problems.

Hope we can welcome you soon on some multiplayer servers.

But, sorry - been said several times AND in the threadtitle AND in the opening post here: NO troubleshooting here. There are plenty of threads open for that.

---------- Post added at 06:05 ---------- Previous post was at 05:58 ----------

Hi Guys,

For what it's worth, I run ATItool to keep an eye on CPU utilisation, process memory and GPU utilisation. I have noted low FPS while all three indicators have significant capacity! So I don't understand where the bottleneck is? When CPU's are 80% (verified in task man), mem only ever to a max of 600mb and GPU's barely over 50% but frames = max 30-35 on some missions it suggests the game is poorly optimised for modern computers with some limitation in the engine kernel or something. My basic stats are:

Win XP

Core 2 Duo 3.2ghz (OC)

ATI 4870x2

2gb ram

That's what this thread is about:

The thesis is that the CPU is under stress already and this not for no reason but for controlling the overwhelming complex scenery.

Again, my reasoning: It lies in the nature of the game (complexity) and it would take pages if not a book to describe the complexity of the scenery.

It cannot be compared to simple shooters like DR or BF2.

(This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to optimize your system, look for bottlenecks etc. straight the opposite! - but NO TROUBLESHOOTING here!)

---------- Post added at 06:19 ---------- Previous post was at 06:05 ----------

Having different threads in a game is always good. While some threads are waiting for memory of even HDD or input devices, other threads are doing their job. But if you are into the computer science you probably heard about the Amdahl's law. We can't get get a boost if we only add more threads.

I agree with Herbal Influence. There is nothing to indicate that having 40 threads is better then having 20 threads.

Thanx for your post. Especially the hint to Amdahl, which is found - little more - precisely here.

---------- Post added at 06:21 ---------- Previous post was at 06:19 ----------

+1 threading is only adding granularity as is not an automatic benefit or performance boost

Nice formula! Thanx!

---------- Post added at 06:27 ---------- Previous post was at 06:21 ----------

(...)

Like Firefox! at the moment firefox has 17 threads open, I've seen firefox with 38 threads open. With firefox doing nothing more than web browsing shouldn't a game that is 1000 times more complex be using a few more open cpu cycles?

[/Quote]

I mean I've never played Arma2 and had my CPU with more than 40% being used ever yet my framerate is stuck at 27 no matter what.

[/Quote]

Yes it does show that Arma and Arma 2 was overhauled and/or (apparently) optimized.

But ask yourself this, how can you "overhaul" and engine that's from 2001 and keep it working with todays hardware? Unless it's the quake 3 engine it won't happen. The truth is OFP wasn't a fantastically made game, but back then we didn't care about framerates, we accepted it as the gameplay rocked.

(....)

The genre will die lol because I can't afford an i7 chip and sadly I'd have to refuse to upgrade even if I could which from various forum posts I'd say the i7 can have a tough time with this game as well.

Well I've typed so much that me coffee's wearing off but heres a hint guys!

Don't drink coffee at 23:30hr's....I'm WIRED!!!!!

Well - concerning the overhaul - I don't know.

Let's wait for comments on this.

You don't need no i7 just take a look at my signature - it costs around 60 Euros. ;)

But sure you don't want to downgrade ...

As for the coffee ... that's a real threa(t)d to performance ... :eek:

[Masterfragg 10]

Hi guys, decided to do another test today!

Last night I formatted my hard drives and today I put Vista x86 back on it.

Lets see if this helps at all.

(I'll report back shortly)

[S-M 10]

I know its not really relevant, but it made me chuckle anyway, i installed DR last night and while i usually get 27fps from Arma2 while playing (3.3quad and gtx275) i started DR up and it was sitting on 120 LOL!

[Masterfragg 10]

I know its not really relevant, but it made me chuckle anyway, i installed DR last night and while i usually get 27fps from Arma2 while playing (3.3quad and gtx275) i started DR up and it was sitting on 120 LOL!

Heh, niceeeee.

I'll admit I've been playing OFPDR almost completed it but I still can't shake the fact that I want to play Arma 2 more.

News guys, Windows Vista x86 (32-Bit) same average thread count as last posted also FPS stuck at 27 with 40% CPU usage.

Ahhhh well....Back to 64-Bit.....

[S-M 10]

Heh, niceeeee.

I'll admit I've been playing OFPDR almost completed it but I still can't shake the fact that I want to play Arma 2 more.

I agree, i like arma more, i just wish it worked a bit better, i switched off V-Synch in DR and its now sitting at 160fps in game LOL!

[Bulldogs 10]

Ran some more tests. Windows 7 32bit

Using core 2 duo (2 cores) arma 2 uses 70-95% of both cores, utilizes all available CPU but drops some usage to windows background programs so arma doesn't take priority.

Core 2 quad (4 cores), arma 2 using 60% of each core, performance increased over core 2 duo.

While using the core 2 duo and loading several mods under the latest beta under full load, arma 2 freezes when CPU usage reaches 100%

I've noticed others talking about periodic freezing in arma 2, possible that this is the same thing.

[SylverFyre 10]

Don't get me wrong I'm no expert

Few people are, but I'm amazed that you have managed to diagnose ArmA2's performance problems as being down to the number of threads it runs all by yourself! How long did it take you to disassemble the code and analyse it?

Do you understand that every thread has its own overhead involved with managing it? The fact that Firefox might launch more threads on a system than a game means nothing significant. Breaking down a task into threads is done as a sensible number of threads for what the program is doing and how it's written shows a performance benefit, the amount depending on the capabilities of the platform it's being run on and the way the OS works.

Please go read up on some SMP/SMT information and some programming theory before making big posts that look like you know what you're talking about.

All said in the nicest possible way, of course :)

[Masterfragg 10]

Few people are, but I'm amazed that you have managed to diagnose ArmA2's performance problems as being down to the number of threads it runs all by yourself! How long did it take you to disassemble the code and analyse it?

Do you understand that every thread has its own overhead involved with managing it? The fact that Firefox might launch more threads on a system than a game means nothing significant. Breaking down a task into threads is done as a sensible number of threads for what the program is doing and how it's written shows a performance benefit, the amount depending on the capabilities of the platform it's being run on and the way the OS works.

Please go read up on some SMP/SMT information and some programming theory before making big posts that look like you know what you're talking about.

All said in the nicest possible way, of course :)

lol Sorry mate but I did say I'm no expert :P

Although any muppet can see there is a major problem there even without reverse engineering.

I mean...40% of CPU being used on my computer with Arma 2 and I've undercocked my graphics card as LOW as it can go via NVCP yet...FPS doesn't change??

Right....If there isn't a problem involving the thread count and CPU/Ram usage then the game is just purely badly made lol

Like I say I'm no expert (Oddly I'm just going through CPU thread usage in my book) I'm a hobbist but even I can see the problems here dude.

I mean lets look at this from the Logical point of view.

If it was badly optimized code apparent in low thread count causing a bottleneck then overclocking would generate a higher increased performance than any other upgrade/OC

This game has shown considerable performance increases due to overclocking yet only shown 40% CPU usage on Intel Core 2 Duo's to i7's.

Now think about this carefully, but if they had a way to better optimize thread usage and counts that would decrease the bottleneck thus allow a more streamlined flow of data through (in laymans terms lol)

Trust me, if you reverse engineer Arma 2's code you'd have a nightmare and I'd bet my left testicle on it.

I know I'm no expert but there is no way anyone-even BIS staff can tell me they didn't screw something up somewhere in the coding.4

***EDIT***

Give me til Tuesday and I'll come back to you with some evidence or myself saying sorry. Thats right, I'm going to learn all this crap by Tuesday and then I will be a bloody know it all that can prove my point.

Personally I couldn't care if I was right or wrong I just wish BIS would pull their fingers out their arses stop fucking about with an EXP pack and fix the goddamn engine lol

Edited October 16, 2009 by Masterfragg

[-RIP- Luhgnut 10]

- "doesn't seem to use the pagefile...I've watched HDD access and well....Theres nothing being written to the pagefile at all.", says Masterfragg

My personal impression is that Arma2 simply needs a very good cpu and this NOT FOR NO REASON but for gameplay, graphics, AI intelligence. So that's my thesis too.

My cpu does a 55 up to 90 %, mostly over 75 % usage which I find optimal - but I am no expert.

Thanx, Herbal

I'm not sure. When I started reading what others were playing the game on originally, I was VERY concerned. My CPU, a little AMD 4400+ x2 Overclocked. really had me worried, and I started shopping around. Graphics card EVGA9800GTX overclocked..... This was during the time of the demo and full-on launch.

Then the game launched, and with tweaking, overclocking, and general free utilities, I'm pulling 33+ FPS in Very High with a 1920x1080 (big ass) monitor. Sure 33FPS will get laughed at, sure.... but it's better than movie quality going to the movies.. I don't get a pause, nothing, it stays in the 30fps minimum FPS even in big cities. In an open field, it brushes 40FPS. Also, I stopped staring at the FPS meter, and just started enjoying the game, and since then, I really don't notice.

Yeah, I'm XP only for A2.

I don't understand why the guys are having such trouble with machines that are WAY bigger than mine. My processor/GPU is at the bottom of the list, and I'm smooth as silk. And I think the pagefile is used, not sure, I noticed yesterday messing with the posted RAM drive experiment, that my I HAD NO PAGEFILE??!?!.... I turned it on and pointed to a separate SATA drive, and it smoothed out even more.

I don't get it. But I'm running fine as fine, even in big cities. View set for 2500 .. 100% fill rate, and default High Quality Video Settings in game. I'm quite happy actually.

Edited October 16, 2009 by [RIP] Luhgnut

[Herbal Influence 10]

Thanx Lughnut - I think the discussion you relating to is this.

The idea discussed over there shows that texture load can be vastly sped up by avoiding the use of the "slow" harddisk but the RAM ("-disk") instead.

So a new thesis could be: Even high end cpu's aren't able to overcome the bottleneck harddisk.

[-=seany=- 5]

I don't want to fill up the patch 105 thread with OT stuff about performance, so Ill continue here.

I really hate to be a naysayer /party pooper but, while I am extremely grateful for all the new features and bug fixes and free content, I would give it all up in a heart beat to have more optimization of the game and better performance, which is what this patch was supposed to bring. So far we have had one performance fix, the bug in the streaming engine. Other than that nothing, in fact I have seen some reports that all the new AI features that have been added could actually be taking more FPS away.

Well, no one likes a Scrooge, so thanks for what we have and what we will be getting anyway. I'm just a bit disappointed that it seems bis has no further options or ideas on how to get the game to run better (on today's top end hardware).

If it would be possible to implement a big performance boost, BIS sure wouldn't wait until Christmas or Patch 1.05 with it.

Which is exactly why I think they are most likely unable to improve perf any further, hence my disappointment.

It's simply a complex game.

It's much more complex than the one you compare it with.

I am aware that it is complex and I never actually compared it to any game :confused:

There is nothing like "bad coding" and a needed "optimization".

At last not in the amount many expect.

Arma2 is hardware hungry.

Not for nothing.

For good reasons.

If you think otherwise and have good technical hints, please comment here.

I never said it was badly coded, but in need of optimization? yes. What do I mean by that? Well, to be on the editor on your own and go from 80fps around dense vegetation and forests to 25-30fps in a town is unacceptable. If fixing this means optimizing the buildings to use less CPU time (by making them more basic by lowering the poly count, removing/toning down the damage model or whatever is causing the massive performance hit) then it should be done. Or at least we should have the option.

[LJF 0]

I'm not sure how true this is, but as far as I can see ArmA2 is only "dual core" optimized, not "multicore". I came to this conclusion after disabling two of my cores (I have a quad) and noticed that the framerate was exactly the same in all tests.

I feel that that my ArmA2 is running at 50% of what it's capable of :(

[Dead3yez 0]

Before the release of ArmAII in press releases and information about the game I was under the impression that ArmAII was only going to be fully supported for dual cores only. Found it....

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=3807

http://www.bistudio.com/developers-blog/real-virtuality-going-multicore_en.html

[edit]

Wtf? What is happening at cpucount=3.

Anyone want to show me what results they get after a fair test running ArmAII-mark two times in a row with the different cpucount number. Running phenom II X4 @3.4ghz here.

Edited December 12, 2009 by Dead3yez

[Herbal Influence 10]

Wow - thanx for the nice graphic!

Can't it be like this:

Using 3 cores is showing that the overhead work (managing multiple threads) is so much increased that overall performance drops?

An example using my noobish mind:

If there are several waiters serving meals to customers:

One does a good job but slow.

Two are doing a better job.

Three are hindering themselves in the narrow door to the kitchen.

Four are able to overcome this hindrance for they are so many ... ;-)

[jasonnoguchi 11]

Very interesting... this is the first time anyone provided any proof that -cpucount=4 works. I shall include it in my shortcut. Thanks Dead. By the way, for those of us not playing with the -cpucount tag, how many cores are being used?

---------- Post added at 11:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:16 AM ----------

ok, did the same test on my rig. with or without -cpucount tag, performance is almost the same for my rig.

[bensu 2]

Well, I can confirm Dead3yez observation. I have a Phenom II X3 720 CPU which is a 3 core processor but actually it has 4 cores and one is just locked. However if you are lucky there is a possibility to unlock the fourth core. So I updated my BIOS and *tada* I had 4 cores

But before I read Dead3yez post I was about overclocking my CPU and did several tests with my 3 cores. Now I did another one with the full 4 cores and as you can see I got a major speed supply. :) Between 2 and 3 cores however there is just a little difference...

System:

* Phenom II X3 720 (@4cores/3500Mhz Northbridge: 2400Mhz)

* 4gb RAM (1600Mhz DDR3/9-9-9-24-2T)

* Asrock Mainboard with AMD 770chipset

* Nvidia GTX 275

* WinXP 32Bit

* ArmA2 Beta Patch (can't remember which one ;) )

[jumpinghubert 49]

thanks very much bensu for this good graphic. Ram speed seems to be a great factor.

[Ape Drape 10]

LOL.

I was searching for info on how to get the city menu into a mission and found this thread.

I can tell you this " -cpucount=4 " works wonders. After reading that in this thread I put it in my shortcut. It boosted my fps in the bench mark missions from 15-20ish to 30-40ish.

I was able to go from very low settings to normal and bump up the resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768 without taking much of a hit on fps, 20-30ish now.

I don't have any fancy charts and graphs because I'm lazy. I don't bath often either. I pee in the sink too.

Anyway, even though it's not a troubleshooting thread, thanks for the troubleshooting!

[Yoma 0]

Addonsync's launcher part autodetects the number of REAL cores on your cpu and preselects the "maximal value".

It also warns people with hyperthreading enabled (core I7!) that this is not optimal for A2.

[Bulldogs 10]

From running a few tests I got :

CPUCount=4 --- 4300 AM

CPUCount=2 --- 3787 AM

(Averages based on 3 tests each)

I should note that while I ran on low details, I still ran on a high resolution so my older graphics card is still a slight limiting factor there.

One other thing I should note is that when I ran the same tests with -maxmem=2048 on I lost roughly 3-5 fps on each test.

[76 0]

Improved Performance in Vista 64BIT, I finnnaly found the root cause of all my HDD Grinding in Vista64 by disabling all these services.

Search for these in google and use the services manager in control panel to disable or change when they run.

Start Menu > Control Panel > Admin Tools > Services

1. Turn off Search Indexing

2. Turn off Superfetch (This was the biggest grinder that vista was doing to my poor HDD)

3. Turn off Windows Search

3. Turn off Windows Update

4. Turn off Windows Restore Points

5. Turn off Windows Firewall (Make sure your using Third Party Firewall Program)

6. Turn off Windows Defender (Make sure your using Third Party Anti-Virus Protection)

This decreased loading times in vista and arma and overall performance in ArmA was increased with smoother gameplay..

Let me know how you get on.

For Vista services try...

http://www.speedyvista.com/services.php

from

http://www.speedyvista.com/