Low GPU-load in game (one single-chipped videocard)

[McArcher 0]

Is it possible for nvidia cards to log the gpu-usage?

I have remembered about GPU-Z. Try this one. It can log data to file.

[jumpinghubert 48]

I have remembered about GPU-Z. Try this one. It can log data to file.

thx. Downloaded latest version and logged gpu-usage.

1.Scenario: editor, 2 groups (1vs1) firefight: 99% gpu-Usage constantly. Driver version nvidia 191.03.

edit:

2.Scenario: editor 14 groups (7vs7) firefight: 74% Gpu-usage constantly.

I think its the same behaviour like cpu usage depends on number of ai.

Edited December 2, 2009 by JumpingHubert

[Ish 11]

I want to see higher FPS. But it s low, though the videocard is not working at 100%, so FPS could be higher if the code of game was optimized... IMHO

Could be bottlenecked by the CPU :confused: I know you wrote it doesn't work at a 100%.. But maybe you have other applications that's eating it up? Not sure what else it could be really.

[McArcher 0]

Could be bottlenecked by the CPU :confused: I know you wrote it doesn't work at a 100%.. But maybe you have other applications that's eating it up? Not sure what else it could be really.

well, actually, only Arma2 was running. No antivirus, downloader, and so on. CPU load was far from 100%. I think it is something else. 3.5 GHz on 3 cores isnt enough for Arma2 ?

[moondawg 12]

Same experience here.

I saw the symptoms of low Hw utilization, and decided to check it out.

Running a Q9400@3,2 and a 4890 1gb, the processors are rarely over 70%,

And the gpu never over 75% And before you ask, my temps are all cool.

So Arma doesn't utilize the systems full potential, although all other games does, unless they cap at 60fps (vsync)

Now, when I the get 30-33 fps on normal settings, and it dips to 20-25,

I get slightly frustrated as Arma struggles, but my HW hardly breaks a sweat.

Now, I love Arma, but i guess the engine is showing its age.

[kklownboy 43]

i wouldnt equate % with FPS so much. There are several reasons for low frames.

[maddogx 13]

The latest GPU-Z version can measure GPU load and video memory usage. I tried it yesterday and GPU load hovers around 90% for me. I suggest anyone who is experiencing low performance issues try it out.

[moondawg 12]

i wouldn't equate % with FPS so much. There are several reasons for low frames.

That may be, but still Arma uses the least resources of all my games, and runs below expectations.

It might be worth mentioning that I have run arma2 on XP, Vista and now win7.

Vista was the worst, but there is no discernible difference from xp to win7 for me.

Ran a check on a server with few players, and the GPU never went above 40%.

Hehe, And I bought that card for this game. What a waste.

Well, I guess it only supports the theory that Arma2 is heavily HD dependent..

[Yoma 0]

Well, I guess it only supports the theory that Arma2 is heavily HD dependent..

That my dear friend is not a theory, its a fact.

[SWAT_BigBear 0]

That my dear friend is not a theory, its a fact.

QFT

I seen a large difference using a 7200rpm compared to a 10,000rpm.

Most noticeble with heavy AI missions.

[kklownboy 43]

That may be, but still Arma uses the least resources of all my games, and runs below expectations.

It might be worth mentioning that I have run arma2 on XP, Vista and now win7.

Vista was the worst, but there is no discernible difference from xp to win7 for me.

Ran a check on a server with few players, and the GPU never went above 40%.

Hehe, And I bought that card for this game. What a waste.

Well, I guess it only supports the theory that Arma2 is heavily HD dependent..

not sure why you have low usage... but if you can turn up your rez/fillters ect and get your % up higher? I get 99% at times on all four of my GPUs.....i dont put any credence in CPU% usage tho. So if you go with the thought you have a bottleneck... what would it be, what would be stalling your vidcard...?

[jumpinghubert 48]

seems to be a difference between ATI and NVIDIA cards in GPU-load. Like i described it is dependend on amount of AI too.

In facts:

7vs7 groups fighting gpu-load is not higher than 74%

2vs2 groups for example (or empty editor) the gpu-load is 99%.

Lets concentrate on the facts you can mesure....

@kklownboy

pls check the gpu-load with lots of AI (7vs7 groups for example)..

Edited December 3, 2009 by JumpingHubert

[Blue_Flight 0]

QFT

I seen a large difference using a 7200rpm compared to a 10,000rpm.

Most noticeble with heavy AI missions.

So when this is true i have the following question:

I have a 7200rpm Western Digital HD and just in case i would consider buying a 10,000rpm one, would it be more important to base the OS or ArmA2 on it? Or in the best case both?

[EDcase 87]

Best to put ARMA2 on its own fast HD or at least its own partition.

[McArcher 0]

So when this is true i have the following question:

I have a 7200rpm Western Digital HD and just in case i would consider buying a 10,000rpm one, would it be more important to base the OS or ArmA2 on it? Or in the best case both?

I think it's more useful to buy a second 7200 to put it into RAID, doubling the perfromance. But, I think HDD isn't the solution. Maybe it's ATI's drivers and Game engine.... I hope BIS and AMD know about this issue and are working on it.

Btw, in intro scenes, GPU usage is 100%, so it must be a BIS's problem.

And, about temperatures. I have read that OCCT GPU test have already killed some non-overclocked videocards. I'm uninstalling it soon)) I measured temps after 10x Firefly Forest run in 3DMark 2006, and VRM was lower than 70 grad!!! no 115 like in OCCT GPU!! So.... don't use it to test your videocard stability =) (just a warning :))

Edited December 3, 2009 by McArcher

[InFireBaptize 0]

Hello, I have got a question about in-game GPU load.

I have an AMD Phenom II X3 running at 3500MHz, HD 4890 OC'ed to 900/4400.

Two days ago I had some time to play ArmA 2, I decided to measure all the temperatures, speeds, clocks and so on in my system via RivaTuner and plugins for it.

I was very amazed when I saw in-game GPU load only about 28-50%. Sometimes it could be more than 50%, but very very rarely. (CPU load is also not so much, not 100% of course) GPU load was 100% only in intro scenes (main menu and a 3D world as a background). Is this a "great optimization" for hardware??? I could understand 50% GPU load with Crossfire not working, but I have a single-chipped graphic card and it seems very strage to me... Plz, comment on this.

P.S. Latest BIOS, latest drivers for MB, VideoCard (Catalyst 9.11), Soundcard, DirectX and so on.

This is a response i received from Sapphire tech support:

From:

"DO-NOT-REPLY@sapphiretech.com" <DO-NOT-REPLY@sapphiretech.com>

...

Add to Contacts

To:

Radeon HD4Kseries cards uses a new technology called the dynamic clock speed, what it does is if the card is idling not doing much graphics intensive the card will lower the clock speed so it will uses less resource from the system, once the card in under heavy graphics load then card will adjust the clock speed to where it is suppose to be at. So there is no need to try and over clock them because they are below clock speed, they will bring up to speed once they are in something more graphic intensive mode.

[McArcher 0]

This is a response i received from Sapphire tech support:

From:

"DO-NOT-REPLY@sapphiretech.com" <DO-NOT-REPLY@sapphiretech.com>

...

Add to Contacts

To:

Radeon HD4Kseries cards uses a new technology called the dynamic clock speed, what it does is if the card is idling not doing much graphics intensive the card will lower the clock speed so it will uses less resource from the system, once the card in under heavy graphics load then card will adjust the clock speed to where it is suppose to be at. So there is no need to try and over clock them because they are below clock speed, they will bring up to speed once they are in something more graphic intensive mode.

well, I can add to that I was monitoring GPU Clock, and it was a line without any falls to 240 (2D Clock) and 500 (light 3D clock) MHz frequencies. It was stable 900 MHz on GPU. When a game have started it runs on max speed until game ended. Bear in mind this also. (In arma2 it uses 3D everytime, except maybe while loading map/mission. In menus, on map and in-game it runs full 3D clocks everytime)

[moondawg 12]

Thanks for all the replies, And yes yoma, it was not meant to discredit the fine work on arma and storagemediums.

However I run this from a rather fastish raid0 array, but I guess it still is too slow..

My main gripe with this is that Arma is by far my favorite game, and I'd like to see it shine :)

[Kristian 47]

Arma is by far my favorite game, and I'd like to see it shine :)

Many things shine IG, including cows :D

[Defunkt 431]

You all appear to be largely ignoring what I believe is the most likely bottleneck; your CPU. Nobody has said anything more than "CPU is nowhere near 100%". If you read Suma's article that should be anticipated, ArmA is still largely dependent on a single core running the game's primary thread and rendering - this is to save on the overhead involved in transferring large amounts of data between threads. If you have a multi-core processor the utilisation of each core is highly relevant to this discussion, I think it likely you'll find that your QUAD at 33% has one core going hard out and a few secondary threads taking up not much around the others. If that is the case it is likely your GPU is under-utilised because you are CPU bound.

[Alex72 1]

Most modern videocards i believe have auto correction of the fan speed depending on how hot it gets or how hard it works (dont know wich). Anyhow my own card 8800GTS does not go up to 100% fan duty even if i play ARMA2 for quite a while. When i forget to do my usual ritual i get worse gameplay.

The ritual is ofcourse using RivaTuner to set the FAN speed to 100% before entering the game. This gets me way better performance as to if i forget it.

Overclocking: If you over-overclock your card, and i guess its different for different games(?) will give you worse performance (even if its just a little over-OC). In ARMA2 i have experienced (before) weak performance and artifacts when going a little too high OC. However it was not too high in general - but it was for A2. I have learnt to OC my card to a sweet spot. This gives me perfect performance. After long time messing with that i have come to where it runs as good as it can.

McArcher: Try getting your heat down more mate. 100c doesnt sound good. The card can take like 130c, but its not meant to be there over sustained time. My older 8800 with the slight OC and fan manually set to 100% puts me at highest around 70c (lots of combat + cities). Normal is around 60c.

Hope that helps.

[Ish 11]

Best to put ARMA2 on its own fast HD or at least its own partition.

Get 24Gb RAM and put the entire game on a RAM drive, should solve that problem :rolleyes:

My only real advice is too turn of the AA.. Everything else I can run on very high no problem, but the AA eats the FPS. And I have a proper gaming computer that is like 3 months old.

I doubt sporting a faster harddrive is gonna help the AA performance.

Edited December 3, 2009 by Ish

[jumpinghubert 48]

mesuring the own gpu-load on different situations ingame and posting it in this thread maybe help............................................................................

[Ish 11]

Maybe the GPU isn't used much because the game uses the processor to calculate most things. I certainly didn't see much difference with my current computers specs and the same but with a 8800 GTS 512 (waiting for the 5870 to be released)... I really don't think GPU is a big deal. Quad core and HT off, overclocked if possible. That's another general tip.

[jumpinghubert 48]

Mesuring the own...........is the first logical step discussing in this thread. Give it a try...the problem seems to be: it takes a little bit time. Posting "general tips" takes less time. But you are right in the point that the cpu influence the gpu-load. I will test it later downclocking my Q6600 to default (2,4GHZ) and mesuring gpu-behaviour on different ai-sceneries.

Edited December 3, 2009 by JumpingHubert