Why am I getting such crap performance?

[azbo87 10]

sorry! I know this has been an ongoing issue and people are posting the same threads. Ive had this game since launch and I really do get awful performance. For Example: Im on mission Harvest Red, in the town, and my fps is averaging around the 24 mark. Minimum 19, max 27. It is extremely jerky and bordering unplayable. I understand its a demanding game, and I can see its giving my processor a decent workout under the task manager. Am i doing something wrong? Or is there some trick people have to improve the performance? I seem to come accross people in these forums and they're saying they get about 30-60 fps and im getting nowhere near that. Any help really would be appreciated. I do believe its a processor related problem as the there is not a massive difference when i change graphic levels. I play at 1680x1050 and just set the graphics to medium-high. Thanks in advance

Windows 7 64 bit

Core I7 920 & 2.66ghz

4 gig Ram at 1066

ati radeon 4890

Its running on a 7200rpm hard drive (just defraged)

all latest drivers

[jw custom 56]

A lot of people are reporting poor performance in the campaign not really sure why that is. I have the same processor as you(and run same resolution) and i can play custom missions with tons of AI running around and get good performance, i haven't played the campaign so i can't say how that would run for me!

[Aeneas2020 10]

your resolution is what is killing you mate...try dropping it a few notches and you'll see it makes a mega difference. Also try opening the advanced options turning post processing off and setting antialiasing to off, and terrain detail to low or normal.

[Alex72 1]

Campaign is packed with scripts and stuff running so it will usually be heavier than other missions. Thats a good PC though so it should be a bit better than bordering to unplayable me thinks. I always found ARMA (all series) got better with time. Not due to patches only, but some voodoo or like driving in a new car... Maybe some tweaking of settings plus "getting used to it" is part of this voodoo? Not sure. But ARMA ran one way before and really good now - well before my PC broke down on me. Now its all stuttering hard.

Keep tweaking and hopefully the voodoo kicks in.

EDIT: What is your 3D resolution set to? If its above 100% please set it back to 100%.

[azbo87 10]

Wow, thanks for the quick response guys, thats fantastic! I've lowered the res to 1024x768, and set the graphics to their lowest level. Its bumped it up to between 28-34 fps now. Surely I should expect a larger return than that? going from 1680x1050 all medium high, to 1024x768 with everything on lowest. looking at my cpu usage it never actually maxes out any of the threads. It taxes the 1st 1 pretty hard, and the rest are all running at 50-60%. Even when I set arma 2 to run 'high priority' in task manager. Going into the armoury and playing about in the environment I can hit 50-60fps at nearly all the highest settings, so I dont think im limited by my graphics card. Infact, credit to Bohemia, this game really does look incredible when it wants to. Im gonna rummage around all the performance tweak guides available, but does anyone know off the top of their head im BIS are gonna patch the campaign or anything? Maybe tweek performance or anything like that? Im not a graphics whore or anything like that, but I really cant stand choppy gameplay. I look at videos on youtube of people playing the campaign on slightly older hardware and their performance seems to be leagues ahead of mine. Again thanks for the quick response

[Defunkt 431]

Why not post a screenshot of your video settings? For instance I have an HD4870 and I can tell you ATI cards do not perform well with any AA running, instead I run with AA off and 125% 3D resolution which provides fullscreen AA.

[RedCanoe 10]

Weird. I have a q6600 and 8800GT and I get an average of 32fps with most things on high and 2XAA at 1600 by 1200.

Your pc should be faster.

[rowdied 44]

sorry! I know this has been an ongoing issue and people are posting the same threads. Ive had this game since launch and I really do get awful performance. For Example: Im on mission Harvest Red, in the town, and my fps is averaging around the 24 mark. Minimum 19, max 27. It is extremely jerky and bordering unplayable. I understand its a demanding game, and I can see its giving my processor a decent workout under the task manager. Am i doing something wrong? Or is there some trick people have to improve the performance? I seem to come accross people in these forums and they're saying they get about 30-60 fps and im getting nowhere near that. Any help really would be appreciated. I do believe its a processor related problem as the there is not a massive difference when i change graphic levels. I play at 1680x1050 and just set the graphics to medium-high. Thanks in advance

Windows 7 64 bit

Core I7 920 & 2.66ghz

4 gig Ram at 1066

ati radeon 4890

Its running on a 7200rpm hard drive (just defraged)

all latest drivers

Did you try disabling HT or using only 4 cores via the shortcut -cpucount=4?

Try a search and you will see some tips and tricks to get more performance out of the i-7's

[Laqueesha 474]

Many people whose requirements exceed the recommended requirements are reporting horrendus performance.

[Bulldogs 10]

Definitely disable Hyperthreading, Arma 2 doesn't like it (many game don't but Arma 2 uses a lot of CPU power and isn't optimised for 8 cores, so it really doesn't like it)

[VictorFarbau 0]

I confirm the counterproductive HT behaviour. I recently did some tests with my new i7-860 and found that disabling HT in the BIOS often leads to better performance in application and games but specifically in Arma 2.

I got 47 and 19 fps in Arma Benchmarks 1 and 2 respectively with an awful stuttering during gameplay with HT set to ON.

After disabling HT I get 53/22 and no stuttering whatsoever. That makes all the difference for me; especially since I run the game in 1920x1080.

Core i7 860@3.6ghz, HD5850, 4GB RAM.

VictorFarbau

Edited April 16, 2010 by VictorFarbau

[rowdied 44]

Definitely disable Hyperthreading, Arma 2 doesn't like it (many game don't but Arma 2 uses a lot of CPU power and isn't optimised for 8 cores, so it really doesn't like it)

Funny thing is I have it enabled and have no stuttering problems whatsoever.

The only problem I have with arma is not arma but those f@#kin ATI drivers from version 10.1 to 10.4.

I lose them and have to reinstall them and it causes me grief from not being able to play my beloved game lol. Fricken ATI!!!!!

[DokiDoki 10]

I have had also a lot of trouble with Arma 2, from crappy performance to the game being very unstable. I had been trying a lot of tweaks and stuff. I even ended up disabling half of my ram.

It all did not seem to help.

Setting it all to lowest video settings gave me roughly same performance as setting it to very high.

I was also wondering all the time why the performance was so crappy and why it kept crashing all the time. I was very sure that my system could run it better than around 20 fps very low :P.

Now it is almost a year later and I guess what Alex72 said is very true about the ArmA voodoo. Also to that comes; optimize your system, try everything and be persistent.

In the end I managed to get Arma 2 to run smooth and stable without any tweaks. HT I have now still turned on (Im still not sure what the benefits with this are but it does not give trouble anymore).

Also Im running the game now at very high, 7 km view distance and 4x AA at 1680 x1050 on a single GTX275. I know someone who has a very similar system to mine but instead of a GTX275 he has 2 GTX260s and he gets way worse performance at way lower settings.

The end of the story is that according to what I have seen the last year, Arma is a hit or miss performance wise. Keep on trying things to get it to run and you might end up lucky.

In the end I noticed that for my initial trouble there was no real solution. I guess it gotten fixed over time with driver updates, patches and aforementioned voodoo :).

[MavericK96 0]

Why not post a screenshot of your video settings? For instance I have an HD4870 and I can tell you ATI cards do not perform well with any AA running, instead I run with AA off and 125% 3D resolution which provides fullscreen AA.

That's really interesting...I'd like to see some benches with AA vs. greater-than-100% 3D Resolution with ATi and nVidia cards. :cool:

[Vick 19]

id bet its that hard drive and cpu combo thats bottle necking your arma2 experience

---------- Post added at 04:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:46 AM ----------

That's really interesting...I'd like to see some benches with AA vs. greater-than-100% 3D Resolution with ATi and nVidia cards. :cool:

i run max 200% screen res and no stutter, its awesome - 2 gtx 260's

[MavericK96 0]

i run max 200% screen res and no stutter, its awesome - 2 gtx 260's

What res? I run 1920x1200 max and I get stutter but I think that's a HDD issue, soon to be solved by an SSD. Frame-rate wise, I've tried running at 200% screen res and it was too slow to be playable on my 2 GTX 280s.

[Bulldogs 10]

Most games will take a massive performance hit when enabling Anti-Aliasing without crossfire/sli. Arma takes the least hit of any game I know of as long as it's kept on MSAA (performance)

[Vick 19]

What res? I run 1920x1200 max and I get stutter but I think that's a HDD issue, soon to be solved by an SSD. Frame-rate wise, I've tried running at 200% screen res and it was too slow to be playable on my 2 GTX 280s.

the same res, but i've got mine running off its own SSD and my OS on two caviars in raid 0

[MavericK96 0]

the same res, but i've got mine running off its own SSD and my OS on two caviars in raid 0

Well, that's probably the difference. Although, even without the HDD stutter I'm still getting pretty low FPS with 200% 3D res. I run it at 125% now and no AA and it seems to look/run about as well as with AA on low, maybe a bit better but it's hard to tell. 150% might be playable, not sure. I'll just wait till I get my SSD tomorrow and let you know. :cool:

[domokun 515]

Azbo: I can feel your pain so have you tried any or all of these suggestions?

Edited April 20, 2010 by domokun