69782 performance and stability feedback

[Inkompetent 0]

With latest 2 Beta patches my FPS dropped in the BIS Benchmark Mission #1, by 2-4FPS in Average. From 30-32FPS down to ~28FPS. However it is noticable... :-(

Aside from raw FPS though, how fluent is it? I lost about 4% FPS, but I suffer much less from stuttering and slow-loading textures.

[mr.g-c 6]

Fortunately I never had any issues with stuttering and slow-loading textures.....

Having 8GB Ram, every week fresh-defragmented Hard-Drives with 7200RPM, maybe thats the reason why i never had it.

[Inkompetent 0]

If you run a 64-bit win XP, or Vista/7 I guess the RAM does it all. Unless your HDDs are in a RAID-setup they are too slow for fluent ArmA2 (good 7200rpm drives can't keep up with all micro-reads and -writes, but if Windows use the RAM for the swap file instead of a HDD (which Vista and 7 are capable of afaik) it would at least take care of the micro-writes. ^^

[MavericK96 0]

If you run a 64-bit win XP, or Vista/7 I guess the RAM does it all. Unless your HDDs are in a RAID-setup they are too slow for fluent ArmA2 (good 7200rpm drives can't keep up with all micro-reads and -writes, but if Windows use the RAM for the swap file instead of a HDD (which Vista and 7 are capable of afaik) it would at least take care of the micro-writes. ^^

Well, even with an SSD I have the massive stuttering with high VD. Hell, even when I tried using the RAMdrive I didn't really see any improvement, so I'm wondering what's going on that I can't get decent non-stuttering performance in this game. My rig is just as good if not better than many who are claiming smooth performance. :(

[EricM 0]

My rig is just as good if not better than many who are claiming smooth performance

Indeed... You have a monster rig.

I think people with top-notch configs are more prone to suffer from early-adopters bugs and quirks, while people with slightly older and tested hardware benefit from the accumulated experience of the developpers (BIS is actually developping on standard middle-class computers, not super duper rigs)

Maybe you are pushing the game too much on the VD (10km?) and something else not so obvious is bottlenecking ? I see you have an SLI config, with may or may not scale up very well with the game, a core I7 causing notorious hyperthreading problems with Arma2...

I'm a happy camper with my 3 year old 8800GTX with 30fps and 2kmVD. OA is supposed to be more fps friendly, so I probably won't upgrade for some more time... You probably have different expectations...

[MavericK96 0]

Indeed... You have a monster rig.

I think people with top-notch configs are more prone to suffer from early-adopters bugs and quirks, while people with slightly older and tested hardware benefit from the accumulated experience of the developpers (BIS is actually developping on standard middle-class computers, not super duper rigs)

Maybe you are pushing the game too much on the VD (10km?) and something else not so obvious is bottlenecking ? I see you have an SLI config, with may or may not scale up very well with the game, a core I7 causing notorious hyperthreading problems with Arma2...

I'm a happy camper with my 3 year old 8800GTX with 30fps and 2kmVD. OA is supposed to be more fps friendly, so I probably won't upgrade for some more time... You probably have different expectations...

Actually a few things:

1) I typically run the game at 3900 VD because that is the max that will still allow Very High terrain detail. I was just using 10k as an example because I have tried it, and it gave me unplayable slideshow stutter.

2) I've tried with SLI on and off, and SLI definitely boosts my framerate a LOT, so I think the scaling is working fine.

3) I have Hyperthreading turned off, and have pretty much ever since I got the i7 because I overclock and the temps were insane with it on. Plus, like you said, in games it can either hurt performance or simply not do anything at all, so I have it off.

I seem to remember this game running a lot better back before Vista/7, but I could be wrong. I do have my settings at Very High but my framerate itself is totally fine, the problem is the stutter caused by streaming, and I can't seem to figure out how to alleviate it.

---------- Post added at 01:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:36 AM ----------

I just did a little bit of testing and found some interesting results.

When I fly over Chernagorsk in an F35B (my standard stability test) I get fairly moderate stutter and lower framerate, as could be somewhat expected. However, during this time my primary CPU core (Core 0) is only hovering around 25% usage, whereas the other three cores (Cores 1, 2, 3) are around 50% or more.

Then, when I get massive slideshow stuttering, which gets progressively worse and usually indicates a pending crash (and is 100% reproducable by simply flying low and fast over Chernagorsk and Elektro-(something)), The usage on Core 3 (the 4th one) skyrockets to like 75%+, and the others are doing practically nothing during this time.

So it seems to me there is some sort of problem with the way the game utilizes multiple cores. Specifically, it is not only not using them to their full potential, but it also hits a point where it has an error and starts using only one or something (in this case, Core 3).

I even tried downclocking my CPU (because I have it overclocked to 3.8 GHz normally, and has been 100% stable since I bought it over a year ago) and there's no difference in crashing/stutter.

Hopefully this information is helpful to the devs. It's not directly related to only the beta, but 1.05 as well.

[NoRailgunner 0]

If someone needs a semi-colon call me in... :)

Now tested again but stuttering and slow-loading textures/LOD switching is still present.

On Utes I only placed a C130J with "get out" and "move" waypoint + myself on 300m distance - watched the units and they were moving like on a flip-book (fps was 58 - with Deadfast FPS Counter:http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6171).

[MavericK96 0]

I just did some additional testing (same procedure as my post above) with the beta, and actually the texture streaming/stutter is GREATLY improved when flying over Chernogorsk. I still will eventually get the massive slowdown/slideshow, but interestingly in the beta, it is Core 1 (2nd core) that is maxed out while the others are doing nothing, unlike 1.05 where it's Core 3 (4th core). Very strange indeed.

However, I was able to crank the view distance to 10k and, while not entirely "smooth" (probably due to having all my other settings cranked pretty high), the stutter was greatly improved while looking around. It was actually halfways playable while flying in the beta. So, good job devs on that front! There is still the issue with the random massive slowdowns, but so far I haven't gotten the beta to "crash", per se, but it will slow down to a point where I'll be getting about one frame every 3 seconds, and it's impossible to input commands because it's almost like the game is practically frozen.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with turning off Threaded Optimization in the video drivers to fix the "v-buffer error" crash, but it might suggest something like that because threaded optimization deals with multiple CPU utilization, whereas when the game starts utilizing only one core, the game slows to a crawl and becomes unplayable.

Interesting stuff. Hopefully the devs can get this ironed out in the next patch.

[xeno 230]

I'm very disappointed with the last two beta patches.

Compared to 63826 they cause massive problems, they are laggy as hell, specially when you run many scripts and have quite a high number of units.

Edit: Went back to 63826 and everything is fine again, no more lags.

Xeno

Edited April 29, 2010 by Xeno

[jw custom 56]

I just did some additional testing (same procedure as my post above) with the beta, and actually the texture streaming/stutter is GREATLY improved when flying over Chernogorsk. I still will eventually get the massive slowdown/slideshow, but interestingly in the beta, it is Core 1 (2nd core) that is maxed out while the others are doing nothing, unlike 1.05 where it's Core 3 (4th core). Very strange indeed.

However, I was able to crank the view distance to 10k and, while not entirely "smooth" (probably due to having all my other settings cranked pretty high), the stutter was greatly improved while looking around. It was actually halfways playable while flying in the beta. So, good job devs on that front! There is still the issue with the random massive slowdowns, but so far I haven't gotten the beta to "crash", per se, but it will slow down to a point where I'll be getting about one frame every 3 seconds, and it's impossible to input commands because it's almost like the game is practically frozen.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with turning off Threaded Optimization in the video drivers to fix the "v-buffer error" crash, but it might suggest something like that because threaded optimization deals with multiple CPU utilization, whereas when the game starts utilizing only one core, the game slows to a crawl and becomes unplayable.

Interesting stuff. Hopefully the devs can get this ironed out in the next patch.

If you ever have the chance/time try run ArmA 2 on WinXP 32Bit. Most people with problems seems to be running Win 7, it could be interesting to see if the problems dissapeared by changing OS!

Compared to 63826 they cause massive problems, they are laggy as hell, specially when you run many scripts and have quite a high number of units.

Xeno

Thats my experience aswell, on 1.05 i don't have any problems!

[stun 5]

Same for me. I have reverted back to 63826. The FPS hit and micro stuttering when turning around on the ground were more than I could take. I am getting way more input lag with my mouse using the latest Beta and had to reduce the mouse smoothing.

Flight may be fixed, but since the main role of this game is as an infantry simulator I hope BIS sort out the other issues ASAP.

[Defunkt 431]

I typically run the game at 3900 VD because that is the max that will still allow Very High terrain detail. I was just using 10k as an example because I have tried it, and it gave me unplayable slideshow stutter.

The default is like 1600 IIRC, something tells me if the slider stopped at 4000 you'd be a happy camper. Happy that is until you get an even flasher rig in a year or two and wished BIS had built a bit more headroom into the game...

[wardog01 0]

System specs

I5 750 @ 3.4Ghz

4Gb ram 1600Mhz

Mobo MSI P55-GD65

2x 500Gb hdd raid 0 with arma2 on it

2x 160Gb hdd raid 0 with OS W7 64bit

ATI 5850 1Gb stock speeds

View distance 3k

resolution 1920x1080

Textures high

Video mem default

A filtering normal

AA high

Terain detail high

Objects detail high

Shadow detail high

post proc. disabled

Without beta bench

1. 50

2. 21

With beta 69782

1. 48

2. 21

So i lost 2 fps in bench 1 with the beta.

But i didnt noticed that really.

With the beta things looks a little bit smoother, less stutter.

But not much, so i voted Same - it seems the same, I cannot see any significant difference

[Herbal Influence 10]

No sorrows (no microstuttering, no big increase of fps, maybe even the loss of 2 or 3 - didn't realize anything like that) here after about a 3 hours of crcti on Everon with newest beta.

So: I am happy with the many improvements made!

[MavericK96 0]

If you ever have the chance/time try run ArmA 2 on WinXP 32Bit. Most people with problems seems to be running Win 7, it could be interesting to see if the problems dissapeared by changing OS!

Yeah, I could do that, though it seems silly that I should have to revert back to a 10-year old OS with no 4+ GB RAM support in order to run a game that is supposed to be more or less current-gen. Most people these days are running Vista/7 so it should work fine with these.

I do understand your point, though, and yes, a lot of games seem to run better on XP.

[PogMoThoin 10]

I'm liking this patch, it feels much smoother with a slight increase oin fps. I see mentions of dedicated server in the fixes, should I be running it on our dedicated server? Anyone tried it on a dedi box?

[jw custom 56]

Yeah, I could do that, though it seems silly that I should have to revert back to a 10-year old OS with no 4+ GB RAM support in order to run a game that is supposed to be more or less current-gen. Most people these days are running Vista/7 so it should work fine with these.

I do understand your point, though, and yes, a lot of games seem to run better on XP.

I think Win7 was only out as beta when ArmA 2 was being developed. I'm going in the opposite direction, what do Vista/Win 7 bring that i really need.... hmm nothing. WinXP has always been running great for me and i won't upgrade unless a new OS bring me something useful or i'm being forced to it software wise ;)

[Herr_kalashnikov 10]

In my experience this patch runs a little slower, got some occasional stuttering to, which I didn't see since 1.05 and SSD disk.

It's not really worse just 1-2 fps in the benchmark missions. Still it isn't the improvement I hoped for. Glad to see the developers focus on these issues though, appreciated.

[xeno 230]

I can just repeat that I'm really really disappointed.

It's not about the graphics, I don't care that much about graphics.

I made a simple script benchmark. With 63826 the bench needs about 0.881 seconds to finish (started it multiple times to get an average result).

With the latest beta patch it needs about 1.551 seconds to finish (checked multiple times again).

Please BIS, correct it again as otherwise modding this game doesn't make much sense anymore.

Xeno

[kridian 33]

Can't get this beta. Links show this: :confused:

[KeyCat 131]

Just check and http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php works fine for me. You can try to grab the patch directly using the following link...

ftp://downloads.bistudio.com/arma2.com/update/beta/ARMA2_Build_69782.zip

Maybe your browser is hijacked (unfortunately pretty common thing these days), I suggest you scan for virus/spyware/etc with an updated AV.

/KC

Edited April 29, 2010 by KeyCat

[ScareCroweb 10]

This patch (69782) gives me Terrible FPS when using Acog or just looking into the forrest or zooming in, 2-3 FPS unplayable

My video card Nvidia 250 GTS, without the beta patch it runs smooth as hell :confused:

[darthmuller_cro 10]

I dont know why but beta 69645 have much better preformance then 69782 for me and some other peapole on this forum. My configuration phenom 2 965 3,7 and ati 5850 10.4 driver WHQL (it have positive impact on preformance ).Beta 69645 is one step to perfection in preformance view, that is my opinion.

[suma 8]

I dont know why but beta 69645 have much better preformance then 69782 for me and some other peapole on this forum. My configuration phenom 2 965 3,7 and ati 5850 10.4 driver WHQL (it have positive impact on preformance ).Beta 69645 is one step to perfection in preformance view, that is my opinion.

This is exactly what makes PC development a nightmare. The only differences between 69645 and 69782 are a few simple bug fixes. I cannot see anything which could affect performance in any significant way. Even the "missing terrain" bug was a more or less a visual thing, with very little performance impact.

I am convinced that even if we made no fixes at all, just released a patch with a new version number, there would still be people who would get worse (or better) performance from it.

[NoRailgunner 0]

hi Suma,

Just curious if a testbed of different missions would give a better result?

So you could better see where the issues might be.

For example (or as interim workaround) which of the default SP/MP missions could be taken as "testmission"?

Which settings should people use for a proper test eg Viewdistance, Video Memory, 100% (lower/higher) Resolution etc.?