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SASrecon

New Beta build 70184 is up!

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Ah you can't launch the beta without using the beta folder. If you try to put the " " anywhere else, you get an error message... or at least, you should. My vanilla 1.05 works perfectly. My beta 69782 works perfectly. I didn't change a thing in my init line for the new beta, because they all go in the same place. I'm reporting that now, for whatever reason, my game does not function while running the last three beta updates. It functioned normally with betas before that. It's a shader error, and I know they played around with the shaders, so the question for BIS is: what did you do? The performance dropped off, and some people (me included) are seeing CTDs.. either in game, or prior to launch. Whatever you did, please DO NOT release it as part of the next official patch. In the meantime, I'll experiment with the betas as they are released to see if they start working for me again.

Well, I just ran the last 6 betas today for my benchmarking all in a row, only deleting the beta folder and then installing each concurrent beta, not changing the beta shortcut on my desktop at all. So whatever you're getting, it's not solely the fault of ArmA2 or even nVidia.

That said, I agree with you about this new beta. The performance is worse and I got an Out of Memory crash fairly quickly with it. So far the best beta for me is still 70100.

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Would be nice to know what exactly we should be testing here.

Are these memory/cpu/gpu related changes or all of them, or what?

Should we be testing in MP/SP Graphics settings or CPU "stress"? Since CPU is usually the bottleneck then shouldn't these be changes relating to this?

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+1 for 70100

By far the best performance so far even over Vanilla 1.05

Win 32

C2D extreme 3.4 ghz

4g 667 ram

2x 8800 GTX sli

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-While 1.05 seems to give the "best" performance, the stuttering is definitely a LOT worse than in some of the other beta builds. Since Benchmark 1 only measures average FPS, the stuttering doesn't really show up in the results. But believe me, it's a lot better in some of the other builds, specifically 70100

I agree.

Now, I only tested with AI as that is my main concern. Graphics are not really the bottleneck here with FPS.

1.05

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

6803, 131351, 12, 101, 51.793

69782:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

6668, 134454, 8, 100, 49.593

70184:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

6637, 135253, 8, 100, 49.071

This is the mission I used to test.

http://www.filefront.com/16382975/AI_FPS_TEST.utes.pbo

win7 x64

AMD 965

gtx260

Edited by Dead3yez

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hahaaaaa!!! X2!!

---------- Post added at 09:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:26 PM ----------

Comme on Cratian coast to fish some zubatac.... :)

Mh? I Didn't understand what you said XD

"Come on Croatian coast to fish some zubatac", maybe?

Why? ò.ò

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I was mad yesterday, lost my nerves ... because laggy multiplayer and some other stuff bothering me for a long, long time. I saw one post of you and you was angry to, so i suggested smarter thing to go fishing or something, that was joke of course

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the fixes they currently working on are probably to obscure to describe in a change-log. The fact the devs are interested in performance changes makes me think its probably in that area they are working on, atleast i hope so

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i believe i get more problems rendering certain tree's/bushes and the gras on chernogorsk..

sometimes they stay ugly like im 2000 mtrs away but i aint...

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i hate those trees, why so many of them?

please in the next patch, shave of those trees, or even better get rid of some. Structures, buildings need optimization as well. Another problem i'm having are incomplete textures especially on vehicle wheels, they show up first as polygons then they get their texture few seconds after. Is it because of my settings:

PP: disabled.

AA: disabled.

AAA: disabled.

Shadow: High.

VD: 1800

VRAM: very high.

Everything else on normal.

Edited by InFireBaptize

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Yes, one thing I've noticed is that LODs are taking much longer to load, especially when you start a mission.

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I was mad yesterday, lost my nerves ... because laggy multiplayer and some other stuff bothering me for a long, long time. I saw one post of you and you was angry to, so i suggested smarter thing to go fishing or something, that was joke of course

Oh lol, no problem ;)

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OK have just tested this build with Armamark2. I got a nice 5091, although I am still getting some microstuttering. If only we could load everything into memory there would be no need for hard drive access.

For information I got 5245 from vanilla 1.05 but there was much more texture popping and more microstuttering.

Edited by Kremator

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Hard drives are cheap. Setup RAID 0, put games on this RAID and Windows on separate drive, with few hard drive tweaks, operating system tweaks and arma2 settings you'll have stutter free game, and don't forget to defrag.

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OK have just tested this build with Armamark2. I got a nice 5091, although I am still getting some microstuttering. If only we could load everything into memory there would be no need for hard drive access.

For information I got 5245 from vanilla 1.05 but there was much more texture popping and more microstuttering.

that would take care of many issue's...

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These betas have worked really smooth for me, but big missions like warfare in official campaign have bad fps and the more you play those the more laggy those become. Especially when loading a savegame after restarting the whole game, the even worse oscillateing performance is there. I have been creating a big SP mission "Black Forest" for about year (with about 170 scripts and 100 triggers), but I just cant find a fix for bad perfomance. Even when there is no new unit spawning made (and AI units are dieing), the mission could still become more and more laggy. RPT-file have much errors like this if they lead to somewhere:

C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/EastCenter/Groups/Item10/targetKB/Item5.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/EastCenter/Groups/Item11/targetKB/Item5.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/EastCenter/Groups/Item19/targetKB/Item25.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/WestCenter/Groups/Item27/Waypoints/Item3.combat: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item5/targetKB/Item5.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item15/Waypoints/Item6.combat: Unknown enum value ERROR
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item10/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item11/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item19/targetKB/Item25.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /WestCenter/Groups/Item27/Waypoints/Item3.combat
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item5/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item15/Waypoints/Item6.combat
Error: post effect with priority 250 already exist.
Error: post effect with priority 450 already exist.
Error: post effect with priority 250 already exist.
Error: post effect with priority 450 already exist.

C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/Vehicles/VisibleFar/Vehicles/Item13/Brain.combatModeMajor: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/Vehicles/VisibleFar/Vehicles/Item133/Brain.combatModeMajor: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/EastCenter/Groups/Item10/targetKB/Item5.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/EastCenter/Groups/Item11/targetKB/Item5.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/EastCenter/Groups/Item19/targetKB/Item25.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/WestCenter/Groups/Item27/Waypoints/Item3.combat: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item5/targetKB/Item5.side: Unknown enum value ERROR
C:\Users\Santtu\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\SaOk\Saved\missions\SPBlackForest.Chernarus\continue.ArmA2Save/GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item15/Waypoints/Item6.combat: Unknown enum value ERROR
Id Veh-1099660 not found
Id Veh-1099661 not found
Id Veh-1099683 not found
Id Veh-1099684 not found
Id Veh-1099708 not found
Id Veh-1099711 not found
Id Veh-1099712 not found
Id Veh-1099713 not found
Id Veh-1099714 not found
Id Veh-1099722 not found
Id Veh-1099747 not found
Id Veh-1099855 not found
Id Veh-1099945 not found
Id Veh-1100014 not found
Id Veh-1100015 not found
Id Veh-1100047 not found
Id Veh-1100048 not found
Id Veh-1100049 not found
Id Veh-1100050 not found
Id Veh-1100051 not found
Id Veh-1100052 not found
Id Veh-1100053 not found
Id Veh-1100054 not found
Id Veh-1100094 not found
Id Veh-1100377 not found
Id Veh-1100378 not found
Id Veh-1100476 not found
Id Veh-1100477 not found
Id Veh-1100478 not found
Id Veh-1100479 not found
Id Veh-1100480 not found
Id Veh-1100481 not found
Id Veh-1100482 not found

Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /Vehicles/VisibleFar/Vehicles/Item13/Brain.combatModeMajor
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /Vehicles/VisibleFar/Vehicles/Item133/Brain.combatModeMajor
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item10/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item11/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item19/targetKB/Item25.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /WestCenter/Groups/Item27/Waypoints/Item3.combat
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item5/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item15/Waypoints/Item6.combat
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /Vehicles/VisibleFar/Vehicles/Item13/Brain.combatModeMajor
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /Vehicles/VisibleFar/Vehicles/Item133/Brain.combatModeMajor
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item10/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item11/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /EastCenter/Groups/Item19/targetKB/Item25.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /WestCenter/Groups/Item27/Waypoints/Item3.combat
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 10, context /GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item5/targetKB/Item5.side
Saving undefined enum value -2147483648 / 6, context /GuerrilaCenter/Groups/Item15/Waypoints/Item6.combat

There is much "Id Veh-1082388 not found"-style errors like 100 of them in row from 1082388 to 1089695.

Edit: I made two bug reports (with sample missions) to dev-heaven about buggy FPS loss with AI.

Deleted units bring only about 1/3 of FPS back:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/10544

A dead AI unit takes as much FPS away as an alive AI unit:

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/10542

Edited by SaOk

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bensdale: thanks for the heads up about the CIT. Great to see BIS so actively following up on difficult to diagnose problems, plus the insight into what else is going on with the betas.

There appear to be changes to the shaders between beta builds 63826 through 70100, haven't compared 70184 yet. 70054 stands out with noticeably lower level of detail on trees.

[70100 seems to give the best results - amended to: 70100 has noticeably more stutter than current release and previous betas, this is immediately obvious in the demo worlds. Also, anti-aliasing looks worse in 70100].

70184 I observed momentarily missing cockpit texture for AH-64 and other bits of vehicles missing/popping in.

-- Amended 09.05.2010--

Now that I've had more time on 70184 I see it is quite slow to load the higher detail LOD's. Overall this isn't such a bad thing as it helps reduce some of the LOD thrashing that we typically see - some hysterisis in the switching algorithm seems to be needed - but the orange bushes/trees in particular look a bit blobby at medium distance.

70184 also has stutter about once every 3s, just not to the same degree as 70100. Running from a RAM drive or a hard disk has no impact on this.

In summary, I the reduction in stutter makes 70184 easier to live with than 70100.

--

From profiling the various betas I have observed the following:

Performance bottleneck appears to be the main execution thread - this continuously saturates a single core from a multi-core CPU.

The thread appears to be doing setup of graphical data, as the only time its utilisation falls is between loading screens when there is little graphical rendering going on. The graphical work is accounting for around 58% of the workload.

Performance scales directly with MHz too - the higher I push the core speed the better overall performance is, utilisation of the core stays at > 98% irrespective of clock speed, hence the deduction that this is a bottleneck.

Secondary thread appears to be doing the data streaming. I say this as it spends a lot of time in the Windows kernel and I understand this is typical of threads doing lots of I/O.

Remaining threads of the 23 total are all < 1%.

70184 looks to have slightly higher utilisation of the secondary I/O thread, around 0.5% above 70100.

Until BIS are able to move some [more] of the workload out of the main thread, I believe we are going to stay CPU limited. I expect this isn't easy however, or I've no doubt it would be done already.

This is all based purely on observation of course, I have no internal information or debug symbols for the software, however it may help get a better understanding of what is limiting performance.

Following feedback from the developers about how the wide variety of PC hardware causes headaches, a suggestion to BIS is to give up to date recommendations on preferred hardware.

A lot of guys are spending a lot of money to improve their experience with ArmA, not all of it bearing fruit.

If BIS could state we developed or tested with CPU A on motherboard based on chipset B with graphics card C or D and hard disk/RAM drive/SSD E with sound card F running O/S G with the following recommended in game settings(!) with some information, then I expect many would follow the guidelines to ensure the best performance and reduce headaches.

Protegimus

Edited by Protegimus
Updated information for build 70184

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Still no luck here

I've tried all the recent patches briefly and mentioned that they literally bring my computer to a slideshow or alt/cntrl/delete esacpe.

Specs: e8500 stock 3.2ghz

ATI 4870 512mb stock settings/latest drivers

8 gigs 800 DDR2 Ram

250 Sata HD just defragged

Vista 64

ArmaMark Results with recent Beta:

Test1: 8.6;10.8;11.9;11.1;14.4 = 1140 took 8 minutes 27 seconds

Test2: 8.5;13.9;17.5;11.2;23 = 1487 took 7 minutes 31 seconds

ArmaMark Results 1.05:

Test1: 22.3;34;26.5;35.7;13.8 = 2652 took 2 Minutes 38 seconds

Test2: 27.3;34;29.7;42.7;28.2 = 3359 took 2 minutes 20 seconds

All settings on normal/AA disabled. Beta folder was deleted before installing.

Am I doing something wrong here? The performance is just awful with 2-3 second delays for mouse input and the title screen stutters every frame as well as music. Do I need to tweak a config or add some parameter as it seems many people only have minor performance issues but this has been my case with every recent patch.

:(

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70184 I observed momentarily missing cockpit texture for AH-64 and other bits of vehicles missing/popping in. Not that much time on 70184 though, so they are initial impressions.

I have experienced that flashing cockpit in air vehicles since very first version of ArmA 2.

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If their was a tree density setting it would have to be set at mission start only since they are objects with locations that everyone has to be able to see and interact with. That would cut down on performance hit. But I think trees are part of the map itself so a map maker would have to make a new "light" version of say Cherno. Right??

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ArmaMark Results with recent Beta:

Test1: 8.6;10.8;11.9;11.1;14.4 = 1140 took 8 minutes 27 seconds

Test2: 8.5;13.9;17.5;11.2;23 = 1487 took 7 minutes 31 seconds

ArmaMark Results 1.05:

Test1: 22.3;34;26.5;35.7;13.8 = 2652 took 2 Minutes 38 seconds

Test2: 27.3;34;29.7;42.7;28.2 = 3359 took 2 minutes 20 seconds

All settings on normal/AA disabled. Beta folder was deleted before installing.

I can't comment on 70184, because I got crashes with it so I reverted back to 70100, but I just did some ArmAMark with 1.05 and 70100, and the results are pretty significant:

1920x1200, All settings at Very High, except Post Processing at Low and Video Memory at Default

First runs only:

[u][b]1.05 Vanilla:[/b][/u]  57.6     [u][b]Build 70100:[/b][/u]  56.4
              36.8                   37.9
              33.3                   35.9
              47.9                   53.2
              13.6                   45.5
[b][u]Score:[/u]      3783.46                4577.32[/b]

Obviously, 70100 is doing something right over 1.05. Especially in Test 5, where I'm guessing the new feature that eliminates grass at high altitudes is at work here.

It's also interesting to note that I ran ArmAMark in 1.05 before I got my SSD, and my results were 2728.19, and that wasn't even with everything on Very High.

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FWIW, after a quick spin with build 70184 here are my experience...

The stuttering seems to improved a bit, it's not as smooth as in 1.05 final but better than in build 70100 on my rig. Now it's playable if I set Terrain Detail = Low but still quite evident stuttering if I set my Terrain Detail = High/Very High (wich is what I use without problems in 1.05 final).

Windows XP Pro

Intel C2D E6850 @ 3.41 GHz

2 GB RAM @ 1066 MHz

2 x Seagate ST3250620AS SATA-II 250 GB HDD

GeForce GTX 260 896 MB with drivers 191.07 WHQL

As previous this simple test was done on Utes with me as US infantry running in the grass alongside the runnway, no other units/scripts/addons running and frametrate is 30+ FPS.

Hope to get some more time testing later this weekend...

/KC

Edited by KeyCat

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All settings Very High except PP=Low Shadows=Normal Res=1920X1200

v1.05 = 1508

beta build70100 = 1981

beta build70184 = 1917

Build 70100 is very very fast at loading the textures on the airstrip flyby. Both 1.05 and 70184 didn't load the strips texture until the end after pausing a bit. Hope that helps.

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All settings Very High except PP=Low Shadows=Normal Res=1920X1200

v1.05 = 1508

beta build70100 = 1981

beta build70184 = 1917

Build 70100 is very very fast at loading the textures on the airstrip flyby. Both 1.05 and 70184 didn't load the strips texture until the end after pausing a bit. Hope that helps.

Yeah, 70100 is definitely the best one out so far for me, subjectively (stutter) and objectively (FPS/crashing). Still has some issues but is by far an improvement over 1.05 and 70184.

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