Arma 2 VERY slow with Win 7 64 bit!

[waterinthefuel 10]

I'm not sure what to do! My computer is a quad core AMD with 8 gigs of RAM and a 9800GTX+ video card and it takes forever for Arma 2 to load now! It loaded super fast with Win XP 32 bit. Is there some setting I need to adjust? I'm using the steam version.

It actually takes about 4 minutes to load the game and while playing it's man...........................in front of...............................us. Target..........................................................that.............................................man. I can't figure out whats choking it up! Any ideas? Any settings I need to tweak?

Thanks for any help you can give me!

[Leon86 13]

Maybe you can try defragmenting the harddrive (although this should happen automatically every time you computer is on and not doing anything).

This kind of difference in performance cant be because of the os-change. Try running some benchmarks like 3dmark 06 and cinebench to see if your pc performs normally in other apps.

Edited June 8, 2010 by Leon86

[johncage 30]

did you update your drivers with win7 64 bit versions? sometimes people forget and download drivers for their old os version.

if that doesn't work, then i'm sorry. windows 7 sucks. it's a bloated piece of trash and it interacts with this game differently.

i used to play this game just fine on windows xp, now after foolishly thinking windows 7 was going to be stable only after 1 year after release and buying it, the game went from smooth to stuttery.

[AL_ 10]

I didn't see any performance difference when moving from XP's to 7 (x64). Maybe a fresh install of everything, and the newest drivers, will help. Win 7 is a very good system, I've never found any issues regarding the compatibility and performance, simply what runs on XP, that runs on 7 without feeling any difference

Just remember to download newest directx (using google+microsoft's web), vga drivers at nvidia.com, and thats it

P.S.: I see many users recomending a disk defrag, but guys, arma runs (as every other game) only from RAM ;) it loads terrain while moving of course, but thats not an issue unless you're running arma from a diskette o.O or, say, 1500 yrs old hard drive (and even if I'm wrong, win7 defragments the drives transparently to the user once a week by default, so the defragmentation is really not the solution here)

Edited June 10, 2010 by AL_

[Honeycutt 10]

no probs with ARMA2 on Win 7 64bit for me apart from well known and widespread CTD issues.

Tried using -winxp, -core -maxmem did nothing in fact ARMA2 CTD "cleaner" without all that compatibility crap. "Cleaner" as in windows easily recovers to desktop. So Win7 is better. Oh and i did tweak the settings file and nvidia settings (like everybody else did)

[PTV-Jobo 820]

No probs here. I have a Core i7 920, 6GB of RAM, and a Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 card with Win7 64Bit and have had no real issues. Even CTD's are super-rare for me. I get minor FPS dips here and there, but nothing that makes it unplayable at all, and it loads up fairly quick.

[bravo 6 0]

I used to have win7 but ArmA2 ran slowed on win7, so i reverted to winXP and ArmA2 runs better.

All windows were X86

[Sinzan 10]

Win7x64, P II x6 1090T, 6G's 'o' RAM, HD5850, no problems. Your issues must reside elsewhere, I'm thinking drivers, chipset, or other.

[waterinthefuel 10]

First off, thanks to EVERYONE that helped me here.

Second, what are the Nvidia tweaks that you speak of to increase framerate?

Thirdly, I found out I probably have multiple issues. I was encrypting my hard drive, but that had been days prior, I figured it had long finished. Well, it was encryping in the background and was NOT done. It is now and gameplay is MUCH smoother. However, my computer hangs up on POST when I go to reboot so it looks like a motherboard BIOS issue. I called MSI and they said they'd send me another one if I return this one (why would I want this POS anyway?) so I'll be changing it out soon.

[no use for a name 0]

I didn't see any performance difference when moving from XP's to 7 (x64). Maybe a fresh install of everything, and the newest drivers, will help. Win 7 is a very good system, I've never found any issues regarding the compatibility and performance, simply what runs on XP, that runs on 7 without feeling any difference

Just remember to download newest directx (using google+microsoft's web), vga drivers at nvidia.com, and thats it

P.S.: I see many users recommending a disk defrag, but guys, arma runs (as every other game) only from RAM ;) it loads terrain while moving of course, but thats not an issue unless you're running arma from a diskette o.O or, say, 1500 yrs old hard drive (and even if I'm wrong, win7 defragments the drives transparently to the user once a week by default, so the defragmentation is really not the solution here)

Same with me; maybe was a negligible difference but I didn't notice it. But defragging will make a difference; especially (like you said) when you're traveling as it will load the textures better. Also, the basic Windows defrag doesn't work as well. It's a very basic defragger that only consolidates information; it doesn't sort it. I use Ultimate Defrag and you can put the whole Arma2 (and whatever other games) directory on the outside of your HDD platter in specific order (which is where you get the fastest read speeds). With Windows defrag, it throws any and all files to the outside but in no discernible order; so the HDD still has to search and move around a lot more.

[AL_ 10]

Same with me; maybe was a negligible difference but I didn't notice it. But defragging will make a difference; especially (like you said) when you're traveling as it will load the textures better. Also, the basic Windows defrag doesn't work as well. It's a very basic defragger that only consolidates information; it doesn't sort it. I use Ultimate Defrag and you can put the whole Arma2 (and whatever other games) directory on the outside of your HDD platter in specific order (which is where you get the fastest read speeds). With Windows defrag, it throws any and all files to the outside but in no discernible order; so the HDD still has to search and move around a lot more.

okay, I'll give it a try, thanks. I see the stuttering in ArmA too, but that's not as annoying thing (it's almost unnoticeable and I got used to it). But if it would disappear completely, I would be a bit more happy :)

[cri74 10]

May have a look in your Arma2.cfg too. Its located in ...Documents/Arma2 and should read something like this i guess. Sorry i got two of them stored since i had that problem and installed Arma2 on different drives to test out a few things. I noticed Arma2 sometimes change the adapter and 3D performance settings on crash or poweroff ingame. On CTD's Arma2 may still be running in the background(Arma2.exe) even though it does not show in your toolbar, where one or two(or more) are in background thus slowing the game you are playing, you will be able to see it in task manager. I was allso suspecting memory error so the settings are a bit different.

Windowed=0;

adapter=-1;

3D_Performance=100000;

Resolution_W=1920;

Resolution_H=1080;

Resolution_Bpp=32;

refresh=60;

winX=16;

winY=32;

winW=800;

winH=600;

winDefW=800;

winDefH=600;

Render_W=1920;

Render_H=1024;

FSAA=3;

postFX=0;

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;

HDRPrecision=8;

lastDeviceId="";

localVRAM=1063723008;

nonlocalVRAM=1878585344;

or this

language="English";

adapter=-1;

3D_Performance=100000;

Resolution_Bpp=32;

Resolution_W=1920;

Resolution_H=1080;

refresh=60;

Render_W=1920;

Render_H=1080;

FSAA=2;

postFX=0;

HDRPrecision=8;

lastDeviceId="";

localVRAM=644939776;

nonlocalVRAM=1475932160;

Windowed=0;

winX=16;

winY=32;

winW=1920;

winH=1080;

winDefW=1920;

winDefH=1080;

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;

I had the same problem and it was very noticable when W7 giving me more and more problems after updates. Updating Nvidia drivers and sound driver made it even worse, so was other drivers for network and chipset etc. It reached the point where i got BSOD's and i was unable to play the game. I found there was conflicts between Realtek drivers and Nvidia drivers causing this. I used a lot of time due to this problem trying to find a solution and its explained Here. Might help others with the same problems. As threadstarter said...it started with the game stuttering and load problems etc. After some time I just bought a ATI 5850 and everything solved.

Edited June 11, 2010 by cri74