Operation Arrowhead performance optimizations/comparisons

[r20 10]

Yeah I know that wikia page.

So 1000 will give most FPS performance or GPU render=0? I am confused.

Don't care about controls lag, need FPS.

[valnwt 11]

Hopefully this wont count as spam.

Ive written in another performance thread about bad fps, something ive discovered is that arma 2 isnt using CPU fully, ram im not sure about. However, people looking to buy new hardware please look at your resource monitor during benchmark 2. Ive got an i7 960 and a gtx560 ti, non of them are even close to 100% usage during benchmark 2 but fps is down at 15-18. Now im aware that 18 fps in benchmark 2 isint bad, but i feel it could be better if my cpu was at higher usage rate. So if ones hardware never work to its fully potential why buy new.

As this is the Arma 2 OA thread, if you dont have benchmark 2 then just put alot of ai on a map and let them go wild.

Regards

Dan

Edited February 28, 2012 by DanielV

[MavericK96 0]

I did a little bit of my own testing. Basically I found that View Distance and Terrain Detail are the biggest culprits in performance loss. I found that ~3500 was the "sweet spot" for performance and quality, and Terrain Detail at Normal instead of Very High made a pretty big difference. With both those settings I gained almost 10 FPS near Chernarus looking out over the forests.

Shadow Quality, HDR Quality and Anti-Aliasing made almost no difference between Off/Normal and Very High for me. HDR maybe gave me like 1 FPS between Normal and Very High, so I left it at Normal because I can't really tell the difference between them anyway. Shadow Quality and Anti-Aliasing made a big difference in visuals and very little performance difference, so I left those at Very High.

Oddly enough, using Benchmark 2 I actually lost 2 FPS setting HDR from Very High down to Normal. :confused:

[Atkins 10]

How does A2 run with a 6850 crossfire set? Stuttering issues? Any problems at all?

[r20 10]

View Distance, Anti Aliasing (AToC), Terrain Detail, Objects Detail, HDR, Post Processing. These make biggest difference.

View Distance should be from 1000 to 3500 according to my FPS. It's the main thing on Benchmark 2.

My monitor resolution is 1920x1080, I leave it same for 3D resolution too. So at this resolution I only need Low Anti Aliasing or I can easily play it without AA. In A2OA cfg I set AToC to 7 and depending on FPS I set AA low or disable because I only need AA for trees and grass at 1920x1080. If your resolution is low try playing with AA and AToC do benchmarks and use Fraps!

I would advise setting Terrain Detail to disable because AI can see through grass and if server allows most people play wihout terrain detail, so it's big advantage at the cost of eye candy. Or set it to low to see some grass around you for little FPS difference.

If you have lag at towns set Objects Detail to very Low. It makes objects far away look blurry but if you are near them or zoom at them they become just as good as at very high.

HDR can save 10FPS depending on situation or it can make no difference at all. It enhances lighting, but not at big difference. I prefer Normal.

Postprocess effects at Low for good performance and a little motion blur but not for blurring everything around you and causing huge lag.

Texture Detail, Anisotropic filtering, Shadow detail at very high. If server allows to change shadow detail at night don't hide in shadows because people can see you there.

Video memory at default.

If it's very choppy leave these settings at very high and everything else at very low or disable, because these barely make difference.

And I am hoping someone explains me GPU_MaxFramesAhead.

1000 or 0 gives best FPS???

I don't see difference.

Edited February 29, 2012 by R20+

[On_Sabbatical 11]

I'm getting a 2600k soon.

I just want to know if disabling hyperthreading is always necessary ... because i do a lot of things other than gaming and don't want to disable it each time i run arma :D.

[denco 16]

I have HT on in arma and it couses no problems all the benchmarks are the same with HT off or on.

[doveman 7]

@ Doveman: thanks for the feedback. I found it very interesting as I'm due to upgrade my R4890 to R6950 this week!

In the meantime, have a look at these tips.

Glad you found it interesting. I thought I might as well share my results in case they were useful to someone else :)

[MavericK96 0]

View Distance, Anti Aliasing (AToC), Terrain Detail, Objects Detail, HDR, Post Processing. These make biggest difference.

View Distance should be from 1000 to 3500 according to my FPS. It's the main thing on Benchmark 2.

My monitor resolution is 1920x1080, I leave it same for 3D resolution too. So at this resolution I only need Low Anti Aliasing or I can easily play it without AA. In A2OA cfg I set AToC to 7 and depending on FPS I set AA low or disable because I only need AA for trees and grass at 1920x1080. If your resolution is low try playing with AA and AToC do benchmarks and use Fraps!

I would advise setting Terrain Detail to disable because AI can see through grass and if server allows most people play wihout terrain detail, so it's big advantage at the cost of eye candy. Or set it to low to see some grass around you for little FPS difference.

If you have lag at towns set Objects Detail to very Low. It makes objects far away look blurry but if you are near them or zoom at them they become just as good as at very high.

HDR can save 10FPS depending on situation or it can make no difference at all. It enhances lighting, but not at big difference. I prefer Normal.

Postprocess effects at Low for good performance and a little motion blur but not for blurring everything around you and causing huge lag.

Texture Detail, Anisotropic filtering, Shadow detail at very high. If server allows to change shadow detail at night don't hide in shadows because people can see you there.

Video memory at default.

If it's very choppy leave these settings at very high and everything else at very low or disable, because these barely make difference.

And I am hoping someone explains me GPU_MaxFramesAhead.

1000 or 0 gives best FPS???

I don't see difference.

Some good tips. Keep in mind, though, that with AA disabled, AToC does nothing. Personally I can't play the game without SOME sort of AA, otherwise everything just looks super jaggy, especially at distance (this is 100% 3d res also).

MaxFramesAhead is more of a setting regarding input lag. Personally I've seen no real difference between 0, 1, 3, or 8 (set in drivers, anyway).

[spotter001 82]

i found some really useful advises here and the game runs much smoother now.

1) view distance:

i used to play with 4500 but now i realize that maybe i don't need that much. of course, i don't wanna end up being shot from an enemy i can't see due to the VD:)

i see some users recommend ~3500. is that supposed to be like 3.5km in game distance? i have it on ~4000 atm.

2) what's AToC? i know what aa is but i haven't seen AToC abbreviation before?

I would advise setting Terrain Detail to disable because AI can see through grass and if server allows most people play wihout terrain detail, so it's big advantage at the cost of eye candy. Or set it to low to see some grass around you for little FPS difference.

what? is this really true? so all those crawling and peeking around the bushes is for nothing?

If you have lag at towns set Objects Detail to very Low. It makes objects far away look blurry but if you are near them or zoom at them they become just as good as at very high.

thanx for this, it really helped. i used to keep it at VH all the time. i got some additional fps by setting it to normal.

HDR can save 10FPS depending on situation or it can make no difference at all. It enhances lighting, but not at big difference. I prefer Normal.

same here, normal is enough.

Video memory at default.

what does it mean anyway? my graphics is 6850 with 1GB mem.

[domokun 515]

Spotter: these tips might help some of your questions

[spotter001 82]

thanks a lot mate! i would never find that post on my own. that thread alone has 151 pages!

[griffz 1]

AtoC means Alpha to coverage. it 's a way to apply FSAA on alpha blended textures. (usually tree, bush , grass, poorly detailled barbwire and net, etc ...)

Edited March 17, 2012 by griffz

[BlueWolf 1]

@spotter LMFaO

I think he means grass only, AI can't see threw bushes

watch this test video:

kAetUEISzt8

Fantastic information. Thanks Dwarden.

So for Apples to Apples comparison when an individual using v1.07 ArmA2 graphic settings @ "Very High" and 3500 view distance... in OA you need to:

* Turn audio samples down to 16.

* Turn PP down to Low.

* Match all other settings.

... All this time I have been playing & fiddling with settings THIS is what I missed.

Thanks !

Edited May 19, 2012 by BlueWolf

[Spectrum 1]

intel® Core i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3601 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 logical Processor(s)

4.00 GB RAM

AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series

Also another one next to it

intel® HD Graphics Family

Windows 7 x64 :cool:

[max power 21]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I'll merge this into the proper thread. Please search before posting, and don't forget to read the forum rules. Thanks :)

[VadyaGT 1]

Hello everyone. I have a problem with the arma 2 CO periodically 3d models are low-graphics

Arma 2 patched to 1.5 then to 1.11. Then set the Arma 2 Operation Arrow, and then patched up to 1.52 to 1.60

All games are licensed

[domokun 515]

VadyaGT: try installing the latest beta patch

http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php

Then, run OA via the new shortcut that the beta patch created in your ArmA2 directory

[doveman 7]

With my 2GB 6950 and Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.8ghz and 8GB DDR3 I'm getting about 21 FPS a lot of the time, occassionally I see it go higher but most times I look it's in the low 20's. Is this normal?

I'm running the latest beta and have AA disabled and the following settings:

language="English";

adapter=-1;

3D_Performance=93750;

Resolution_Bpp=32;

Resolution_W=1920;

Resolution_H=1080;

refresh=60;

winX=16;

winY=32;

winW=1280;

winH=1024;

winDefW=1280;

winDefH=1024;

Render_W=1920;

Render_H=1080;

FSAA=0;

postFX=1;

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;

HDRPrecision=8;

lastDeviceId="";

localVRAM=2129182720;

nonlocalVRAM=2147483647;

vsync=0;

AToC=7;

PPAA=3;

PPAA_Level=2;

Windowed=0;

FXAA=0;

anisoFilter=4;

TexQuality=3;

TexMemory=4;

useWBuffer=0;

shadingQuality=100;

shadowQuality=3;

sceneComplexity=300000;

viewDistance=3011.3025;

terrainGrid=12.5;

[domokun 515]

Doveman: try the following tweaks:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-%28low%29-performance-issues&p=2081466#post2081466

And let us know how you get on

[doveman 7]

Thanks domokun, I'd did some tests with Benchmark 1 (my previously reported 21 FPS was in both the single-player campaign and online Warfare, so not directly comparable to these results). The Avg for Benchmark 1 is skewed by the start where there's not much going on and the camera's looking at the sky, which is why I've added details of what the FPS was at most of the time.

ATOC=0, Avg 40 FPS (mostly high 20's-low 30's)

PVT, SAP Clutter, GDT Grass (okt_noblurbeta causes error on launching OA): Avg 39 FPS (mostly high 20's-low 30's)

1. ATOC=7, Avg 40 FPS (mostly high 20's-low 30's)

2. Post-Processing disabled: Avg 36 FPS (mostly mid-high 20's)

3. ATOC=0, Avg 48 FPS, (mostly mid-high 30's)

4. Reduced visible distance from 3000 to 1600: Avg 64 FPS (mostly high 40's-low 50's)

5. Increased visible distance to 6000: Avg 30 FPS (mostly low to mid 20's)

I'll have to check how the results at 3. translate in-game but there certainly seems to be a nice liitle boost with ATOC=0 and PP disabled, which might be sufficient to keep me in the 30's at least. I don't really want to have to reduce the Visible Distance as it does make a difference, particularly when flying.

Even with the VD at 6000 though I noticed a lot of texture popping/changing on the building and trees that were fairly near to the camera, which seems strange. Not sure if it was happening at the lower VD or if I only happened to notice it on the last run.

[domokun 515]

Doveman: try using E08 Benchmark , rather than E01 as it's more balanced.

I understand about leaving VD at 3000 so try AToC=0.

As for PP, so long as you use Oktane's noBlur mod you can easily run PP at Low without any signficant loss of framerate (compared to PP=Disabled)

[doveman 7]

OK, I'll use the E08 Benchmark in future, thanks for the tip.

I'll see if there's an update to the noblur (beta) mod as at the moment it causes CO not to load with a "DX9 error", although it's worked fine in the past so maybe some recent beta patch broke it.

EDIT: Ah, I see it's updated quite regularly http://506.jestservers.com/scripts/oktane/noblur/for_OA_beta_builds/ There doesn't appear to be one for 94103 yet but I'll try the 93965 one.

---------- Post added at 16:06 ---------- Previous post was at 14:25 ----------

OK, that version of noblur (beta) works fine.

With E08, VD 3000, ATOC=0 and Postprocessing disabled I get Avg 57 FPS and with PP Low Avg 56 FPS (ranging from around 50-70 FPS depending on the scene), so I think ATOC=0 has helped a lot :)

I tested Benchmark 1 again and got 48 FPS with PP Low. I also didn't see much texture popping. Putting the VD up to 6000 and it was much worse (besides dropping to Avg 29 FPS), so perhaps having to render so far causes it to have problems rendering the nearer textures. Mind you, I then put the VD back to 3000 and put AA to Normal (Avg 46 FPS, E08 Avg 51 FPS) and noticed a lot more texture popping again, so perhaps it was just a co-incidence.

Edited June 27, 2012 by doveman

[doveman 7]

I did some more E08 tests, this time on XP with Cat12.4 (12.3 on Win7). Note I've got the pagefile on a 4GB RAMdisk in XP to make use of my 8GB RAM.

VD 3000, Texture - V.High, Video Memory - Default, AF - V.High, AA - Disabled, Terrain - Low, Objects - Normal

Shadows - High, HDR - Normal, PP - Low, Vsync - Disabled: Avg 56 FPS

Shadows - V.High: Avg 49 FPS

Shadows - High, VD 6000: Avg 46 FPS

VD 3000, AA - Normal: Avg 48 FPS

AA - Disabled, Terrain - High, Objects - High: Avg 44 FPS

Terrain - Low, Objects - Normal, PP - Normal: Avg 49 FPS

I was surprised I was able to up the VD to 6000 for only a 10 FPS hit (only 3 more than upping Shadows from High to V.High or PP from Low to Normal). However, with all the tests I noticed a lot of texture popping/flickering (it's like parts of bushes/trees/shadows (of a ladder on a wall), even quite close to the camera, disappear and come back) which is very annoying and seemed to be worse than under Windows 7 but it is a problem under that as well and perhaps I just noticed it more tonight. Any ideas what causes this or how to fix it?

[BasileyOne 10]

with pressure of [immensely]increased Terrain and viewdistance footprint/impact on memory usage, engine forced to pressure back objects level of detail more heavily/intense.

basically 64-bit binaries would be only ONE valid/long-term option to ensure stability AND decent appearance of feats-rich/huge/detailed landscape with HUGE viewdistance, around which concept, Arma2, is built.