[Crossfire problem] ARMA 2 OA Texture LOD/Low FPS/Massive stutter

[RobertJ 10]

Playing OA since release now, I can safely say performance has been reduced massively.

I played ARMA 2 every day, max settings, full AA. I hit 60 FPS all the time, I could run through a forest and not see it drop one bit. I load up OA, put it on the same settings and hit 30 FPS max, 22ish average on the same settings. I disable Post Processing and it doesn't change one bit. I put all the graphics settings on minimum so the game looks like Doom 1 and it's still 20-30 FPS.

On very high textures don't load, in 3rd person my characters BDU's and webbing are just a mess of horrible unloaded textures. The ground looks like a pastel drawing and I thought for about 2 days that BI had removed the 3d ground textures from ARMA 2 until it eventually loaded and I saw 3d rocks etc.

The game stutters horribly freezing for around 0.1 seconds every 3-4 seconds or so.

My computer runs every game fine, ARMA 2 runs like a dream, Crysis runs like a dream. I can spin around in chernogorsk while 1000's of C-130J's crash and it'll maybe drop down to 50 or so. Operation Arrowhead is just totally borked. For a laugh I decided to run Arma 2 on 1 GPU and I still got 50 or so FPS so it isn't a crossfire issue.

I'm running the game on the latest catalyst drivers/profiles (10.6) with OA.exe renamed to Arma2.exe. As for GPU performance I averaged about 20-25% GPU load in an average play session, GPU load reached a MAX of 47% on GPU 1 42% GPU 2. CPU never rose above 10% or so. Where the hell am I going wrong?

Edited December 24, 2010 by Dwarden

[sofmisf 10]

Im in the same boat as you with similar specs. Arma 2 runs like a dream after all the patches but OA sucks performance wise. I dont notice the studder but the texture loading is horendous. I get low rez textures untill Im with in 2 feet of a tree or vehicle. Hope a patch will come soon as I love the environment, when it finally loads.

[lizardgun 10]

Try going back a few Catalyst versions. i.e. on my rig (also a Core i7 with a HD 5970), going from Cat 10.6 to 10.4 solved all the low texture/LODing issues.

[Vipera 10]

I have similar problem. Check my post here

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=103753

Try to turn off shadows at all. I hope this is temporary solution and developers will look at this problem.

[Hoaah 10]

Disable Hyperthreading

-cpuCount=8

buy nvidia if you can (i know high power usage and temps, but still they perform good)

www.disktrix.com

try ultimate defrag 2008 to put arrowhead on the best side of your hard disk. it will take time to configure the program, but you will be rewarded like me. And you will save some cpu time when it is looking for textures or something. Maybe get the trial first. I would never buy it because that program has worst support ever. But it works like a charm, but if you have problems with it, don't expect to get help.

[Aspide 10]

I too have the same problem, but is it possible that the team of Bohemia was not able to make a fix to solve this problem?

I have a good PC configuration, but during the game often that the textures do not load resulting in a very poor graphics.

I've seen that have already opened a ticket, but no solution has yet been found.

I do not know if you buy the latest DLC because the game does not make it graphically.

---------- Post added at 08:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:42 PM ----------

Let me know if you out a new official patch for Arma OA but not beta, with the hope that it will solve the problems with the texture LOD.

Who has information?

Look at how disgusting it is inconceivable!!

http://img530.imageshack.us/i/arma2oa2010103120105662.jpg/ > 100kb

http://img180.imageshack.us/i/arma2oa2010103120160836.jpg/ > 100kb

http://img522.imageshack.us/i/arma2oa2010103120120609.jpg/ > 100kb

http://img175.imageshack.us/i/arma2oa2010103120145935.jpg/ > 100kb

Edited December 23, 2010 by Zipper5
Images > 100kb

[kklownboy 43]

You have the default BAF/lite(buying makes all the diff for the BAF Units), Dont use them for any IQ comparison. They absolutely make the game bland IQ wise(kinda like British food lol).

And be sure to use any new beta (1.54.74xxx)

That poor IQ is your setup.

[stk2008 14]

The unit he is using is BAF but the buildings are not and should not look like that.

As said try latest BETA if not all ready.

[pandur 10]

got this problem since patch 1.56... Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead Patch v1.57

didn't help either. what drives me crazy is that I never had this problem before. I can ignore a lot of bugs but this one is really ugly. (I don't have the stutter problem though - just the xtremely ugly LODs like Robert described)

also i7 and hd5970oc using Catalyst 10.12

question: "Try going back a few Catalyst versions. i.e. on my rig (also a Core i7 with a HD 5970), going from Cat 10.6 to 10.4 solved all the low texture/LODing issues. "

is this confirmed??? (I don't want to mess around with drivers too much)

Edited December 23, 2010 by pandur

[Alex72 1]

Seeing tendencies of this too now with my new HD 6970. Blurry textures comes up and it seems to switch to the lowest LOD even when close. FPS goes down when this happens as well.

Never noticed it with Nvidia personally. However im hoping the drivers for the 6 series are still new and will get some attention over time because the performance is amazing with this card.

[pandur 10]

Seeing tendencies of this too now with my new HD 6970. Blurry textures comes up and it seems to switch to the lowest LOD even when close. FPS goes down when this happens as well.

QUOTE]

exactly what I meant.

I don't want to change back (had a gtx295 first) hd5970 and your 6970 definitely rock arma. Got almost all settings on max and never had a problem since patch 1.56

Hope this gets some attention. Soon.

[Arthur Hucksake 10]

Same problem here, 6870 Crossfire. Absolutely unplayable in it's current state.

Emailed AMD, they say their drivers are fine. **Yeeeah right!**

£35 worth of unplayable as it stands. Gutted tbh.

[Arthur Hucksake 10]

Seeing tendencies of this too now with my new HD 6970. Blurry textures comes up and it seems to switch to the lowest LOD even when close. FPS goes down when this happens as well.

Never noticed it with Nvidia personally. However im hoping the drivers for the 6 series are still new and will get some attention over time because the performance is amazing with this card.

It has to be the AMD drivers, got to be.

They've "optimised" them to gain performance which is having an adverse effect in this game.

For e.g in PMC, stand near a stationary truck. From a pretty close distance the detail level just bottoms out.

[Alex72 1]

It has to be the AMD drivers, got to be.

They've "optimised" them to gain performance which is having an adverse effect in this game.

For e.g in PMC, stand near a stationary truck. From a pretty close distance the detail level just bottoms out.

To me its random. Or maybe even that it comes over time. Havent tested enough to be sure. But at one point the textures (all textures) started switching fast between "low" and "high" in a frenzy, and LOD's did the same. Both on the world and units, vehicles etc. Restarting the game and its all good again. So far it seems its coming after a while. Might be combo of drivers and code in the game for ATI/large Vram. Not sure.

Im also thinking this is a problem especially when maxing the game. Turning down some options makes it more stable. At least with the little testing ive done. However at max i have no lag so it doesnt feel im maxing it out on hardware that cant cope.

Will do some tests. And maybe try to poke at some AMD forums. :)

[pandur 10]

@Alex72 "Turning down some options makes it more stable."

1) tried that yesterday but for me it's not about stability it's about LODs only. Turning down this-and-that (e.g. shadows, texture detail) didn't show any significant results.

2) I always played ARMA2 with high settings (the only way ;-)), never had any lod problems. Such an awesome milsim and then THIS!!! What am I going to play now? ;-)

[HitmanFF 6]

I have an HD5970, and I've experienced the same low res textures at close distance since Catalyst v10.5. I've tried just about every version that came out since, and every time I had to conclude that 10.4 is the only version that will give decent texture quality. This is on vehicles, objects and ground, no matter whether CPU or GPU are maxed out or not.

No amount of tinkering with in-game settings has made a change for me.

[george176 10]

I'm not sure if this is related but I've discovered that using drivers newer than 10.4 (I tried 10.10 and 10.12) means that Arma 2 incorrectly detects local vram, as reported in the config. It's possible that the bad vram value leads to the lod problems.

[pandur 10]

@george176 I guess you are right.

Problem got to be a mixture of driver and arma2. I found these...

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16189

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16163

[MrRoper 0]

Hi guys,

I have had this problem for a while now on a pair of 6870`s xFired. (The LOD issue mainly. textures are blocky unless standing very near to the object)

After reading this and seeing people were having problems with the vram settings i checked mine

they were both set to 300mb approx.

To fix do the following.

• Delete the cfg file
  
• DISABLE crossfire
  
• start the game and set the gfx settings to required
  
• check settings in the new cfg file
  
• set the cfg file to read only (IMPORANT step, it seems to reset the vram settings)
  
• REENABLE crossfire
  

these are my new settings and LOD is now much better

localVRAM=1059373056;

nonlocalVRAM=2147483647;

hope this helps :)

[PogMoThoin 10]

Hi guys,

I have had this problem for a while now on a pair of 6870`s xFired. (The LOD issue mainly. textures are blocky unless standing very near to the object)

After reading this and seeing people were having problems with the vram settings i checked mine

they were both set to 300mb approx.

To fix do the following.

• Delete the cfg file
  
• DISABLE crossfire
  
• start the game and set the gfx settings to required
  
• check settings in the new cfg file
  
• set the cfg file to read only (IMPORANT step, it seems to reset the vram settings)
  
• REENABLE crossfire
  

these are my new settings and LOD is now much better

localVRAM=1059373056;

nonlocalVRAM=2147483647;

hope this helps :)

The local and nonlocal vram is NEVER read from the .cfg, written only. Suma posted this fact before

[giorgygr 61]

Hello guys.

I have a Q6600+5970(latest driver)+4 gigs RAM///most settings off->normal//View dist=3000

Most times i m flying an aircraft (especially close to ground) my screen

goes "black",and i m getting the "receiving" message for about 10 seconds.

(Of course..you can imagine this isn't a "happy end" for me and my aircraft.)

I don't mind very much the LOD issues,although i hope someday

they will fixed-but..the "receiving" message its something that

really ruins my fun.

I already tried some tricks mentioned in this topic (and other topics also)...

..except rolling back to 10.4.

If someone can confirm-that rolling back will help me..i will do that also..

..any more advice?

[KrIxXuS 10]

Also getting a huge stutter whilst playing, the game literally freezes then jumps back into play...very odd..i have had other minor issues here and there and just had to tweak certain settings/config but this stutter is nasty. I7 920 4870x2 tried different drivers and found none to be of any use...seems latest patch has messed this up for me...all my other games are working great with no issues and im overclocked to a stable 3.6ghz, rather frustrating lately as i seem to be having one problem after another with the new patches and beta's ....im not a happy chappy and im sure many others are feeling the same way too. I cant remember but i think 74630 patch (beta) ran great, so frustrating!

Edited December 27, 2010 by KrIxXuS

[kklownboy 43]

Also getting a huge stutter whilst playing, the game literally freezes then jumps back into play...very odd..i have had other minor issues here and there and just had to tweak certain settings/config but this stutter is nasty. I7 920 4870x2 ...

Disable your ATI_HighDef audio devices in the device manager.... Helped.

[KrIxXuS 10]

Disable your ATI_HighDef audio devices in the device manager.... Helped.

Ah yes cool, will give that a blast thankyou....

edit: ok seems to work and it appears i am getting nearly double the frames after rolling back catalyst (10.10 and hotfix,also re-installed the game and using pmc exe not combined ops exe) the textures look a little blurry/soft :S i like my image sharp...will have a mess with ccc.

Edited December 29, 2010 by KrIxXuS

[ironhulk 10]

so it is a problem with ati cards then my textures are poor as well on 5970

Edited December 29, 2010 by ironhulk