desertjedi

A lot of aggravation in this thread and a lot of arguing about performance that doesn't seem to be accomplishing much. Regardless of hardware, I don't see a lot of peeps stepping up to say, hey, I'm averaging 90 fps in Arma II on high settings...even with the hottest hardware money can buy. But didn't a couple of the patches that came out for Arma 1 make dramatic performance enhancements? I usually pick up a game about two years after it comes out. It just happens that way for me. When I picked up Arma, patch 1.14 was already out so everything was pure bliss. Except for some AI stupidity, I have like zero complaints about Arma (1). Now I'm here at the start (of Arma II) and it feels like the "bleeding edge"...seeing all the growing pains of this very complex game. I'm assuming that two years from now (maybe sooner), we'll have a patch that will do for Arma II what 1.14 did for Arma. But the trip to get there may be a bit painful. Many of you, I assume, won't be here two years from now. Arma II dings my rig up a bit at 1680x1050 at Normal settings playing on a Core 2 Duo at 4.18Ghz and an overclocked GTX 260(192 shaders). I probably average about 40fps while in combat. And from what I hear, upgrading my hardware probably wouldn't do much. I think we'll have to wait on patches for real performance improvement. But I have a FAR more serious problem with Arma II than bugs or performance issues. From the few times I've played, I simply don't enjoy the game. I don't like the locale, the look of the game or the whole "feel" of the game. So if you generally "like" Arma II, take heart...chances are the patches will do wonders for the game like they did for Arma. But being an Arma fanboy, I may have a tougher road ahead - trying to find the right missions or the right mods or the right something so that I actually enjoy the game.

I just read in the account of the actual "Black Hawk Down" operation that the bullet will crack if it goes by your head. If it doesn't but is still in audible range, it will make a whizzing sound. I got rid of the cracking sound in Arma with a mod quite some time ago. I think the best path on this would be to forego the cracking sound and simply go with a whizzing sound, possibly louder the closer the bullet is. Or if cracks are used, make sure not to go overboard on them. Sometimes the less realistic option can be the more preferred one. I know it sure is for me in this situation.

Dude, you can Arma new for under $6 in the US and Arma Gold new for under $9. Not sure why you'd even be messing with something like that.

XAM and ACE are both outstanding mods. My biggest problem with using them is that there's bound to be one (or more likely several) of their new "functions" that are deal-breakers for me. I know ACE has some switches/flags that can be set to turn off certain functions but I'm not sure if every option can be turned off. What's so nice about the ECS mod is that there's a flag for every single option in the mod so that you can turn on/off any function you want. For example, when I tried ECS, I would get shot and then slowly bleed out because at that moment, I had absolutely no way to get healed and I would just slowly die. I could not play with this so I turned off all bleeding. There were actually a bunch of things I turned off such as being set on fire if you walk close to a burning vehicle. The whole new wounding/healing medical functionality in ACE sounds awesome for a good-size bunch of players but I always play alone with AI mates so I really don't want it (again, not sure if you can turn it off). Often, it's not even a matter of liking/disliking something. Often, it's simply...do I have the time to deal with this given my limited amount of playing time?

Yeah, you're right...especially when words like loathe, despise and abomination work much better. j/k! :DRunning through people's backyards fighting flannel-wearing goons just isn't my thing. :p Just like in Arma, its up to the player to find out where Arma II shines whether it be mods, missions or whatever. And I'm sure I'll find it. I just started. As I said, I had much harsher words for Arma when I first picked up but then that was from playing the stock SP campaign. :eek: BTW, great sig pic Alex!

First impressions.... I really hate the visual "style" of Arma II. It's like a Slavic rural rust belt. The color scheme, IMHO, is pretty gross....lots of ugly greens mixed with orange trees and pink-roofed buildings. Oddly, when you're up 500 feet in the air looking down, Arma looks way more impressive and realistic than Arma II does (IMHO). Arma II just looks strange. Also, Arma II is very dark, dismal and a bit depressing-looking. Is any of this important to a combat simulator? No, not really. Another thing I don't care for is the overload of visual detail. It's like combat in a junkyard. There's just way too much stuff and way too much detail. I don't want see people's backyard crap in a combat simulator. I didn't buy Arma II to play an FPS. I think this was actually a strength in Arma 1 - you had buildings, roads and flora and that's about it. I don't want see all this realistic stuff like people's dirty laundry. Being a combat sim, theoretically, the game could be stellar fighting amongst big lego blocks. Again, not that important - just bothersome. The mechanical voice-dubbing in Arma II is a big step backward. I don't what the f*#k soldiers are trying to say so I just read the text. Some of the resulting sentences are simply ridiculous to listen to. I tried a simple MP co-op mission from the SimHQ pack as the only human player and was greatly disappointed. The enemy AI was useless and I felt they posed no real threat. They just lied around or ran around with no obvious purpose. I ended up shooting a lot of them in the back as they were running around. There was no tension like when I play against Arma 1 AI. It just felt like the enemy was retarded. I was playing against some militia (MEU?). Are the real enemy soldiers any better? Well I'm off to a slow start. One positive note is that my opinion above is probably better than my initial opinion of Arma 1. :D And Arma 1, IMHO, is simply a phenomenal game! I'd like to try a more typical, military-style infantry engagement and see how things go but not sure what MP co-op mission to try.

That's great news, Hobbo. Based on your symptoms there was obviously something very wrong with your system. Does Memtest86 work fine after you pull the bad RAM? I ask simply because I haven't been able to run Memtest86 for probably two or more years now simply because it keeps failing on the newer motherboard chipsets. I used to use it religiously but I finally gave up on it.

Wow, and I thought I was the only one getting bitch-slapped like that! As soon as I hear the "KA-52 at 1000m" callout, I immediately throw the Blackhawk into a vertical dive. A few times, I have been able to use the terrain to intercept incoming missiles but you have to really hug the terrain. Sounds like you need an "Eject Passenger" button!

Here's a treat. Someone actually used Arma II to compare performance between XP, Vista and 7 with the inclusion of SLI/Crossfire results too. Windows XP is the clear winner. SLI helps a little and Crossfire seems to hurt a little. Article quote: Link to Arma II page of article.

An interesting thought. I may actually keep WinXP 32-bit in a dual-boot setup with Windows 7 64-bit just to play Arma...which, tbh, is really all I play and a little Grand Ages Rome. Currently, in Win 7, I can't get any audio when recording Arma movies in Fraps. I narrowed the problem down to the Creative audio driver. But by the time I'm really interested in Win 7, so many things may have been improved.

That's exactly what I thought based on what I had heard - until I dug a little deeper in the topic.

Weren't the two solutions from the "monster thread" on this to limit your RAM to 7xxx something using MSCONFIG or to fall back to the 182.50 drivers?

The bottom line, Eric, I'm sorry to say is that you'll never get workable frame rates with your laptop spec'ed out as it is. Your hardware simply isn't powerful enough.

Call me crazy but you're NOT running in Crossfire but you're going to be running at a high resolution with High to Very High settings? If so, I think AA will be the least of your problems...and frame rate will be your biggest.

Yeah, I've run XP 32-bit with 4GB of RAM for quite some time. What you're referring to, the /3GB or /PAE (physical address extension) switch is the most misunderstood concept on the net - regarding PC memory. I researched the /3GB switch for quite some time before I realized that it indeed, was completely misunderstood and was being incorrectly recommended to your average user. I forget the exact explanation I found that clued me in to the FUD concerning this switch. It might have had something to do with a server environment. But I realized it was definitely not meant for the home PC environment. I recommend you don't use that switch. Arma runs just fine with XP 32-bit with 4GB of RAM installed.

For perpspective, those of you running 8GB under Vista 64-bit or Win 7 64-bit might want to try this...benchmark your games with 8GB of RAM installed and then yank 4GB and run the same benchmarks with only 4GB. When you see the identical performance results, you might view this problem in a slightly different light. Those of you with 6GB in Tri-channel might see some added benefit simply from having the RAM run in Tri-channel mode (added memory bandwidth), not from the actual amount of memory. I put an extra 4GB of RAM in my box but it was sort of for future-proofing but mostly because it was dirt cheap. To me, it's not really serving any purpose and I may pull it to use in a test-bench setup. I think you've got a whole 1% of this forum covered with that one but I hear ya...I do a lot of photo editing and some video editing as well.

What exactly about the game looks bad? I can't tell from your screenies. One thing I can tell you is that your aspect ratio is wrong, it should be 5:4. I have most settings set to Very High and the game looks fantastic. There were times when I first started playing where I actually bugged out because it looked..."real".

My biggest concerns about chopper-flying in Arma were how to lose speed and even more so, how to lose altitude quickly. I found some site about RL chopper landing and it's the same way most do it in Arma: - reduce throttle and pull up on the nose. The author stated that often, the chopper will rise in altitude (called ballooning) when this is done. IIRC, improving your technique is what's needed - but that's RL. I play a good amount of Evo and Domination so I just about always have a "Shilka up my ass" and get blown out of the sky often. I counter this by flying like an absolute lunatic trying to use cover and low altitude to prevent getting shot down. I've used the OP's technique for a while now but in a more extreme fashion. When I near the LZ, I pitch the chopper (usually a UH-60) over almost 90 degrees and put it in "death spiral" to lose altitude very fast. The downside is that it can be quite hard to regain control of the chopper when you reached landing altitude...and cleaning up all your mates' vomit is a bitch!! :D The reason I've reverted to this is simply because it takes forever to lose altitude with the Page Down key - often it does absolutely nothing. Is there another way to cut power using the keyboard? Here's an interesting link for all Arma Chopper-jockies: http://www.wikihow.com/Land-a-Helicopter-After-Your-Pilot-Has-Been-Killed

Can we assume that each PC on the LAN has its own purchased-version of Arma or are you just installing the same game on multiple PCs?

I don't understand why you're looking to run in crossfire. You're not thinking of crossfiring with your current X1900 card? The way you have your comparison stated is a little odd as you can pick and choose video cards based on your budget. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would choose two video cards in Crossfire (or SLI) over one video card with similar performance unless there is a significant cost savings or...unless you want to add a second card in Crossfire as a "cheap" upgrade. But I wouldn't recommend going Crossfire/SLI from the start. A lot has to work right (drivers and games) in Crossfire for it to payoff and often it doesn't. And yeah, I don't see anything wrong with your rig except that it could use a more powerful video card.

Let me guess...you've got 4 or more GB of memory? You might want to try this: This will limit your total memory to about 3GB - unfortunately. You patched up to 1.14 before installing the 1.16b patch, right?

No, not maximum. But you should do okay as long as you have a good cpu. Doesn't the demo ask to install OpenAL?

Hope you enjoy it Marc - we need all the Arma players we can get these days. I only played the first scenario in Arma 2 and it looked REALLY dingy. The only French word I found for that Marc was "sombre". But add a little bit of "dirty" to that word and you've got my meaning. Some places in Arma 2 I could see fine...others were terribly dark.....and "dingy". :p

You have onboard video so no, Arma would not work on your PC. Regarding hard drive speed, I'd bet he has bigger issues to tackle (cpu, video card) than worrying about that.

I think the same thing whenever I hear the term "mouse lag" thrown around. I've never experienced "mouse lag" in any game. I have experienced total-ass frame rates though. If you're getting 55fps in Arma II and your mouse is unresponsive, that sounds like a problem. But if you're getting 12fps, that's not "mouse lag" - that's just crappy performance that will make it feel like your mouse is lagging. Can someone experiencing the problem do a Fraps benchmark run and post their frame rates? Actually, even the term "lag" is misleading because that's really a "networking" term.