Furret

The 7970 is a 3GB card right? try using the -maxVRAM parameter and upping the limit arma has access to, try 2000 first and work upward.

I'm hoping to keep this post updated with answers to the most commonly asked questions. Questions that are asked multiple times a day. I'm surprised we don't have some sort of official version of this thread. Startup Parameters These are commands that can change how the game perceives your computer or what resources it uses. Adding parameters can be achieved by right clicking Arma3 in your steam games list and clicking properties, selecting the ‘GENERAL’ tab and clicking the ‘set launch options’ button: Here All startup parameters can be found here : Link Most commonly used parameters: -maxmem=x 256-2047 This can be used to set how much RAM arma3 uses. 2047 MB is the max you can set. The game automatically chooses between 512 and 1536 MB if the user doesn't designate a value -maxVRAM=x 128-2000(>2000 may result in issues) This can be used to set how much video RAM that's on your graphics card ArmA3 has access to (2GB cards seem to automatically select 1500) -skipintro Skips the intro logos/splash screens -exthreads=x Can be 0/1/3/5/7, sets the number of threads the game will use. Use 7 for quad-cores. This is almost entirely unnecessary as the game should pick the right one for your CPU Click Here for more details -cpucount=x 2/4 honestly not that important as the game will auto-detect the value for you -nobenchmark Prevents the game from automatically running a benchmark, can help computers with integrated graphics chipsets starting the game -winxp Forces the game to drop down to a DirectX9 only renderer, this may improve performance with low-end graphics cards -nologs Prevent ArmA3 from writing errors to the hard drive CPU vs GPU Certain effects are processed on your Graphics Processing Unit or your Central Processing Unit depending on what they are. Different settings can make an effect swap from one to the other. Bottlenecks A bottleneck occurs when one device is being made to wait for another device. E.g.: the GPU cannot process any faster until the CPU has finished performing a specific action. For players a bottleneck is most likely to occur when their CPU cannot process fast enough, this in turn results in the GPU sitting idle, waiting. Not working at its maximum capacity. Solution: Try and offload as much processing from the CPU to the GPU. This includes: Setting Shadows to Standard instead of Low, Low forces shadows to the CPU, standard and above forces shadows to the GPU. Common problems: Low FPS in the editor/single player It is necessary to work out what the bottleneck is. If it’s the CPU you can lower the following settings: Objects Terrain Overall Visibility Shadows – set to Standard(forces shadows to the GPU) If it’s the GPU, you can lower the following settings: FSAA SSAO Shadows – set to low(forces shadows to the CPU) PPAA Resolution / Sampling Solution: New hardware ArmA3 is massively CPU bound, a new CPU would help significantly, the current ideal CPUs are Quad Cores, these include Intel’s i5 range, 25xx(Sandy Bridge), 35xx(Ivy Bridge) and 46xx(Haswell) ranges. This is due to their ability to process more Instructions Per Clock(IPC) as well as perform more complex operations in fewer cycles. AMDs 6/8-core processors are not an optimal choice for this particular game, ArmA3 cannot utilise a full 8 core CPU, resulting in many cores laying unused. More RAM is also beneficial; 8GB or more is optimal to prevent file swapping with the hard drive. This is not to be confused with vRAM, RAM used by your GPU. Video RAM will effect what size textures you can use. More vRAM means higher quality textures. Solution: Change the power plan of your machine to 'Balanced' or 'High Performance' (Windows 7: Control Panel > Power Options). Solution: Close unused programs before you run the game. This includes your browser or email clients. Anything that may use up CPU cycles. Solution: Excessive CPU or GPU heat can cause the device to throttle down in an attempt to prevent damage. Try monitoring the temperatures of your hardware and prevent it from overheating. Solution: Unpark your CPUs cores. Core-Parking is when unused cores are placed in a low-power state, resulting in lower performance but also lower power usage. This can negatively affect ArmA3. Core Unparking tool download Here Solution: Do not disable your pagefile. This is a necessary component of Windows and disabling it will not improve performance. Low FPS during multiplayer As a player there is little you can do to mitigate this problem. The server may have problems dealing with the load required of it, the mission its running may be poorly coded or any other number of reasons. Solution: Your options are limited to finding another, more powerful server or running a different, more efficiently scripted mission. The game stutters This can be caused by a number of issues: Script errors writing to write to the error report file. Each time the game writes to the file it causes a tiny delay in the game, given enough errors being written to the report file this can cause game stutter. Solution: Add –nologs to the startup parameters. Multiple startup parameters can be used; you are not limited to one. Anti-virus or anti-malware software can also cause issues when it accesses files at the same time as ArmA3. Solution: try disabling the software and running the game. If it is the cause see if it’s possible to add ArmA3 to the software’s exception list. ArmA3 doesn't start This can happen with on-board graphics, laptops often have this problem. Solution: Try adding –nobenchmark to your startup parameters. Another posibility is your profile has somehow corrupted itself. Solution: Navigate to Users/ACCOUNTNAME/My Documents/Arma 3/ and delete the files that end with .Arma3Profile as well as Arma3.cfg. Solution: Try installing/reinstalling the latest version of DirectX, The download can be found Here Textures suddenly ‘pop in’ ArmA3 streams textures from the install directory, improving the speed the data can be accessed will minimise the texture pop in Solution: Increase the allocated VRAM by using the -maxVRAM parameter Solution: Install the game on a solid state hard drive (SSD) Solution: Given enough RAM, install the game onto a RAMDisk. This is not easy and requires a large volume of RAM (12GB+ ideally) The game crashes: Corrupted game cache Solution: Right click the game in Steam > properties > LOCAL FILES tab > DELETE LOCAL GAME CONTENT Overheating Solution: Use Temperature monitoring tools (GPU-Z, HWMonitor, MSI Afterburner), over 70c for the CPU and 80c for the GPU is often a bad sign. Try using compressed air to clean out dust around the components in your computer case. If this fails you may have to reseat your CPU heatsink, you'll have to refer to online guides on doing this. Out of memory Solution: Close programs you don't need when running the game. Browser etc. Solution: Try adding -maxmem=2047 to your startup parameters. Solution: Try increasing the size of your page file. Instructions Here. Solution: If its video RAM you're running out of, lower the Texture setting in the game. Poor Power Supply Unit This is a physical component that supplies power to other parts of your computer. A cheap PSU can cause a computer to restart when too much power is requested, this can occur in demanding applications like video-games. Solution: Buy a new PSU that is rated for your computer from a reputable manufacturer. Do NOT buy a cheap PSU from china, they will explode and can cause damage to other computer components. Cant play multiplayer/cant connect to servers Solution: Ensure steam is not in offline mode. Steam>Go Online. The game has significant input delay/lag Solution:Go into your game options and lower mouse smoothing to 0. Solution:Find your arma3.cfg file located in users/ACCOUNTNAME/My Documents/Arma 3/ Look for the lines GPU_MaxFramesAhead and GPU_DetectedFramesAhead and change them to both equal 1. Solution: If you have a nvidia graphics card open up nvidia control panel/3D settings/Manage 3D settings/ set 'Maximum pre-rendered frames' to between 1 and 3. Legitimate game bug Solution: If you can reproduce the crash by performing a set of exact actions, make an account here: http://feedback.arma3.com and create a bug report, Bohemia can use this to fix the problem for everyone. A guide to posting a bug report can be found here *********************************************************************** If none of the above helps you make a thread here, make sure to include as much detail regarding your problem as possible. Details like: Your computer hardware: CPU (make, model, clock speed), GPU (make, model), RAM (amount, timings) Your operating system + if its 32 or 64bit Driver versions of your graphics card If you've overclocked your computer What you were doing when the problem occurred What you've tried doing to fix the problem *********************************************************************** I’ll try to keep adding to the OP as necessary. If you think something is missing post your info and I'll get it added.

Added a parameter to the list and a line or two about page files. edited formatting to be more consistent.

Kibot, I was wondering. Is it possible to start zone placement close to the HQ, then as more zones are created they are placed further away, spiralling out?

Can you link it here? I'd gladly vote it up.

Hello Dazhbog, Is the largest value that -maxmem allows still 2047? Would it be possible to raise this limit or is that not possible? Edit: as in, could it go up to 4000 and still be within the limits imposed by being LAA?

Great video, your best course of action is to make a ticket on the bug tracker with that video, try and show examples of where you can see z-fighting occur(GPS coordinates etc). List your graphics settings too.

But he's talking about memory usage on a dedicated server, not client.

Cities have always been an issue in the RV engine. There have been impressive improvements over time, I'm sure many people here remember cities in Arma2 at release. If you're interested in what's involved with city FPS have a read of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_surface_determination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-buffering#Z-culling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewing_frustum It's a fascinating topic.

Glitches could be related to graphics driver bugs, RAM failing, heat damage to the CPU or GPU, corrupted game cache as well as other reasons I can't quite think of right now.

A cheaply made PSU would result in the machine rebooting itself. Worst case scenario the PSU dies, emitting an audible pop, a flash of light and a horrendous smell with a good chance of destroying 1 or more of your components. Definitely something to look into. A well-made low-watt PSU is always better than a high-watt cheap PSU.

Hi Kibot, ran into a few bugs in your mission when running it on Altis. Error in expression <i" from 0 to _fadetime step _delay do { _grpIconColor set [0,(_grpIconColor sele> Error position: <_grpIconColor set [0,(_grpIconColor sele> Error Undefined variable in expression: _grpiconcolor File A3\modules_f\marta\data\scripts\fnc_effect.sqf, line 35 Error in expression <_difR = ((_grpIconColorEnd select 0) - (_grpIconColor select 0)) * _step; _difG > Error position: <_grpIconColor select 0)) * _step; _difG > Error Undefined variable in expression: _grpiconcolor File A3\modules_f\marta\data\scripts\fnc_effect.sqf, line 29 Interesting how its from a BIS script file, perhaps its unrelated to you? Second problem is the RPT file is filled with: "Some of magazines weren't stored in soldier Vest or Uniform?" linked to the following units: B_Soldier_TL_F B_Soldier_AR_F B_Soldier_GL_F B_soldier_AT_F O_Soldier_AA_F O_Soldier_AT_F B_soldier_AR_F O_Soldier_LAT_F 900 of these after about 10 minute of play.

Go into your game options and lower mouse smoothing to 0. Find your arma3.cfg file located in users/ACCOUNTNAME/My Documents/Arma 3/ look for the lines GPU_MaxFramesAhead and GPU_DetectedFramesAhead and change them to both equal 1. If you have a nvidia graphics card open up nvidia control panel/3D settings/Manage 3D settings/ set 'Maximum pre-rendered frames' to between 1 and 3.

Try adding -nologs and -exThreads=7 to startup parameters. Details Here Lower the view distance, it kills fps on Altis. Overclocking may be a good option if your i7 is of an older variant, Bloomfield etc.

OP, have you released a mission or something? I don't see it.

exthreads need a value, 0,1,3,5 or 7. http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#exThreads Your GPU is is the dual-GPU one, right? are you running the game using both with...crossfire is it? that may be the cause of your crashes. Edit: this would be a lot easier if i knew what components you have.

You mentioned you removed all AV software, does that also include anti-malware software?

Found a bug in the just released beta patch. When clicking credits from the main menu the following error occurs: Error in expression <4]) then { { _allowRecompile = (_x call bis_fnc_functionMeta) select 5; _xCode > Error position: <bis_fnc_functionMeta) select 5; _xCode > Error Undefined variable in expression: bis_fnc_functionmeta File A3\functions_f\initFunctions.sqf, line 474

GPU drivers + physx drivers (326.80 beta - 9.13.0725 physx) Heat of CPU or GPU Try a different mission and see if it still crashes (are crashes mission specific?) Does it happen in the editor SSD firmware Bad RAM (memtest86) add (-maxmem=2046) to startup params

An i7 920s default clock speed is 2.6GHz, its rather low for ArmA3. Have a read of these guides, its easy to overclock, you even have after-market cooling, perfect: http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/rmp_i7_920_overclocking http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/1 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/3 http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/easy-overclock-for-i7-920.164606/

I'm uncertain that it'll do anything but updating would be a good thing to try' date=' download drivers here

What version of PhysX are you using currently? is it 09.13.0725?

I have the same CPU myself and have found it overclocks extremely well. Currently I have mine running at 3.66GHz and see a huge improvement in performance. You may need to fiddle with the vcore to get it stable but its not too hard to do that. There's lots of guides to overclocking the 920 specifically. Regarding your poor MP performance I'll have to echo Pbishops views. There are some horrendous scripts in use right now. One example I read about was a script that polls a value and draws static icons on a players screen. It was being run in a loop hundreds, even thousands of times a second. Awful. There is very little help with performance profiling in Arma3 right now, hopefully that will change in the near future.

Short answer: yes Long answer: maybe

Gamma, the work you've done is fantastic. Actually seeing how the AI operates makes diagnosing problems exponentially easier. I wish more people could see the work you've done. Have you considered posting this elsewhere to raise other peoples awareness? I was thinking the AI thread here. Edit: Oops, I see you've been posting there already, its odd that I've only come across your work in this thread by accident. I'm sure others in the AI thread have also missed your work and would appreciate seeing it.