Skeptic

2600, 3800 series are very underpowered for Arma2. If you want to enjoy the game today and in the next 6-12 month I'd highly suggest picking up 4870-4890 from ATI or GTX260 216SP from nVidia. After 1.02 hotfix patch I get very playable performance on high/normal with 4890.

:D LOL mate!

Great, thanks - more info is needed like DxDiag.txt and arma2.cfg etc. Please post link to the issue, so that I could vote it up and add my info. Here's my thread documenting this.

Ginger McAle, could you please register and post this issue in A2 bug tracker? See links in my sig. You might be requested to provide additional info/testing (Suma, kju and alef will look into it). I had this issue with XP32bitSP3 9.4 cats, then it was gone with 9.5 and W7 64bit. I can't reproduce it reliably - which is required for the bug tracker. Make sure to provide all the info. Quick notes: 1. I can confirm this is not overheating - tested with FurMark burn in test 2. It is possible to fix by switching default video memory to very high or high (helped me with 9.5 32bit) 3. Some drivers exhibit this more frequently 4. Play around with a) disabling catalyst AI, b) disabling AA, c) lowering/disabling AF

This info is outdated, I know because I did run XP 32bit past SP2 with PAE enabled:

Actually not, 32bit windows reserves 1Gb for itself thus limiting apps to 2Gb. There is PAE /3GB switch that could be added to boot.ini that allows 3Gb of memory address space accessible to apps, but this might lead to instability and crashes.

Please read this thread first. I don't think both of your GPUs working in 3D mode. I know that for long nVidia could not run SLI+Multi monitor at the same time. May be it was fixed? 1. Are you running in SLI or just Dual GPUs for multi-monitor? Multi-monitor and no SLI means only one card crunching 3D another is doing splitting of V output. 2. There are also reports that suggest renaming arma2.exe to fear.exe and setting nVidia profile for it helps to enable SLI. CF and SLI is still very flaky with most games and most of the time supported by titles that drop huge amounts of cash on ATI and nVidia so that they specifically tweak drivers for those games.

Please read this thread first. Try adding -maxmem= switch to the shortcut and test values of 2047, 1024 and 512. See if that helps.

Or there is simply no benefit in compiling binaries in 64bit and then having headache maintaining two versions. There is simply no proof that Arma2 would benefit with more than 2Gb of RAM.

Do you realize that localVRAM and nonlocalVRAM are in bytes, so you're telling him to set them to 1MB and 2MB respectfully? Do not touch those in files, but set Video Memory in-game setting to Default and it will use all of VRAM. For 1Gb VRAM by the way it should read localVRAM=1073741824;

Great explanation! You nailed it. I have to say that for me it happens not often at all now with 1.02 patch. See Flanker15's post explaining differences between the two: one is bug (flickering) another is feature of streaming engine (LOD pop-up)

Try to add these switches to your arma shortcut: -winxp and may be -maxmem=512 (experiment also with 1024 and 2047 values). Check also video memory setting in Video options. For some default works better for others either high or very high (for 512 and 1024MB video cards). Good luck.

Thank you.

CF or SLI duplicate frame buffer for each of GPUs. So you actually get only 1Gb of RAM. This is not Arma specific but all 3D apps work like this. We have been waiting long time for Dual/Quad GPU technology to advance and not duplicate frame buffer. Your solution is technically sound. The only benefit we would get is larger addressable RAM. 64bit precision is not required for game play - not astro-physics / particle simulation... Regards.

I solved this by going from 9.4 on XPSP3 32bit to 9.5 cat on Windows 7 64bit. I'm back to XP now and will test. AGP Aperture does not apply to PCIe cards.

That's correct, by default the engine is multi-core aware and the load will be split among the available cores. In rare circumstances you might want to limit to 2. Single core will struggle with Arma2.

No, otherwise Dual/Tri/Quad-GPU set-ups wouldn't have been available on PCIe 1.1. There is plenty bandwidth on properly configured system.

64bit will give you benefit of addressing more than 2-3GB of ram for application. If devs feel that it's plenty, I don't see a reason to compile it in 64bit and then make sure everything else working properly. I'd rather have BIS spend time on tweaking/improving one PC version. Yep, just added. I haven't started Arma2 specific section - just added "(Arma2)". Feel free to move around. Cheers.

Isn't it only with PAE /3GB switch enabled? By default it's 2GB.

It only works together with affinity. Please read first post carefully. @PhatVybz: Enabling HT on Core i7 to get 8 threads will actually slow you down a bit (since you don't get actual 8 physical CPU cores). 4 cores is plenty for Arma.

No, it won't - FADE only kicks in if you mess up exe. This mod BTW is not supported by BIS since it originated from beta leaked pbo's. This thread will get locked.

Here you go: Old and new shortcut switches that make it run better Watch out so that it doesn't slow you down too much. -cpuCount=4 makes no difference, since if you have quad core CPU Arma by default will use all four. And we covered -maxmem=2047 already.

Try adding -maxmem=1024 or even -maxmem=512 switch to Arma2 shortcut. When I had 8800GT on Arma1 - it helped me. It was a problem with nVidia drivers/GPUs, I wonder if it also works for ATI?

OK here's how Arma2 looked for me using 4890 with 9.4 cat on XP SP3 (click to enlarge) Checked temps by running FurMark - was fine. All settings were on normal, view distance 2km, postFX low. Memory default. Installed W7RC1 64bit with Cat 9.5 - no bugs like that anymore. Now, I hate new things and don't upgrade OS just because it's what everyone talks about. In this case it's either driver or W7 or combination of both. Anyone else seen these glitches?

Heh, mine was reversed - never problems like that in Evo, but some Air Cav servers. I think since view distance is set by server - might had something to do with it? Any way, I'm back to XP now, under W7 one of my SSD's got corrupted - had to reset BIOS. Will see how 9.5/XP behave...