OUT FOX EM

I'm trying to squeeze the last drop of performance out of my brother's computer that I can, so I overclocked his CPU and his GPU. I ran all stress/torture tests to make sure the system is stable and that the temperatures are good, so I know that is not a problem. What IS a problem though is when I overclock his GPU, ArmA II's framerate takes a HUGE hit (up to 50%). Here's the PC specs: Intel Q9550 (3.8 GHz) 4 GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 (1066 MHz) Nvidia GTX 260 216 (740/1586/1650 MHz) Asus P5E Windows 7 x64 ArmA II Settings: Version: 1.05 Visibility: 1600 Quality preference: High Interface resolution: 1920x1080x32 3D resolution: 1920x1080 Texture detail: Normal Video memory: Default Anisotropic filtering: Normal Antialiasing: Normal Terrain detail: Normal Objects detail: Normal Shadow detail: Normal Postprocess effects: Low The odd thing is that when I use RivaTuner to overclock his GPU from 655/1404/1125 to 740/1586/1650, the framerate will go from 60-80 in the menu and 30-45 in the game, to 18-22 in the menu and 15-25 in the game. That's a 50% performance hit. I know the simple answer is "well then don't overclock it" but that doesn't help me understand why overclocking is killing performance, when it should in fact be just the opposite. Even odder still is if I use RivaTuner to set the clocks back to the stock factory clocks, my performance suffers just the same. Obviously this is not related to the clocks of the card, but the act of changing the clocks itself. For the record, I tried EVGA Precision and the same thing occurs. I've monitored the clocks and the temps while in-game and they're normal. The GPU is at 54C under full load in FurMark, and doesn't pass 51 in ArmA II. If anyone has any experiences like this, or better yet an explanation, why RivaTuner/EVGA Precision would kill performance even at stock clocks I'd love to hear it. Once I solve that problem I should see results from the higher clocks.

I have to be honest, when I saw "trapped unit - help" I wasn't sure what I was about to see...

Yeah that's about right. If I use RivaTuner (or EVGA Precision) to set the clocks to factory settings, in other words override factory settings with ANY setting -- higher or lower than stock -- then I get the problem. If I never use RivaTuner at all then I don't have the problem. As for other games, this is a clean install. I haven't really installed much on there other than ArmA II and BF2 (for ProjectReality). PR runs fine either with the overclock or without it. The system uses a Corsair 750w PSU (this one). Next thing I'll try is overclocking before playing BF2, then reducing back to stock clocks via RivaTuner and see if it makes any difference in there.

Well just like the title says, I "upgraded" to Windows 7 x64 (retail version from MSDN, not the Beta) expecting to get even better performance in ArmA II, since many users are getting a nice increase in framerate, and instead I was greeted with disappointment. On the menu alone, my framerate dropped from the 120's to below 50. In-game was almost as big of a drop, going from 60-80 down to 30-40, and even lower when things get hectic. Not only that, but microstuttering is now a problem, making the game pretty much unplayable. It's like watching a movie while pressing pause every 2 seconds. It's enough to make one go bald in 5 seconds flat. I've tried different drivers, from 182.50 to 190.38, and everything in between. Everytime I've changed drivers I've used Driver Sweeper to get rid of any of the leftovers. ArmA II was the only thing I installed after the upgrade, so it was definitely a clean install. I know it's not a "supported OS" yet :rolleyes: but that just means the developers won't troubleshoot it, not that it shouldn't work. Anyone else seeing similar problems to mine? Any solutions?

Where? I read both pages and that quote is the only post mentioning X13000. I also tracked down the original article in that thread, which is found here (in English): http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/08/13/gt300-have-nvio-chip/ There's no mention of any scores at all on any of those sites, other than the quote in my last post. I think you shouldn't get your hopes up until some real scores do emerge. On the other hand, I definitely agree that a paper launch is pretty weak but they're in no need to rush, seeing as Nvidia currently has no DX11 competition yet.

I certainly hope that's true. However, I followed the chain of links, and even tried deciphering the Chinese translation, but I found nothing indicating those scores unfortunately. This was the closest I came: "G300 is slightly a bit of it, but also your head refers to the Vantage X13000" That's certainly nothing concrete. At this point I'll have to throw that into the rumor bin and wait until some real benchmarks comes out. I definitely do hope they're that good though...

Nice. Thanks for the post, though I haven't yet added the patch. Everything works fine right now and I didn't want to roll the dice. At least they fixed that though.

I don't understand why the developers don't make it look like this, obviously it can be done. Good job man!

Honestly, if you're not familiar with the registry then you should not venture in there. It's an extremely dangerous place for someone who does not know what they're doing to be in. He told you where you could find the registry key and you didn't even realize it, so I know your experience in the registry is somewhere between zero and none. I strongly advise against doing anything in the registry at all, and just reinstalling ArmA II. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, I'm trying to help, seriously.

That's what I'm saying. I'm glad I made this thread and was told to disable HT, because I definitely never suspected that as the culprit of the stuttering. The odd part too is it only happened in Windows 7 for me. :confused: In Vista HT didn't cause ANY stuttering at all. I can only hope that future patches and driver updates will resolve this problem, but I'm sure the developers are hard at work on their new expansion pack instead... :icon_rolleyes:

Just for shits and giggles, see how long you can play in windowed mode and get back to me... (-window -x=800 -y=600)

Speaking of the obvious... You have an 8800 GTX! Found your problem. :icon_rolleyes:

Well I don't know if you read the thread (or even just the first post) but those drivers didn't work for me. As others have said, all hardware/software combinations respond differently from one another, so what works for you won't always work for me (or anyone else).

Back once again, and I did what I did before -- installed 186.18 and renamed to Crysis64.exe. I decided this time not to install the EVGA SLI enhancement, as I can live with the file being named after Crysis... and that's what fixed it for me. Thanks for everybody's help. Hopefully my experience and everybody's advice in this thread will help someone else down the line. I'm off to play Crysis... oops I mean ArmA.

So here we are, nearing the end of 2009, and we still gotta trick the goddamn thing into thinking it's 2001. I actually had momentary success with the 186.18 drivers along with renaming ArmA2.exe to Crysis64.exe, believe it or not. That got me up to Vista framerates for one play session, but now I'm back down to where I was after I kept on tinkering. :banghead: I'm off to reinstall my drivers... again.

For the OP, there's a good tool (it's free) called EVGA Precision, that you can have display your GPU temps in-game, much like FRAPS displays your FPS. You can also use it to display your FPS if you want too. NOTE: Many games that run PunkBuster will kick for running EVGA Precision. So if you use it on other games and get kicked, then you know why.

Damn it this is so frustrating. It's like ArmA 1 all over again... though what else should I have expected? The 182.50 drivers give me the exact same framerates as the 190.38's did, so I don't know what to do here. It's even more frustrating knowing this is where my computer should be! :mad: I was getting 6000+ on Vista. I'd be willing to bet if two systems were built exactly the same, with all the same components, ArmA would still perform differently on them. :icon_rolleyes: Well, I'm not going back to Vista just for ArmA, and I'm not going to partition and dual-boot for it either, so I guess I'll just keep on tinkering. I'm out of ideas here. Thanks for all the help guys. I got a lot more useful replies than I was expecting.

Ok, so I installed the EVGA patch, and it did help my framerate quite a bit. However, it's still not on par with Vista. I experienced something odd with AFR2 -- the framerate in the menu would start off over 100, and I thought I was home free, since that's how it was in Vista. Then once I closed in on the carrier it dropped to 50's and 60's. In-game I was getting less than 20 though, so that was a no-go. I tried all modes, and the default seemed to do the best for me. Also, ICE... what command line switches do you use in your shortcut (if any)? I've tried with and without -winxp, and it doesn't seem to affect anything for me personally. I don't use nHancer but I will try the 182.50 drivers once again and see what happens.

Thanks, I actually just came back to ask you the very questions you just answered. I disabled HT which put a stop to the microstuttering, thank God. I can deal with a lower framerate, but the jumping every other second was driving me insane. Now I just gotta work on getting my framerate back to where Vista was at the very least. I'm going to try out the EVGA patch and AFR2. Will be back shortly.

Yes. No. No. Yes. I'll try that' date=' since that's about the only thing I haven't yet done. Look at our computer specs. They're almost identical, and yet you have no problems in Windows 7. I definitely don't understand what's going on here, which is exactly why I created this thread. I want that same boost you've gotten.

I've tried all AA settings, and even on the highest (8) I still get a TON of jaggies. It's honestly not even worth the performance hit I take by enabling it: I notice it a lot on the shadows, which maybe AA doesn't touch. If that's the case then that's fine. However, it's also terrible on objects and models too. Does everyone else notice this too? Also, I noticed when I turn my visibility up to 10000 it doesn't let me choose higher terrain detail. Is this also a normal limitation?

When you get the same framerate at multiple resolutions then it's almost always a CPU bottleneck. Surely that can't come as too big of a surprise to you though, considering that your processor is aging and ArmA II relies heavily on the processor.

I've been using the Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider for awhile on Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64 and it works great. Also, I ran this little utility to remove the watermark that appears in the corners and at the top. I've tried many different methods to get rid of that thing and this is the only one that truly works without any ill effects. I uploaded it here since it can be kinda hard to track down. The more mirrors the better I think: http://www.filefront.com/14067075/RemoveWatermark_20081210.zip And here's where I originally found it: http://uploaded.to/?id=tsyyhe Hope that helps.

Artificial or not, the results are real. I haven't had a crash since I lowered my clocks -- neither has he. Problem? Who knows. Solution? Most definitely.

That might be a blessing in disguise. You'll understand why once you hear the 15 year old's they got to do the voices in English.