H-street

any eta on when 1.05 will be released over steam?

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/01/nvidia-fakes-fermi-boards-gtc/

if you really think its coming in november i'd be prepared to be disappointed, we haven't even seen a picture of the card yet. And during an Nvidia press conference yesterday there was really nothing shown that indicates they are any where near production ready. more likely it'll be out around February next year , maybe late january.

Check out http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/09/22/amds_ati_radeon_hd_5870_video_card_review/8

Don't bother with SLI for Arma2, as of right now you wont' get too much of a benefit from it (Some may have other opinions on it). have a look at http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/08/10/arma_ii_gameplay_performance_image_quality/ to get an idea look at the 2560x1600 section in that review keep in mind that much of the advice you are going to get is based on personal opinion so i'd suggest just reading up on everything you can about Arma2's performance and try and pick what you think you'd like. personally id get the fastest single GPU solution. i'd make sure it had 1Gb of Memory (1Gb / GPU, so dual GPU would have 2Gb) Right now i'd get the ATI 5870 for 399$, preliminary benchmarks put it outperforming the GTX295.. it is a brand new card (It isn't released until tomorrow 9-23) so you may have to wait a week or so for the vendors to get them in stock.. http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10011218&prodlist=celebros

There is an arma2.exe switch (-) that will disable loading anything at startup except the menu. don't know it off hand but that would let you get in and turn down your settings.

SLI doesn't seem to work with Arma2, see http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/08/10/arma_ii_gameplay_performance_image_quality/

have you tried removing the cfg file and letting it regenerate it?

does it store the key in current user or or local machine? you might be able to do it if you run install the 2nd copy and run it under a different user .. it probably stores the key under local mchine, but if its under current user then you could do it. another possibility is running Arma from a BAT file that enters the key into the registry right before launching. Depending on how Arma2 works, if it just fetches the key at startup then once the copy of Arma2 is loaded you can change the key and load up the 2nd copy without issues by changing the reg key.

what are your current settings on each one? Just my recommendations Starting at the top What resolution are you running at? Visibility: 900 Interface and 3d resolution: 1024x768 or 1280x1024 texture detail medium video memory: medium anistropic filter: off antialiasing: off terrain detail: medium (or low) objects detail: medium shadow detail: off post processing: off as far as the bios update goes, don't do it. unless your computer is having major issues i wouldn't touch the bios. The bios itself definately won't help, its not like updating a driver ..

Arma2 is a sim in every aspect. for those who are Falcon 4.0 lovers will understand what i mean. In the end its the objective of Arma2 that makes it a sim, not its individual parts. Even the most hard core "Sim", as we think of them, have non sim elements. Take Falcon 4.0 for example, considered to be the most hard core sim you have. yet even it has "hit" points as a damage model. To give you an insight into , what i consider, the best attitude to have for building a sim (one i think Arma2 does extremely well) i'll post a blurb from the Falcon 4.0 manual. If you have it or can find it online read the Appendix A: Designer Notes. A few quotes Really the bottom line is the experience is what makes it a Sim vs a game. It isn't always about the nuts and bolts of the game that makes it a sim, although they are nice to have, but the overall sim experience. IMO OFP, Arma, Arma2 do that extremely well trying to put our heads into the infantry of the battlefield. Take DCS:Blackshark as a prime perfect example of a Nuts and Bolt sim. It has the highest fidelity flight model you'll ever play in a civilian sim. Yet its battlefield is so sterile and lifeless that the high FM is lost without the battlefield to experience it in. I'll take the sim experience over a nuts and bolt style sim any day because in the end its the experience the sim gives you that makes it great.

I ran across this , this morning thought others might enjoy it [H]ardOCP ArmaII Game Performance Review

This is called being CPU limited, when you are CPU limited it doesn't matter what resolution you are at, the game will run at the same speed. its not a bug, just the way gaming is. You can't look at the game performance as graphics/resolution only.. There is a lot more too it then that. One interesting article that just came out today was [h]ardocp's performance review for ArmaII its a good read and should be a good way to guage how well your system is actually performing. [H]

Sorry to hear you are having issues, sometimes there are just issues that are very specific to a person that no amount of "trouble shooting" by the community or even BI can help it. For others i'll just put a few suggestions since it sounds like you are done trouble shooting It could be a multicore issue, but i'd really be suspect if it was. And usually anything that has multi-core issues can be fixed by setting the Affinity (only 1 game i know of has had multi core issues, DCS-Blackshark, and it is fixed by setting the affinity) First I'd check the Event logs in windows, make sure nothing else funny is going on look at the Errors and Criticals. Second i'd run a Mem checker - even if you think its ok i'd run it (never assume your hardware is OK because of other things that run fine) Along with this scan your HDD for faulty sectors. Third i'd probably monitor temperatures of my CPU/GPU/Southbridge. There is a programe called Prime95 that overclockers use to test theri CPU. I'd suggest running that just to see how your CPU does. It should really work your CPU (monitor the temps with it running) i'd then check my drivers, even uninstalling and reinstalling them (actually uninstalling the drivers, not just removing the hardware). When i've had issues that aren't of the normal it ended up being a piece of hardware or device driver (even though everythign else was working perfectly) or my GPU / CPU was over heating. Some programs (armaII may be one) are much more sensitive to to things like that. After hardware issues it usually ends up being a corrupt installation. A few files corrupt here and there (usually from faulty hardware, DVD, ribbon cable etc..). Corrupt installations are hard to diagnose if they dont' have a way to verify the installed files are correct. I doubt this is it though since that would usually crop up as other errors (Check your windows log) for several programs. anyways hopefully in the future your issue will get resolved, i found shelving problems like this eventually fix themselves just as your change hardware / operating systems, etc.. I understand your frustration.. I'd give it a week and then maybe take a fresh look at it. See if you have any luck.

i was just about to ask if the arma1 campaign works? i'd love if we had all the OFP / Arma1 campaigns imported into Arma2. Even if i have to have the original disks to do the import that would be awesome. maybe BI will listen and release an expansion with them? might be a nice bonus