HellfireDeLuxe

Hi again, yes , it definitely helps to increase the nonlocalvram in this case (AGP card), but in the end i found some heavy sceneries which brought in some artefacts again. I guess that may be the limit really sits on my aperture size and whatever i input as nonlocalvram stays down to 256mb (and if i could put 512 mb in my BIOS it would then already be a win). I am fed up to make some systematic tests in order to verify this. I wanted to go for the win 7 solution but I guess that won't help either, and if i got it right i will not find any working AGP drivers for the 3850 . Luckily it seems that only the campaign is so demanding , I did have pretty no artifact in sp missions or mp (domination , evo blue, PvP). Good luck anyway to everybody. HellfireDeluxe

Hi people, I have tried to fast read through the 43 pages, picked up the main concern and tried to sort out the details . My (humble) system : - E6400 @ 2,4GHz stable - ATI 3850 AGP 512 mb ddr-3 - RAM 2 GB DDR-2 533 - ASRock 4CoreDual VSTA - Win XP SP3 Besides the fact, that I have to put most settings on low (AA disabled , anisotropic disabled , post effect disabled) , I usually have FPS > 25 , which makes the game playable. The flickering bug really made it unplayable. I could get rid of the flickering for let's say 95% of the time. I guess that the 5% are really induced by my systems low specs (ram and ddr-3 vram constraint i would say). I will post the details of how i came to this conclusion later but now at work I only post the workaround which really improved my (and hope that it might improve others) experience. In brief: - Check ur nonlocalvram in arma2.cfg - if you divide the figure by 1024^2 you get it in Megabytes. - If it's 1024 or 2048 , check ur memory size setting in the video options , put it to default . If you still experience flickering read further , may be you will understand something new and might find a trick that works for you. - If the value is <1024 , put 2048*(1024^2) = 2147483648 instead - go into arma video settings , chose default memory size , if that was not the case already. - shutdown arma again . - check ur cfg file again , arma probably set the value back to the a lesser amount , put it back to 2147483648 . - put the read-only flag on the cfg file, in order to avoid that arma2 sets back the value. - start arma , dont go into the vid settings (I explain why below) , go to your 'favorite' flickering artefact bug mission and try. Hope u get rid of it like I did. A few explainations: - I had not time to test if it makes a difference to put the nonlocalvram to 512 , 1024 or 2048 or even more . - from 512 on , I guess that it improves. - I could assume 2048 is the higher limit. - I think that high and very high limit the use to 256 , 512 MB and that default uses the figure in the cfg file. may be very high (512) is a max anyway , back to point one -> "I had not time to test...." - I don't know, but I guess this is also limited by the available system RAM . - I wished I had 4GB (so the nonlocalvram really has 2GB for it's usage) of system ram to try out and hope to get rid of the remaing 5% of flickering occuring now and then but not really blocking the game as it eventually autoresolves now. - I have not tested yet, if the read only flag is set on the cfg file, it makes a change if u go into the video options or not before or during playing. In doubt i recommend to not go there and straight go to play . If u want to change a parameter , put the flag back to writable, change the param in arma , leave arma, put back nonlocalvram to 2147483648 in the cfg file and set the file back to r/o again. I will test this ASAP. -for AGP users like myself , if you don't have high , very high and default in your video memory settings within arma2, you have to set the AGP aperture size to at least 256mb in your BIOS (the max on my system , although Thrott seems to have 512). Then high , very high and default will be available in the video settings of arma , otherwise this workaround can't work. - There was also something with Catalyst A.I enabled/disabled , I will check at home, but this is not the heart of the solution for me. -And 2 things for Thrott : you wrote about GART version , is it updatable within the BIOS or independently of the BIOS (wonder how this would work) or is it part of the ATI card drivers and so through the AGP hotfixes ? The other thing is that OC'ing the card in catalyst did worsen the overall performance for me, so I run stock clocks on my 3850. Just facts , no theory for me behind it (although overheating might be an issue or that the memory bus (as we are speaking about vram issues) is overwhelmed .... no dont hit me , please :D ) Hope you can decode what I wrote and that someone will have an overall improvment of this otherwise fantastic game. A last question to BI developers (although as a developer myself I usually am and do not feel responsible for first-level support ) : How is the nonlocalvram used in arma2, how is it detected , on AGP? on PCIe? Is it possible to have a little explaination about this parameter or a link to another thread which explains the details ? thanks in advance , and keep on the otherwise great work. HellfireDeluxe Edit 1: I see that this has been already suggested by Daniel M but only applying to localvram , a param I didn't play around with ( i play with nonlocalvram) as it states 512MB and that seemed right to me. But the read-only , or/and not going to vid settings things could really make the difference because arma has to use the figures out of the cfg files and not the ones it detects. Edit 2: I have done this with patch 1.02 , I was not able to test with 1.03 by now.