shuurajou

Hi All, I raised CIT bug #4042 and also a bug with the IDEA GAMES publisher reference 'IDEA-GAMES-RT #10871'. I raised both of these originally, specifically for the issue where the VRAM values in ArmA 2 cfg were incorrect (indicating ArmA 2 had incorrectly detected VRAM). If you're unsure what these values should read (i.e. so you can determine if the beta patch fixed it for you), export a dxdiag report and look at the Display Devices section, you'll see some memory values. Convert your ArmA2.cfg nonlocalVRAM & localVRAM values to MBs and compare. I'll test with the latest beta patch tonight and post my feedback.

Coincidentally I bought mine on steam. The publisher did say they are apparently working on it but it's not easy to fix.

Dissapointingly I've had a ticket open with IDEA games (publisher and our 'official' way to get support) since the 28th of August and I was told today that they recommend I return the game for a refund. This is after quite a lot of time providing dxdiag, specs etc to help them pass the issue onto BIS to troubleshoot and being told it was passed onto the developers... doesn't fill me with confidence this is going to get fixed if the publisher is telling users to get refunds.

For me I've found with or without the -winxp parameter, when using the BIS recommended NVIDIA drivers (e.g. latest) my VRAM is detected incorrectly (specifically VRAM, not RAM). Limiting to 4GB in MSCONFIG or removing 4GB resolves this detection issue for me.

So, with the -winxp command line argument, looking at your localVRAM parameter, it has correctly detected your video card memory on all machines? Might be useful to paste your localVRAM & nonlocalVRAM detected parameters for each machine. The command line argument -winxp does not fix incorrect VRAM detection in the scenario of having 8GB+ RAM. On some setups it can change the VRAM detected so the game runs without graphical glitches but it still detects it incorrectly. MSCONFIG does help with this.

I have 2nd computer I've also bought ArmA 2 for, it's an iMac with a 3gz core 2 duo & this card - 2gb ram and whilst you won't get blazing FPS if you turn up the GFX, it's certainly playable. Of course 'playable' is subjective.

Even if you set the read as read only ArmA 2 only writes to those parameters to help with debugging, it doesn't read from them so you can change them to 2MB and it won't help.

That may be true, but if you look at the nonlocalVRAM & localVRAM parameters in your ArmA2.cfg are they accurate (convert bytes to megabytes)? If they are inaccurate and then you are likely getting performance that isn't taking full advantage of the RAM on your video card.

VRAM detection is still broken even if you use -winxp.

FYI for me, if I removed 4GB of RAM from my comp, performance improves dramatically as VRAM detection then functions and the 'default' video memory setting allows me to take advantage of my 1024MB RAM on the video card. So this is certainly a bug linked with 8GB RAM. BIS attempted to fix this in 1.02. Hopefully they'll try again! On that basis though the game won't 'always' be bad, and isn't 'always' bad now. Just depends what bugs impact you.

The thing is you can't actually manually change the VRAM in the config - ArmA 2 writes those values, it doesn't read them - so even if you change them to 2MB it doesn't make a difference, they were made for debug so developers could validate what VRAM ArmA 2 was detecting. You can't change them sadly :(.

In the end of the day the OS supports 8GB so it's not acceptable to have bugs because a computer has 8GB. That's like saying it's OK for the game to have bugs on 24" monitors or an xbox 360 is OK to have bugs with wired controllers. If it's officially supported by the core OS then all subsequent pieces of software need to be able to co-exist with that config without negative impacts.

The only problem being in that case I believe VRAM detection will still be broken and the 'default' setting won't result in the optimum performance of his 4890. May be different with ATI though.

You can use SLI setups without the -winxp switch since newer 190 nvidia drivers. Which are a multi GPU setup of sorts. It seems '-winxp' forces Arma 2 in vista/win7 to use XPs version of Direct3D 9, the GPU enabling on some setups seems to be just a side effect. It sounds like your VRAM detection is working fine. Again, you have 2GB RAM so I'd expect no issues with your VRAM detection. If you run dxdiag, and 'save all information' to your desktop and look at the dxdiag.txt file. Scroll down to the 'display devices' section, then, look at 'dedicated memory' I believe this is what localVRAM should translate to (after you've done bytes - megabytes conversion). I believe 'shared memory' is what your nonlocalVRAM value should translate to.

It'd be worth trying 4GB I think. Just as a test :).