shuurajou
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Posts posted by shuurajou
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Just try with different settings and see what do your system best!!!!Personally i have tried tons of settings, turning off PhysX, VSync etc. etc, tried all the command line stuff and honestly it doesn't give or take on my system.
Only thing i found weird and working is to NOT set my video settings too low, meaning that if i set options to high/highest i get much better performance than with settings on normal/low!
Also noticed a performance boost with postprocess effects off, this also gives a crystal clear view instead of being annoyingly blurry!
I too have tried all the different settings. For me to make educated tweaks against my settings though it's important to understand their functionality.
The video memory setting systems mostly a mystery to everyone though (some people think very high is for 2GB GFX cards, some people think very high is for 512MB GFX CARDS) - I tried to uncover this mystery... but alas... I guess we'll have to keep on guessing.
I think the devs certainly do know their own engine, just that no devs with the knowledge of that part of the engine have shared that knowledge yet...
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As Planck said, you need to tweak your settings to your preference. There is no "ONE" magic answer. You got very extensive answers to your questions which is more than you would have received from other publishers.Eth
I'm not asking for 'one' magic answer. I'm not saying 'medium' video memory should work for everyone regarldess of configuration. I'm saying, tell us what you made each setting for, so on the basis of our computer specs, we should be able to configure. Video memory is only about the graphics card memory, so this isn't about every possible configuration and every possible varient of PC, this is purely about GFX card RAM. I'm saying, if they designed 'medium' video memory to be selected for 256MB graphics cards then they should say so - if they haven't then they need to give guidance and explain so.
Some people say 'default' is for 512mb+ cards, but nobody from BIS or support has said this, people are guessing - people shouldn't have to guess, there should be guidance.
If the manual said 'For GFX cards with 1025MB RAM or more, select default', as a user, I'd know what to do. I would be able to tweak my settings as I know what they did. Nobody knows how to use the video memory setting, that's why there's a thread 7700 people have looked at as they don't get it either.
Quality settings are entirely different of course as that depends on the whole system configuration.
Some of the details support offered were ambiguous, I sought to resolve this ambiguity. There are threads with several thousand views because people don't understand these settings. I am trying to help them understand by getting the official statement around these settings.
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What a load of old cobbler's. They more than sufficently answered your questions from what I can see.Eth
Regarding localVRAM=X parameter. Miloslav advised this is the autodetected 'GFX resource' - I asked if he meant video card RAM - he did not answer thie question so the question is unanswered. The answer he provided is ambiguous, I am merely trying to fully understand it before it's relayed to the community.
Regarding nonlocalVRAM=X parameter. Miloslav advised this is the autodetected 'available resources from main memory via AGP' I asked if he meant AGP aperture size and if this mattered to PCIe users - he did not provided an answer, again, I was merely trying to clarify his ambigious definition if the parameter.
Regarding '-winxp'. I asked Miloslave if this forces Win7/Vista to use Direct3D 9 vs Direct3D 9EX, he did not confirm this. He only stated it minimalised OS differences and helped multi-GPU users.
Regarding video memory, there are several settings.
- low
- normal
- high
- very high
- default
They should be configered based on the amount of RAM your pesonal video card has, however, no guidance is offered on what setting is for what GFX RAM amount - there is no answer to this question.
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Sadly BI support seem relucant to assist us further - see my update in the main thread.
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As many of you may know, I have been trying to get the publisher (our official support channel) to provide clear definitive guidance to assist us in making Arma 2 run correctly. The key questions I have asked are...
- Guidance on how to correctly use the in game 'Video Memory' setting, as there is no guidance in the game manual. This is a user facing setting and there are threads with 7,700 views and no conclusion/answers.
- Guidance on how to understand the localVRAM parameter, many people are trying to change it and fiddle with it without understanding it and a correct understanding may help people determine if Arma 2 is still incorrectly detecting their video card RAM.
- Guidance on how to understand the nonlocalVRAM parameter, many people are trying to change it and fiddle with it without understanding it - this is still very unclear as to what this means or if we can use it to help troubleshoot our issues.
I have had some response from the publisher but for the most part it has been inconslusive. I have attempted to clarify multiple points but the publisher doesn't seem interested in bottoming out these questions. The email chain below for your viewing... I am exhausted and infuriated after spending hours to try and resolve this for the community, the publisher is disinterested in helping us - despite this being their job. There are threads with thousands of views on these issues and everyone has tried hard to figure it out but now it's time for the publisher to step up and help.
Anybody else got any ideas how we can get facts from BI about these settings? It seems the publisher is not able to.
The publisher seems to believe that lack of clarity around these issues is only frustrating to me personally - if you too are frustrated, show your frustration in this thread, perhaps the publisher will acknowledge a need to clarify these issues.
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/27
To: X
Lets be honest Kirk,
it is frustrating to you, that support line is trying to answer to your
questions which have nothing to do with actual work, you are trying to
do web guidance for players, yes it is quite interesting idea and i do
not doubt it may help people, but we have work here, i agree about doing
this, but please understand that you are not the only one person writing
to us and there are people with real problems,
besides with demo benchmark that does that was released, so there is no
need to write it on forum when everyone can do it himself,
regards,
Lynx
Quite frankly I find their last email entirely unprofessional and if my business was communicating with it's customer base like this I would be ashamed.
I've reworded the same question so many times to get a conclusive answer but each response seems to offer little information and minimal acknowledgement of all the questions I've asked.
Subject: [iDEA-GAMES-RT #10871] IDEA Games: Arma 2 - Settings help------------------------
From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/26
To: X
On Tue Aug 25 22:56:07 2009, X wrote:
> This is an enquiry e-mail via http://www.idea-games.com from:
> Shuurajou X
>
> http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=84936
>
> Please see this forum post. Please can you arrange for BIS to contact
> us on the forum as the manual does not provide guidance on these
> settings and people are having to guess.
>
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/26
Hi Miloslav,
Looks like you accidently sent me a blank email?
2009/8/26 Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/26
To: X
Yes,i saw you got answer on forum,
any good to you?
Regards,
Miloslav "Lynx" Cinko
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/26
Hi Miloslav,
I appreciate your response, this is really important to the community to understand this so I hope you'll stick with me. I'm actually surprised you've responded :).
The moderator on the forum (not Bohemia Interactive staff) has directed us to a community Wiki page, and whilst the page has some information, is specifically does not have the answers to the questions I've asked. I've summarised them below:
The in game setting of 'Video Memory':
This doesn't appear to be in the manual and there is no guidance from Bohemia Interactive to what we should set this setting to. It obviously will depend on our hardware, but we don't know what setting should be set for what graphics card memory value (e.g. if the GTX 285 has 1024MB memory - do we choose 'very high', 'low', 'default'?).
The command line argument of '-winxp'.
This is appended to the end of the arma 2 shortcut. It seems to help some issues, but we actually don't really know what it does and nobody from Bohemia has explained what it does. We only know it helps with some problems, we don't know why. If we understood what the command line argument actually did, the community could correctly recommend it at a solution to some problems.
The Arma2.cfg parameters 'localVRAM=X' & 'nonlocalVRAM=X'.
Some people guess (and we only guess as we don't understand the 'video memory' in game setting), that if the video memory setting is default, the game auto detects the localVRAM (we think this means your video card memory) and then put that detected value in the CFG, however often it seems the game incorrectly detects the video card memory, especially if you have 8GB PC RAM, this was meant to be fixed in version 1.02.
Regardless, people don't understand what those 2 parameters mean, if we can change them, and how we can use them to help troubleshoot the issue.
Nobody can really gives us the answers to these questions but the people that built those options into the game.
Many thanks Miloslave, look forward to your response.
Kirk.
Yes,i saw you got answer on forum,
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/26
To: X
So,
after little research
-winxp is used in vista/7 to enable multi gpu support (different
approaches from OS are minimalized)
localVRAM=X' & 'nonlocalVRAM=X - both values are auto detected and are
used by engine for graphical optimalization, local is cards resources,
non local is available resources from main memory via AGP,
as I recall 1024 is medium,
regards,
Lynx
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/26
Hi Lynx,
Thanks for your response.
Are these confirmed from BI or sourced from the wiki/forum? It's really important to know that. I've spend hours writing the below 2 threads to help the community, which isn't my job, but I want to help so I need your help too.
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=84974Any posts on the forum or wiki are just guesses from players and not validated as true from BI developers. This is why if you ask 7 different people on the forum they will have 7 different beliefs on each of these items (often conflicting) - we need a definite accurate statement to work with on these questions. So please confirm you know this to be fact for 100%.
With '-winxp', the wiki says it's about enabling GPU, and forum users suggest it uses an older version of Direct3D 9 in Vista/Win 7, but nobody from BI has said this, people are hoping/guessing. It is for sure not just about enabling multi-gpu, as users with 1-GPU GTX 200 series cards (i.e. not mult-gpu) and 8GB ram are finding it helps an issue with missing/blank textures.
With localVRAM, obviously users can look at our graphics card to know what this value should be (then we can determine if Arma 2 is accurately auto detecting). When you say 'nonlocal resources available via AGP' do you mean AGP aperture size? I believe PCIe graphics cards no longer have this function, so is it redundant for new graphics card users?
Regarding the 'video memory' setting - do you have guidance on this? Like, what setting should be used based on what graphics card memory? There is a massive amount of debate around what it should be set to and a huge amount of what I suspect, is misinformation on the forums. This setting doesn't appear in any Arma 2 manuals I can find (I bought Arma 2 from steam myself), so we need guidance.
Someone highlighted that back in Arma 1, these settings were made at a time when the biggest amount of memory you could get on a GFX card was 512mb. When the 8800 card series started to come around, obviously that GFX card memory ceiling increased, and apparently, I think in the Arma 1 1.05 patch, BI introduced the 'default' setting to be used with cards higher than 512mb.
Is this the same in Arma 2 and when the default setting is selected, will Arma 2 try to utilise and work with what GFX memory Arma 2 THINKS you have as a result of it's autodetection?
Is there a telephone number I can call and discuss?
So,
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/26
To: X
You are chatting with BI official support, information is from programmers,
regards,
Lynx
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/26
Thanks Lynx, this is great to hear.
I hope the answers I get will help a lot of people.
Could you confirm the appropriate GFX card memory sizes that should be used with the corresponding 'video memory' settings in Arma 2 please? This would be useful. Below is an example which would be really useful (I have used made up examples).
High - 400mb
Very High - 512mb
Default - Uses autodetect (you can see autodetect by looking at localVRAM)
Should a PCIe graphics card user pay any attention or care about the values in nonlocalVRAM?
If the user has 'video memory' on default and the localVRAM=X parameter has an incorrect value (I assume it is in bytes), should they contact support?
Many Thanks,
You are chatting with BI official support, information is from programmers,
regards,
Lynx
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/26
To: X
I guess your example is fine, but I just guess, it would be better to
test it, about attention to nonlocal VRAM... I think that to most
players it is quite greek, i would not mess with that if game is
working, if not, they should contact support,
regards,
Lynx
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/26
Hi Lynx,
The problem is that everybody on the forums is guessing what the different settings should be used for. BI who developed the game would know what they had in mind when they created each option and who should use it. This was my hope in contacting you, that you could confirm with BI, with all the 'Video Memory' options in game, which ones would be appropriate for different video card memory values.
For example, I have a GTX 285 - there's no manual or information from BIS what 'Video Memory' setting to use when I have a 1024MB graphics card. I also used to have an 8800 GTX, which has less memory - the same question stands. Some people have cards with 1800MB memory, but the same question stands. I have contacted yourselves so BI can provide official answers to these questions, as only BI can provide the answers. I hope you can help.
From your explanation, the nonlocalVRAM/localVRAM parameters aren't a user configurable parameter and is only outputted by the game indicating the autodetected values the game has identified.
In your previous mail, you advised that the localVRAM parameter indicates the autodetected "GFX card resources", does this mean the amount of RAM on the video card?
In your previous mail, you advised that the nonlocalVRAM parameter indicates the autodetected "local available resources from main memory via AGP", does this mean AGP aperture size & does it matter to Arma 2 if you have a PCIe card?
I appreciate I am asking a lot of detailed specific questions, but I ask because the whole community is guessing about this information and fiddling with it to try and improve their games and fix bugs. Please, take time to read each individual question and respond to them fully, only if you have 100% verified facts that you are happy for me to represent as statements to the community.
Thanks
I guess your example is fine, but I just guess, it would be better to
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/27
To: X
If I understand correctly, you want me to write that list, yes?
Regards,
Lynx
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/27
Hi Lynx,
The things I think we need confirmed are...
1. Guidance on the in game 'video memory' settings. So this means, a list of all available video memory settings and what graphics card memory you should have for each one. This needs to be 100% confirmed with the developers and not guesses as I'm sure you can appreciate everyone has been guessing. There are in threads with 7,774 views about this question in particular. So this is definitely a question to be answered. These are missing from the manual. The manual can be found here: http://store.steampowered.com/manual/33900/ - search 'video memory'.
2. 100% confirmation that nonlocalVRAM/localVRAM parameters aren't a user configurable parameter and is only outputted by the game indicating the autodetected values the game has identified.
3. 100% confirmation that the localVRAM parameter indicates the autodetected amount of RAM on the video card.
4. 100% that nonlocalVRAM parameter indicates the autodetected AGP aperture size & confirmation if this is relevant on a computer using a PCIe card.
I appreciate this may be difficult questions - I hope you can help. Please, if you aren't 100% sure/confident to answer, let me know.
Kind Regards,
Kirk.
2009/8/27 Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/27
To: X
Hi again,
i thought i already wrote you about 2,3,4,(if someone feels competent
enough to change it, he is free to do it, but even I would not mess with it)
about 1 :
this is something that could be source of disappointment because you can
not guarantee that game will run on every computer in the world with
this mb ram on this quality, besides it depends on resolution, view
distance, etc., besides, each player can try it on his own and can find
his optimal setting,
regards,
Lynx
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/27
Hi Lynx,
I feel as if my questions are not being read in detail and understood. This is frustrating support to get.
It's important to recognise that when I say 'Video Memory', that this setting is not the same as any of the other texture quality settings. It is an independant setting on it's own that is missing from the game manual but present in the game.
These are the options in the game for Video Memory.
- low
- normal
- high
- very high
- default
In Arma 1, we know that version 1.05 introduced the 'default' value to cater for cards with more than 512MB onboard RAM.
What we need to know, is that in Arma 2, based on your graphics card onboard RAM, what settings should be used for what amount of graphics card RAM.
As it seems easier to deal with one question at a time I'll go back to 2, 3 & 4 later.
Hi again,
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From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/27
To: X
Lets be honest Kirk,
it is frustrating to you, that support line is trying to answer to your
questions which have nothing to do with actual work, you are trying to
do web guidance for players, yes it is quite interesting idea and i do
not doubt it may help people, but we have work here, i agree about doing
this, but please understand that you are not the only one person writing
to us and there are people with real problems,
besides with demo benchmark that does that was released, so there is no
need to write it on forum when everyone can do it himself,
regards,
Lynx
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From: Shuurajou X
Date: 2009/8/27
Miloslav,
The game has a built in, user option. The manual doesn't acknowledge this option exists. Nobody knows how to use it. It is your duty as publisher to support the game. I merely ask you do so.
I don't understand what you mean by 'having nothing to do with actual work'?
I wouldn't need to do web guidance if the guidance was in the manual about this setting. The benchmark doesn't tell you how to use this setting.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Miloslav Cinko via RT <support@idea-games.com>
Date: 2009/8/27
Subject: [iDEA-GAMES-RT #10871] IDEA Games: Arma 2 - Settings help
To: X
It tells you what setting is best for you, it simply tells your card how
much memory to put into operations, it can not be written like you
imagine it, performance of card is not totally equal to its ram,
regards,
Lynx
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: KW X
Date: 2009/8/27
Subject: Re: [iDEA-GAMES-RT #10871] IDEA Games: Arma 2 - Settings help
Lynx, I am disappointed with your unprofessional response claiming this frustration is my own. I have posted this disappointing support to the public forum. In fact I am infuriated. I am a professional and work in a professional business telecoms environment and if I knew my customer support team was talking to customers like this I would be outraged.
I have had to ask the same questions repeatedly and I only get half-answers of some of my questions asked in the previous emails. I have clearly spent more time trying to understand this and it isn't even my job to do so. I am exhausted and feel that the support doesn't have the knowledge available to their teams to adequately support this game.
- Guidance on how to correctly use the in game 'Video Memory' setting, as there is no guidance in the game manual. This is a user facing setting and there are threads with 7,700 views and no conclusion/answers.
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You are confusing video memory with system memory...In what context? BI support have confirmed that Arma 2 autodetects the amount of RAM on your video card.
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I'm with dogz, try changing the config file so it's driving out a lower resolution. TVs wont turn off like monitors when it goes out of range.
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Hmmm... is the monitor powering off when you start it?
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suma; "..with nVidia 190.38 drivers"The behaviour is the same for 190.38.
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Thanks for all your trouble, I'm definitely following thing. You really shouldn't have to go through all this of course, especially since some of the people who can sort this out once and for all are reading the thread. Makes you wonder.Your welcome, hopefully in the end we'll have the answers we need. Good news is that this chap says the information he's providing is sourced from BIs programmers & he is official BI support.
---------- Post added at 05:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------
FYI updated with some BI developer comments.
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While I was able to reproduce this issue, it seems it is gone with nVidia 190.38 drivers.Hi Suma,
This still seems to be an issue.
My specs are...
GFX: BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX
Sound: X-Fi Fatal1ty
Mobo: ASUS P5N-T Deluxe (BIOS 1303)
CPU: Intel Woldfale E8400 Intel Core 2 Duo
Cooler: Tuniq Tower 120 (on the CPU)
Case: Cosmos S
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural 4000
Mouse: Razer Diamondback
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Final RTM Build
RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC 8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 PC-8500C5 @ 1066MHz
Display: Dell 2005FPW
PSU: Hiper Type M 880W
My findings...
Using 190.62 drivers, with 2x 8800 GTXs in SLI, no command line arguments and no msconfig modifications, Arma 2 detected 2GB localVRAM.
Using 190.62 drivers, with 1x BFG GTX 285 OCX, no command line arguments or msconfig modifications, Arma 2 detected 200MB localVRAM. Also had white textures.
Using 190.62 drivers, with 1x BFG GTX 285 OCX, with the -winxp command line arguments and no msconfig modifications, Arma 2 detected 2GB localVRAM.
Using 190.62 drivers, with 1x BFG GTX 285 OCX, with the -winxp command line arguments and 4GB msconfig memory limitation, Arma 2 detected 1002MB (essentially correct) localVRAM.
This is with Arma v1.03. Same applies with 190.38.
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How do they play at 3000?I have a core i7, 6GB RAM and a GTX295 and I am struggling with a view distance over 2400!!!!
It all depends on what settings people use, resolution and their own personal tolerances. Some people can live with 30fps.
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Just to update, i switched to "default" last night with my gtx275 and it smoothed everything right out a treat :DEspecially the texture pop i was getting.
I think it's what I'd expect. The GTX 275 has more memory than 512 (which I think (yet to be confirmed) is the limit of 'very high'). The default setting should basically allow Arma 2 to auto-detect the amount of memory your GFX card has. As you have less then 8GB Arma 2 was able to do this successfully hence your improved performance.
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Why use old drivers?In my personal experience as a GTX 285 (GT 200 series) user I've had more issues with 190.62 than 190.38, and as the 190.38 are referenced in a sticky in the thread there's a better chance that BI are happy they work OK with the game. We can always try something else but it's a starting point.
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even if you understood everything the game won't run better, i have played with those settings more than i played the game and probably everybody else did. You'd probably be better off playing it on low resolution, lower than your native screen resolution, i know it sucks but gameplay will be silky smooth... Disco...Disco
The thing is, whether or not the game is utilising the RAM on your graphics card correctly could have a large impact on performance. There is no configuration parameter associated with the game that a user can change to fix this autodetection we know for a fact Arma 2 does.
If we can understand truely what the localVRAM & nonlocalVRAM Arma2.cfg parameters mean, then we might be able to use them to diagnose issues & highlight them to BI.
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Updated main thread with current communications with the publisher.
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A few people I play with like 3000, but it depends what you're doing. 1500 seems OK for town assaults. It's down to your system specs though really.
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If you look at event manager (it's a build in vista system management app) do you see any details of errors that occured at the date/time your system froze when you started arma 2? Might help.
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If you go to guru3d and download driver sweeper, this I think, is key. Also make sure you're running Arma 2 v1.03.
What nvidia drivers are you using? I would suggest trying 190.38 available from nvidia.com.
Then take the following steps...
In windows 7, go into your program manager and remove your nvidia display drivers & phsyx drivers & stereoscopic 3d drivers if you have them.
Rebooted. Whilst your computer is booting, keep hitting the F5 key until you get a screen which lets you choose your OS come up - then press F8 for advanced. Select normal safe mode.
Once in safe mode, run driver cleaner, tick nvidia phsyx & nvidia display drivers and then click 'analyse'. Then click 'clean'.
Reboot and go into windows 7 normally. Then install the 190.38 drivers. Reboot normally again.
Then, try Arma 2 again. Let me know how it goes.
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I did get an email from the publisher today - but it was a blank one. Perhaps it was an accident. I'll keep you all posted.
W0lle, as you can see highlighted by others in this thread, the information on the wiki is incorrect/incomplete in a quite a few areas (specifically for Arma 2), and as I've highlighted, is completely missing the answers to many of the specific questions I've asked. If you can prompt a response from BI, that'd be very useful. I'm sure you read the forums, but the specific parameters & the specific options/command line arguments I have raised questions about seem to be the most popular 'solutions' suggested by people, when nobody actually knows what they do and & merely guessing, so it'd add a huge value to get this information.
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Very nice and detailed post. Kudos to you. :)I, admittedly, haven't actually looked at the VRAM parameters yet, because the game has always been running pretty well for me. (4GB RAM FTW!)
However, I'm pretty sure you're right about the VRAM parameters not actually being read by Arma2, but simply being overwritten (if possible) when it does its autodetect thing. Actually I believe the fact that Arma2 tries to overwrite anything people put in there is a clear indicator that this is the case. Basically I the game behaves like this: "Well, I've detected the VRAM values and... wait, I can't write them to the config file. Ah screw that, I'm using my values anyway."
Thanks MadDogX, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of the issues. There are threads of 60+ posts of people trying to figure it out. These threads would be dramatically shorter if BI told us what the different commands/settings mean and/or do.
Obviously this thread has all of my own trouble shooting, but there's a key issue here in that we're guessing what a lot of the settings do and what the different parameters mean. I've made another thread here which is a request to BI to provide details on how we should use these settings/parameters to help ourselves - I've also forwarded the request to the publisher (the publisher is meant to be the official support channel) in hope they can get the attention of BI.
But for the purposes of this thread, it's meant to be a discussion point to see if we can conclude any of these questions ourselves, so we stop misinformation each other when someone needs help.
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Pretty detailed information, however you are refering to version 1.02?Do you mean version 1.03 has not fixed this issue yet? Because version 1.03 has been out for a while now... and there are even beta patches which might also address this issue.
http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php
Yapa
Hi Yapa,
The version of Arma used in all of the above is 1.03. I quoted 1.02 only as reference due to BI stating 1.02 should have fixed incorrect VRAM detection in systems with 8GB RAM.
I don't believe any beta patches or 1.03 have addressed the issue any further than 1.02 attempted to.
I've updated the main post with this info.
Cheers,
Shuurajou.
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There's a huge amount of debate and discussion about all these things below - so I've tried to make some sense of it...
FYI - my specs are at the bottom.
In Arma 2, there is a setting called 'Video Memory'. There is a massive amount of debate around what it should be set to and a huge amount of what I suspect, is misinformation. This setting doesn't appear in any Arma 2 manuals I can find (I bought Arma 2 from steam myself), so as the community we'll have to guess what BI want us to do with this setting.
Digging around the forums, someone (sorry, can't remember who now) highlighted that back in Arma 1, it was a time when the biggest amount of memory you could get on a GFX card was 512mb. When the 8800 card series started to come around, obviously that GFX card memory ceiling increased, and apparently, I think in the Arma 1 1.05 patch, BI introduced the 'default' setting to be used with cards higher than 512mb. Although this is unclear, it seems BI just carried this over 'as is' to Arma 2. It also seems when the default setting is selected, Arma 2 will try to utilise and work with what GFX memory Arma 2 THINKS you have as a result of it's autodetection. It's commonly believed (although unconfirmed), what GFX card memory Arma 2 thinks you have, is documented by Arma 2 in the localVRAM parameter found in the Arma2.cfg file...
Many people believe that the 'localVRAM=X' parameter in the Arma2 CFG file is something that you can change, and Arma 2 will use. Despite this popular belief, I think (and could be wrong) that it's actually something else. We know that Arma 2 itself, does automatic VRAM detection. It seems that, once Arma has been started and done this automatic VRAM detection, it enters the values it has detected (in bytes), into this parameter. It's unclear what it should read if you have SLI (although it's debated it should be 1 of the 2 cards memory), or that it's actually your GFX card memory at all (as nobody from BI has confirmed any of this - let's assume for now this is accurate).
There is also a 'nonlocalVRAM=X' parameter, and many believe that SHOULD if Arma 2 has detected it correctly, show your PCs page file size - I'm not too clear on this, so I won't go into it further for now.
So... VRAM detection. In 64bit Vista (and let's guess Win 7 inhereted this too), Arma 2 has had a bug where it incorrectly detected VRAM, specifically if you had 8GB (perhaps other values of RAM too). BI's CEO confirmed in the 1.02 change log that the bug should have been fixed. It seems that this may not be the case.
In my own experience, I had previously run 2x Leadtek 8800 GTXs in SLI. At the same time, I also had 8GB and was running Windows 7 64bit (release version from MSDN) and the 190.62 WHQL nVidia driver. At this time, I did not need to add any command line arguments (such as '-winxp') onto my Arma 2 shortcut. However, at this time, Arma 2 thought my GFX card had 2GB RAM (if the localVRAM=X value is believed) and 2GB of 'nonlocalVRAM' (both incorrect). The game worked though - not perfectly (average 30fps?), but it did work. After wiping my HDD and formatting, installing a fresh Win 7 with the same drivers etc, the outcome was the same.
After formatting again, I installed a BFG GTX 285 OCX (flashed mobo CMOS at the time). Same drivers as previously (190.62 WHQL). Interestingly, without the '-winxp' parameter (just as before with the 8800 GTXs), Arma 2 gave me loads of blank textures (a problem people often associate with having 8GB of RAM). Looking at the CFG file revealed that Arma essentially though that my GFX card only had 2mb of memory (incorrect - it has 1024mb) & 2mb of nonlocalVRAM (again, unclear what this is meant to show). That kind of made sense to me - you can't do a lot with only 4mb total available memory I suppose - so the textures weren't able to load properly (and were blank as a result). To try a test, I changed the values in the CFG file to what they should be (assuming nonlocalVRAM is pagefile), and set it to read only. The textures were still blank. So, I genuinely don't think that Arma actually looks at these values for instructions, just fills them for diagnostic purposes.
Adding the '-winxp' command line argument changed things. Arma 2 then started to detect that I generally had '2GB' of GFX card memory (localVRAM) & 2GB of nonlocalVRAM. This is incorrect, but as before, the game would run - just not great. Interestingly, if I loaded an old 186 driver, Arma 2 would load, with the new card, and my 8gb RAM, without -winxp & without blank textures.
So what does this tell me?
Having 8GB doesn't seem to be the sole root cause of people having blank textures. What GFX card you have, and the driver your using, does seem to influence Arma 2's ability to correctly detect these values.
Having 8GB does seem to be related though... from what I can tell (again, it's a guess, as it is for everyone, as BI haven't told us what it truely does) using the -winxp command line argument has the game use the WinXP version of Direct3D 9 (Vista/Win7 use a slight varient Direct3D 9EX which works with WDDM) which seems to not use Vista/Win7's WDDM. It may also be reasonable to assume to some degree, that in this case, Arma 2 can't see all your 8GBs of RAM, so it doesn't get subjected to a bug with 8GB RAM, but if this was true, why did 8GB ram work without issue when I had an 8800 GTX and the same drivers? So the graphics card or it's drivers do seem to influence this somehow.
So, even with the -winxp command line, or with my old 8800 GTXs, Arma 2 still didn't seem to detect things correctly. So, I tried limiting the RAM my machine can utilise with msconfig to approximately 4gb. After rebooting, it seems that with my GTX 285, Arma 2 then successfully detected my video card RAM (it said 1002mb, but you know, it's pretty close). That's interesting, so having 4GB vs 8GB does influence the localVRAM detection & nonlocalVRAM detection to a degree. So I guess, that 1.02 hasn't 100% fixed this yet.
So folks... this is all I've been able to find out, and make sense out of, and all I can. It's all 100% speculation as BI haven't confirmed what these different parameters and command line arguments actually mean/do. Until then - maybe this'll help us get to the bottom of this.
Shuurajou
Version of Arma used in all of the above is 1.03. I quoted 1.02 only as reference due to BI stating 1.02 should have fixed incorrect VRAM detection in systems with 8GB RAM.
GFX: BFG GeForce GTX 285 OCX
Sound: X-Fi Fatal1ty
Mobo: ASUS P5N-T Deluxe (BIOS 1303)
CPU: Intel Woldfale E8400 Intel Core 2 Duo
Cooler: Tuniq Tower 120 (on the CPU)
Case: Cosmos S
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural 4000
Mouse: Razer Diamondback
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Final RTM Build
RAM: OCZ Reaper HPC 8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 PC-8500C5 @ 1066MHz
Display: Dell 2005FPW
PSU: Hiper Type M 880W
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Well, it's the publishers job to support us, and I've asked them to answer the questions in the thread... they claim in their automated email response...
For Game Playing Issues: This issue is most likely going to be upgraded and a developer will have to deal with it so this will normally take longer to expedite. During the wait please upgrade your system and components especially Direct X!
BIS - help us help ourselves!
in ARMA 2 & OA - TROUBLESHOOTING
Posted · Edited by shuurajou
It's actually Bohemia that defined 512MB as 'Very High' in Arma 1 and in v1.08 of Arma 1, they created the 'Default' setting for people with more than 512MB video card RAM. Change log is quoted below.
Nobody knows what 'very high' or 'default' means for Arma 2 (apart from the devs), however, it may be reasonable to assume BI didn't change this in Arma 2 so you should still use default in Arma 2 if you have more than 512MB RAM on your video card.
However... there are still bugs in auto video card RAM detection in Arma 2, so if you're impacted by these bugs default might turn out to be worse for you. If you have a video card with more than 512MB RAM, default is likely the right setting for you, but only if you're not affected by the VRAM auto detection bug where Arma 2 incorrectly detects your VRAM.
In Arma 2 patch v1.02 BI did attempt to fix the VRAM bug (change log quote below) but it seems to not have been entirely successful as I (and others) still suffer from incorrect VRAM autodetection.
That's what I think... but nobody can say for sure apart from devs.