dannyboyee82

Ok, so here I am, roughly a week and half after buying ArmA 2 and I am still tweaking and visiting these forums to find out what is the matter with my game. If it isn't the poor frame rate, it's the crash to desktop, if it isn't the crash to desktop it's the AI bugs, if it's not the AI bugs it's the mission bugs. What is next? Will it ever end? And most importantly, will it ever be fixed? Now I know that some people are not having the same problems, I am sure that some people are not having any problems at all. Or if they have, they have been ironed out. But for the rest of us, who are having these problems on a daily basis I pose the question to the people responsible; why release a game that either isn't finished, or is just doomed to be un-playable? I am a fair man, I can see that the game has amazing potential. The graphics are superb, the story flows and the missions are captivating, all leaving you wishing that you were at your PC playing it when at work. But, the sad fact is that when I am playing, all the goodness the game has to offer is completely overshadowed and spoiled by the many bugs it has. I think I can speak for many a PC gamer here, the reason why we play PC games is because we love to fiddle with the them, push them to their limits, tweak them and mod them. But when it comes down to playing, we just want to play! We don't want to be thinking "Maybe I should turn the AA down", "Why is Boomerang driving up and down a country lane a kilometre away when it is meant to be aiding my assault on the Main Camp" or "What? Why has my desktop appeared? I was in a bush shooting at a russian just this second". This post is a plead, it is not meant to be a stab at Bohemia. It is an honest plead to everyone involved in the development of ArmA 2, we love your game but could you please fix it!

Can I just put my pennys worth in? My 8800GTX plays every game I've thrown at it to date, other than ArmA 2. Empire Total War on ultra? No problem! Far Cry 2 high? No worries mate! Crysis high? Easy! GTA IV high? Of course! DOW 2 maxed? Definitely! Need for Speed Shift maxed? Yep! COD World at War maxed? Too true! Dead Space, Call of Juarez, GRID, Fallout 3.. you get the picture! The 8800GTX is dated now, if you compare it to current cards. A year after its release? Give me a break! This card was one of the most powerful GPUs in its time, rivalled by.. well, nothing. The fact that I can still max out all of those games I mentioned is testament to just how much of a beast it was, and in my mind still is. Have you ever owned one? You would think differently if you had. It just so happens people, that today I managed to solve all my performance woes with ArmA 2.. by setting the interface size to normal! Yep, it has somehow made the game perform and look like a playable game. Only, it isn't is it?! There are still the AI bugs to sort out, but I have changed my mind. I am going to persevere, start from the beginning again and see what happens this time round. I have never come across a game that is so good and yet so appalling at the same time. I'm off to play now, I have a playable frame rate.. and it looks sexy at the same time! ---------- Post added at 09:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:23 PM ---------- Just to bolster my argument 'luhgnut'.. check out the high end GPU benchmark chart, see where the 8800GTX comes? http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

I do play Empire Total War, it works perfectly for me! I maintain my PC on a daily basis, I even go so far as to clean it out every month. I dare say I do more to maintain my PC than most people in this thread. I'm inclined to be with Skyline On Fire with this one, it varies so much. What flake posted about ETW just proves that it can vary for no reason as I get perfect performance with ETW.

Who is the question at Skyline?

Isn't it annoying that they release a game that only a small percentage of people can play "the way it's meant to be played"? I'm sure that they will optimise the game in due course, but that raises my point of why release an incomplete game? I have not played Armed Assault, so I cannot compare the two. But after playing ArmA 2 I am more than a bit disappointed with the game. Time will only show if they will/can fix it, but until then I am playing games that I can rely on.

That is my point exactly, to make a CPU upgrade worth my while I would need a new system altogether. A socket 1366 Mobo, DDR3 RAM and of course an i7. Do I have that kind of money? No! Nor do I have the money for a Core 2/Quad Extreme CPU. But more importantly, do I need that kind of rig? No! So, from a frugal point of view.. a new GPU is the only way of squeezing the most out of my current set up. The new HD5870 or 5850 is looking more and more tempting, looking at a few benchmark tests from around the net and from MicroMart, it blows its competition out of the water.. for a reasonable price too. Do NVIDIA have a new card up their sleeve? Probably, but can they offer it at such an affordable price? I doubt it. We will see, but I think AMD finally have their headstart in the GPU market.

Why would I switch to a quad? Find me a game that uses all four cores and I will buy a quad, but for now I'll stick with my overclocked E8400 ta! The processor is not the problem, it is the graphics card.. as somebody else pointed out in the thread, there is an endless amount of possible set ups and they all work differently. I am happy that yours works for you. However, I doubt you are getting a fps of 40+ (playable fps to me, ideally I'd like it double that). I do get a fps of 25-30 average with decent settings. But, as I said, personally that isn't playable. That is beside the point though, the game itself is the major drawback for me, not the tweaking of graphic settings. The AI bugs I have experienced have just made it un-playable. I am aware that some people have not experienced these bugs, but to the people that have.. c'mon! You can't tell me that you aren't a little more than a bit disappointed? I am going to wait until they have it fixed and come back to the game then. We have a load of next gen games about to be released over the coming year or so, I can't wait to see the rewards of DirectX 11. Although I know older video cards will support the main features of DX 11, at the price that the ATI 5850/5870 are retailing at (£200-300).. if I'm going to upgrade I may as well get one of those!

Yeah, I agree.. the 8gb of RAM does sound a tad excessive for gaming but I do work with photography and of course use Photoshop, so it's not such a pointless upgrade. The price of RAM these days is so good that it doesn't really make too much of an impact. I think what I'll do is shelve ArmA 2 for a month or so, I'll return to it when some of the bugs have been ironed out and I have a new GPU. I have plenty of other games to play with until then, NFS Shift is my latest install.. I think that will keep me entertained for now! Cheers for the replies everybody, see you in a while.. if I can keep away from it that is! Easier said than done! Take it easy.

Yeah, it is an amazing game.. I can see that. I wouldn't bother with it otherwise, I just want to get it running smoothly. To be honest the biggest down side to the game for me is the AI bugs. Anyway, my specs are.. XP 32bit E8400 @ 3.6 4gb Corsair Dominator 8800GTX ASUS P5Q Pro The only weak link in the chain is the 8800GTX, but up until this game i hadn't even considered upgrading it. The 8800GTX is an amazing card, let me tell you! I can still run any game maxed out apart from ArmA 2 and Empire TW. So, in light of the new ATI 5850/70 release, I may splash out on one of those beauties. With the release of Windows 7 around the corner, I intend on making a dual boot.. using Windows 7 64bit and investing in another 4gb or Corsair Dominator RAM. Should be a pretty sweet system then.

Ok, will do.. cheers for the heads up. Danny

Ok, first of all Hi to everyone here. Secondly, congratulations to BI for making such an awesome game! After about a week of having the game I have finally managed to get my settings correct so I have best overall quality and performance. Suprisingly, I set all settings on 'very high' and 'view distance 3500', this gave me the best overall performance/quality balance. I have however disabled PhysX, and set my image preference to 'performance' in NVIDIA control panel in order to achieve this. My system is as follows; Win XP Home 32bit Intel E8400 overclocked at 3.6ghz 4gb Corsair Dominator DDR2 XFX 8800GTX ASUS P5Q Pro Samsung 22" (1680x1050) I know, I can't believe my 8800GTX is still pulling it off either! It is testament to how unbelievable a card it was and still is. Now, throughout the week I have had random crashes to desktop, with no error message, only the standard 'do you wish to send error report to Microsoft' garbage. Does anyone have any clues as to how I can start solving this problem? My patience is gradually wearing out! ---------- Post added at 05:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:33 PM ---------- Just to confirm, I have the latest drivers (190.62) for the 8800GTX installed.

Yeah, I'll try it but I have a feeling that it doesn't matter what graphic settings I use.. it just seems to close after about 10 - 15 mins of playing time. I'll report back in a bit, see if it helps. Cheers.

Good job, I think the trick is to just stick with the settings now. I've played around with mine so much recently that I'm sick and tired of it!

Yeah, AA is at very high, everything is maxed out. If you disable your PhysX in the NVIDIA control panel and set image preference to performance you should see decent gains. I also heard that if you are running a Creative XF-i card disabling the XF-i Crystalizer helps too. It didn't work for me, but it may for you. Good luck and yeah, I'd be interested to see if any of that helps.

Pretty similar systems, how are you finding the graphics settings? I have not bothered with Arma Mark yet, might take a look at some point. Are you having any crash issues?