Rich_R

Second the Logitech G35's. They have the ability to simulate surround sound, aren't too heavy and the mic seems to work really well. One of the better headphone mic setups I've played with. I was interested to read about the players that use a mic along with the speaker set up though....

Tonci87, which part of the map was that excercise filmed on?

If you search the forums many people swear by leaving the setting at default, but like the previous poster I've not experienced any consistent gains or losses in performance by changing this option.

For the crossfire fix rename your arma ao exec file to arma.exe, crossfire will magically work in arma again!

Yep, I love this game so much I boight it twice, once through Steam and again on disc to manage the patching system. Needless to say, I use the disc system. Like a prior poster said, love steam but not for this game.

My 2 cents....current owner of 2 5870's in crossfire (upgraded in May '10) I've always had Nvidia cards before this, performance aside, Nvidia is MUCH more user-friendly with drivers (installation, patches etc). Performance wise, 580 aside ATI had cornered the market on sheer muscle in their cards. BUT, all this power is handicapped by the inconsistent dirvers and ATI cards crippled by any kind of AA implentation. I have been so frustrated with not only the hassle with installation of drivers but also the inevitable rolling back of said drivers when they seem to do more harm than good. I have been seriously considering swapping out the crossfire 5870's for one single 580. But there is supposedly a lot of movement in the videocard industry right now with everyone holding their breath to see how ATI responds to the 580 (and 570) and how Nvidia responds in turn. It could mean a drop in the price of higher end video cards. From what I've seen crossfire is hit and miss in general with gaming and doesn't appear to offer any advantages with ARMA 2. I proved this to myself last night, starting crossfire enabled and disabled resulting in exactly the same benchmarks with both. Sorry about the lengthy reply, but wanted to give some insight to what I've looked into and learned over the last week or so looking at the different video card options.

Thinking about going from my 5870 crossfire set up for a single 580. Could all the Arma 2 players who are using this card post their benchmarks (ingame ie 01, 08 etc) and what settings including the draw distance? It would be incredibly helpful for the final decision. Thanks

My current set up is as follows; I7-960 processor 2 5870's in crossfire 12 GB ram Win 7 64 bit My question is this, will I see any dramatic performance increase if I change over to a Nvidia 580? The main complaints I have with ATI cards are the texture popping (although I don't think its as near as bad as some people) and just the messy way ATI releases its drivers (never work properly don't really clean the old ones out that well, etc) I'm looking for feedback from both Nvidia and ATI crossfire users. Thanks

I know the manual can be found on Steam (product page) not sure if its in Italian though....good luck!

Second this request with an add-on; With the apparent challenges the latest patch (1.55) has brought, maybe an all-clear that the issues seen in the latest patch have been fixed and its good to upgrade beyond 1.54? While I haven't read every post on the latest post, I am impressed overall with Arma players who haven't resorted to name-calling or torrents about the problems with the latest patch. Think it shows the level iof maturity and understanding from the player-base that BI is just trying to improve thier game with strange things sometimes happenng to good people:D

Replying to Monkman Great chopper pilot in that video...looked like a great battle...might throw my name into the hat with that weekly battle.

As I read the Bit Tech review I was starting to feel the Nvidia-longing. I've always had Nvidia cards but went with a pair of 5870's when building my gaming rig about seven months ago. They've been great as far as raw performance is concerned, but ATI and their drivers are the worse. But Bit Tech said it themselves, looks like another round of card wars is about to take place so get ready for some serious leaps in Video performance!!!

Tried it again with the amended code...worked perfectly...thanks!

I've followed the very helpful links to the various resources offered up in these forums by cant find the answers to the following three questions; Want to have a smoke marker already popped when the mission starts (the type used for marking pick up locations), how do I do that? I know how to have to have text appear in the middle or bottom of the screen but how do I make it come across in green or blue conversation mode as if it's a preset response from hq? I would like to script an allied aircraft blowing up at a certain point. I can create the trigger but how to create the on board explosion? Thanks for the help or links!

Just wanted to give feedback on the advice quite kindly given; Only Razor -the set damage worked perfectly...exactly wanted I wanted...thanks I couldn't get the smoke to work....followed the instructions but nothing seems to happen. Ranger - your suggestion worked perfectly as well, I think considering this is my first mission, it'll do in a pinch without having to get deep in a description file and CSV files. AZ Coder I do have the community pages bookmarked but for a lot of the stuff unless you know what you're looking at it doesnt make much sense. I've downloaded a copy of the guide and looks like it'll be printed off when no ones looking at work tomo:)

Great stuff, I'll try those tonight! Thanks for the quick response!

I saw that fix, but couldn't get around the LOD and texture issues, so there really was no point to fix the pink hue. The point of this story (and every driver release since 10.4) is the disappointment with ATI over the quality of drivers. This is the first time owning an ATI card (or in this case two) for gaming and my amazement at the hardware they've pulled together with the resulting performance is ruined by the driver support. This comes from both the drivers themselves and how difficult ATI makes it to install. Not only am I very happy for those that are using the 10.10's, but envious of the performance boosts. But with my system throwing up the texture and LOD problems, I'll just carry on with the 10.4's. Thanks for your input though.

Decided to go back to the 10.4 drivers. Aside from the texture and LOD problems with Arma 2, I saw the same pinkish hue others complained about on the ATI forums. Heres the thing, downloaded the 10.10 profiles and saw the OA benchamrk jump by 4 fps. Interesting.

Wasn't sure if this should go in this section or not, but I caved in and upgraded from the very reliable (as far as Arma is concerned) 10.4 ATI drivers. Everything after the 10.4's brought issues with the textures loading when they should an effectively messing up the LOD. I'd read about great perfomance boosts with the 10.10 (a,b,c hotfixes as well) and decided to upgrade. Ran the benchmarks right after installing adn voila, anywhere from 1 - 11 fps improvement! Guess what, the texture and LOD issue is back. Uniform detail can be fuzzy up close as well as the trees and bushes. I can pause the game, come back and it fixes itself, but thats not the gaming experience I'm looking for. The problem is the problems are all inconsistent. It was a real pain to install the drivers to the point they wouldn't crash the computer so I'm hesitant to roll back to the 10.4's straight away. But the 10.4's ran flawless with textures loading great. Anyone have any idea's before I roll back?

It looks like you and I were posting about the same issue and question. In my post while the performance has improved, the texture and LOD problem has reared its ugly head. If I can't find anyway to fix it, I'll just go back to the 10.4' which seemed to work best for me.

I'm still stuck in the loop. Even after choosing restart, I'll complete the bike race but have the same two choices....end or restart. End takes me to the beginning of one week later as well. I've even tried to replay the mission before it to help out with the bug, but it doesn't seem to matter. Now I never successfully capture the bad guys in the mission prior to one week either....not sure if that affects One Week later... Any ideas?

I had the same problem after the patch/BAF upgrade. Linked my problem back to the ATI drivers not playing well with the new BI patches/upgrades. Rolled my ATI drivers back to 10.4 and all the long texture loads disappeared!

I'm no expert but dont think it has anything to with Hyperthreading. Had exactly the same problem (just like your attached pic) which came about after the last Arma Patch, but it wasn't BI but the catalyst drivers. I rolled back my drivers to 10.4 and not only did the textures and LOD fix themselves but the game ran noticably faster and smoother. Since I did that however, ATI issued an updated to the 10.8 drivers (b maybe) but I didnt want to mess with the performance I've been enjoying with the 10.4's. As for hyperthreading, I just read an forum post where a gamer tested the same games with hyperthreading on and then off. There was hardly any difference. The exception to this would be (supposedly) if you over clock. By taking the hyperthreading off, the CPU runs cooler and allows more room for hyperthreading.

Ditto to the above post. Rolled back to 10.4 and the problems I experienced with textures not loading quickly or fully enough disappeared. Took the same step of renaming the exe and viola 47 fps in the benchmark (slightly more eye-candy than Gabe....lol)