rob151515

To be honest, I wanted to re-install the OS and Arma 2 onto the SSD but I'm too lazy and have a very tiny SSD! Like I said, initial impressions seem pretty good but I haven't had much of a chance to test it out yet.

Everyone here has been so helpful I thought I should update in case it helps someone else. Was having same problems as op except I have 2 x 6970 in cfx. If I tried to use Default my FPS suddenly dropped 10 or more and it became quite stuttery. Yesterday I purchased a 60 gb Vetex 3 SSD, moved my arma 2 folder over to it and now it seems I can use Default without issues. Only fps issues i've noticed now are when there is a lot of vegetation to render but the gpus are going flat out so thats understandable. Still doing testing but so far its looking very promising.

I do get better frame rates using both in crossfire as opposed to a single GPU - I just wish I could use the "Default" setting as I don't think the full amount of VRAM is being utilized. I get a frame rate drop when I look through the scope which usually lasts a few seconds before it rights itself and I can't put objects or terrain on anything greater than normal/high...

I have 2x6970 and have the exact same behaviour using the "Default" memory setting so you are not alone.

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this. I'm playing the ACE version of this mission with the bon recruit ai script which I added based on a suggestion from a previous poster and am absolutely loving it!. Only problem is I can't seem to get medics to heal. If I call out that I'm injured or ask them to heal somebody, they will go over to the injured soldier and stand around for a bit before reporting back with "negative". Does anyone know if this is normal? Anyone else playing this with bon recruitment ai script also seeing this behaviour?

Thanks for posting these. Was doing some testing last night and I definitely can't seem to get rid of the white pixels all over foliage when using any form of AA. Also done a bit of searching and there's already a bug posting about it here: https://dev-heaven.net/issues/15668 - doesn't look like it's going to be fixed in a hurry. :( There's a couple of people are reporting that if they use driver controlled Anisotropic Filtering instead of Application controlled it's gets rid of the issue, but it's not doing anything for me. From what I'm reading it seems to be isolated to Takistan which is pretty much the only map I have been playing on.

To be fair, the white blinding flickering light only occurs when running in crossfire I think... Are you using AA in game? What are your video settings?

I purchased my 6970 (I actually have 2 of them now, not that crossfire seems to work that well with Arma 2 anyway) and I wish I hadn't. Arma 2 is the only game that I really wanted to get running well and I haven't been able to - I have an i5 2500k oc'd to 4.3 Ghz Problems, ok where do I start... I can't use AA in game or I get white pixels spread throughout the trees and bushes. I get significant fps drop when looking through scopes and then I get flickering of buildings/textures when looking at them through a scope. Oh yeah and then if I do manage to achieve a reasonable frame rate the lighting starts blindly flickering white util the entire screen is white and I can't see! (not being able to see kinda makes it a bit unplayable) From what I have read people with ATI cards seem to have started getting problems when upgrading their drivers from 10.10 to anything later. Unfortunately there is no support for 6970 using 10.10's (I think support was added sometime around 10.12) IMO there is something not quite right with the memory setttings in Arma 2 and my 6970. From what I have read, there seem to be quite a few people out there with 6000 or 7000 series ATI cards that are having similar problems. Sorry for the rant but if it was me, I would return that card and buy something else.

Can I ask which drivers you used to be using? I have a 6970 and would like to give them a go.

I agree with the op, I also have a 6970 and there is definitely something odd going on with the default memory setting. If I switch to Very High memory my frame rate picks up significantly but I start getting lots of textures popping in all over the place. As soon as I set it to Default, my texture problems are gone but so is my frame rate. :(

Hi All, I've been tweaking/testing like everyone else here on and off over the last 6 months or so. I know I've read many posts around the forums that describe this but I think it's finally clicked for me last night as to why I can't achieve reasonable frame rates constantly in the game (and I don't think that any more tweaking of my system is going to have any effect). My System: Windows 7 64bit Core i5 2500k (OC'd to 4.4GHz) 16GB RAM (using an 8GB RAM disk for some of the PBO's). ATI HD6970 (Have 2 of these but pulled one out as I was getting worse fps with it enabled - possibly underpowered psu but haven't confirmed this yet). I'm playing the game at the 'Very High' setting (haven't touched advanced - so normal textures, normal terrain, high objects, 88% 3D resolution etc.) The game looks ok, it's a bit blurry at 88% 3D resolution but at least I'm getting a good frame rate (60+) when nothing is happening. Last night I was playing the first mission of Operation Arrowhead where you take over the air field. I've always thought that my GPU was struggling with certain scenes/objects in the game and that was why my fps was dropping so dramatically. Last night I enabled GPU Usage % in MSI Afterburner OSD while I was playing and noticed that when it's running at 70-100% GPU Usage, I'm getting great frame rates (45-60+). As soon as a fire fight breaks out it plummets and sits at anywhere from 20-40% Usage resulting in a much lower frame rate of 15-25. Looking at my CPU Usage while this is happening, 1 Core is going flat out, while the other 3 cores are hovering at about 30-40% utilization. I thought I read somewhere that the AI and rendering are processing on the same core on the CPU. If so this would explain what I am seeing - as soon as AI starts to increase and things start happening, GPU usage drops off. If this is what is happening it seems to me that the there is nothing I can do about it unless I could somehow overclock my CPU (10GHZ? :p) My question to everyone is: Do you think it's possible to achieve a reasonable frame rate (35-40+) during fire fights on my current hardware and not by lowering the video settings any further or am I just wasting my time (It seems to me that it's not possible :confused:)? Has anyone achieved this and if so, what are your specs? I haven't found any game that comes close to ARMA 2, I've tried playing others but always end up coming back. Damn you ARMA 2, you've ruined me for other games! :mad:

Did a bit more testing over the weekend, but have come up empty unfortunately. :( Yep Takistan - that's what I'm seeing. Went through the whole process - installed the drivers exactly to his specifications - no difference unfortunately. Haven't test with Chernaruss map - only tested with Takistan at this point (didn't want to introduce to many variables). I'm not sure how you are getting a min of 40 fps with those settings on Takistan, does that include walking into the middle of towns? When I run those settings, even when I do get 99% GPU load I'm definitely dropping well below 40 fps in towns with lots of buildings and trees around (and that's with a VD of 3000)... :confused: I am running with memory at 'Default' rather than 'High' though. I find that If I run with memory set to 'High' I get a lot of 'Blob' trees and low res textures not swapping to high res textures until I'm right in front of them.... As frustrating as this is, I still love this game. It is easily the best game (sorry simulation) I have ever played. :)

I didn't think i5's had hyperthreading? If they do I don't think it's enabled on my system because task manager is only show 4 processors...

I'll give them a go and report back. Thanks.

Thanks unfortunately it wasn't AToC. Switching it off had no effect on the issue I'm seeing.

I posted a new thread in this forum (http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=130220), but I've just found this thread and this looks to be what I am seeing in SP. As Burdy puts it: Maybe it's not my hardware after all?

I do like hearing things like this! Maybe things aren't so hopeless after all. What is FXAA sharpening filter? I have maxed FXAA in ARMA ini file. Would the blur be an issue as I can reproduce without moving my head (staring at a fixed point)? My memory could be a problem, (PC-10600 1333MHZ DDR3 not OC'd) but could it really account for such a large dip in performance and under utilization of the GPU?

1. 1920x1080 but as I mentioned running 3D resolution at 88% 2. Reset to Default settings (I think they are mostly application controled). 3. Running latest official patch 1.6 (Haven't tried latest Beta). 4. At this point just testing on that BIS mission because it has a fairly decent number of AI at the start (and it's fun! :D). ---------- Post added at 12:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:14 PM ---------- deszythe this does give me hope - when you say it slightly drops to 70%, is this on the same mission I mentioned? Can you test that mission for me?

At this point I am open to any suggestions, so I will give it a try and see if it helps.

When I get out of the chopper in the first mission for Operation Arrowhead (the one where you take over the airfield) my GPU usage for the first half of that mission won't go above 50%... :( Haven't tried using 12.1 preview - using 11.12 currently. Yep, using the primary PCIe Slot (Gigabyte P67 motherboard, don't have the exact model number at the moment). Have tried disabling AA and this does result in a slightly higher FPS but this is because the GPU has less to do not because its load has increased any. Played with VSync on/off last night - no effect to GPU load. I'll have a play around with shadows and PP to see if it has any effect (though I think with PP it will be the same - turning it off will give the GPU less to do so I will get a slightly higher FPS but no extra load on the GPU which is what I need).

I've got a standard spinning drive not SSD that's why I'm using the 8GB RAM disk. View Distance is currently 3600 (Default when you select 'Very High'). I did play around with this - lowering it to as low as 800 but GPU load was still low during fire fights. In this case PSU is not an issue because I have only one GPU in the system currently (not running Crossfire). Are others seeing a fully loaded GPU during fire fights?

I have EXACTLY this same issue! My specs: i5 2500k oc'd to 4.2GHZ 16gb RAM 2x6970 CFX The issue is there in both crossfire mode and non crossfire mode. I've read around and tried lots of different solutions but nothing helps. I'm also leaning towards driver issue on this one.

Thanks for going to the trouble of writing this post some great tips in there - I will try some of these out and report back. What's odd is that last night I disabled crossfire to see what would happen and weirdly enough the frame rate didn't seem to change (maybe 1-5 fps difference) but MSI afterburner was reporting only 1 gpu in use and the lag issue when spinning around in game seemed to be less of a problem than with Xfire enabled. I also overclocked the CPU to 4.2GHZ which made a small increase in performance but nothing to get excited about - tried this with both Xfire enabled and disabled. I should also mention that I'm not running with AA on because of the white dotted trees that occur when I do - this should boost performance somewhat but still only getting 35-45 fps on average. I'm starting to wonder if this may be a catalyst driver issue...

Been doing some further testing (using 'Hike in the Hills') and it looks like I can get fairly smooth frame rates (40's - 50's) if I select 'Very High' and let Arma select the advanced settings. It's great getting smooth frame rates but seems a shame I can't run smoothly with higher graphics settings considering the specs I now have: i5 2500k 16gb RAM 2x6970CFX (Already tried ocing the CPU and GPU's) Should I be getting better performance than < 25 fps with everything maxed (view distance at approx. 4500) or is this as good as I can expect? I seem to get good frame rates using the 'Very High' video memory setting with everything maxed until I push out the View Distance a little bit (over 3600) then suddenly it becomes very laggy (50-60 fps down to 15 - 20 fps) - only when I turn around in the game. If I keep my head looking forward it's great! unfortunately occasionally I need to turn around and check behind me. Its as if each time I turn around it needs to load the scene behind me into memory again... I've tried using the 'Default' video memory setting - this fixes the 'Turning around' issue but the frame rate instantly drops to a constant 25-30 fps everywhere. :(

I have 2 crossfired 6970's and I agree with this. Getting terrible frame rates running when this setting is set to 'Default'. Getting better frame rates running with video memory set to 'Very High' but by doing so I'm finding I'm getting far more textures popping in all over the place. I can't win!!!!!!