RuecanOnRails

@smoke, Why?, because we are given the tools to do so. Unlike other games we actually get to control our personal experience with the game. There are very few options/settings/configs that you cannot change in order to fine tune the your optimal playability. Do not fall into the group of people who set it to normal, high, ultra then complain. I think it would be best for Arma 3 to remove the presets all together and instead have tutorial style mission where you go through and make changes to settings. Choice and customization is a privilege we are privy to in the Arma series. perhaps when Arma 2 gets full integration/ported into Arma 3 people can enjoy the same performance they're used to running those assets and just ignore the Arma 3 terrain and assets that "cause issues". A lot of poor performance threads directly correlate to comparing both fps and presets to various games. Such as the common one "I run BF3 on Ultra with 120fps, But can only run Arma 3 Ultra at 40 FPS, something must be wrong" Other than trying to explain the way Arma works, they are usually a lost cause and won't hear any of it. I'm not saying the OP is one of these people. I also grew up with games that at the time would occasionally push the limits of current hardware and require purchasing new hardware just to play a new game. In some cases even a generation or two of new hardware was needed just to get it up to playable levels. IMHO, modern games have fallen into a rut with a generalization that anything can run them. They should not be "playable" on an average gaming grade 2+ year old hardware, let alone 5 years with settings beyond the low/medium settings. Even struggle with such low settings. I'm currently on a 3770k clocked at 4.8gh, crossfire 7970's at 1175/1725, an SSD, and ramdisk to help load some arma pbo's quicker. I have little to no issues unless I find a server running substandard hardware, high latency, or just running a poorly made mission. Even though my hardware is more than decent, I'm always looking for the next upgrade. Unfortunately Intel haswell line-up was a flop, I'm anxious to see the new AMD GPU though. Besides all that, the screen shot you posted shouldn't happen regardless of performance or settings. That's a bug and not related to the thread. I agree that's unplayable when textures just disappears, if it's repeatable post it on the feedback tracker. Of course the game got worse performance wise on launch when going from DEV build to release. The Dev build was a few weeks a head of the final release. Changes made prior to launch were rolled back, they are still being added back in. This was done due to the cut off date for a finished product. If you had better performance (I think everyone did) the day before release on the DEV build, be patient. Those optimizations still are slowly making it back into the current dev builds.

Poor frames or not. I'm more than happy to play a game of such scale and exquisite feature set at low fps. The issue is not the performance/optimization as much as it is the ability to change absolutely *everything* in terms of settings and configs. Most people are used to the "plug-n-play" and rely on hard presets such as normal, high, ultra. Arma 3 does not fit into that category of plug-n-play, you have to sit there and meticulously go through every possible config option to find what works for you. There is no one size fits all, a playable config for some might not be playable for others. You really need to spend hours finding your suitable config and stop watching an irrelevant FPS counter. Go beyond the in-game video settings and go to the config files in profile directory.

The 7990 is a dual gpu card similar to a 690. It uses two 7970's in crossfire but on one card. A single 7970 can currently be found rather cheap, even cheaper buying 2 7970's vs 1 7990 for the same performance/configuration. However depending on your budget I would recommend waiting for the next iteration of AMD cards which is being announced in several hours. The price for the flagship card is expected to be around $550 -$600 (nothing confirmed or denied at this time). It rumored to out perform any current GPU solution out there in most cases. For some benchmarks and other general info check out this site https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/58794-r9-290x-benchmarks/ in the next day or so be prepared for a storm of news as the NDA's and embargo's should end for people that have had hands on experiences. But back to your budget, it really depends what you're looking for. A great deal and performance can be found with a single 7970, the best performance to dollar would be a 7950 at this time. Generally speaking when looking for a new piece of hardware for your computer, look towards hardware and tech forums, rather than game specific forums as opinions should be less biased and more knowledgeable.

You're likely using the DEV/ build of the game. In properties for Arma 3 select the betas tab and check which version you are running. *I recommend running the DEV build for the latest updates, fixes, and features before everyone else on the stable build.

Perhaps consider the DEV branch. While you may find less servers to play on, you will get to enjoy the latest fixes, features, and content before others. You can switch between dev and stable by finding the game in steam right clicking and selecting properties. Then under the betas tab you can select the version of the game to keep up to date. Dev updates occur daily, while stable branch updates are set to occur about every 2 weeks I believe. As for bugs and reporting. There is a feedback tracker which allows you to easily report, or vote up already discovered bugs. (It's always best to check the DEV branch to see if a bug you're about to report isn't already fixed) http://feedback.arma3.com/view_all_bug_page.php

If you're having issues with the numerous commands to keep your AI squad alive, there's a couple things you can try. Practice and learning the options, along with where they are to quickly navigate and give commands. Nothing beats practicing by sitting back and sending your squad(s) to fight for you. If that doesn't sound like much fun, you can always try voice control via a third party app. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?150814-Voice-Activation-for-Arma-3-via-VAC-Builder-Profile-and-other-software

A 120hz monitor is able to refresh the viewed screen image 120 times per second. In theory that can be synced to frames per second using Vsync. With a 120hz monitor you could only display a max of 120 fps anything higher is *wasted*. Just because a game is unable to reach 120 fps, does not mean it won't work on a 120hz monitor. It will simply show the same image a couple times. When using a 120hz monitor but only getting 30fps, each frame will last 4 refresh cycles. If you get 60 fps, each frame will then last 2 refresh cycles and so on. You're question of will Arma 3 take full advantage of your 120hz monitor capable of displaying a constant 120fps. The answer is no, but that doesn't make a difference. There are many reasons for owning a high hz monitor outside of Arma 3. You will likely find it difficult to reach 120 fps in most games running a single 7970 and a low cpu overclock unless you lower ingame settings.

They can vary heavily from mission to mission. You got your standard ones like buildings, plants, rocks, etc any LOD object which you frequently see changing in game. If you want to be precise, try running process monitor and filter out only arma3.exe and .pbo reads http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx it will record 10 minutes of content so run around in a mission you play often for ten minutes then stop and export the data to a spreadsheet app. There's an thread about I/O for Arma 2 which you can read about setting it up and try to adapt it for Arma 3. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?88629-ArmA-2-I-O-analysis-results

If you're still having issues, you can try running command prompt as an admin and set up a junction that way. Cut and paste the files to their new location, then open command prompt as administrator and type mklink /J "path" "path" typing mklink /? will bring up the help and list of options. http://windows7themes.net/windows-7-mklink-command-use-to-create-symbolic-links.html

That's strange, is it giving any errors? I've currently got my install spread across a few locations. It's installed on a storage array, but actually sitting on an SSD with my main OS along with several files which I cycle onto ramdisk. Once you've got the link shell installed, make a backup your original install (incase something goes wrong it's easier to just use the backup) cut and paste some files to your SSD, ramdisk or wherever you wanted to move them. Now highlight the newly moved files, right click and select "pick link source" Go back to your install directly, right click and select "drop as" and try symbolic link. If that doesn't work, try dropping it in as a junction. A junction should work better in a server set up. While they perform generally the same, junctions are processed at the server, while a symbolic links are processed on the client. Remote access into a computer will see junctions, but not symbolic links.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Electronics-EVO-Series-2-5-Inch-MZ-7TE1T0BW/dp/B00E3W16OU Consumer grade SSD's now at sizes of 1TB for under $700. give it some time and the price will lower. For the best performance you can use both an SSD and a Ramdisk. Using symbolic links you can move files anywhere and have them appear in a different location. Such as moving high I/O Arma files to a ramdisk and linking them back to the install directory. Allowing you to utilize the speed of your SSD for the game, but some .pbo's which are heavy in reads can be placed on a ramdisk for extra performance. There's no need to have a massive ramdisk, as you can pick and choose individual files which need the speed most. A Ramdisk of only 1 or 2 GB can provide decent room for a few PBO's. http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

I don't think you understand how crossfire works, gets implemented, and who adds support for it. Crossfire support is not up to the game devs. Crossfire must be added at driver level from your respected graphics card manufacturer. Wait for them to update drivers with crossfire profiles for various games. Side note, crossfire does work by the way. It worked in Arma 2 and it works in Arma 3. Perhaps the scalability you're looking for isn't there yet, or you're being bottlenecked by the cpu, hdd, or even ram.

Yes you put the OS on the SSD and not really anything else other than a few things you want speeded up. In general SSD's have a much smaller capacity which it why you want to keep only high priority things on them. Using symbolic links, you can easily keep everything installed on a storage HDD, then move them to the SSD when you want to speed them up and link them back to their install directory using symbolic links. In other words an SSD will greatly improve your overall experience both with the OS, and with anything installed on the SSD. http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html

This got ugly quick haha. Just wanted to add a note about bi-pods and my opinion on it. When BIS add a feature to the game, they follow through fully with that feature the best they can. This means for bi-pods to be implemented they have to work fully for both player and AI, along with identifying surfaces which can be used to deploy the bi-pods. While it may sound simple, it would add a bunch of extra routines for the AI which would cause a performance drop. The AI when in combat would constantly be posed with the additional options of whether deploy, where to deploy, if they remain in cover while deployed, and when to return to formation. By allowing the community to create and implement scripts which allow only players to set up bi-pods is faster, and has no performance hit. You also aren't required to allocate man power for coding these features while on a deadline. A lot of these small "features" which seem easy are left to the community because the amount efforts involved in fully implementing them just isn't feasible. Especially with such a talented modding community which is able to add exactly what they want and nothing more/less.

You will likely have to look to community mods. You can also import objects from previous Arma assets into Arma 3. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?152706-All-in-Arma-(AiA)-TKOH-OA-A2-A1-merge-with-A3

O & O Defrag. Works well for my needs. After setting it up and keeping in the background, it will keep your files in one piece. I use an SSD for primary which never needs to be defragged, my storage drives rarely need any maintenance. If you're looking to squeeze out better performance and less noticeable LOD switching. Consider getting a SSD, then set up symbolic links, and ramdisk for extra points. Keep the entire game on the SSD, then place a couple of the most read files into a ramdisk using symbolic links. The amount of files you place into ramdisk will greatly depend how much ram you have to spare.

I didn't get anything... Perhaps you stole my email?! Likely a bug, I'd be concerned if it started happening with time a newsletter went out.

VAC works in certain situations. Arma 3 is not one of them. Give Battle Eye time to update and stop raging please. I'd also like to mention steam VAC is far from perfect, even with the games it works well in, there are still hackers running rampant.

Steams VAC, will not solve anything. If anything Steams VAC will hinder Arma 3 more than it helps. Battle Eye is rather efficient, if you like, report the hacks to help notify them and push an update.

I've seen mention of the fabled todo list many times, any chance we get a sneak peak into it's content for upcoming features? I like to imagine the todo list as a colourful wall of sticky notes with varied colours depending on priority. My guess it looks something like this.

What OS are you on? For windows 7 to change pagefile open start menu and right click on computer > select properties > left side click advanced system settings > select advanced tab > performance settings > advanced tab. There you will see your virtual memory pagefile and you're able to change the size and where it's stored. I like to keep the minimum size and maximum size the same, so if you have 8gb of ram put min and max to 8192. This will lower the total writes for dynamic size changing. If you're not on windows 7, or need further help type into google or preferred search engine "change pagefile in *insert OS here*" The pagefile works by offloading current data stored in ram to a swap file onto a local drive to free up ram for more demanding tasks. It's likely windows or other programs are using up ram in the background, as Arma 3 requests more ram overhead, windows will move older programs and data to the pagefile. If the pagefile is disabled or too small it will display the error that you're running low on memory and suggest closing the program which is demanding more.

Honestly, what do you expect steam to do? Are you trying wanting a refund from them for some reason? Steam only distributes games, they can't help with troubleshooting games. Unless your experiences issue with the steam client or steam products. If you post your issues or questions here you will likely get help, I'd advise against stepping into the steam discussion boards for arma 3, it's a mess right now.

This has been addressed many times. It's a windows error. Enable, or increase the size of your Pagefile. Try making your pagefile at least the same size as your total ram.

Another thing you could try is monitoring the usb logs to see if it gets an error. Look into an update for them as well from your motherboard vendor's site. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_log_view.html Although yogi may be correct if everyone experiencing this issue is on windows 8. If it is a known issue, please post a link to more info on it. I don't experience any of this, but I'm on windows 7.

Exactly. Unless the projectile fired has some sort of secondary source of propulsion such as two stage rockets, the velocity and impact force will continuously lessen once it is fired. It will maintain the maximum force for a short distance, but it will not and can not exceed the initial force used. Twitching and brushing off getting shot, is accurate as the characters in game have no response or method of feeling pain. Pain is not simulated in the game. Just think of every character in the game being jacked up on morphine and PCP.