jurrasstoil

You have to buy hardware that doesn't exist. Join one of the multiple threads discussing this problem: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147533-Low-CPU-utilization-amp-Low-FPS http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162894-re-Beyond-recommended-requirements-Terrible-Performance http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162258-FPS-SP-is-great-MP-is-horrid-Tried-several-community-suggestions-Still-lost

Yeah, welcome to the club. Join one of the multiple threads discussing this problem: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147533-Low-CPU-utilization-amp-Low-FPS http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162894-re-Beyond-recommended-requirements-Terrible-Performance http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162258-FPS-SP-is-great-MP-is-horrid-Tried-several-community-suggestions-Still-lost tl;dr specs are fine, engine is still not great, performance stinks, nothing helps, all hope lost.

Well, it's the same engine as Arma 2, which had the same problem. They can't be surprised that the very problem that plagued Arma 2, carried over to A3 if they didn't fix it. Just because you slap a new number behind the game name and the engine name doesn't mean that everything is improved all of the sudden.

I just made a little test run with AI engaging in a town. The "Mission" is quite simple. Just 2 Rifle Squads and 1 Fire Squad on each side of a town for a total of 40 AI soldiers, Move Command with 'Open Fire, engange at will' to clash in the middle of town. In the first run I sit on a hill overwatching the town, in the second run i'm miles away on the other end of the map. No player movement of course. Run #1: Run #2: Both runs are about 5 minutes long (as you can see on the X-axis of the graphs). I think the weirdest part, is that the AI clashing in the town (engaging and path finding) costs a specific amount of frames per second and not a percentage of the total fps. The difference between the most and the least fps in both runs is about 25ish fps. ~58 down to ~33 and ~95 down to ~70. You'd expect CPU Usage to go up when the AI is starting to enter the town and pathfinding while engaging enemies, but stays mostly the same. However, the GPU Usage drops significantly stronger when I'm closer to the city. After about 5 minutes 50-75% of the AI's are dead and you can see the fps slowly climb again once less AI are fighting and pathfinding. Without any AI, my fps are about 62fps in the first run and about 97fps in the second one and since nothing is going on they stay like that of course. Specs: Xeon 1230v3 @ 3.5ghz on all cores GTX660 8gb 1333 DDR3 win7 x64 Game is installed on a Samsung HD155UI (5.400 1.5TB HDD)

I think the last time "Defrag your harddrive" was legitimate advice to gain more performance was in the days of Windows 98 SE...

Depends on what you need it for. Is it primarily/mainly for Arma (or gaming in general)? ➥ take an i5 4570 with a B85 or H87 board or if you feel like overclocking take an i5 4670k with a Z87 Board. Arma won't use the HT the i7s provide, so it would be a waste of money. Is it somewhat for Arma, but mostly for cpu-intesive applications that can use a lot of threads (Like rendering, encoding, video editing, etc.)? ➥ take the Xeon 1230v3 instead of the i7 4770/4771. It's basically the same CPU, it just has 100/200mhz less (which won't make any noticable difference) and no iGPU (which you aren't going to use anyways). Here's a link to compare the three CPUs on the intel ARK.

Like i said: semantics. I wasn't arguing that the current state of the engine and its performance is anywhere close to tolerable, but rather that there is a CPU bottleneck that is created by the engine and that a faster CPU (high singlecore performance) can improve fps. I'm not saying "Y'all should buy new rigs!" at all tho.

Yeah, a high clocked i5 would be better, but i didn't buy the xeon for arma. I'm using it mainly for rendering, where HT is quite useful and it was a cheaper option than a 4670k (which i would have to get up to 4.5 to make up for the lack of HT) with a (more expensive) Z board and a (more expensive) good cooler. An i5 at 3.5ghz will give the same performance as a Xeon (of the same generation of course) at 3.5ghz in Arma tho. Performance isn't cut in half, Arma just doesn't use the extra computational power that HT could provide. Haswell provides about twice the singlecore performance compared to the Phenom II.

Of course not, but you'll have at least barely playable fps. I had the same problem and switched from an old Phenom II X4 to a Xeon 1230v3. On the same servers, with the same mission/mod/map and same amount of players i now have playable fps. They are still not great, but what I'd consider somewhat playable. However, like I said before, this should not be necessary. A decent Quadcore like a Phenom II X4 or a Q6600/Q9550 should be able to give you playable fps in MP. I guess we mean the same thing and are arguing over semantics really. For me, it's a CPU bottleneck, but one that is the engine's fault.

http://ark.intel.com/products/29765

Yep, you are basically struggling with the same issue a lot of other people are struggling with as well. The Sticky about Low CPU utilization & Low FPS is strongly connected to this problem. CPUs that should be able to handle at least somewhat playable framerates are bottlenecking the entire system. You have to throw an unreasonable amount of high singlecore power (ie. current intel cpus) at the engine to get even barely playable performance. This problem is as old as the RV engine itself unfortunately. So, yeah, don't get your hopes up too high. I mean, maybe the additional press and customers that the DayZ craze brought to bohemia might pressure them into fixing it (or at least try to).

Yeah, your CPU bottlenecks the fps. I mean, next time you get bad fps, try lowering all you graphic settings to the lowest setting and your resolution to 640x480. You'll see that your fps won't improve.

If it takes you a day to download 800Mb, you are probably better off not signing up for the dev builds. Like TonyGrunt said, it's updated quite frequently and the updates aren't small usually. Right now I'm downloading another 400Mb of updates for the dev build.

All of them when I still had my Phenom II.

Tons and tons of snake oil should help as well. _______ Regarding the Phenom II: I had a Phenom II X4 945 myself till 2 weeks ago. It ran A3 and A2 horribly. Switched to a Xeon 1230v3 and now it runs pretty well. However, the performance the Xeon provides should be what the Phenom should be capable of in A3 and the Xeon should perform way better than it does. I could play all the games that have been released recently perfectly fine on the Phenom. Only A2 and A3 ran like complete ****. Your hardware really isn't the problem, rather how it is utilized.

nope.

This then also requires a Z87 Board which costs an additional 30-40€. The cheapest performance i5 would be the i5 4570 (165€) + B85/H87 Board (like an ASRock B85 Pro4 at 70€) which would cost you about 230€. The 4670k (200€) + Z87 Board (like an Asrock Z87 Pro3 for 90€) would cost you 290€. On top you'll need a strong cooler to overclock the 4670k which means another 35-40€, while the normal 4570 can easily and quietly be cooled with a 20€ cooler.

I doubt that. The screenshot above is an 1230v3@3.5 in the Helicopter Showcase. Here is a screenshot of the Combined Arms Showcase during the firefight at the camp: In MP it drops a few percent depending the server and mission. Plus there is a sticky that is dedicated to the low cpu usage with almost 2,000 replies and a feedbacktracker ticket (#716) talking about the same thing. It will work. Make sure that the tall heatspreaders don't interfer with your CPU Cooler though.

I'm sorry, but this is pretty much not that great advice. In multicore applications the 8350 or 8320 have really good price/performance ratio and usually beat the current intel i5 quad cores, but in games multicore is useless for the most part. The current intel processors offer about 50% more singlecore performance. Arma barely uses 4 cores. It utilizes one core heavily and 3 others just a bit here and there. So, if you want the best performance in Arma or any other game at the moment except for Crysis 3 (which is able to use 8 cores/threads), you are better off going with the i5 4570 than with the 8320. Here is the core usage in a rather ideal situation in Arma 3: ie. it's better to have 4 (or especially 1) strong cores/threads than 8 mediocre cores/threads.

With pleasure: and that the AI numbers have little effect on the client FPS. One would expect wrong. This is not how MP works in our engine. While path-planning and some decisions are done owner-side only (which is server side for most AI), the simulation itself needs to be performed everywhere (the only optimization done is that simulation of far away units is done much less frequently). I am sorry to disappoint you, but some things are really too hard and we are not willing to spend the time on them. From this dev heaven bug report.

Well, I "fixed" my MP fps or at least made it less bad. I've now gone from totally unplayable 10-12 fps to a barely playable 20-30fps on the same servers with the same mission and amount of players. The solution was simple. All I had to do is shell out 300€ to upgrade to a Xeon 1230v3 from my Phenom II X4 945. Sure, I could have paid 50€ less and gotten a 4570, but I'm using the PC for other things as well and they can make use of 8 Threads. Still quite the joke and far from "great performance".

It should be listed under Configure -> Controls -> Controller -> Customizable Controllers

Is this meant to be sarcastic? Last time I checked, 50-80% of my hardware wasn't used when the fps went down the drain.

Post specs.

BLUFOR Rifleman (Carrier Lite (Green) according to Inventory): BLUFOR Grenadier (Carrier GL Rig (Green) according to Inventory):