Dual core, Quad Core and SLI...

So Armed Assault is a very heavy GPU intensive game, rich graphics, huge worlds! Now I heard the other day from a friend that Arma doesn't support dual core… Is this really so? I was also told that it doesn't support SLI! Is this also the case?

If so, why are games being created that don't support the technologies available to them. I thought the concept of producing a game was to allow for the ultimate gaming experience? I'm not having a rant here, I'm just a little overwhelmed that a game that uses so much power to even run on the latest hardware isn't compensated in using the technologies available to aid the game and player. It has always been in the mind of game developers to produce games with the richest experience, make them the best they can be for all. Producing a game which lacks all these technologies makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever...

It’s like selling a Ferrari that uses diesel for fuel.

Can someone please confirm that this game doesn’t support dual core. Quad core or even SLI?

It run's well on my 8800GTX but thats not the point, I'm considering the majority of people that don't have the latest graphic cards, how do they play the game without it looking like something from 3 years ago?

It’s like selling a Ferrari that uses diesel for fuel.

Yes, this is indeed considered for future sportcars, because modern high charged and high rpm diesel engines have a general higher performance.

What I dont understand ist:

Why am I able to play the game at normal to high detail with Just an old AMD XP3200, 1025MB DDR RAM, and EVGA 7800GS CO 256MB ?

It runs on veryhigh also, but slower and the visual difference is not worth it.

The game doesn't support dualcore as like 95% of all other games...

Dual core is still quite new, and as this is actually an upgrade from OFP and uses an older engine, it hasn't got dual core support in it. Making such changes is quite hard and especially when they started working on it, there weren't that many people with a dual core CPU.

For SLI I thought it worked but had some troubles in vista because of a driver-related problem(this might already been fixed though)

For SLI I thought it worked but had some troubles in vista because of a driver-related problem(this might already been fixed though)

Arma is supported in SLI-mode by Nvidia.

You just have to have the very latest drivers. For Vista I believe there is only one driver that actually enables SLI.

"Supporting" dual-cores or not isnt that big a difference in performance. Usually 5-15%. Atleast with Intel.

Ach but diesel is actually better!

ArmA may not take advantage of multi-threading (use more than one of the cores in a multi-core processor), of course it would have been desirable if it did and there is no reason to assume BIS doesn't want to take full advantage of modern technology. So. It just didn't make into this version of BIS' game engine. If multi-threading is not present in the next game title coming from BIS, then I start to think what they have been taking...

Just because the game itself doesn't take advantage of multiple cores doesn't mean that there is no benefit. Current video card drivers are multi-threaded so you will still get a decent performance increase. It also allows background programs to use a seperate core and not interfere with the game's performance.

Ive just spent me sunday fitting in the 2nd 8800GTS and then the next few hours installing the drivers, to find SLI not working.. Few google searchs later, Find its a bios Issue and to use the Beta's.  Use the Beta's, reboot after flashing and my OS could not be found.  Not being that PC savy, Panick set in. Bit of BIOS fiddling later i spot the RAID was off. One lesson learned I guess. End product....

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 5200+ 2613

Memory: 4096

Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC. M2N4-SLI

BIOS: 902beta

Graphics Cards Manufacturer: Inno3D

Dual NVIDIA GPUs: 2x NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320mb

Driver: Nvidia 158.18

Sound: Realtek AC'97 Audio

Hard Drive(s): C:\ (465.8 GB)

Benchmarks: 3Dmark06 score: 9461

Notes: Vista Home Premium 32bit

Now SLI works and FX looks freaking sweet.  FS9 flashs in and out like an Auto Alt-Tab.. And ArmA , the mission i tried.. Basic Helicopter manuevers. Whilst walking the screen would flash white, and slowly build up to the speed that would set epileptics off. Everything then washs out white, resets again to normal textures and restarts the whole flashing process. Entering the helicopter stopped it, apon starting the engine it flashed a few times but cleared.. It appeared again for about 6 seconds on the way to get the troops.

Only other issue i had was the Fog.. Coulda been the weather   And the 'rubber band effect'  (smooth then the mild pause.. smooth etc)  Im used to it from a game called Trainz and funny thing I found was that in the helicopter, There was no rubber banding.. just smooth flying. Till it crashed into a desktop.

My distance is set at about 5km and most settings are above average, The game looks sweet.. If only I could enjoy it for longer than 2 mins because so far it doesnt go much longer than that and just crashs to desktop.

Is there any hope a patch could bring it up to run on Dual core\SLI's better than it does now or is it another package to shelve and wait for next offering from them ? (Hey I still love their work, even if it doesnt currently work for me)

Bit of a waffle n rant but oh well..  

Please use this thread for technical issues in Arma.

And the 'rubber band effect'  (smooth then the mild pause.. smooth etc)

I was getting this problem and my FPS was around 30, and when it stutered the FPS didn't lower. Its to do with the refresh rate on LCD monitors, or so i believe.

I have Quad SLI and i'd like to know if all four of my GPUs are actually working when i play ArmA. I can't make out what the load balancing graph is trying to tell me. Can someone shed some light on this thing...