ArmA2 / OA (low) performance issues

Ok heres the deal, i bought a brand new gaming pc (worth a fair bit) and thought i would like to see what it can do so buy arma 2 with it.

I take them home and install Arma 2 and it was soo laggy i mean it was stupidly laggy (fps lagg not ping) i cant even get it to run smooth unless i drop settings to very low and have the lowest 3d resolution but the it just looks blurry and teared. Normally i try to run very low settings with 100% 3d resolution and still laggy.

my pc specs are: Quad 2.4ghz amd phenom

4gb ram

Radeon HD 4850 512mb

windows vista home premium 64 bit

wtf is going is there any know issues with my card or is my pc a waste of money

i know this is a very demanding game but to get major lag on low?! is there any performace fixes?

BTW i got all patched to 1.03

Alright, all "poor performance on my power rig" discussions go in here now.

Please refrain from starting any more weak performance threads as it makes no sense to have 50 different threads about one and the same thing.

There are some issues with performance in some missions, even people with Core i7 processors are struggling to run some campaign missions properly. There are some tweaks you can try at ArmaHolic ArmA2 Optimization thread (but don't expect them to do any miracles):

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73947

Whether the situation is improved in future patches, time will tell.

btw. Nice thing to have sticky thread for perfomance issues instead of gazillion small ones. Thanks W0lle.

That's an okay system but not exactly a monster-rig. If you have a large flatscreen I can imagine you might have a few issues running this game.

1. ArmA only uses two of your four cores, so I think you would've been better off with a 3.0ghz Athlon X2 (for instance).

2. Your video card only has 512mb, 1GB alone would be worth an extra 5fps according to this pre-release review, and a 4870 or 4890 significantly more.

3. Vista is the worst performing Windows for games in general and ArmA in particular.

All in all, not the best fit/mix for this particular game.

Ok heres the deal, i bought a brand new gaming pc (worth a fair bit) and thought i would like to see what it can do so buy arma 2 with it.

I take them home and install Arma 2 and it was soo laggy i mean it was stupidly laggy (fps lagg not ping) i cant even get it to run smooth unless i drop settings to very low and have the lowest 3d resolution but the it just looks blurry and teared. Normally i try to run very low settings with 100% 3d resolution and still laggy.

my pc specs are: Quad 2.4ghz amd phenom

4gb ram

Radeon HD 4850 512mb

windows vista home premium 64 bit

wtf is going is there any know issues with my card or is my pc a waste of money

i know this is a very demanding game but to get major lag on low?! is there any performace fixes?

BTW i got all patched to 1.03

Look at my specs.....I have poor performance as well along with Crash to Desktop and BSOD issues.

The biggest problem I had that was killing my performance was caused by myself. After a bunch of reading I found this little gem that fixed the graphics loading slow issue. It was caused by me setting the "Video memory" to high or very high...turns out for a 295 if you use these your actually using less of your video memory. I turned it back to "default" which is using the exact amount of video ram on your card and my FPS jumped back up to 40's instead of 20's and the slow loading textures problem also vanished. Also as a test I tried setting the video memory to low....this also killed my framerates and the problems came back.

Turning settings higher in this game doesn't work the same as it does in evey other game out there. On that same note people telling you to turn your settings down especially on a performance system can screw you up too.

Edited August 28, 2009 by Slain

Here are my Specs

Video Card- Nvidia 9800 Gt

Memory- 6 Gb

OS- Vista 64 bit

Processor-AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core Processor 2.20GHZ

I run on Medium settings, with pretty bad texture loadings, like on bushes and trees, they look bad. And I get random Lags, no matter where I am. :(

Message to all: Use XP Pro 32 bit.

I used to use Windows 7/Vista 64 bit. Downgrading to XP Pro 32 bit solved all my performance issues. I now get 30+ fps everywhere. I can't speak for the 64 bit version of XP pro but I'm not taking any chances.

Here are my Specs

Video Card- Nvidia 9800 Gt

Memory- 6 Gb

OS- Vista 64 bit

Processor-AMD Phenom 9550 Quad-Core Processor 2.20GHZ

I run on Medium settings, with pretty bad texture loadings, like on bushes and trees, they look bad. And I get random Lags, no matter where I am. :(

Your processor is slow. Games run on the first core and offload on the second. Using very little of the third and fourth cores. Games are most effected by clock speed, not additional cores. When playing games a quad core doesn't use all 4 cores in unison.

Your processor is slow. Games run on the first core and offload on the second. Using very little of the third and fourth cores. Games are most effected by clock speed, not additional cores. When playing games a quad core doesn't use all 4 cores in unison.

So is there a fix to make them use all four cores? Also will overclocking help...?

Your processor is slow. Games run on the first core and offload on the second. Using very little of the third and fourth cores. Games are most effected by clock speed, not additional cores. When playing games a quad core doesn't use all 4 cores in unison.

Generally true but not necessarily the case for Arma2 if I remember correctly? Does it not use 1 core for the ai and 1 core for other stuff? I could be wrong here but there you go.

That aside, he's right your processor is slow.

The main thing that I keep coming up against with performance is that Arma1 runs flawlessly on my hardware and supports only 1 core. Where as Arma2, that supposedly supports multiple cores, struggles badly. It performs about how I would expect Arma2 to perform if the engine still only supported 1 core.

It is interesting to note (as many have) that using Sahrani in Arma2, the performance is good and on par with Arma 1, but I would not say better. So what this extra core support doing for us exactly?

In testing I have done, switching my Quad core to 2 cores (using MSconfig and a reboot) I go from 33FPS to 28, big whoop. So each core is giving a 2 FPS increase in performance, that can't be right.

If anyone else here plays Blackshark they can testify to just how well Multicore can boost performance in a CPU bound game, we are talking 40-50% increase. And that sim didn't even support it officially. Maybe Arma2 supports mulitcore but it sure as hell doesn't perform like it.

You've got to remember that the graphics aren't the only thing that changed from Arma 1. Arma 2 has a lot more complex AI routines, more complex maps, physics, etc.

In my game the problem are buildings and villages, in the editor is tryed some things.

Forest= 30fps

Chero=20 fps still stable but i get lagspikes

Even in small villages i lose to much fps.

thank god this is taking care of in patch 1.04 :D

You've got to remember that the graphics aren't the only thing that changed from Arma 1. Arma 2 has a lot more complex AI routines, more complex maps, physics, etc.

I don't buy into that, the game is simply not that much more complex. Especially since we can now use 4 cores when we could only use one previously. The fact is the improvements to game have dropped the performance to level you would expect if the game still only supported 1 core.

To be honest, aside from the AI leaning around corners to shoot me, I have not seen them do anything, or behave in anyway different to how they behaved in Arma1. I have been playing since the 505 release, which I think is enough time to notice.

I just bought 2 new xfx gtx 275's in SLI all my games work great I upgraded from 2 8800 gts 512's and I get slower performance in one game ARMA 2. I have decided to wait to play until they get the bugs worked out. I have tried everything I can think of to get sli to work including the nvidia sli patch, evga sli patch to no avail........I am getting seriously disgusted with the hassle in getting this game to work. I bought it off newegg for my B-day I hope BIS is working on some fixes for this. I love OFP and ARMA but come on get this engine optimized for newer technology.

That's an okay system but not exactly a monster-rig. If you have a large flatscreen I can imagine you might have a few issues running this game.

1. ArmA only uses two of your four cores, so I think you would've been better off with a 3.0ghz Athlon X2 (for instance).

2. Your video card only has 512mb, 1GB alone would be worth an extra 5fps according to this pre-release review, and a 4870 or 4890 significantly more.

3. Vista is the worst performing Windows for games in general and ArmA in particular.

All in all, not the best fit/mix for this particular game.

1. I wouldn't be so sure about this. Try running your system with 2 cores disabled (can be set in msconfig tool) and you will see it is slightly slower then with all 4cores enabled! At least on my system the difference was 3fps (35 and 38)

2. Video card is not a big issue here. The game really just needs a faster CPU. I tested over and underclocking of my GTX275 and nothing happened. But when I underclocked my CPU to 2.7GHz I lost 10fps!

3. The performance is THE SAME under Windows 7 as under Vista! At least on my system. Not even beta version of forceware did anything, so on my system the CPU is a bottleneck.

I play at 1600*1200. Details medium, postprocess low, AA normal, Aniso high and I barely get average 25fps in campaign which is bad :-\

My specs are Phenom 2 940 @ 3.6ghz

8 gb DDR2 1066

ASUS M4N82

2-250gb Hitachi SATA 2

2 XFX GTX 275 @ 700/1658/1200

Windows 7 x64 build 7100

nvidia driver 190.62

Oh well at least Crysis is playable maxed with 4xAA....LOL

My question is why would a recent game be developed on a dated platform using a old engine. Why is there no 64bit addressing in the engine?

Why won't SLI work? Why is there so much hate in the world? ....JK :)

---------- Post added at 01:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 PM ----------

thank god this is taking care of in patch 1.04 :D

Are you sure where is the proof! I wanna see....

@R3fl3x

I use a 2.4 ghz quadcore, too (3 GB ram and geforce 9800 GT) and I have all settings between normal and very high...

I'd rather expect the problem to be related so some driver issues.

Q9450(3.2) tested stability with Intelburntest running for 24 hours, no CTD's, no BSOD's.

Nvidia 280 tested with over 10 drivers

4GB

X-Fi extreme music

Vista 64+SP1

Everything low=25-30 fps in campaign, everything very high=25-30 in campaign. 800*600 - 1920*1200=same 25-30.

ArmAII-Mark 1920*1200:

I've tried all tweaks but nothing is helping campaign fps. It's VERY STRANGE that SLI is helping fps 'cause settings/resolution don't do anything at all.

Edited August 29, 2009 by iHarri

I have an FPS at about 25-26, but the problem is that it's not running smooth, every other second everything stops for a millisecond making it laggy. Have tried changing settings, but no effect, it seems that the problem is the same wether I run lowest or highest settings.

Quite dissapoting since I've just bought a new computer with 6gb ram, quad i7 ,HD4890 and SSD disk. Running Windows 7 64-bit.

Any suggestions?

Ill just list a few

1. Make sure your ArmA2 folder is defragged

2. Make sure your Anti-virus etc isnt scanning

also is this happening no matter what or only in certain areas of the world?

I had a similar issue today when trying to force adaptive AA in 9.8's CCC, make sure that is disabled...Its worth a shot?

I'd just like to share something with the people reading this thread. I was getting really really annoyed with Chernarus as it's impossible to have a decent game on that map with graphics up high. I installed the CAA1 mod and was running missions on United Sahrani last night, sooooooooooooo much better. I can max the resolution and detail out whilst still maintaining a very good framerate, more to the point it has more enterable buildings and a very good variety of scenery. What strange item has been introduced into cherno that apparently causes all my performance issues?

I get this if I don't close down certain background programs before I run the game. I use Gamebooser (free w/ no malware/spyware) and the problem goes away. It basically shuts down all non-essential apps running in the background to free up ram/CPU resources.

I still haven't narrowed it down to which one(s) are causing the pauses cause there's so damn many worthless apps that run everytime windows loads :j: