graphics bugs with ATI 4800 series (4850/4870/4890)

[fjaekel]

Hi! There is a severe graphics bug thats happening to me. I allready searched the forum for anything similar but found nothing. So I hope it may get fixed in a patch because it makes this great game pretty much unplayable for me.

1 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma1.jpg)
2 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma2.jpg)
3 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma3.jpg)
4 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma4.jpg)
5 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma5.jpg)
6 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma6.jpg)

So ... I got this strange layers everywhere in the game. The higher the settings the more it appears. Its also caused by areas with many objects. Looking on the ground makes it disappear. And they even drop shadows as you can see in picture 2. It might also interest you that I had several blue screens when I tried to change settings in the moment these things appeared. No blue screens when they were not visible.

My System:
Windows XP SP2
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93Ghz
ATI Radeon HD 4850
4GB Memory

[telejunky]

I there i got also a HD4850 the first time i hade these problems i manually set up the fan up to 40% and now i can uses it without manual control, maybe to hot?
Type shift and - on the numblock one time together and then "flush". it helps a bit for a while. I got the same problems only some times in arma 1...

[sidhellfire]

Yep, I owned HD4850 before and it's stock fan needs boost if you do not need additional oven.

[craig3000]

GPU VRAM problems maybe

Anywho check your temps with this : http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/SysInfo/GPU-Z/

If your receiving temperatures of 80 degrees celsius you should be worried if its 90+ then ye that's probably the reason :)

50-70 degrees celsius is usually the standard temp for the 4850 when playing a game and by 4850 I mean one with a good cooler or the fan raised, the default card gets temps of 90+ which is insane for constant use, so if you have high temps go into the control center and change the fan to manual and adjust to what you feel comfortable with

If its not the temperatures and you suspect the drivers then report it here : http://ati.supportcenteronline.com/ics/survey/survey.asp?deptID=894&surveyID=486

[fjaekel]

Thanks guys. I will take a look at the GPU temperature and report back. It truly gets very hot ... but I think it shouldnt be over 70 degrees. If this heating-thing is true can you suggest any software to controle the fan with? And why does this problem only occur in Arma? I played several games and none showed problems of this kind.

It may also help to say that sometimes framerates get lower when these things show up.

[craig3000]

Thanks guys. I will take a look at the GPU temperature and report back. It truly gets very hot ... but I think it shouldnt be over 70 degrees. If this heating-thing is true can you suggest any software to controle the fan with? And why does this problem only occur in Arma? I played several games and none showed problems of this kind.

It may also help to say that sometimes framerates get lower when these things show up.

Yeah when the GPU gets to hot it should reduce the clocks which would result in lower framerates

Make sure you have the latest drivers here http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Make sure to download the full catalyst software, once installed you should have an icon bottom right of the screen saying ATI this is the control center, enter advanced mode, if you go down to the overdrive tab and enable you will see the manual controls for the fan

Looks like this : http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/graphic-cards/10872d1237241112-fan-speed-control-ccc-fan-control-enable.jpg

[fjaekel]

I wish i could. I tried everything to install this control center. It always tells me "could not find drivers for your device".

[sidhellfire]

o_O
Go to system preferences, device manager, and check if anything goes wrong there. Remember to uninstall drivers first.

[craig3000]

There are other means to overclock but that not as flexible

Check your temps first there might not even be anything wrong :)

[fjaekel]

There are other means to overclock but that not as flexible

Check your temps first there might not even be anything wrong :)

Ok craig. I downloaded the GPU-Z software but I dont understand where to get the temperature from. There is information about pretty much anything but the temperature. In the "Sonsors" tab i only got two "Clock"-bars which are both red.

Thx in advance!

[craig3000]

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk62/craig_3000/gpuz.jpg

That's what it should look like if you have an ATi4850, the overall temperature being the third one down

Also go back to the graphics card tab and tell me the driver version, thanks

[Ginger McAle]

Hi everyone,

iam having the same problem. I had this problem in ArmA 1 also, but very rare, so i did not further investigate it. But now, when i saw this thread i did some tests and recorded also a video.

It seems not to be a temperature problem. My ATI 4850 HD 512 MB is watercooled and is not reaching high temperatures. Take a look yourself:


Max temperatures during playing ArmA 2 and getting the graphic error:

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/09/05/29/7u5.png


Temperatures a few seconds after going out from Arma 2 with ALT+Tab back to Windows:

http://gpuz.techpowerup.com/09/05/29/equ.png


I know that problems do happen when you overclock your card, so i have disabled the overclocking to exclude this error source. I think the problem here is when there is too much work todo for the graphics card, but hey, this is just speculation, i have no idea how graphic cards work. My graphics game settings are at normal, when setting them to very high, the graphic error does come faster and is more intensive. When setting all graphic settings to low, the error does not occur.

Also interesting, as you can see in the video, only the 3D things are affected by the error. The 2D overlay images (team member avatars, comunication menu) are being displayed properly.

Here is the video: (errors start from 0:40 seconds)
http://www.tsviewer.com/lager/arma2.2009-05-29.21-32-42-18_1.flv
31 MB, Flash Video, just open it with your media player, should work. If not, say a word and i will upload it in a another format.

I hope someone can help with that.

*edit*
This is with the newest ATI driver. I had it updated yesterday when the problem did occured the first time at Arma2. I thought it could be a driver problem, but it does also happen with the actual driver.

[fjaekel]

Hi everyone,iam having the same problem.
Hi Ginger. Its great not to be the only one. Looks exactly like mine.




That's what it should look lize if you have an ATi4850, the overall temperature being the third one down

Also go back to the graphics card tab and tell me the driver version, thanks

Sorry craig I can only see the first two bars "GPU Core Clock" and "GPU Memory Clock". The Version is "ati2mtag 6.14.10.6903 (Catalyst 9.1) /XP

[craig3000]

Hi Ginger. Its great not to be the only one. Looks exactly like mine.



Sorry craig I can only see the first two bars "GPU Core Clock" and "GPU Memory Clock". The Version is "ati2mtag 6.14.10.6903 (Catalyst 9.1) /XP

I did say upgrade your drivers as you have 9.1's the current are 9.5, But did you say that it wouldn't install or was that just the control center?

You can download just the drivers by themselves no control center, its hard to tell what the problem is game/GPU/drivers etc, I have to go now :) hope you can fix it

[fjaekel]

I did say upgrade your drivers as you have 9.1's the current are 9.5, But did you say that it wouldn't install or was that just the control center?

You can download just the drivers by themselves no control center, its hard to tell what the problem is game/GPU/drivers etc, I have to go now :) hope you can fix it

Yea i know. I tried that the last 4 hours. Now I remember why I hate windows. I tried every version of the driver and the CC and its always the same messege. But anyway after Gingers statement its propably not heatrelated.

[craig3000]

Yea i know. I tried that the last 4 hours. Now I remember why I hate windows. I tried every version of the driver and the CC and its always the same messege. But anyway after Gingers statement its propably not heatrelated.

Ye I guess that's annoying you can't upgrade your drivers, it really can benefit if you upgrade em, especially when they release more after ARMA2 is released worldwide

Check out the AMD game forums, see if they can help with your driver trouble :D

Signing out!

[Himmelsfeuer]

Also owning a HD4850.The boxed fan just sux badass what often ends in Display Problems.
In my thing it was still not the problem...^^I thought about checking the air rotation in my computer and i saw that the graphic card(its only 5 month old) had terrible much dust in the van so the card was gettin damn hot.After i cleaned that my temperature nearly lowered about 15Degrees^^and i had no Problems no more lol.maybe u check that before

[fjaekel]

Also owning a HD4850.The boxed fan just sux badass what often ends in Display Problems.
In my thing it was still not the problem...^^I thought about checking the air rotation in my computer and i saw that the graphic card(its only 5 month old) had terrible much dust in the van so the card was gettin damn hot.After i cleaned that my temperature nearly lowered about 15Degrees^^and i had no Problems no more lol.maybe u check that before

Hi Himmelsfeuer ... my computer is mearly as new so I doubt there should be much dust allready.


Ye I guess that's annoying you can't upgrade your drivers, it really can benefit if you upgrade em, especially when they release more after ARMA2 is released worldwide

Check out the AMD game forums, see if they can help with your driver trouble :D

Signing out!

Yea but thanks anyway. Maybe I will try to reinstall Windows later and see if that fixes the driverproblem.

[Skeptic]

Folks, alt-tabbing from game back to GPU-z won't display actual load temp of the card. You need to enable logging by clicking "Log to file". In A1 I had that problem, logged temps and they were pretty high. I manually set fan in Catalyst to 35-40% and it was cured.

Make sure your case is properly ventilated. Meaning: at least 1 intake fan and 1 exhaust. If possible always go for 12cm ones. Some single slot cooler GPUs don't exhaust hot air out of the case - that leads to heat build up. You might have other parts of GPU over-heating too (VRAM for example) and there is no sensors for it.

[Mr_Centipede]

i had something like that with ARMA1 before, with AGP ATI card. I solved it at CMOS settings, cant remember where, but it's something like video memory (or somthing) and set it to maximum of the card memory. default was set at 64mb. my card was 512mb by I can only set it to 256mb and that solve the problem. Last time i think the term of this bug is called "graphic artifacts"...

pls note I dont have ARMA2. but the screen look something lik i had with ARMA1 so I figure that might help

[telejunky]

Interesting that it is not heat related but how about your vram while cooling the gpu with water... maybe they are too hot?

[Phnx]

I have an HD3850. I have the exact same problem and my temps are ok. I checked them. It seems this problem is vram related.

[Mike@Uk]

I've also been having this problem with an ATI 3870, it seems to happen more when I'm in built up city areas like Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk or other areas where alot of objects are loaded / loading quickly (like when I'm flying a jet).

Card temperatures are between 60 - 70c while in game (Although afew days ago I noticed my fan only ran at 20% speed and was getting to 80 - 90c!, however I have it set at 45% speed now so the temperature is more stable, however the artefacts still show up.)

Here's an example:

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/2264/graphicstear.jpg

[Goeth]

Yup me too, had the artefacts few times. First i thought it was the big cities that caused it but then it happened on the countryside too. Card temps were ok, it think it was alt+tab that caused the problem.

[Ginger McAle]

You might have other parts of GPU over-heating too (VRAM for example) and there is no sensors for it.

Interesting that it is not heat related but how about your vram while cooling the gpu with water... maybe they are too hot?

At the 4850 there are sensors for the memory.


i had something like that with ARMA1 before, with AGP ATI card. I solved it at CMOS settings, cant remember where, but it's something like video memory (or somthing) and set it to maximum of the card memory. default was set at 64mb. my card was 512mb by I can only set it to 256mb and that solve the problem. Last time i think the term of this bug is called "graphic artifacts"...

I think you mean the AGP Aperture size (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/43), its only at AGP graphic cards. Today most cards are PCI Express, this setting is not there anymore.



I did again research for a few hours, its definetly not a heat problem. As you can see in my video (http://www.tsviewer.com/lager/arma2.2009-05-29.21-32-42-18_1.flv), the graphic error/bug can be triggered by looking in different directions.

And i can also confirm that this grapic bug/error is also there at country side, not only in big cities. When lowering almost all graphic settings to minimum it seems the bug does not occur. But this is more a workaround till Bohemia finds a solution for it.


Here are my temps (watercooled), ingame at a minute later in windows when the temperatures are cooled down:

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/3392/hardwaremonitoring.png


As you can see, the temperature differences are very small when the card is water cooled. When cooling the card with the stock cooler, the temperatures are somewhere between 70-90 ° Celsius (this sounds high, but is a normal heat). As we can see now the ATI 38xx product line is also affected.

Yesterday i had also made a test and set all the fans that do cool down the water to 100% and pointed an additional fan on the graphics card and set it to 100% also. The graphic error/bug did occur, made no difference, only the temperatures were cooler.

Again,

its most propably NOT a heat problem
different graphic driver versions seems not to make any difference
in ArmA 1 this do also happen, but less often
the card is not overclocked
problem is reproducable
problem does not occur in other games i played


I know, when you overclock your card, you have exact the same graphic glitches/errors/symptoms (big full screen fast moving triangles) but this problem does occur on NOT overclocked cards.

I hope Bohemia will see this thread and will help us ATI users.

Regards
Ginger aka Mariusz

[ohara]

It looks that your GC have problems to load texture, try to set videomemory on normal or low. Check how is in your bios set speed of bus for your GC.

[Ginger McAle]

Thanks for looking into this thread.

problem occur: normal video memory & textures
problem did not occur yet: low video memory & textures

Iam not the only one, 4 people (including me) till now saw this thread and had this problem, different graphic cards, but all from ATI, 3xxx and 4xxx series.

[ohara]

I expect that its some problem of combination of your motherboard (chipset) and ATI driver (fragmentation of videomemory, texture load). Just for test, try to run game with
-window argument, maybe in that case will be videomemory handled different way.

[Ginger McAle]

My GC PCIE bus is at default value, not overclocked, 100

Motherboard is MSI P35 Neo2 FIR: North Bridge -> Intel Bearlake P35


Started ArmA2 windowed, problem did occur again, i went into the editor, set all settings to high, placed me into a helicopter over a city to get the error quickly and it did come very fast.

http://img79.imageshack.us/img79/5246/arma2windowed.th.png (http://img79.imageshack.us/my.php?image=arma2windowed.png)

[ohara]

Sreen shows that you have also corrupted 3D data in videomemory, uff dont know how to help you for now. Try -noCB argument just for test, game will be slower, but maybe it help, if not, we will need to wait for some repro to know more whats source of problems.

[Thr0tt]

Amazing, I have been trying new drivers, new GART, old drivers, cleaning everything as I thought it was a driver issue. My HD3850 is doing the exact same thing !!

The only way currently to run the game without this is setting memory to low in game but this also means textures are low.

I have had this happen in ArmA recently too but on once since last beta patch. I can reproduce this in seconds if Devs want to contact me to test anything or send any reports.

Thr0tt.

[Ginger McAle]

Ok, tested this parameter as well. Problem did also occur again. When graphic settings are on low, problem does not happen.

You guys have maybe an ATI card (3xxx or 4xxx series) at your office? Can you guys also maybe ask ATI about this? Maybe they know already what the problem is. Thanks for your help ohara.

[Thr0tt]

-noCB appears to help but I get more stuttering in game. I will keep testing for a while to see if this just delays the problem. What does noCB do ?

[Ginger McAle]

Thr0tt are you sure? This is what i do to get the error as fast as possible:

- max all graphic settings, everything on highest value, fillrate 100% is ok
- open Tschernarus in editor
- place you inside a chopper at biggest city in south at the coast
- fly around, low at the city, after max 60 seconds you get the error

When having the graphic settings on medium, it takes longer to get the erorr. When graphic settings are on low, the problem seems not to come.

Please doublecheck this.

[ohara]

-noCB turn off multicore drawing. I have 4870 , XP rrv9.3 here and no problem, we need to see it here under pix to know what happens :(

[=Spetsnaz=]

Thanks guys. I will take a look at the GPU temperature and report back. It truly gets very hot ... but I think it shouldnt be over 70 degrees. If this heating-thing is true can you suggest any software to controle the fan with? And why does this problem only occur in Arma? I played several games and none showed problems of this kind.

It may also help to say that sometimes framerates get lower when these things show up.

i run a 3850 at 100% 24/7, i am so use to it now that temps dont even go over 50c under load or 35-40 idle. I use RivaTuner!

[Sickboy]

I get it sometimes too with my GTX 280, but after setting the Video Memory to High or Normal, instead of Very High, I have barely come across the problem.

[ohara]

There wil be new drivers from ATI around 10.6. that will fix videomemory fragmentation problem, hope it will help.

[Sickboy]

There wil be new drivers from ATI around 10.6. that will fix videomemory fragmentation problem, hope it will help.
Very nice and quick response. Really great to see the BI Devs around the forums and picking up these things :)

[craig3000]

There wil be new drivers from ATI around 10.6. that will fix videomemory fragmentation problem, hope it will help.

Thanks for kicking ATi into gear they usually fix things if the Devs ask them too!

Cheers!

[Ginger McAle]

Okay. Thank you ohara. Appreciate it how deeply you guys are watching over your forums and help the people.

Wondering why you dont get it with the 4870. As you said specific mainboard chipset and graphic card combination?

[Thr0tt]

Thr0tt are you sure? This is what i do to get the error as fast as possible:

- max all graphic settings, everything on highest value, fillrate 100% is ok
- open Tschernarus in editor
- place you inside a chopper at biggest city in south at the coast
- fly around, low at the city, after max 60 seconds you get the error

When having the graphic settings on medium, it takes longer to get the erorr. When graphic settings are on low, the problem seems not to come.

Please doublecheck this.

Will do.

I have been playing for an hour with missions and such like and all seems good at the moment. Most settings are on normal or my machine just grinds to a halt... Phenom II x4 + HD3850 (AGP), 4GB DDR2 (3.5 in use WinXP).

Will post back shortly.

[Ginger McAle]

Ok cool. Please keep in mind, its important to open the Tschernarus map (the big one). On Utes (the small island) the problem does not occur. Maybe there are not enough objects/textures/whatever.

[fjaekel]

Ok cool. Please keep in mind, its important to open the Tschernarus map (the big one). On Utes (the small island) the problem does not occur. Maybe there are not enough objects/textures/whatever.

Thats not true. It occurs less often but it once did for me in the first mission on the carrier. It did not happen for example in the aircraft training.

[Jaspion]

It happens in few minutes also on a ATI Radeon 1600XT even on low memory setting. BSOD occurs if you don't leave the game quickly.

[Thr0tt]

Nope didn't occur and that with me in the big town, flying Huey and some cows and tanks placed in and around town.

Now, having removed that command and removing a -maxmem=2048 command I have having difficulty getting to happen again.

I also tried reducing the screen size from 1680x1050 to 1440x900 which game some performance but not really worth it.

Trying again with more objects and increased view distance.

[Thr0tt]

Since using the -noCB command my problems havent come back ??? Does this mean it is now hard coded as such, if so how can I get it back to test crashing and start streaming over multiple cores again ?

[ohara]

No,just remove this argument and reset settings back

[kuss]

http://img4.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20090602153745.jpg
http://img197.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20090602153736.jpg

i dont no if its the same problem or what but anyone got any ideas to this ?
iv tryed every settings i can think of
my rig
e6600@<hidden>
4890
8g ram
vista 64x

[mr.g-c]

Noooooooooooooo damn it.... i just ordered a ATI HD 4890 exclusively for Arma2....
Don't tell me Arma2 and ATi will have issue forever like Arma1 had with ATI.....

[kuss]

yea and this is 9.5 drivers i havent tryed it with older ones, dont realy think it will help:mad:

[Guy123]

@<hidden> - go into the advanced video options, and turn 'video memory' to default and see if this fixes the problem. when 'video memory' is set to high, it only utilizes around 512mb of graphics chip set memory. By setting it to 'default' it checks the current amount, and uses as much as is avaliable. (I think thats the right description right?)

Please post back if you get any strange artifacts and glitches, as I am encountering this error. For ATI users (I think its only us getting the issues) there is a new driver coming out on the 10th of June that should apparently fix this issue, according to Ohara, please edit if I misunderstood what he said.

[Killerwatt]

For what its worth guys this problem also exsists on my HIS ATI Radeon X1650 PRO 512mg AGP card. when it occurs youcan be facing a particular direction and turn and everything is back to normal. turn back and the problem returns or even moving into a particular spot triggers it the two steps back and it disappears again.

[mr.g-c]

...there is a new driver coming out on the 10th of June that should apparently fix this issue, according to Ohara, please edit if I misunderstood what he said.
Ahh my heart.... i missed this post when reading through this topic.
That is really great to hear!!!
I assume BIS Devs are in contact with ATI/Nvidia?
10th of June.... lets see when my 4890 arrives :p:D

[Phnx]

Yeah 10th of June, but AGP users, like I am, keep in mind that we need to wait two or more weeks longer, because we always need a hotfix driver version for our AGP graphics cards! They are not officially supported by ATi. Only PCie cards are! :(

[Killerwatt]

Im glad Im building a new rig for this game. My p4 3.4 gig and ati X1650 pro are getting to old lol

[GI-JOE]

I have the same problem when i want to increase the view distance. When i get back to default (1600m) everything returns normal... I hope this problem will be solved with the next update of drivers and/or ArmA2 :)

(WinXP SP3, Q9400, ati 4850 and 4gb of RAM inside).

[kuss]

http://img188.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20090602182659.jpg
http://img37.imageshack.us/my.php?image=20090602182703.jpg

no joy at all end im trying everything i can remeber lol

[kuss]

i think its to do with DX3D im on verson 8.14 and my m8 is on 7.14 and his game work ok..........

[Phnx]

i think its to do with DX3D im on verson 8.14 and my m8 is on 7.14 and his game work ok..........

dx3d? You mean dx3d.dll?

[kuss]

na in the CCC/info center/gfx software

[Thr0tt]

Just for info. I am using Cats 9.4 after doing a load of cleaning the newer drivers out etc. Lets hope the new 9.6's do the job.

[kuss]

yea init iv got no hair left on me boby coz iv been trying to get it to work lol

[Phnx]

My Direct3D version is 6.14.

[ziiip]

GET CCC 9.5! It solved my problem immediately.

[Phnx]

GET CCC 9.5! It solved my problem immediately.

9.5 is the DRIVER VERSION! Not the CCC version! I have 9.5. It solved nothing for me.

[Kr3v]

Noooooooooooooo damn it.... i just ordered a ATI HD 4890 exclusively for Arma2....
Don't tell me Arma2 and ATi will have issue forever like Arma1 had with ATI.....

I've just bought this card too and my game crashes. It seems to be a problem with d3dx9.dll, i'll try to reduce the video memory option...

Edit : Ok now I can't launch the game anymore...

Edit : It seems that putting the "video memory" option in default instead of very high allows me to play again and in better conditions.

[DreDay]

Just for info. I am using Cats 9.4 after doing a load of cleaning the newer drivers out etc. Lets hope the new 9.6's do the job.

I use 9.4 as well and I have not had a single crash with 4890, then again I keep my view distance at just under 3000m - maybe that's why?

Peace,
DreDay

[Shadow NX]

Intresting to find this thread as since yesterday i share the problems described here :(

I got a HD 4879 512MB by Sapphire, first series of the HDs i think so stock cooler and everything unmodified.

Yesterday i played the campaign mission where you assault the industrial complex ( Chernogorsk? ) and the fun started when i saw how every lil detail in the landscape started to load slowely and go trough all its lods slowly till all was there.

After a while these nice wildly flickering effects started, with using -flush comand ingame it helped but you would have to do it every minute basicly, really seems like the video memory isnt clean or as said clutters up baddly especialyl in such a detailled enviroment as this industrial complex.

If i dont have the flickering issue i have constant texture loading and sometimes lods that pop up very late.

Intrestign is that later in the last weeks of ArmA in had similar problems on Sahrani and islands that used Objects and textures from Sahrani but there it happend when i looked ina certain direction, game wasnt running too smooth but once you turned into that direction it started to flicker wildly even in big open countryside, look away its gone, look again and its there again, very odd, reinstalled and for a few days it worked but then was back again.

Temps of the card worried me a bit because in FUR mark it shows me a nearly constant 86 - 88 degrees of heat, however from different people i heard that the HD4870s seem to be cards that always get very hot and i shouldnt bother.

In the FUR mark stresstest on 1680 x 1050 and 4xFiltering i didnt get any artifacts though so card seems ok.

In the campaign missions before, the training and missions on Utes itself i didnt had any probs not even on all settings high ( apart from post processing as that looks horrible on mid and high ).

In the end i guess the drivers are indeed to blame as this seems connected to me installign the system freshly and adding latest ATI drivers yesterday before playing.

Hope the next patches and new ATI drivers really help as this is totally destroying my fun i had before.

Always liked ATI but i guess the saying that ATI is good but their drivers suck baddly miost of the time is really true.
As much as i like the card in other games ArmA2 is my most important one so i guess sooner or later ill switch to a Nvidia again :/

--- My System

Win XP SP2 freshly installed with all drivers updated to newest.
AMD Phenom X4 9850 so 4 x 2,5
4 GB G-Skill PC-1000 DDR-2 Rams in Dual mode
HD 4870 512MB by Sapphire with latest Catalyst ( from 04.06. )
Lots of free HD space

Nothing overclocked or anything.

Question to the devs, is the Phenom problematic in ArmA2?
Or should i more worry about the HD4870 with only 512MB?

Yet it seems even people with lot older cards get better points in the ArmA mark than me :/

[Thr0tt]

Ok found the 'fix' I think. Basically its to do with these lines in the ArmA2.cfg:

localVRAM=536870912;
nonlocalVRAM=525074400;

If I set my AGP Aperture to 512MB I get no screen corruption and all drivers work with or without the noCB command. Anything less and the system displays the corruption as per OP and subsequent vids etc.

Not sure if you can do something with PCI-e ? But if you are AGP and can increase the size in your BIOS then do it. Issue with just changing the ArmA2.cfg is that it detects RAM when you start and modifies this file, not sure if changing it to RO will work.

Good luck all.

[Velaska]

I had the same problem on my 4850, disabling any overclocking on the board (still oc on the bios) fixed the problem !!

[Ginger McAle]

Okay,
today i have started Arma 2 again to check if the problem is still there with the new Catalyst 9.6. And yes, its still there, unchanged problem. Exact the same problem situation and way to get it as before (shown at pictures and video).

What to do next Ohara?

Regards
Mariusz

[Thr0tt]

There appear to be a couple of problems here, 1 is low speed LOD's and the other is massive screen artifacts if I read it correctly. I also believe this is only effecting a small amount of people so we may need to put up with this for a while.

[Basil Brush]

Shadow NX it appear I have the same or at least similar problem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoozjv-hvgg) to you but with an Intel based system and the same graphics card (also 4870 512mb by Sapphire). Problem is I tested with my old 8800gtx and the same problem exists so it must be something within the engine?, Arma1 had a lot of vram issues as I remember and it looks like nothing has changed?.

:(

[Surtr52]

Oh please god no... I have a 4870 too and don't want this to happen.. I've already pre-ordered the game, I hope I didn't pay for a coaster...

[Basil Brush]

I wonder if someone can post a video using a 4870 looking at Chernogorsk and show if they dont get this issue(s)??.

[householddog]

I have been getting these effects as well.

I noticed that they seem to start when there is about 20mb of vram remaining.

Maybe setting the max vram to 1000, 980 etc might help? On a 1GB card that is.

Its a bit hard to tell from the video. But it sort of looks like I get the effect in the same location yours is coming from. Sort of on the last street of the city.

[sirex]

i have the exact same problem.

i had a 4850, but got screwed screen. Thought the gfx card was broken, so bought a 4870, and i get the same problem, even on the brand new drivers.

This didnt happen in ArmA1, and it does happen less with low texture settings. The thing is, this dosent happen with any other game, including gta4 with the settings cranked right up, so i cant see how this is a problem with anything other than ArmA2 code.

edit: oh and also, i have no overclocking, and an awful lot of fans. The system temp is around 30 degrees under load, 45 for chipset, and 65 for the 4850, around the same for the 4870.

also, i now have two cards (joy!) and crossfire isnt working in arma2 only. works in other games. So now i have an extra card i didnt need that dosent even work.

[miche86]

Hello everybody. New on this forum, i had the same issue, big rectangles filling part of the screen mostly when watching in the sun direction (running a 4870 512mb, 2gb ram, XP SP3). Installing catalyst 9.6 (leaked version) solved the problem for me. catalyst has all the options set to "let the game decide", and I disabled catalyst AI.

[householddog]

Funny, 9.6 final caused my problem.

I think if you tone down the texture details it might help. Haven't really tested this though.

The corruption only appears from buildings, so far.

[miche86]

Yeah funny. Lowering the texture detail and the drawing distance didn't help me with the previous catalyst version.
9.6 (leaked) solved the problem for me, only extra thing I did was disabling catalyst AI (don't know what it actually does, read to try disabling it somewhere on this forum).
I tried playing around with the graphic settings, it seems to be stabile whatever detail i set now..some flickering still remains, mostly on the buildings, but that is nothing compared to the massive screen corruption some of us are\were experiencing..

[householddog]

Yeah funny. Lowering the texture detail and the drawing distance didn't help me with the previous catalyst version.
9.6 (leaked) solved the problem for me, only extra thing I did was disabling catalyst AI (don't know what it actually does, read to try disabling it somewhere on this forum).
I tried playing around with the graphic settings, it seems to be stabile whatever detail i set now..some flickering still remains, mostly on the buildings, but that is nothing compared to the massive screen corruption some of us are\were experiencing..
Good to hear.

I might try one more install of 9.6. then try the betas again.

The AI lowers your graphics settings when your frame rate drops. Not too sure how effective it is. But you could have a play and see.

[Thr0tt]

For AGP I tried to lower the AGP Aperture in the bios to 256MB instead of 512MB, this delayed the problem but it did occur later in a mission. So it appears that when the 256MB of aperture is used up it starts corrupting ? How does that work then ?

Would be nice to know if BIS are looking at the issue, I am happy to be contacted to perform tests on my system, I can duplicate the error at any time, guaranteed. -noCB does nothing for me.

Are there any other switches to force video memory, not sure the Arma2.cfg settings does much tbh when making changes to that.

[WoodShock]

I dont even have a problem with my Ati 4870.. running 9.6 and got a BIG performence boost! 60fps @<hidden> 3K viewdistance all medium

before 9.6 it was 30-40fps

System specs:

Ati 4870 512mb (driver 9.6)
E8400 Stock speed (still need to overclock it)
TWIN2x4096-8500 dominator DDR2
DFI P45-T2RS

[householddog]

OK I think I know what the problem is.

Can you guys tell me what your in game memory size is set to + whether you are getting the problem.

[moosenoodles]

Set to very high dog.. and no problems with textures

[householddog]

Ah, try setting it to "preunites" (panties) and drive around the city for a while. Try to do a lot of zooming, scanning around etc to force it to load textures.

OK Guys I Have a THEORY.

Since the driver update solved some memory fragmentation problems, maybe it is conflicting with the local swap file? Assuming there is one? Maybe existing data conflicts with the new data.

Anyone know what the swap file is called?

Second theory. Arma just can't handle 1GB with these drivers.
I have set my config to localVRAM=985661440;

So far no glitches.
Scratch that one - just got the problem. Was on very high for testing. Changing to the auto option gave me instant corruption.

[Thr0tt]

Ah, try setting it to "preunites" (panties) and drive around the city for a while. Try to do a lot of zooming, scanning around etc to force it to load textures.

OK Guys I Have a THEORY.

Since the driver update solved some memory fragmentation problems, maybe it is conflicting with the local swap file? Assuming there is one? Maybe existing data conflicts with the new data.

Anyone know what the swap file is called?

Second theory. Arma just can't handle 1GB with these drivers.
I have set my config to localVRAM=985661440;

So far no glitches.
Scratch that one - just got the problem. Was on very high for testing. Changing to the auto option gave me instant corruption.

I have tried everything in the config file to reduce and increase memory, removed my pagefile from the system, changed resolutions to minimal etc. etc. and so far this is the only game that shows these problems...

I am happy to try any other settings, I even tried to underclock my CPU to run at 2Ghz (from 3.2Ghz) which had no effect, reduced AGP to 4x, slowed memory, sped memory up, ganged and unganged it, disabled sound... anything else someone want to suggest ?

Currently I am wearing my wifes panties to see if that also helps but so far a little chaffing but thats it. ;)

[householddog]

I have tried everything in the config file to reduce and increase memory, removed my pagefile from the system, changed resolutions to minimal etc. etc. and so far this is the only game that shows these problems...

I am happy to try any other settings, I even tried to underclock my CPU to run at 2Ghz (from 3.2Ghz) which had no effect, reduced AGP to 4x, slowed memory, sped memory up, ganged and unganged it, disabled sound... anything else someone want to suggest ?

Currently I am wearing my wifes panties to see if that also helps but so far a little chaffing but thats it. ;)
Nah its not your system, lets get that straight. Just tell the turkeys to gobble off, if they tell you that. :)

If something is coded properly it won't have issues with hardware etc. Certainly not common issues.

I think the problem is that setting your memory via the config file is causing the problem. I think that the config only changes texture memory not vram. Damned if I know what that means, but turning it to very high helped.

Try changing Video memory to Very High, in game. Let me know what it was set at before too. For a 512 card try Medium or even Low video memory

Damn still says preunites since the patch? Moose what is the last option called in Video Memory? In game. Underneath Very High.

[householddog]

Hi guys I think I might have a workaround to fix the graphics corruption issue with ATI cards.

It appears, at least on my computer, that changing the Video Memory option from default to Very High (with a 1GB 4890) seems to fox the problem.

I would like some testers, who have the problem, to check what their video memory is set to and let me know.

Also try setting the Video Memory option to Very High (if you have a 1GB card) and see if the problems stop.

The problem always seems to occur when the video memory fills up or hits the cfg limit. The best way to replicate it is in a city. Drive around, looking in all directions with very high textures on. Zoom in on things and generally soak up the graphics. Try to look at everything you can.

Sorry started new thread, 3 others with similar issues. Just need to organise testers. Hard to do in 3 separate threads.

I dare say setting your view distance up high might help with this.

For 1GB Video cards (or 2GB SLI/Crossfire) try it with Video Memory at default and with video memory at very high. For a 512 card try Medium or even Low video memory

Try it for 20 minutes on each setting and see what happens.

Cheers


OK looks like Arma2 does not want to use the Default settings in Video Memory.

The workaround is this.

For 512MB cards set memory to Medium or Low.

For 1GB (or 2GB crossfire) set video memory to Very High.

This will mean Arma won't use all your video memory, but it should help a few people.

[Thr0tt]

Unable to comply, HD3850 says low / normal for memory and textures.

If I frig it using the config files then the issue happens sooner than before.

[moosenoodles]

Default :D

[Killerwatt]

Running on very high memory solved it for me on a 2gb ATI card. Default gave me the artifacts in towns.

[Shadow.D. ^BOB^]

Never had any issues with my ATI, althouh i did notice that putting my video memory to default dropped my frame rate considerably, wih very high i get 60fps (think this is capped) yet when i go to default i get max of 25 fps.

Just though i would chip in with that...

What exactly does the option do?

[Manzilla]

Never had any issues with my ATI, althouh i did notice that putting my video memory to default dropped my frame rate considerably, wih very high i get 60fps (think this is capped) yet when i go to default i get max of 25 fps.

Just though i would chip in with that...

What exactly does the option do?

I remember when they implemented it in ArmA but can't remember what it was for. I've never tried the settings on Very High, only Default. My fps is pretty damn good but I'll try Very High.

[sirex]

as a side note, i have a 512mb card. using normal fixes most of the issues, using high/very high makes the problem appear almost instantly.

[householddog]

Default :D

Thats it.

The secret is to use either very high, high, etc video memory selections - in game.

If you use the default setting, it uses the CFG file value and gives you issues.

[householddog]

as a side note, i have a 512mb card. using normal fixes most of the issues, using high/very high makes the problem appear almost instantly.

I think thats because very high is around 640mb-680mb.

The problem seems to be, when it references the Non local vram.

---------- Post added at 07:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:23 AM ----------


I remember when they implemented it in ArmA but can't remember what it was for. I've never tried the settings on Very High, only Default. My fps is pretty damn good but I'll try Very High.
If default is working for you, I dare say leave it there. This is really only for people getting massive corruption on their screen.

[Palanoid]

i have an HD4870 512mb but by turning up or down the video memory setting the artifact/corruption is still there. having updated the display driver to 9.6 doesnt help :(

[Thr0tt]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.

For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.

[electron-libre]

I had this issue.
I own a HD4890 1G.

When I was setting the value from very high to default, the artefacts appeared. (In ARMA and ARMA2)
So I downgraded to Very High again.

But I managed to fix it.
I installed catalyst 9.6
I 've restarted the game after setting the VM to default.

I dont know wich of these two action is the one that did the trick.
But you should try.

First install latest ATI dirvers.
Second restart the game AFTER setting the VM to default.

[householddog]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.

For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.
Could be, but then the pci bus is used for more than just loading textures.

Another test I did was stay in the same area. Just running around. I don't get the problem this way. I am pretty sure the pci bus is still used for this.

Anyway I put it in the bug tracker.

---------- Post added at 09:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:26 PM ----------


I had this issue.
I own a HD4890 1G.

When I was setting the value from very high to default, the artefacts appeared. (In ARMA and ARMA2)
So I downgraded to Very High again.

But I managed to fix it.
I installed catalyst 9.6
I 've restarted the game after setting the VM to default.

I dont know wich of these two action is the one that did the trick.
But you should try.

First install latest ATI dirvers.
Second restart the game AFTER setting the VM to default.
Will give it a try, later. Too much time spent testing. Need to do some playing now. :) If others want to give this a try go ahead.

BTW can you post up your arma2.cfg file contents?

[Thr0tt]

Have you tried doing shift - FLUSH when you get the problem to see if flushing the textures then gives you a start again point till it fills up ?

I tried it when I was using 256 Aperture and it seems to reset the 'timer' before it failed again. Can't be doing that while flying ;)

[householddog]

Sorry didn't know about that command.

I imagine it would work though.

How do you do it exactly?

BTW is there a reference site for all these types of commands?

[Thr0tt]

while in game hold SHIFT and hit the - key (minus) then just type flush (there is no command line for you to see) but if sucessful you wilkl get a message saying flushing textures.

Theres a list somewhere...

[electron-libre]

language="German";
adapter=-1;
3D_Performance=93750;
Resolution_Bpp=32;
Resolution_W=1680;
Resolution_H=1050;
refresh=60;
Render_W=1920;
Render_H=1200;
FSAA=0;
postFX=1;
HDRPrecision=8;
lastDeviceId="";
localVRAM=1067663360;
nonlocalVRAM=1878523904;

[Skeptic]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.

For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.

I solved this by going from 9.4 on XPSP3 32bit to 9.5 cat on Windows 7 64bit. I'm back to XP now and will test.

AGP Aperture does not apply to PCIe cards.


LINK (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/43)
What is AGP Aperture size?
Author: W1zzard
Date: 2004-05-16 03:55:36
How big should I set AGP Aperture size in my BIOS?

First of all, AGP Aperture memory will not be used until your video card's on-board memory is running low. That means it will usually not impact your gaming performance because developers are trying hard to not exceed the on-board memory limits.
The bigger your video memory, the smaller your Aperture Size could be. However with later games requiring more and more texture memory a good number seems to be 128MB Aperture Size for all cards with 64 MB to 256 MB Video RAM.
Setting the Aperture Size to HUGE values will not increase performance because this merely sets the maximum amount of physical memory that can be used. It only makes the GART Table bigger because every 4K page has its own entry, no matter if allocated or not.
Setting the Aperture Size to too small values could result in running out of available texture memory especially on a low-mem video card. It is also possible that developers make use of the GART's features by creating textures as 'non-local'.

If you experience in-game stuttering try playing with the size of your Aperture.

What is it from a technical point of view?

When using an AGP card the video memory on the graphics adapter is mapped into the 4 GB memory address space (above the region of the physical installed memory). Any accesses to this memory region are directly forwarded to the video memory, greatly increasing transfer rates. However in earlier days of video cards graphics memory was rather limited and ran out quickly (a single 32-bit 512x512 MIP-mapped texture consumes ~1.5 MB) so AGP added a mechanism to use the system's main memory as additional storage for graphics data such as textures. This is what the AGP Aperture is. Usually directly below the mapped video memory the system reserves a contiguous space of addresses the size of your Aperture (no physical memory will be consumed at this time).
When free video RAM is running low the system dynamically allocates 4K sized pages of system memory for use as AGP Aperture Memory. The problem with this dynamic allocation is that in many cases the pages are spread in a non-contiguous form throughout the physical memory. Accessing these pages directly would hinder performance because of scattering/gathering requiring extra logic. To get around this limitation the GART (Graphics Address Remapping Table) which is implemented in hardware in the Northbridge's Memory Controller Hub provides an automatic physical-to-physical mapping between the scattered pages and the AGP Aperture. See the following illustration:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/43/images/aperture.gif

[householddog]

I solved this by going from 9.4 on XPSP3 32bit to 9.5 cat on Windows 7 64bit. I'm back to XP now and will test.

AGP Aperture does not apply to PCIe cards.
Cool let us know. Also, if you could check if it uses the full 1GB on the card. With XP that is. Use atitray tool (if you didn't know already)

Yeah I thought it was a driver issue. I was just seeing if there was a way to get it working on 9.6.

BI is going have a lot of angry Steam users on 9.6 though.

I think he was mainly talking about the bandwidth. 5 in the morning here, though, so i am not reading straight.

To be honest I am no hardware expert. I am a pretty good troubleshooter though. Arma has taught me a lot this week about graphics etc.

Anyone know any got tutorial sites that cover it in a more systematic way?

[kklownboy]

Looks like its more prevelant on 512MB cards then as the memory is being hit earlier on, my guess is the 1Gb cards may never or rarely get hit.
512mb is default setting
1GB is veryhigh
2GB is cool
4GB is e-P


For PCI-E can you see if you have an option in you bios similar to that for AGP (Aperture) and see if you are able to increase its size, better still if you have AGP Aperture increase that to 512MB ? Not getting my PCI-e for a while so can't test.
Your 512mb "Aperture" is like PCI-E 2X....
The bandwidth of 16X is huge. 8X is good upto 1600/1200 at veryhigh/max filltering. You will want more at higher Resolutions, or you have to go with out filltering/AA.
A ati3850agp is a HD2600/2900pro i would think they would max out with nice fillrate @<hidden>/768 . If you compare to crysis @<hidden>/1200 ,no AA ,medium=18fps

Hello nurse!

[Thr0tt]

Running at 1024x768 gives me exactly the same error with massive screen corruption... where does that fit in the theory ?

[kklownboy]

Running at 1024x768 gives me exactly the same error with massive screen corruption... where does that fit in the theory ? with the same setting? What is your MB? your running a PhenomII x4?
And your GART driver is? Bios? Did you have to flash your MB to get the AM3 to post?

[Thr0tt]

Before you comment, this is the ONLY game in my collection of most of the new and old PC games (mainly FPS's) that has this issue. GART is 3.77 as any later it blue screens and ASRock say use 3.77.

It would be so easy to say 'ah its your mobo' becuase I can't replace it at the moment... I await your startling reality check and solution to all my woes... wouldnt it be funny if patch 1.02 fixed the problem...


Specs: ASROCK AM2NF3-VSTA | AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE 3.2GHz | Sapphire HD3850 AGP (Latest Cats) CCC | Corsair - TWIN2X4096-6400C5 4 GB |Samsung 2232BW 22" LCD | X-Fi Ultimate Gamer (5.1) | LiteOn DH20A4P DVD-RW | Saitek Cyborg Evo Joystick | M$ Windows XP Pro SP3

[kklownboy]

Ok 3.77, and your Bios?
We can only hope 1.02 has some new fixes to help us where its needed.

[Thr0tt]

Bios is Version 3.0, the latest for this board.

[householddog]

Ok 3.77, and your Bios?
We can only hope 1.02 has some new fixes to help us where its needed.
Its not his bios I have a completely different board and processor. Same issue.

Do some testing before making unsupported claims please.

THanks

[nesponge]

another ATI user here (4870) with the same issue...

Had to stop playing ARMA1 for the same reason

going to try the fix now :)

EDIT: nope... still got problems. I'm going to try downloading and installing the latest drivers (9.6)

[householddog]

another ATI user here (4870) with the same issue...

Had to stop playing ARMA1 for the same reason

going to try the fix now :)

EDIT: nope... still got problems. I'm going to try downloading and installing the latest drivers (9.6)

How much vram on the card?

[nesponge]

512mb

EDIT: latest drivers do not help

[Thr0tt]

I wish someone could sticky the issue, the more people who get the game the more people will have this problem that only effects a small percentage of users so we will start getting loads of posts describing the same problem.

So far some 'workarounds' exist but don't fix the problem, its not an overheating problem on the majority of folk as we have tested the temps.

[nesponge]

it seems to be a memory problem of some kind...

Interestingly ARMA 1 and 2 are the only games I have any problem with on my system... even if it turn out to be ATI's problem.

[householddog]

The reason I think its a memory problem, is because ati changed something in the memory management. Then this problem occurred. Not an ATI problem IMHO. Games should be programmed to be somewhat device independant.

Nesponge, the advice I gave was for cards with 1GB memory. For a 512 card try Medium or even Low video memory. My mistake. I didn't mention that before. Will edit my posts.

Either way it doesn't look like Arma has very good memory management at all.

[nesponge]

tried it on "Default"

This does not stop the artifacting but does indeed make it less frequent and will sometimes correct itself temporarily.

I will try the lower settings and see if that helps... many thanks

[kklownboy]

Its not his bios I have a completely different board and processor. Same issue.

Do some testing before making unsupported claims please.

THanks i am sry for crapping on your thread, and starting a workup on his computer, my query wasn't for your issue so much but his issue's. With out a doubt veryhigh works better than default or lower for my ATi cards. 2X 4870x2's. I have seen similar tendency's in ARMA1. As for his issue he is most likely saturating his PCI/apg bus, hence the gart(agp driver) bios questions. And can try stuff like "fast writes" ect...

[Thr0tt]

I appreciate the suggestions but I have enabled and disabled about everything and tested including sidebanding, fastwrites, AGP 4x/8x, underclocked, overclocked, increased power to memory, agp, increase PCI latency, removed drivers, tried no CCC, tried fan control 100%, tried with case off, tried standing on one leg, everything in game to low, 1024x768, everything to very high, running in high priority, running in lower priority, trying single, dual and all 4 CPU's, increasing AGP from 66-86Mhz, reducing down to 33Mhz, turning off DEP, turning on DEP enabling selection process, disabling LAN, disbaling Firewall, disabling Antvirus, checking power consumptio, temps, magnitic fields bounding the earth so next thing to do is to encase my machine in 6-8" lead incase there is and sort of interferrence causing this issue in just THIS game.

Did I miss anything ?

And the great news is the 1.02 patch appears to have little in the way of fixes but the 'important' option to disable blur effect wtf ? Looks like me and the other 'few' will have to suffer while the next option to disable somthing is added, yay.

[kklownboy]

veryhigh is working great.

[Thr0tt]

Soo been doing the the mutigpu debuggness, and as in ARMA1 using a Crysis.exe rename of your arma2.exe the HDR, the flashing to dark ect is greatly reduced, like not really there :) .There is still the classic strobe but it settles down real fast after you start something, and after that its way better than arma2.exe... So -winxp + Crysis.exe FTW. 4870x2's in CFX/Quadfire, great fps and now less migraines. will try a few others, farcry2 Fear2 ect...

There has been an ArmA2 profile in the drivers since 9.4 I believe so there should be no need to rename the .exe, but if it works for you then all good. I also hear the putting lucky heather near your GPU also increases FPS but I may be mistaken.

[kklownboy]

There has been an ArmA2 profile in the drivers since 9.4 I believe so there should be no need to rename the .exe, but if it works for you then all good. I also hear the putting lucky heather near your GPU also increases FPS but I may be mistaken. my last post was in the wrong thread... But yeah they have had the "profile" in even earlier, but you do need to renam as of 9.6 to not have the "mutigpu" issue . A rename may work for you too. I have had to rename ARMA 1 since day one (german 1.0) to use CF and SLi. I guess it will be the same for ARMA2...

[Brainbug]

Maybe is it also due to some object with a little bug that triggers this. I mainly experienced those weird polygon spikes in Elektrozavodsk, other areas were issue-free (of course I haven't come around all of Chernarus yet, but enough to narrow it down to Elektrozavodsk).

However, I just played there with the Catalyst 9.6 and didn't get any errors, maybe it is gone (but I haven't tested enough yet to be sure).

Oh, FYI: I have a Radeon 4850 512MB (device ID 9442), running Win XP 32bit with 4GB RAM (or rather 3,25 of course), in-game settings are maxed except for terrain (low) object detail (medium) and fillrate opt. (100%).


OT (sry):

Not an ATI problem IMHO. Games should be programmed to be somewhat device independant.
Actually it would be a problem of the API, in this case DirectX, if the need arises that game programmers or driver programmers bypass the interface. In theory, an interface should not be penetrated, it rather defines certain standardized calls and returns so that both sides (in this case hardware and game) of it can communicate with each other without knowing from each other. DirectX maybe not bad, but if the game has to know if either an AMD or nVidia card is in the box, then the interface doesn't do its job by the book.

So yes, you are right with the above quote (I would even replace "somewhat" with "totally"), but you can't blame either the driver programmer nor the game programmer, they just try to cope with the imperfect interface.

[DFA_Graywo1f]

I have an ATI 3870 ICQ3 and i will try using very high..... High does not work but i only have 512MB of video memory on the card. so we'll see.

[Surtr52]

I'll be able to throw my hat in to the testing once the demo comes out, Vista 64 4gigs of system memory and a Sapphire 4870 1gb.

I hope I don't have these problems, but my luck says otherwise.

One thing I'm wondering, is why hasn't Bohemia fixed it if was occurring in the original arma. None of them own a radeon?

[Brainbug]

OK, now with 1.02: No change, still errors :(

[sirex]

it didnt happen to me in the original arma, at least.

[Basil Brush]

I got the texture corruption with video memory at 'default' but when I changed to 'very high' and restarted it has not shown itself since (for now). Still get slow loading textures though quite often.

[Thr0tt]

I got the texture corruption with video memory at 'default' but when I changed to 'very high' and restarted it has not shown itself since (for now). Still get slow loading textures though quite often.

Good news for you hopefully. Fingers crossed for you.

[Brainbug]

Actually, it became worse, much worse. With 1.01 I had it sometimes, but usually could play for hours. Now with 1.02 it has become unplayable, every few minutes I have to alt-tab out because I can't see anything anymore, after that it works for a short while. :mad:

[Conkermon]

Same problem here. Have similar rig to everyone else, ATI Radeon HD 4870 not overclocked. Have the latest drivers and newest patch.

First encountered the problem on the campaign mission Red Harvest when I entered Chernogorsk. Like others have said it seems to be the result of being in a large built up area with a lot of stuff happening.

Since so many of us with ATI 4800 series cards in the same kind of places are getting the exact same problem, it's pretty clear that the responsibility for resolving the problem should not rest with us users. BI or the ATI people need to fix this and it should definitely get priority over other problems as it is literally unplayable.

[Brainbug]

Seriously, how can we play with this?

http://s10.directupload.net/images/090622/9u4vp38z.jpg

If I could, I'd go back to 1.01, but most servers switched already.

I can only hope it will be fixed in the next patch.

[Conkermon]

Seriously, how can we play with this?

http://s10.directupload.net/images/090622/9u4vp38z.jpg

If I could, I'd go back to 1.01, but most servers switched already.

I can only hope it will be fixed in the next patch.

I'd just like to know that BIS are aware of it and are attempting to resolve it. Was great to see a response from a developer a few pages back and some suggestions (which unfortunately didn't work), but this thread now stretches to 11 pages and since then there has been sweet fuck all. I understand this was also an issue that went unresolved in ArmA I? In which case I'm a tad worried that the policy henceforth will be to disregard those of us with the problem as they've never been able to fix it..

[Palanoid]

after updating to ver 1.02,my game has now become playable.
no more corruption when i played the mp evolution coop,but the downside is i have to tune down video memory setting and texture detail to low,which are below default settings. i have an HD 4870 512mb

[Brainbug]

I think I found something, it may be the anisotropic filtering! In a desperate attempt I disabled the AF completely, and I haven't had any problems anymore!

Please help to verify this thought, either it really helps (it would also help the programmers to narrow it down) or I'm just lucky.

You have to set anisotropic filtering to 'use application settings' in the Catalyst Control Panel, then to 'disabled' or 'deaktiviert' in game:
http://s5b.directupload.net/images/090623/eljirnoi.jpg

Of course the textures will now look bad, but at least you can see everything and the game is playable again. Fiddling with the texture resolution or the memory setting didn't do anything, so you are free to set what you want here (since the textures look crappy anyway, you might just turn them down to squeeze out a few more fps, but dont expect too much). This still needs to be fixed in either a patch or a new driver, but at least we won't have to toss the game into the corner until then. :)

[AMiRAl]

Hi everyone, and thanks for the tips.

@<hidden> : i will try this asap.

indeed, i experiment the same artifact problem from the first time i've launched the game (yesterday :rolleyes:). it happens fast in the middle of nowhere in Chernarus land too, when looking in a given direction. the higher my video options are, the faster it appears.

with a Sapp. HD 4850 X2 1Gig ( C2D @<hidden> 2.8GHz, 2 Gb RAM, Xp, Dx 9.0c march 2009, CCC 9.6, ArmA II 1.02, very high, 1680x1050 100%)

the 'anisotropic filter' option was locked on ("4x" if i remember well) in my arma 2 advanced video option menu.
i couldn't change it. i'll try and disable it in the CCC to try this workaround, and give you feedback.

i really hope that Bohemia and/or ATI give us a real fix soon !


Edit (June 24th) : in fact disabling 'anistropic filtering' helps quite a lot, i can play much longer without getting artifacts ... but it doesn't completely solves the problem sometimes in places rich in objects (villages center) : they still suddenly appear and then go in seconds.
so as proposed in firsts posts i manually set my GPU fans above 45% (hopefully i use a headset when playing !) and i was freed of these annoying polygons for this time.
i may check every other workaround too, since it seems that multiple factors lead to this.

[Brainbug]

Yes indeed, I had now problems again as well, so it doesn't help. What does seem to help is just changing any settings, then it works for a while. I reverted now to AF on and could play again for a while. As long as it lasts...

I'm now totally clueless what might cause this.

[Crazyfox]

I have the same problem here as many others.
Some people here may not have the exactly same problem but this is what happends.
After a while playing around i get the texture failures seen in the screens, when this happends the fps drops to 0-3. If i monitor my cpu load it is almoast constant when this happends, GPU stays the same. It happends quicker in the bigger cities, can almost not play there at all. It seems to do with how much textures that is loaded. Tabbing out or making the game reload the texutres resets the problem but it will happend again after a while.
Have tried a lot of stuff, nothing works. Have only played the 1.02 patch of the game. Nothing overheats, and have tried the ATI 1.6 and the 1.7 beta driver.
Lowering settings in game to lowest still gives me error but it will take longer.

As I said i've tried a lot of stuff but nothing works, were close to format the partition with windows on and reinstall but as it seems that other ppl got the problem ill wait. Im able to provide help if you tell me how, (monitoring software etc) haven't been able to find any error report log yet though.

Please fix this problem BI as the game is great and i want to be able to play it.


My Specs: HD4870 1GB, A64 X2 5000+, 3GB RAM. WINXP 32bit.

[Brainbug]

I want to add that I experienced this type of error in the past in other games and on other computer hardware (always Ati cards), e.g. in Gothic3 on a x1900 or in BF2 on a X800pro. In all cases this was fixed at some point by either a game patch or a new driver, don't know for sure exactly (I just noticed several months later that it was gone). But it shows that this type of error is known and also a solution is known, so I'm pretty confident that we will see it being fixed at some (hopefully not too distant) point in the future.

[Tankriders]

Have you disabled the AI Catalyst, that worked for me. I have a ATI 3870 2x card..

[Badstar]

Hi! There is a severe graphics bug thats happening to me. I allready searched the forum for anything similar but found nothing. So I hope it may get fixed in a patch because it makes this great game pretty much unplayable for me.

1 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma1.jpg)
2 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma2.jpg)
3 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma3.jpg)
4 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma4.jpg)
5 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma5.jpg)
6 (http://www.fabian.webdesign-jaekel.de/arma/arma6.jpg)

So ... I got this strange layers everywhere in the game. The higher the settings the more it appears. Its also caused by areas with many objects. Looking on the ground makes it disappear. And they even drop shadows as you can see in picture 2. It might also interest you that I had several blue screens when I tried to change settings in the moment these things appeared. No blue screens when they were not visible.

My System:
Windows XP SP2
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.93Ghz
ATI Radeon HD 4850
4GB Memory

Same problem with me, ATI Sapphire HD 4870 512 mo !!!
The game is unplayable because of large artifacts !!! (especially over the cities "Tchernogorsk")
My System :
Windows XP 32 SP3
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0Ghz
MB :Asus P5Q-PRO
Sapphire Ati Raedon HD 4870 512 Mo : http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?psn=000101&pid=174
4GB Memory (3.25Go/XP 32)
Sorry for my English but I'm from Belgium : my language is french.

[Brainbug]

1.02 Build 58134

After driving through Chernogorsk in the editor for just 2-3min, I got the bug again. Obviously it hasn't been worked on yet.

[Ginger McAle]

I dont know if it has been said already in this thread, but it seems the problem does occur when the VRAM gets FULL.

An user from german forums found it out.

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8859/arma2graphatt.png

When the VRAM gets FULL, the graphic errors come. Bohemia are you guys doing something about it?

By the way, another video on youtube posted by someone showing this problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imN3xa0sZxU

[Crazyfox]

I don't think its becouse of that the vram gets full. My vram has never gone down to the bottom when i get the problem. But the error could just eat up all the vram when the strange textures is shown, i dunno.

[Elanzer]

Count me in as another also experiencing this issue.

[BelM]

well I think there's maybe 30% or even more players with this issue. Count me and my friend, both ATI 4850 - 512vram. Hope this will be solved soon, cause ARMA2 is pretty unplayable even on low settings.

[Thr0tt]

Devs told me its an issue with my AGP, I am pretty sure they are yet to make a 4850 or 4870x2 AGP version... same issue yet I can stop it happenning luckily due to the fact I have AGP which I have posted earlier (I think in this thread).

Would be nice to a. have this officially recognised and worked on and b. an idea of when / if its going to be fixed.

The YT vid above show exactly what happens, I can recreate it as and when so its not as if the devs don't have anyone willing to provide reports / stats or anything they need to bottom out this ArmA2 engine problem.

12 pages of replies / testing / etc. shouldn't this be stickied as a known issue...

[kklownboy]

Have you disabled the AI Catalyst, that worked for me. I have a ATI 3870 2x card..
well then you loose your multigpu.
Has anybody tried renaming the arma2.exe? setting your HDR in the arma.cfg to 32 (8,16,32).
also does Alt-Tab out and back into game help.

[sirex]

well then you loose your multigpu.
Has anybody tried renaming the arma2.exe? setting your HDR in the arma.cfg to 32 (8,16,32).
also does Alt-Tab out and back into game help.

yes. and no, it doesnt help.

just to confirm, i get this with a 4850 and a 4870, or a 4870+4850 crossfire. 512mb cards, winxp 32bit, 4gb ram (3 used)

[Conkermon]

Well it's pretty clear that this is a widespread issue and the lengths some have gone to in an attempt to resolve it (and failed) are well beyond what more novice PC users and gamers are capable of.

Since it's been comprehensively proven to exist, replicated and tested, I don't think we can do much more aside from keeping this thread alive and waiting for a response from BIS.

[JaCkNiFe]

I am also getting those glitchs on my screen
Ati Radeon HD 4800
Win xp 32bit

[shezan74]

Add me to your statistics about users with problems with ATI video card.

In my case i think it's a temperature related problem, due the fact sometimes my system will fail also just before new maps are loaded in COD4 multiplayer.

[azmothman]

Please add me to your stats. BIS hello are you there? PLEASE RESPOND!!!!!

[madweegie]

DriverVer=06/10/2009, 8.630.0.0000

ONLY XP x86/x64 at this time, will update when/if Vista version becomes available.

XP x86/x64

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KYXNVKC8

Also can install in windows 7 x64 mode if u chose f8 at start up and start without driver signatures. u can use 64bit driver on 7 and works.

These are Cat 9.7 rc3 (8.63) drivers.

Just to let everyone know, the 9.7 drivers are WHQL

Driver Version 6.14.10.6973
Driver Details 8.63-090610a-082777E-ATI
Driver Date 6-10-2009
Driver WHQL Certified true

worth the shot.

[Shemashko]

Its not the overheating of your card it is the problem with ATI cards and the AA. Just change your AA to disabled or low and it will go away. Somehow AA on ArmA 2 freaks out on ATI cards hopefully they'll fix it.

[householddog]

This might help a few people who get problems after 10 minutes.

I noticed that VRAM issues were a problem in arma1 too.

[Burrows]

didnt help with the Sun causing "flickering"

[householddog]

No its probably more for massive polygon anomoly's really.


I wouldn't mind some people, who get crashes after 10-15 minutes trying it out.

The results seem a little varied, really. Some people are helped by this fix, a lot of others aren't.

I stil strongly feel its something to do with non local vram handling. Whatever that is? I think its using RAM as VRAM. Not sure though.

One thing I have not tested, is setting non local vram to zero and the vram to 1GB.

[sirex]

No its probably more for massive polygon anomoly's really.


I wouldn't mind some people, who get crashes after 10-15 minutes trying it out.

The results seem a little varied, really. Some people are helped by this fix, a lot of others aren't.

I stil strongly feel its something to do with non local vram handling. Whatever that is? I think its using RAM as VRAM. Not sure though.

One thing I have not tested, is setting non local vram to zero and the vram to 1GB.

im pretty sure a bis dev said the bug is a memory fragmentation issue. Which would make sense, as when i get the bug i can change from high to very high with a 512mb card and itll go away for a bit. when it comes back i go back toh igh or normal and it goes away again, so i dont think anything we do is going to fix it until bis sort it out

[householddog]

Yeah I agree. Its more a bit of a workaround more than anything. I have popped it up as an issue on the bug tracker. Put some votes on it and it might get looked at.

I think its more the 9.6 drivers fixed the fragmentation issue. Arma2 coding possibly didn't adhere to some standard and started getting issues.

I actually noticed Armed Assault had the same sort of issues with VRAM. Their latest patch mentions it in the release notes.

[Burrows]

One thing I have not tested, is setting non local vram to zero and the vram to 1GB.


ill try this right now

edit: didnt help...made it worse

[Conkermon]

Its not the overheating of your card it is the problem with ATI cards and the AA. Just change your AA to disabled or low and it will go away. Somehow AA on ArmA 2 freaks out on ATI cards hopefully they'll fix it.

I did a full uninstall, installed the latest patch and put AA on low, the problem was worse than ever (as in it came very quickly). Will try again on disabled but wont get my hopes up.

[Brevado]

It seems every so often I get random white graphical glitches. Basically it looks like a few pixels (and by a few I mean its really noticeable) come up randomly and I'm not sure whats causing it. I'm not fast enough to get a screen shot either as like I said its random, and happens pretty frequently.

I'll see if I'm able to later:

My specs

Radeon 4850 with up-to-date drivers
Pentium i7 920
3 gigs of ddr3 ram

My GPU idle's at around 60c* and is overclocked a teeny bit

Has pretty good flow, and I've tried cleaning it out as well. It's leading me to think it might be more of a bug then a personal hardware problem.

I noticed in another thread that there was a way to adjust the fan speed in the catalyst control center, but I do not see that option for mine (I just downloaded the most up-to date version)

If anyone knows of any thing I could try to fix this I'd appreciate it :)

Anyways, back to making some more levels :yay:

[ProfTournesol]

I got Catalyst 9.5 and you can adjust fan speed in the overclocking section of the CCC (at the end of the menu). My HD 4870x2 is heating a lot, and stock fan speed is ridiculously low (27%), so i set it to 40% and it's not too much (but quite noisy).

[Brevado]

Hmm did they remove the option from 9.6?

[ProfTournesol]

Nope AFAIK

[Brevado]

http://i40.tinypic.com/i1mk91.jpg >100kb

???

[Beagle]

The white artifacts are rather driver and engine dependent.
They were gone with Cat 9.5 and ArmA 1.01 but reintroduced with ArmA 1.02 and Cat 9.6

[Skeptic]

Ginger McAle, could you please register and post this issue in A2 bug tracker? See links in my sig. You might be requested to provide additional info/testing (Suma, kju and alef will look into it). I had this issue with XP32bitSP3 9.4 cats, then it was gone with 9.5 and W7 64bit. I can't reproduce it reliably - which is required for the bug tracker. Make sure to provide all the info. (http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/cis)

Quick notes:
1. I can confirm this is not overheating - tested with FurMark burn in test
2. It is possible to fix by switching default video memory to very high or high (helped me with 9.5 32bit)
3. Some drivers exhibit this more frequently
4. Play around with a) disabling catalyst AI, b) disabling AA, c) lowering/disabling AF

[Ginger McAle]

No problem. Will do. Thanks for recommending this way of proceeding.

[Skeptic]

Great, thanks - more info is needed like DxDiag.txt and arma2.cfg etc. Please post link to the issue, so that I could vote it up and add my info.

Here's my thread documenting this (http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=73977).

[Brevado]

Ohhh youch thanks for the heads uP!

[Burrows]

that is odd. dont know why it isnt letting you adjust your fan speed. maybe your graphics card doesnt allow that.

[randir14]

I have a 4850 that doesn't let me control the fan speed either. I heard it's because some cards only have two wires going to the fan, you apparently need three wires to control fan speed.

[maschenazi]

:mad:

I have the same problems... The game is not play-able like this.

Some screenshots:

http://img18.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=arma22009070117172127.jpg

MB: Gigabyte EP45-DS3P
Intel Q9450 @<hidden> 2.66
8Gb RAM
Gigabyte Radeon 4850 1 Gb Vram
Vista 64 bit

[Mr_Centipede]

I have ASUS ATI Radeon 4870 DK(Dark Knight) 512mb, just got the game yesterday and expecting the artifacts.. but gladly i didn't experience any. my rig is still new, so no other games installed except ARMA1 and ARMA2.

mobo is ASUS P5QL PRO
4gb RAM
VISTA ULTIMATE 64bit
INTEL Q9550 @<hidden>
everything is on factory settings, not overclock or anything, does all of you OC your rig? mobo and/or gfx card? try to set it back to factory setting. though it's just my speculation... im no techie

[Thr0tt]

Thanks Mr Centipede, but if you read this and many other threads this is not a simple overclocking issue, if it was don't you think it would be sorted ?

The issue happens on some systems with these and other ATI cards in, you are one of the lucky ones where it doesn't happen, good for you.

[Placebo]

Ok I've merged the three main threads together which seem to cover the same issues, also renamed the thread to make it clear what it's about.

I personally have Ati 4870 512mb and have no such problems, using the Cat 9.4 as later ones killed my OS (plan to try again to install the latest when I've cloned my OS drive again).

[Burrows]

im still having the flickering bug with 2 4850s. using 9.6 going to try rolling back my drivers.

[Thr0tt]

Ok I've merged the three main threads together which seem to cover the same issues, also renamed the thread to make it clear what it's about.

I personally have Ati 4870 512mb and have no such problems, using the Cat 9.4 as later ones killed my OS (plan to try again to install the latest when I've cloned my OS drive again).

Cool, has anyone in BI seen the issue first hand or because you have not had the problem it doesn't really exist ? I am sure there are plenty of people here who would be more than happy to help you fix the problem.

So.. I am also guessing that as you have not seen the issue it is not intended to be a fix in the next patch.

Also note that this issue has appeared on X1950XT, HD3850, not sure which others but these two are confirmed not just the 4xxx series.

[alexp247365]

That looks like gfx card over-heating. Any time you have random corruption like that, heat is the first suspect.

[Thr0tt]

That looks like gfx card over-heating. Any time you have random corruption like that, heat is the first suspect.

Wow, its solved, many thanks, please post again soon, bye.

[GoOB]

I'd grab Speedfan for temperature monitoring rather than GPU-Z, download it here: http://www.almico.com/speedfan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php). Also grab ATItraytools to manually control your fan speed, the ATI controlcenter does that now too, but traytools is alot more lightweight.

[Thr0tt]

I'm sorry if 18 pages of problems is tough to read but start at page 1 and you will see that is not an overheating issue. Speedfan, ATT, slapping a bif mofo fan to the side of your PC will not solve this issue for 99.9% of folk with this problem that only happens in this game.

Please view the amount of things everyone has tried to do to fix the issue then comment on what you believe the issue is rather than the default 'overheating', 'not enoug VRAM', 'defrag', etc.

[cosmokev]

Im running an 4850 and xp - corruption as soon as game starts.
installed windows 7 and no problem now.

THIS PROVES its a driver related problem - games runs fine with win7 but not xp - cant really put it any simpler.

Or thinking about it ive heard win7 deals with memory in a different way to xp.

The corruption seems to be from memory handling of graphics ram so it can be fixed by BI and ATI .

[Thr0tt]

cosmokev, thanks for that, I have a spare drive and will try Win7 over the next few days.

[krazypoloc]

I am having the same issue. And I have custom cooling and stock clocks on my GPU - see sig for details.


Oh and on a lighter note, check out this interesting glitch.

http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g222/krzywica/Arma%20II/th_arma22009-06-3015-07-38-12.jpg (http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g222/krzywica/Arma%20II/?action=view&current=arma22009-06-3015-07-38-12.jpg)
http://i57.photobucket.com/albums/g222/krzywica/Arma%20II/th_arma22009-06-3015-08-02-19.jpg (http://s57.photobucket.com/albums/g222/krzywica/Arma%20II/?action=view&current=arma22009-06-3015-08-02-19.jpg)

[Conkermon]

I'm sorry if 18 pages of problems is tough to read but start at page 1 and you will see that is not an overheating issue. Speedfan, ATT, slapping a bif mofo fan to the side of your PC will not solve this issue for 99.9% of folk with this problem that only happens in this game.

Please view the amount of things everyone has tried to do to fix the issue then comment on what you believe the issue is rather than the default 'overheating', 'not enoug VRAM', 'defrag', etc.

Well said.

[D3lta]

Thr0tt, I Agree!! This is not a bug card, but a game bug...

A2 running in Windows XP:

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/th_arma22009-07-0220-18-05-18.jpg (http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/?action=view&current=arma22009-07-0220-18-05-18.jpg)
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/th_arma22009-07-0220-19-12-18.jpg (http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/?action=view&current=arma22009-07-0220-19-12-18.jpg)
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/th_arma22009-07-0220-30-23-68.jpg (http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/?action=view&current=arma22009-07-0220-30-23-68.jpg)
http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/th_arma22009-07-0220-31-19-32.jpg (http://s103.photobucket.com/albums/m135/_DragonAvenger/?action=view&current=arma22009-07-0220-31-19-32.jpg)



I have a ATI 4870 and the performance is poor in Normal mode:mad:..... Boehmia, we needs a patch, urgent!!!!!.

[Ginger McAle]

Added bug in bug tracker
"Graphic artefacts with ATI cards"

Link:
http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/2500

Regards
Ginger

[householddog]

Already popped one up a few weeks ago.

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/2118

You vote for me and I'll vote for you though. :)

You might want to merge yours with mine or vice versa. Yours is a lot better laid out. :)

---------- Post added at 12:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 PM ----------

On top of this though, I really think the memory management on this game is pretty poor.

---------- Post added at 01:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 PM ----------


I'd grab Speedfan for temperature monitoring rather than GPU-Z, download it here: http://www.almico.com/speedfan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php). Also grab ATItraytools to manually control your fan speed, the ATI controlcenter does that now too, but traytools is alot more lightweight.
Seriously Go0B if you are going to come out with garbage suggestions like that, without reading this forum. Please don't post at all.

[Crazyfox]

I really hope this gets fixed with the next patch. I cannot play anything but Utes right now becouse it contains too few textures to give me problem.
When i get the problem though i fps drops which makes it impossible to -flush. If im lucky i can get the menu up and tab out and in.
But even with this problem fixed i can not play in big cities. The LOD loading or whatever it is when looking around and zooming in just destroys my computer, and then im over optimal req.

Anyway I had this same corruption with Arma1 when i put on high texture details, problem was gone when they were put to normal. But in arma 2 nothing works.

Can add that I tryed to roll back to 9.4 drivers but problem is still there.
In every thread where this problem is brought up someone gotta come with the expert advice: "Check your temperatures".:icon_slap:

[Burrows]

rolled back to catalyst 9.4 and i jumped 10 fps and flickering bug stopped.

[Harlock_GBase]

I only have the demo, not the full game, but i have to credit BIS for making Arma II run better on my medieval rig than Arma. I have an old P4 3.2GHz with 2GB Ram and an ATI x1950pro with 512MB (AGP). I can run Arma II fine with even higher settings than in Arma. What the heck?! Well, i also have these artifacts and the fact that as AGP user i'm stuck with the 9.3 catalyst driver doesn't help much. Would be nice if this could get sorted out. I might even think about buying the full game : )

[Leopardi]

I had this with NVIDIA 8800 GTS when the bug in drivers filled the VRAM.

[Placebo]

So.. I am also guessing that as you have not seen the issue it is not intended to be a fix in the next patch.

I don't believe I at any point said or implied that?

I was giving my own personal feedback as an ATI 4870 owner.

And yes I use Windows7.

[kenjara]

I get some black lines with my 4870 1GB. Had similar problems with my 2900XT on arma 1 before it was patched. Im on vista 64bit ultimate btw.

[Ginger McAle]

I was giving my own personal feedback as an ATI 4870 owner.
And yes I use Windows7.

Good to know, another person with Windows 7 that does not have this problem.

So far only Windows XP and Vista are affected right?



Already popped one up a few weeks ago.
Oh, did not see it. I have been asked in that thread to open a ticket, so i did. Sorry mate.

[Thr0tt]

I don't believe I at any point said or implied that?

I was giving my own personal feedback as an ATI 4870 owner.

And yes I use Windows7.

Thanks for the feedback that you don't have the issue on your 4870. I too was only leaving personal feedback as you (working for BIS) who has not had the issue nor stated or implied anyone else within BIS has had or experienced the issue would only make me throw a guess in there that you may or may not be looking to 'fix' it.

Lets hope that if this issue were to appear somewhere within BIS (I'm not saying it is or isnt) that you (i'm not saying you personally but addressing BIS) are able to isolate it (i'm not saying you haven't already isolated as you may or may not have) and fix it (if it is not already fixed).

I hope that clears up the confusion (I am not saying you are confused but a gereral confusion over non-commital responses leading to presumption and guess work).

Cheers,

:D

[Placebo]

Impressive ;)

[Conkermon]

So can we get a sticky on this thread? With 14,000 views it seems to be of interest to the masses :)

[Placebo]

Sure.

[kklownboy]

Its not the overheating of your card it is the problem with ATI cards and the AA. Just change your AA to disabled or low and it will go away. Somehow AA on ArmA 2 freaks out on ATI cards hopefully they'll fix it. some ppl can have a overheating issues, and should test that anyways.good debug practice.

From reading this thread, it seems the 512mb cards on xp32 are the most prevalent with the issues.. I do not get any of the issues for any length of time ever...i have 4870x2's 2gb each and Vista64 but before my steam version(1.02.5) i used the -winxp flag no issues... ill try out a xp32 and a xp64.

[cosmokev]

I vote for a permanent ban on the next tosser that mentions overheating and/or overclocking.

[SnR]

I vote for a permanent ban on the next tosser that mentions overheating and/or overclocking.Your 2 posts means no:p

[Thr0tt]

I vote for a permanent ban on the next tosser that mentions overheating and/or overclocking.

He has my vote. :)

[Sneaky5150]

Same problem, same area of the map.

Single Visiontek 4870 512mb (Zalman VF1000 cooler, so it's NOT heat), Intel 3.16ghz duo core, 4gb 1066 matched pair corsair ram, Asus Rampage X48 chipset, XPpro 32-bit SP3. Nothing overclocked, noob settings.

Had this exact same problem with and old 9800xt Radeon card, and Arma1. Assumed it was because that setup and vid-card were old. Therefore, built a new box, and it ran Arma like glass maxed out.

Arma2, not so much. Anyone running crossfire? If so, same problem? Any problems at all? Was waiting for Arma2 to implement crossfire with a second card, but now I'll guess I'll wait.

Ugggh...

[householddog]

Oh, did not see it. I have been asked in that thread to open a ticket, so i did. Sorry mate.
No worries mate the more the merrier. As I said, yours if far more coherent than mine. ;)

[LEEROY_UK]

All i want is Crossfire to give me better preformance than just using one card as im getting worse frame rates with crossfire enabled at the same graphics settings as when i use just one !?

Q6600 oc @<hidden> 3.0ghz

2x HD4870 512mb

4GB corsair xms2

Vista 64

[Crazyfox]

I just want to say that when i went from XP to windows 7 RC 64bit and all my problems are gone! :shine:
No more corrupt texturebug, framerates are no longer 8 in the big cities but 20-30 when in editor, att high graphics.

I still got some flickering textures sometimes, and the sound somethimes get weird but its nothing compared to what problems i had before.
Can finally play the game! :D

So if you have problems with an ATI card in XP try Win7, worked for me anyway.

[Thr0tt]

Just installing now, problem is I don't think NF3 is supported so gonna be a pig to get running.

[Beugnen]

I just want to say that when i went from XP to windows 7 RC 64bit and all my problems are gone! :shine:
No more corrupt texturebug, framerates are no longer 8 in the big cities but 20-30 when in editor, att high graphics.

I still got some flickering textures sometimes, and the sound somethimes get weird but its nothing compared to what problems i had before.
Can finally play the game! :D

So if you have problems with an ATI card in XP try Win7, worked for me anyway.

though im glad you got a performance improvement, it is perhaps hardly a conclusive test

moving to a new OS obviously included you to install all new drivers along the way, which is to say perhaps a driver update was responsible?

additionally, the game runs much faster in the editor than 'in-game' :cool:

[Sneaky5150]

though im glad you got a performance improvement, it is perhaps hardly a conclusive test

moving to a new OS obviously included you to install all new drivers along the way, which is to say perhaps a driver update was responsible?

additionally, the game runs much faster in the editor than 'in-game' :cool:

Haven't seen it in the editor yet. Then again, I haven't loaded up a mission with a ton of units yet, either.

We'll see.

---------- Post added at 05:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:27 PM ----------


All i want is Crossfire to give me better preformance than just using one card as im getting worse frame rates with crossfire enabled at the same graphics settings as when i use just one !?

Q6600 oc @<hidden> 3.0ghz

2x HD4870 512mb

4GB corsair xms2

Vista 64

It's running slower with two cards? Does Arma2 not support crossfire?

Are you getting the video bugs that everyone is complaining about in this thread (i.e. giant asparagus attacking you, and completely immune to small arms fire)???

[ryan80]

so its confirmed that windows 7 runs this without any issue? which version of catalyst driver? 9.4 or 9.6?

but is there still huge performance hit in built up area or populated towns?

might download and install windows 7 RC later if this is true.

[Thr0tt]

Windows 7 and AGP (ATI Cards) doesn't work so I'm fugged ! Tried everything to get it working and no joy.

Guess ArmA 2 and all its greatness is going to have to wait for me to completely change my system before I can play properly, really happy I wasted my money on the German and UK versions, thanks BIS, great looking game, fantastic functions but doesn't work for me. This is my last post on this so good luck to eveyone else with the issue and I hope you have better luck.

[Argie86]

Im on Windows7 64bits, and i have the texture bug with a 4870 1GB
So windows7 isn`t the solution.

My specs: Asus P5Q3 - Q6600 - 8GB RAM - Gigabyte 4870

[Conkermon]

Windows 7 and AGP (ATI Cards) doesn't work so I'm fugged ! Tried everything to get it working and no joy.

Guess ArmA 2 and all its greatness is going to have to wait for me to completely change my system before I can play properly, really happy I wasted my money on the German and UK versions, thanks BIS, great looking game, fantastic functions but doesn't work for me. This is my last post on this so good luck to eveyone else with the issue and I hope you have better luck.

Mate, we're not changing our systems, that's ridiculous. I'm not upgrading to windows 7, especially at EU prices, just to play ArmA II when I'm happy with XP and it should work with XP.

[=BIA=Freisar]

Same problem of the first post but my gpu is not hot...is same arma problem with ati card.

(only game with this problem)

Xp32 HD4850 512mb 3gb ram.

[Vipera]

When I set Texture Detail to Very High than I have similar artefacts. When I set Texture Detail to High, than I don't have artefacts but I can see textures and lods redrawings in heavy geometry locations. When I have Texture Detail=Normal and Video Memory=Very High with AA=Disabled than I receive HUGE performance increase and it removes constant and annoying texture redrawing when I turn around. I have good performance and I don't have any artefacts. I just want to note that my video card has 1Gb of memory installed.

ARMA2 option :
1920*1200
Fillrate - 100%
Texture Detail - Normal
Video Memory - Very High
Anisotropic Filtering - High
AA - Disabled
Terrain Detail - High
Objects Detail - High
Shadow Detail - High
PostProcess Effects- Disabled

Visual Distance - 3000

[Crazyfox]

though im glad you got a performance improvement, it is perhaps hardly a conclusive test

moving to a new OS obviously included you to install all new drivers along the way, which is to say perhaps a driver update was responsible?
Yeah it must be the drivers/drivercompability with the game.
Problem could also have been by an old driver that got wiped out when i formated my c: drive as well. Even though i use a driver sweeper.


Windows 7 and AGP (ATI Cards) doesn't work so I'm fugged ! Tried everything to get it working and no joy.
Hang in there, it's great when you get it to work. :)


Mate, we're not changing our systems, that's ridiculous. I'm not upgrading to windows 7, especially at EU prices, just to play ArmA II when I'm happy with XP and it should work with XP.
The release candidate is free and expire in a year from now. But of course it should work with XP as well.

[ryan80]

going back to the catalyst 9.4 drivers did make performance improvements.

[Dogtags]

going back to the catalyst 9.4 drivers did make performance improvements.

I tried that as well after you mentioned it and found no difference what so ever, Receiving.... as bad as ever and performance was no better, maybe slightly worse but it was marginal.

[householddog]

Even if this is a driver issue, it up to BI to bring it up with ATI, not the other way around.

Its not as if ATI has access to BI source code for testing.

[Skeptic]

so its confirmed that windows 7 runs this without any issue? which version of catalyst driver? 9.4 or 9.6?

but is there still huge performance hit in built up area or populated towns?

might download and install windows 7 RC later if this is true.

In my case going from XP SP3 32bit and Cat 9.4 to Win7 RC 64bit with 9.5 Cat cured it. This is definitely driver issue. I'm back on XP now with 9.5 and in few short MP sessions (<=1hr) I had no problems with mem setting on very high (have 1Gb HD4890 here).

[ZlITTeR]

hello here i have a saphire 4870 512mb i have same graphiqs error in arma2.
In arma1 i had the same problem whatever ati drivers i used untill i try the 1.15 beta patch that fixed the problem at 100%. i bought the gc in september 2008 stoped playing my favorite game for months estie and now its
the same thing for arma2 :(

[archsceptic.]

I've made this post in the AMD forums:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=233&threadid=115658&enterthread=y

Can everybody who is unhappy about how their ati cards are performing, particularly with ArmA2, pile in there and make your feelings known. My 4870 X2 2Gb has under-performed with just about every game I've played on it.

I think we all know by now ArmA2 has some problems, not least mystifyingly poor performance on top-end systems compared to mid-range systems. BI are bound to blame ati and ati are bound to blame BI - but I think we've said enough in this forum to let it be known how things are - but I haven't yet seen a complaint in the AMD forums.

Come on guy's, get over there and tell them. One catalyst release after another has achieved zilch for me - ever since 8.12. If we dont make a noise they wont get off their backsides and do anything, except fine tuning the next catalyst release for SIMS 3.

Men, attach bayonets!!!

:mad::mad::mad:

[randir14]

Actually it probably is ATI's fault. This isn't the only game that ATI cards have problems with. Another recent one was Prototype which was missing a ton of shader effects and shadows on ATI cards.

[Chaz]

My specs:

eVGA 780i mobo (P08 BIOS)
2 GB DDR2
ATI 4870HD 512mb
150GB raptor HD
Resolution 1920X1080

When I first played this game, I was using the old 8.9 drivers. Massive texture corruption, frame slowdown, virtually unplayable.

Upgraded to catalyst 9.6 No problems at all, other than some textures "re-drawing" itself as I turn around. My videocard fan speed is set to 45% when gaming.

I see about 30-35 fps on average- 40-55 fps in open less populated areas. 20-25 in dense populated city areas and firefights.

[MoonDawg]

Just thought I`d pop in here.

I run Arma 2 on vista 64, 4850 512 with cat9.5, Q9400@<hidden>,4 and 4gb.
Runs smooth enough, and never an artifact.

Now, i wanted to test the performance on XP
So i got cat9.6, and fired up armamark 2.0. Lo and behold, lots of artifacts.

Now, I haven`t develved into this, but I had none on vista at same settings..

[householddog]

Guys Ginger has logged this fault in the tracker.

Sign up and vote for this issue to be dealt with here.
http://dev-heaven.net/issues/show/2500

[Sneaky5150]

When I set Texture Detail to Very High than I have similar artefacts. When I set Texture Detail to High, than I don't have artefacts but I can see textures and lods redrawings in heavy geometry locations. When I have Texture Detail=Normal and Video Memory=Very High with AA=Disabled than I receive HUGE performance increase and it removes constant and annoying texture redrawing when I turn around. I have good performance and I don't have any artefacts. I just want to note that my video card has 1Gb of memory installed.

ARMA2 option :
1920*1200
Fillrate - 100%
Texture Detail - Normal
Video Memory - Very High
Anisotropic Filtering - High
AA - Disabled
Terrain Detail - High
Objects Detail - High
Shadow Detail - High
PostProcess Effects- Disabled

Visual Distance - 3000
Thanks for posting that. That seems to have worked, so far.

Still, would like to run crossfire or SLI. And, make a decision one way or the other which board to build out. Right now it's looking like nvidia unless BI or ATI address this issue.

Please BI? I'll give ya 50.00 dollars! Wait....I already did! Just kiddin!

[kklownboy]

Thanks for posting that. That seems to have worked, so far.

Still, would like to run crossfire or SLI. And, make a decision one way or the other which board to build out. Right now it's looking like nvidia unless BI or ATI address this issue.

Please BI? I'll give ya 50.00 dollars! Wait....I already did! Just kiddin! i use a pair of 4870x2s and have none of the issues that are in this thread... game runs good. vista64 with the -winxp flag and using crysis.exe for the Cf strobe, tones it down.

[mr.g-c]

Hi i have a HD4890 oc'ed Toxic Model and i can put all on very-high, besides Anti-Aliasing (set to Normal on 1920x1200) and Objects-Detail (High) .
I have none of the texture Problems, but i can only play the game with the "-winxp" switch in my shortcut, which gave me overall 5-10FPS less, because i have Vista64, 8GB Ram.
So when i put out 4GB Ram of my System and play without that -winXP switch, i get 5-10FPS more which is essential in that game to stay above 25-30 FPS....
Im running it with the latest Catalyst 9.6, but also the Previous ones did not help at all.
I pray that this will be fixed with the next patch, otherwise its just lame.... everytime the same with BIS games and good hardware..... *rolleyes*

[Alex72]

Im about to buy the 4890. I really hope i will get away without problems. Just want to step up in resoultion and textures to high - then im happy. Bit scared though reading about artifacts...

Alex

[KEVBAZ]

I have a XFX HD 4850 XXX Edition 512MB, 2gb ram, AMD Phenom X4 9950 Windows Vista and i have no such artifacts or graphical glitches.....

[BLKSmoke]

I have 2 x 4890 (although Crossfire is not working... yet) and I get OK performance. My in game settings:

Quality Preference: Very High
Visibility: 3600
Resolution: 1920x1200
3D Resolution: 100%
Texture: Very High
Video Memory: Very High
An. Filtering: Normal
An. Aliasing: Normal
Terrain: Very High
Object: Very High
Shadow: Very High
Post processing: Disabled
Ratio: 16:10

Results: averaging 27 FPS (demo benchmark)

The rest of my hardware is mentioned in my sig. Although I am now testing Windows7 (64bit) but have found absolutely no difference in gaming performance over Vista (32bit).

Naturally turning some settings down a bit means more frames per second - but I like it to look pretty... I'm still searching for that 'happy medium'.

I'm really hoping ATI get some 'optimised' drivers out for this game soon so I can use my second GPU.

[demowhc]

crossfire works if you add -winxp switch to the command line of desktop icon

[SnR]

Nvidia just came to the party and brought out a SLI patch for Arma II, lets hope ATI catch up.

[Sneaky5150]

i use a pair of 4870x2s and have none of the issues that are in this thread... game runs good. vista64 with the -winxp flag and using crysis.exe for the Cf strobe, tones it down.

Which would indicate it's a XP problem. Although, earlier in the thread some have the same issues using vista. Who wants to upgrade to Vista now, w/ windows 7 coming.

Going to try crossfire, hoping to god the 2nd card arrives with the same bios.

[MoonDawg]

Thought I'd share some more of my experiences with this

I ran arma on vista64, running Armamark 2 tests
My specs were: 4850 512 with cat 9.6, Q9400@<hidden>,4 4gb800 ram, Asus p5q-e
armamark 2912, normal with low AA, PP off.
All good, except a little to be desired in fps :/

Since i dualboot to XP(32), i ran it there too. Cat 9.6
20-25% better, armamark 3449 with same settings.
EXCEPT the artifacts made it unplayable..

So I got myself a 4890 1gb :D

In Vista64 i got 3398 score at above settings, and little less (3247) at High.
A little less than I excpected from the beast.

In XP I didn't even bother to check the results, the artifacts came immediately...

So I guess the problem lies in ATI's drivers for xp. Or how BIS code interacts with them.

[Thr0tt]

Just tried the latest RC of the drivers from ATI and ArmA II is still incompatible with XP and ATI GPU's on some systems.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33948552 if anyone wishes to try but pointless exercise until BIS fix the game.

[BLKSmoke]

crossfire works if you add -winxp switch to the command line of desktop icon

Thanks for the tip - but I have tried this along with renaming the exe, and i get no performance difference at all (still ~27FPS). I also get this same FPS if I have only one card in the system.

Guess i'll just have to wait patiently for patches. :(

[Horus]

ATI 9.7 (8.630) Vista/Win7 WHQL (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=COO6B3QC)
ATI 9.7 (8.631) XP/XP64 WHQL (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L8AIWSOP)

[Thr0tt]

ATI 9.7 (8.630) Vista/Win7 WHQL (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=COO6B3QC)
ATI 9.7 (8.631) XP/XP64 WHQL (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L8AIWSOP)

You mean http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33948551 and http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33948552 where you got those links from ? May be useful for people to have a look to see if anyone els has posted responses to the original source.

You could also go http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=98785 or http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3198865 - amazing he gets no recognition here when you folk just post the download links. Just doing my bit for a very helpful leaker of drivers.

[Horus]

All this helpful leakers have some contacts with ATI or nVidia :bounce3: so if some1 wants medal go to Olympics :D