Hardware Issues: Tips/Tricks/Solutions

[Jack-UK]

Well the 28 page long Hardware thread is now much too long to find many of the tips, solutions and rigs which people have posted, so i've compiled some information in this thread for those who need help =)

So lets start...

Developer Rig Running ArmA
Quoted from Developer Suma:

Quote[/b] ]My system specs are:

Primary:

Intel P4 3.6 GHz, nVidia G6800 GS 256 MB VRAM (PCIex), 2 GB RAM

Secondary:

Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, ATI X 800 256 MB VRAM (AGP), 1 GB RAM

Both are running ArmA quite fine, smooth and playable. We tested the game on both minimal and recommended configurations and we have found the experience acceptable on both of them.

This confirms that a rig around this spec SHOULD run ArmA acceptably. If not, your ArmA settings are TOO HIGH or you have hardware/driver issues. Use this as a benchmark.

If you are looking to upgrade your hardware...
Use Suma's benchmark as a rough guide... Also use THESE threads to find which rigs are working well with ArmA:

ArmA Mark: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=55304

The HIGHER the mark the better. Look at a variety of rigs for comparisons.. results DO vary so get a good range of marks.

ArmA System Thread: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....t=55253

Ask questions here about rigs, view other people's posted rigs and FPS etc.

Also READ REVIEWS OF HARDWARE! Google some hardware which you are considering, read some reviews about it. Use websites such as Froogle to find a nice price too.

Can't/Dont want to upgrade?
There are ways you can increase FPS/Performance without upgrading. Not all of these tips worked for everyone so don't expect results from all tweaks. I've compiled a list here of some tweaks used and claimed to increase performance.

1) Overclock: This is probably the most beneficial tweak, though also one of the most complicated and possibly risky. If you do want to overclock READ UP INFORMATION FIRST I am not going into the depths of overclocking here, google it. I would recommend overclocking your GPU or your CPU as they will give you the most benefit.
For NVidia Cards... http://www.softpedia.com/get....g.shtml (I have NOT used this program before but this is a highly recommended program from the internet)

For ATI Cards... http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ (I am using this program myself and have encountered no problems, easy to use, but still EXERCISE CAUTION, Overclocking can DAMAGE your hardware if used incorrectly) Dont rely COMPLETELY on the autodetect settings for ATI Tool, use some common sense along with it =)

(by Dwarden) i suggest to use ATI Tray Tools, download from homepage
active developer behind,
tweaker, overclocker and tester
contains also application/game profiles support etc.


For CPUs... There are various methods of overclocking.. i havent experimented much with my CPU... so Google it yourself As with GPU overclocking, please be careful
UNDERCLOCK for troubleshooting + increased stability Quoted from Dwarden (thanks&#33:

Quote[/b] ]UnderClock is way to be sure Your "problems" like crashes are not related to heat or weak PSU bad memory timing etc.

for normal use i can imagine underclock usability as
- low/no heat => passive cooling
- low/no noise => great for listening music / watching movies (multimedia station)
- ultralow power usage => you alive longer on UPS when poweroutage happen

2) Card Settings/Game Graphics Settings: To maximize performance LOWER YOUR INGAME SETTINGS. FPS killers include Anti-Aliasing (AA), Anistropic Filtering (AF), Object Detail and Post Processing Effects. Lower these key settings to see an FPS increase. Lower the other settings for smaller FPS increases. Also lower your ingame RESOLUTION if you can.
ArmA Config Tweaks: Also try opening your ArmA config file (located in your My Documents\Armed Assault folder) enable 16 bit mode by changing the 32 to 16. BUT there are graphical side effects, HDR is off, nights are pitch black and NV goggles bright bright green... - Thanks to Ryankaplan


Your Graphics Card Settings... Nvidia + ATI Cards usually have a control panel with them, such as ATI's Catalyst Control Centre. Sometimes particular settings can force settings within games, causing lower FPS and/or perfomance issues. I won't give a step by step guide for changing settings, but reported settings which can improve performance include the following:
VSYNC: There doesnt appear to be a way to turn this off in ArmA, Force it OFF in your control panel.
Anti Aliasing, Anistropic Filtering: Make sure these are set to APPLICATION CONTROLLED or OFF Otherwise turning off AA/AF ingame may not work as it is forced on in the control panel.
Set other settings to PERFORMANCE (If possible)
Misc. Settings: Settings such as 'Catalyst AI' should be DISABLED as this is known to lower performance.
Excellent Nvidia Tweak Guide by KELLO
Force Triple buffering: If you wish you can also force D3D triple buffering in your card settings panel (if availible). Thanks to Dwarden
Tip: (thanks to [WWS]WarWolf) Try reducing Texture LOD Adjustment to -2 or experiment in ATI Tray Tools. Couple of frames gain and sharper vegetation.

For SLI-users:
Current Forceware drivers do not enable SLI in Arma. You can however, fool the drivers by making it think you're running a SLI-enabled game by renaming arma.exe to fear.exe (FEAR has been reported as a stable SLI-profile for Arma).
I think you can use the same method for ATI's Crossfire.
A more permanent change involve using nHancer to copy an existing profile and make it trigger on Arma.exe and save it back to the registry.

3a) Dual Core Tweaks Thanks to Ziggyjinx!

Quote[/b] ]This may help some of you peeps with AMD DUAL CORES... ]AMD DUAL CORE OPTIMIZER

Thanks to Shadow!

Quote[/b] ]For WinXP32 SP2 and all dual cores with powermanagement, get MS' hotfix ]KB896256 and install it (this will be included in a future servicepack).
Then do the changes to the registry on ]this page..

I dont know about AMD's cpus but Intel's C2D cpus benefit from this fix, especially the adding of the pmtimer.

3b)Keep eye on ***MicroCode updates (by Dwarden)
as they address specific processor bugs and issues (utilizing workarounds, tweaks etc),
there are 3 ways to keep on track, ofc all of them combined is win-win situation

- keep Your bios up2date
- keep Your chipset / CPU drivers up2date (supplied by INTEL/AMD/NVIDIA/ATI/VIA/SIS etc)
- check for MS reliability updates like following one

*** *** Core2Duo MicroCode update 11.06.2007 (wXP,w3k,wV) , download KB936357 from here and read more details there



4) System Tweaks/Tweaking Programs Some people have badly fragmented hard drives, or a messy system. These tweaks have had various results, some people have had no performance boost, others good boosts, so its not guarenteed.

Clean Boot A highly reccomended tip from Tracer (all credit to him for finding this out)

Quote[/b] ]Anyway, here's what to do:
Click here

Note You may experience a temporary loss of some services functionality when you follow these steps. Restoring the settings restores the functionality.

1. Click Start, click Run, type msconfig in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. On the General tab, click Selective Startup.
3. Under Selective Startup, click to clear the following check boxes:
• Process SYSTEM.INI File
• Process WIN.INI File
• Load Startup Items

4. On the Services tab, click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box, and then click Disable All.
5. Click OK, and then click Restart.

To resort back to your 'normal' machine just select 'Normal Startup' at the top and presto! your machine is as it was.

Defrag your hard-drive Regular defragging is very useful, if your files are all over your hard-drive it takes them longer to be streamed, this can cause slow downs. Good idea to do this weekly. Ultimate Defrag is a useful program if you wish to put ArmA to the OUTSIDE of the hard drive, allowing it to be accessed faster.. especially useful on large/full hard drives.

Update your GFX DRIVERS Not only could this increase performance it can also help solve some troubleshooting issues.

Disc Caching Software Some people have said software such as System Booster (http://www.disktrix.com/systembooster/systembooster.htm) has massively increased their FPS by approx 10 FPS. Others have said they experienced no change. Though a common benefit of the program is that the Map load screen (when you press M ingame) is MUCH QUICKER to load, hopefully u wont crash ur chopper so much =)

Create a New partition This is also said to give a very good performance boost, though it is rather a lot of work. It involves partitioning your hard disk JUST for ArmA. On the partition put only Armed Assault and the necessary drivers to run it. People have reported good performances boosts, though this is a lot of work. Reformatting your PC is also another option, but once again extreme as you will lose all data on your hard disk. I am not going into detail about this, as always, Google is your friend for guides of partitioning etc

Two Harddrives? Page file! Quoted from Desertfox:

Quote[/b] ]For all the people who have at least two harddrives - I recommend you create a 1GB partition for the windows pagefile on a drive other than C: ( Or wherever Windows is located on your PC )

HERE is a Microsoft Knowledgebase article.

FSAUTOSTART *thanks to Greyhill!* A good system program to turn off background processes to allow for resources to be freed up to play ArmA. Link isHere

2GB RAM? Pagefile Tweak: *Thanks to Puma*Click here!


TROUBLESHOOTING
I will try and list some known troubleshooting issues here and possibly some fixes once they are discovered.

Also read the WIKI FIRST @ http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/A...roubleshooting

Graphics Card Issues: UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS!!! This is VERY important, keep your drivers up to date, try not to use 3rd party drivers, use the latest drivers from your manufacturer.

ATI Driver Issues?: Reportedly some owners of ATI cards have been receiving strange graphical glitches. Not all owners of ATI cards are affected, though if this is the case try using OLDER drivers (Pre 5.8 is said to have worked for some) ATI Drivers.

ATI Catalyst 7.6 contains official AMD.ATI fix for ArmA handles leak , download from http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html (by Dwarden)
ATM latest drivers are Catalyst 7.8 and hotfixed 7.8

Direct X Issue: An issue with d3dx9_30.dll not being found can be solved by Downloading and reinstalling Direct X @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloa....lang=en

'Bush FPS Drops': This 'issue' has been addressed by Developer Suma. He claims that the reason your FPS lowers as you get closer to a bush is because of the high level of shading. This lag can be reduced by LOWERING YOUR SHADING DETAIL.

Mouse Lag: As suggested earlier in the post make sure you FORCE OFF Vsync in your Graphics card control panel.

Required Ports: If you need to trigger ports behind a router or firewall the following ports are required to be open:
2302 ArmA
2303 Server
2305 VOIP

Required Space For Install: Please be aware that the game can take up over 4 Gigabytes of hard disk space for the install, not as stated by some publishers as 3 GB. Make sure you have plenty of hard disk space to install!

SecuROM "required security module": If this error appears when starting the game. Uninstall any cd drive emulation software and clean the registry of keys. Such software includes Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools etc.

Vista Map Flickering: Fix from Espectro -download the LATEST nvidia driver for Vista. ***[/quote]

by Dwarden : ***there were several other VISTA updates and beta hotfixes released laterly which improve speed and stability etc

list of NVIDIA recommended hotfixes for VISTA

http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows..._hotfixes.html

one of most important is KB940105 (You need latest drivers to support it for any videocard), http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

You can discuss it here on forums http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....27;st=0

Creative Labs X-Fi cards (by Dwarden)

- if You encouter problems with latest X-FI wXP WHQL drivers 2.09.0007 (build 1184)
then try use wXP beta drivers (build 1302) from latest wVista package 2.15.0002

now there is even newer Audigy (1-2)/ X-Fi beta driver build for both W2k,XP 32/64 (maybe also w3k and Vista 32/64) version 2.16.0000 (build 1320)

Latest beta driver from 2008.08.28

click here to download file

Quote[/b] ]...this driver resolves several OpenAL driver issues...

also please report driver problems to Creative Labs here
click here to see driver issues and report new ones


MP Crash? Try deleting the following folder of information, you might have some corrupt MP Cache:

C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Local Settings\Application Data and then delete the folder named ArmA

(You MUST have Show Hidden Folders enabled in XP in the Folder properties)

Limited Texture Settings? Thanks to: Balschoiw
Solution for all who have a 256 MB card but want to have access to higher detail settings in Arma video menu without editing arma config :

Enter BIOS at startup of computer, set AGP aperture size settings to 256 MB and that´s it. This will enable the Arma video options that are hidden if your AGP aperture size is set lower than 256 MB.

OpenAL by Dwarden
Keep Your OpenAL up2date, latest version 2.0.3 from summer 2007

click here to visit download page

Texture problems? Flush your VRAM by pressing the following keys: HOLD SHIFT and press Numpad-(MINUS) then type FLUSH

SecuROM Patching Issues Fixed EXE Clicky


-------------------------------------------------------

I hope this thread is clear and helpful. I think this section of the forums needed somewhere with some common issues/questions and stuff listed without having to trawl 30 page threads (which are also quite full of irrelevant info)!

I would appreciate any other information which you feel is appropriate and which i have missed. =)

edit: added info on SLI. -Shadow

edit: added info on CPU microcode updates and C2D mc update. -Dwarden

edit: added info on X-Fi beta XP drivers in Vista package. -Dwarden

edit: added info on official WHQL 7.6 ATI Catalyst drivers. -Dwarden

edit: added info on ATT for ATI users. -Dwarden

edit: added info about OpenAL summer 2007 update. -Dwarden

edit: added new latest Audigy (1-2) / X-Fi beta drivers with OpenAl improvements (for all OSes) and link to Creative Labs driver issues report - Dwarden

edit: another new Audigy(1-2) / X-fi beta drivers for all OSes - Dwarden

edit: updated VISTA related issues with hotifx for memory mapping errors etc. - Dwarden

[troop]

Excellent summary! Thank you.

[Marines]

I'll try the ATI specific tool you recommended. However, I've never messed with GPU overclocking....

Edit:

Jack, given these settings what would you recommend to ensure a stable GPU?

Core
445.50

Memory
270.00

[Marines]

Nevermind. I tweaked and tweaked, and it didn't improve the FPS drop when near foliage. Thanks for the excellent summary though.

Cheers!

[Jack-UK]

Well the ATI Tool can calculate the max you can go. Just watch the screen (it can take up to 20 mins depending on the max) and when it 'Scans for artifacts' watch it until yellow pixels begin to appear. when that happens stop the process and lower the GPU speed by 20-25 Mhz. Thats the max you can go. I'd reccomend you dont go to the max straight away, play ArmA and see if any artifacting occurs. If nothing occurs increase it slightly up to the max possible. But if any artifacting occurs open Ati Tool and lower the speed.

Just a matter of hitting the sweet spot =)

It wont fix the issue with the bushes (see the post about info about foilage lag) but it will increase your overall FPS. The only way i can play on my current ATI Radeon 9550 card is with overclocking (from 400mhz to 500mhz) which gave me a boost of 10-15 fps if i go any higher than 500 i start to experience artifacting however.

[Kevlar2007]

This is very good summary and it would be good to make this thread to a sticky.

[NeMeSiS]

EDIT: Forget what i said..

Good job anyway, deserves a sticky

[Jack-UK]

Cheers guys,

Im getting a new case for my pc sometime next week.. loaded with fans

So i'll try out some CPU overclocking then, atm my CPU cant really do with any overclocking... quite hot under load.. i dont like to go above 60c... I'll see how well i can cool it next week and try a little CPU overclocking and see what my results are

[KELLO]

Ive done a very basic guide for getting your FPS up with a nvidea card
Nvidea Guide
hope it helps

[Jack-UK]

Ahh excellent! Cheers!

I'll put it up there =)