Last edited by echo1; Jul 3 2009 at 20:10.
MY AWESOME PC: Intel 8088 @ 4.77MHz | 128KB DRAM | MC6845 4KB Monochrome Graphics card | 10MB Seagate ST-412 Hard Drive | 83-key Model F keyboard | 14" IBM 5151 green-phosphor Monitor | PC-DOS 2.0
I was experimenting with different settings to find the best looks with acceptable performance and found something weird.
Let's start with my system specification:
Q9550 @ 2.83GHz
3 GB RAM 1066MHz
ATI HD4870x2
Rest is not so important...
My monitor's native resolution is 1920x1200, but playing at that resolution gives quite bad performance if some settings are turned to "high" or more. It's playable, but my eyes hurts after 30 minutes of gameplay.
So i tried to set smaller resolution. At first i set 1680x1050. (In ATI ccc panel i set that image scales to center of monitor, so i get smaller screen, but at least resolution is correct.) Perfomance got better. It was trully playable on all settings on normal, only Post process was disabled (it fixes mouse lag for me.) and object detail to very high.
After that i tried something different. I set resolution to 1600x1200 and aspect ratio to oldschool 4:3. Guess what... I got very good performance increase. Now i set all settings to very high (Post process disabled) and i have better performance than all to normal on 1680x1050 resolution.
I don't see logic here...
1600x1200=1920000 pixels
1680x1050=1764000 pixels
Difference is 156000 pixels...
So how resolution with more pixels gives better performance than resolution with less pixels? And with better settings...
My guess is that Arma 2 engine is based on Operation Flashpoint engine. At that time widescreen was not so common and game's engine natively supports 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions. Resolutions with aspect ratio 16:9 or 16:10, I think, was added later with some weird implementation. Just my guess...
What do you think about it? Try yourself and please tell about your results. Just curious is that "bug" only on my system or not.
P.S. I didn't check actual FPS increase, but I can see the performance improvement for sure.
Last edited by Bono_LV; Jul 3 2009 at 20:08.

If someone reports an issue/complains about the Alpha etc, replying in the thread "dude it's an alpha" doesn't really help anyone! Point them to the Arma3 Alpha feedback tracker instead please!
Please do not PM or Email me directly about your CD Key issues, follow the guidance in this thread instead.
thx for the reply booga couldnt find anything though.I just wondering how all these people with I7 920s are getting over 5000 in arma mark and i can only manage 3000 could it be my HDD.
Doesn't happen in my game. My monitor's native resolution is 1280x1024 and since my machine is not powerful enough for constant 30fps i run the game at 1280x800 16:10 aspect ratio with black bars top and bottom and it drastically improves the FPS for me. Maybe not the best comparison as you're running higher resolutions but the principle is the same.
-i7 3770K @ 4.6GHz
-16GB G.Skill DDR3-1600
-Sapphire Radeon 7970 OC w/ GTX 260 Hybrid PhysX
-Yamakasi Catleap Q270 SE @ 110Hz
If I had a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4850 what specs could I run AmeA2 on?
High? Medium-high? And what view distance?
Just did the test and have confirmed my suspicion and that is crossfire makes no difference in this game....
Did the Arma2 bench with stated settings and got:
2736 with crossfire enabled
2732 with crossfire disabled
CPU - I7 920
RAM - 6GB generic
HDD - Velociraptor x2 in raid 0
GPU - 4850x2
OS - Vista 64 bit
RES - 1680x1050
I am now depressed, I paid several hundred dollars for an extra graphics card that is now as useful as a house brick....Specifically for this game.
Specifications:
AMD Athlon AM3 AMD Phenom II 1055T X6 @ 3.9ghz
Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600mhz CL9
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO
HIS HD ATi Radeon 4850 512MB PCI-E
Thermaltake Silent Purepower 560W
1TB SEAGATE SATA II HD
Antec Twelve Hundred Gaming Case
Windows 7 64Bit RC 7100
biggles - I got an I7 - 4 gb and a GTS250 - runs great - you should have no issue.