69782 performance and stability feedback

[Inkompetent]

With latest 2 Beta patches my FPS dropped in the BIS Benchmark Mission #1, by 2-4FPS in Average. From 30-32FPS down to ~28FPS. However it is noticable... :-(

Aside from raw FPS though, how fluent is it? I lost about 4% FPS, but I suffer much less from stuttering and slow-loading textures.

[mr.g-c]

Fortunately I never had any issues with stuttering and slow-loading textures.....
Having 8GB Ram, every week fresh-defragmented Hard-Drives with 7200RPM, maybe thats the reason why i never had it.

[Inkompetent]

If you run a 64-bit win XP, or Vista/7 I guess the RAM does it all. Unless your HDDs are in a RAID-setup they are too slow for fluent ArmA2 (good 7200rpm drives can't keep up with all micro-reads and -writes, but if Windows use the RAM for the swap file instead of a HDD (which Vista and 7 are capable of afaik) it would at least take care of the micro-writes. ^^

[MavericK96]

If you run a 64-bit win XP, or Vista/7 I guess the RAM does it all. Unless your HDDs are in a RAID-setup they are too slow for fluent ArmA2 (good 7200rpm drives can't keep up with all micro-reads and -writes, but if Windows use the RAM for the swap file instead of a HDD (which Vista and 7 are capable of afaik) it would at least take care of the micro-writes. ^^

Well, even with an SSD I have the massive stuttering with high VD. Hell, even when I tried using the RAMdrive I didn't really see any improvement, so I'm wondering what's going on that I can't get decent non-stuttering performance in this game. My rig is just as good if not better than many who are claiming smooth performance.

[EricM]

My rig is just as good if not better than many who are claiming smooth performance

Indeed... You have a monster rig.

I think people with top-notch configs are more prone to suffer from early-adopters bugs and quirks, while people with slightly older and tested hardware benefit from the accumulated experience of the developpers (BIS is actually developping on standard middle-class computers, not super duper rigs)

Maybe you are pushing the game too much on the VD (10km?) and something else not so obvious is bottlenecking ? I see you have an SLI config, with may or may not scale up very well with the game, a core I7 causing notorious hyperthreading problems with Arma2...

I'm a happy camper with my 3 year old 8800GTX with 30fps and 2kmVD. OA is supposed to be more fps friendly, so I probably won't upgrade for some more time... You probably have different expectations...

[MavericK96]

Indeed... You have a monster rig.

I think people with top-notch configs are more prone to suffer from early-adopters bugs and quirks, while people with slightly older and tested hardware benefit from the accumulated experience of the developpers (BIS is actually developping on standard middle-class computers, not super duper rigs)

Maybe you are pushing the game too much on the VD (10km?) and something else not so obvious is bottlenecking ? I see you have an SLI config, with may or may not scale up very well with the game, a core I7 causing notorious hyperthreading problems with Arma2...

I'm a happy camper with my 3 year old 8800GTX with 30fps and 2kmVD. OA is supposed to be more fps friendly, so I probably won't upgrade for some more time... You probably have different expectations...

Actually a few things:

1) I typically run the game at 3900 VD because that is the max that will still allow Very High terrain detail. I was just using 10k as an example because I have tried it, and it gave me unplayable slideshow stutter.
2) I've tried with SLI on and off, and SLI definitely boosts my framerate a LOT, so I think the scaling is working fine.
3) I have Hyperthreading turned off, and have pretty much ever since I got the i7 because I overclock and the temps were insane with it on. Plus, like you said, in games it can either hurt performance or simply not do anything at all, so I have it off.

I seem to remember this game running a lot better back before Vista/7, but I could be wrong. I do have my settings at Very High but my framerate itself is totally fine, the problem is the stutter caused by streaming, and I can't seem to figure out how to alleviate it.

---------- Post added at 01:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:36 AM ----------

I just did a little bit of testing and found some interesting results.

When I fly over Chernagorsk in an F35B (my standard stability test) I get fairly moderate stutter and lower framerate, as could be somewhat expected. However, during this time my primary CPU core (Core 0) is only hovering around 25% usage, whereas the other three cores (Cores 1, 2, 3) are around 50% or more.

Then, when I get massive slideshow stuttering, which gets progressively worse and usually indicates a pending crash (and is 100% reproducable by simply flying low and fast over Chernagorsk and Elektro-(something)), The usage on Core 3 (the 4th one) skyrockets to like 75%+, and the others are doing practically nothing during this time.

So it seems to me there is some sort of problem with the way the game utilizes multiple cores. Specifically, it is not only not using them to their full potential, but it also hits a point where it has an error and starts using only one or something (in this case, Core 3).

I even tried downclocking my CPU (because I have it overclocked to 3.8 GHz normally, and has been 100% stable since I bought it over a year ago) and there's no difference in crashing/stutter.

Hopefully this information is helpful to the devs. It's not directly related to only the beta, but 1.05 as well.

[NoRailgunner]

If someone needs a semi-colon call me in...
Now tested again but stuttering and slow-loading textures/LOD switching is still present.
On Utes I only placed a C130J with "get out" and "move" waypoint + myself on 300m distance - watched the units and they were moving like on a flip-book (fps was 58 - with Deadfast FPS Counter:http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6171).

[MavericK96]

I just did some additional testing (same procedure as my post above) with the beta, and actually the texture streaming/stutter is GREATLY improved when flying over Chernogorsk. I still will eventually get the massive slowdown/slideshow, but interestingly in the beta, it is Core 1 (2nd core) that is maxed out while the others are doing nothing, unlike 1.05 where it's Core 3 (4th core). Very strange indeed.

However, I was able to crank the view distance to 10k and, while not entirely "smooth" (probably due to having all my other settings cranked pretty high), the stutter was greatly improved while looking around. It was actually halfways playable while flying in the beta. So, good job devs on that front! There is still the issue with the random massive slowdowns, but so far I haven't gotten the beta to "crash", per se, but it will slow down to a point where I'll be getting about one frame every 3 seconds, and it's impossible to input commands because it's almost like the game is practically frozen.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with turning off Threaded Optimization in the video drivers to fix the "v-buffer error" crash, but it might suggest something like that because threaded optimization deals with multiple CPU utilization, whereas when the game starts utilizing only one core, the game slows to a crawl and becomes unplayable.

Interesting stuff. Hopefully the devs can get this ironed out in the next patch.

[Xeno]

I'm very disappointed with the last two beta patches.

Compared to 63826 they cause massive problems, they are laggy as hell, specially when you run many scripts and have quite a high number of units.

Edit: Went back to 63826 and everything is fine again, no more lags.

Xeno

[JW Custom]

I just did some additional testing (same procedure as my post above) with the beta, and actually the texture streaming/stutter is GREATLY improved when flying over Chernogorsk. I still will eventually get the massive slowdown/slideshow, but interestingly in the beta, it is Core 1 (2nd core) that is maxed out while the others are doing nothing, unlike 1.05 where it's Core 3 (4th core). Very strange indeed.

However, I was able to crank the view distance to 10k and, while not entirely "smooth" (probably due to having all my other settings cranked pretty high), the stutter was greatly improved while looking around. It was actually halfways playable while flying in the beta. So, good job devs on that front! There is still the issue with the random massive slowdowns, but so far I haven't gotten the beta to "crash", per se, but it will slow down to a point where I'll be getting about one frame every 3 seconds, and it's impossible to input commands because it's almost like the game is practically frozen.

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with turning off Threaded Optimization in the video drivers to fix the "v-buffer error" crash, but it might suggest something like that because threaded optimization deals with multiple CPU utilization, whereas when the game starts utilizing only one core, the game slows to a crawl and becomes unplayable.

Interesting stuff. Hopefully the devs can get this ironed out in the next patch.

If you ever have the chance/time try run ArmA 2 on WinXP 32Bit. Most people with problems seems to be running Win 7, it could be interesting to see if the problems dissapeared by changing OS!

Compared to 63826 they cause massive problems, they are laggy as hell, specially when you run many scripts and have quite a high number of units.

Xeno

Thats my experience aswell, on 1.05 i don't have any problems!