Super low GPU usage on MP only???

[MavericK96 0]

I've noticed that recently too, but only in the latest betas it seems.

That is, where alt-tabbing out and back in gives you a performance boost. Seems like a memory leak issue or something.

[Noble75 1]

What seems to help on my fps is:

alt+tab to windows and back to game

or

1) alt+tab to windows

2) start another instance of arma2 wait until it loads to main menu

3) alt+tab back to first instance

4) alt+tab back to 2nd instance and exit it

5) return to the first instance now with better fps (but still depends on server fps, scene complexity)

In mp warfare on Chernorus in late game where client fps drops to unplayable level, this might have to be repeated several times during the game to "clear" the fps back to a higher level.

It seems like the client fps is clogging up with time...dunno if it's some memory leak, engine limitation or "lazy" programming.

Haven't tried this "solution" yet, but I am having exactly same issues while playing domination2 MP takistan coop map. In start fps is smooth and way over 25. At some point during late game it always clogs up and frame rate drops to unplayable level (approx 12 or so).

This only happens in multi player and I do have decent 8/1mb dsl connection so it should not be the problem either. Arma CPU usage is around 30% in this point (AMD Athlon II X4 645 3,1GHz).

Restarting the client won't fix the issue. It continues to have low fps even on the "welcome texts" when u re-enter the server.

Sound like server side issue to me, but is it something you can fix or something what is related to hardware limitations of the server.

---------- Post added at 14:44 ---------- Previous post was at 14:22 ----------

True. And it doesn't seem to be a GPU brand-specific issue, so I wouldn't say drivers are the cause.

Unfortunately if it ends up being something in the engine itself there's probably not much we can do about it.

If I may guess something I would say that it has very little to do with GPU and plenty to do with CPU.

Is it about servers or clients CPU - no idea, but it seems that when CPU (on one core) is fully utilized, the FPS (and GPU usage) starts to drop. In other words perhaps the multi processor usage could be tweaked further?

For those referring to "only 55% or 30% CPU usage" in previous posts I have to remind, that windows task manager doesn't necessarily tell the whole truth as 25% or 50% load indication may actually mean that one of 2 or 4 cores is running on 100% load and is unable to perform everything what Arma2 wants it to do.

so... further investigation to this direction might be worth it? Or not? Like I said - just a guess.

Now forget everything what I just said.

After long and painful investigation I found out that my graphics card (nvidia GT430) seems to be bugged somehow and always repeats it's behaviour in (and so far only in) Arma2 multi player environment. This is rather funny and strange coincidence. Arma2 multi player environment seems to be the catalyst for the bug and only computer reboot resets it (temporarily at least).

Problem origin: GPU Graphics clock drops from (default) 700mhz to fixed 405mhz and gets stuck there. You can't get it back up with tools like official Nvidia over clocking utility either (which I installed just to test this possibility). Card just doesn't want to throttle itself back up even temperatures are way below any trigger levels (and it doesn't want to throttle itself further down either when gpu usage drops to 0%). Computer reboot seems to be the only way to reset the clock rate.

This is not GPU heat related issue - that is clear already. The card might be somehow broken, but giving it a change and investigating ways to prevent this GPU from throttling down in 1st place. Will update this post if I have found some working solutions. Somehow I still feel that this is software based problem.

Note to self: I'm not sure if alt tabbing the client might have something to do with the "trigger" going off. Gotta keep eye on that.

Current test: GPU power management settings turned to "maximum performance" from "adaptive" in global nvidia settings.

Current test "fresh start" notes:

-> GPU still throttles between 50mhz, 405mhz and 700mhz in desktop while arma2 is not running.

-> GPU throttles up to 700mhz after starting arma2.

-> GPU doesn't throttle down from 700mhz when alt tabbing from arma2 to desktop.

important fact: while in "adaptive" power management mode GPU did throttle down when alt tabbing from arma2 to desktop. Related to problem?

Current test "playtesting" notes:

-> So far no problems, GPU staying at 700mhz, usage around 40-50% on 40/60 man domi/warfare server.

-> GPU temp at 50-55C, fan speeds at 35% most of the time.

-> Normal fps, game well playable even after plenty of stuff has been destructed.

-> Alt tabbing doesn't cause any issues.

Conclusions:

At the moment it seems that at least my FPS problems vanished after turning GPU power management settings to "maximum performance" from "adaptive" in global nvidia settings and restarting computer (GT430, driver version 301.42, win7 64bit, AMD Athlon II X4 645 3,1GHz).

Will provide further info if facts change.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Noble75

[gunso 10]

it's pretty easy to do stress test on GPU to see if it is broken or not, just use this http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

[MavericK96 0]

*snip*

Will provide further info if facts change.

Thanks for the extensive data and post. I will try setting to Max Performance, though I am pretty sure I've tried that in the past with no real result. Maybe things have changed?

Also, what is your CPU usage like? I understand your point in the crossed-out section of your post about Task Manager not showing correct usage, but if you can see usage per-core on there as well and generally usage over ALL cores is fairly low for me.

[Noble75 1]

Thanks for the extensive data and post. I will try setting to Max Performance, though I am pretty sure I've tried that in the past with no real result. Maybe things have changed?

Yea I tested that before also, but it didn't fix the already active problem unless combined with reboot (which I obviously didn't do back then). Didn't even know that my GPU had locked to lower clock back then because wasn't monitoring it.

This has totally fixed it for me... no problems in arma2 multi player what so ever after the setting change. Even the domination2 end game works like charm now and graphics card doesn't do any nasty tricks.

Also, what is your CPU usage like? I understand your point in the crossed-out section of your post about Task Manager not showing correct usage, but if you can see usage per-core on there as well and generally usage over ALL cores is fairly low for me.

CPU load is distributed rather evenly to all 4 cores and there is plenty processing power to spare. I even have the advanced power management set to allow 5% minimum processor state and that doesn't cause any problems either.

So now in multi player I have rather low GPU usage and rather low CPU usage. Could probably boost the view distance and gfx settings up quite a bit if needed, but haven't gone there yet. One thing at the time. Just enjoying the constant and smooth fps now - through the entire session.

All in all - I don't know if my case was isolated faulty hardware issue or is the problem something what has roots in some specific graphics chips or nvidia drivers. If having problems, changing that setting and rebooting should be worth trying at least.

Edited July 5, 2012 by Noble75

[Scoggs 1]

I am having this issue too. I am hosting a warfare on takistan with one of my friends. When I start the match I was at 100% GPU usage or so. Then 4 hours in my framerate drops to 30 and I am only using 40%. This is the second out of two times we've played this that it has happened.

Oh and my specs

W7 64bit Ultimate

i7 2600k w/ HT enabled @4.6Ghz

EVGA GTX580SC

16BG 1600MHz ram

[Minoza 11]

I'm experiencing same issues as well. I have i7 3770K OCed @4.5GHz, GTX 670, 16GB of RAM. I took custom Insurgency mission set in Zargabad for a test. Using same settings, in MP I get massive framedrops near Zargabad (low 20s), especially when looking towards it from distance, yet, the same map and the same mission, when hosted locally on my PC (which is theoretically more stress), wherever I go or look at, no issues at all, no frame drops... Settings were:

-View Distance: 3500m in MP, 5000m when locally hosted (yet this one ran better)

-Memory: Default

-No VSync (Adaptive in nVidia control panel, turning it off didn't help)

-No MSAA (FXAA Sharp used)

-Objects: Very high

-Shadows: Very high

-Terrain: High

-Post proccess: Very High

-Resolution & 3D: 100% (1920x1200)

-HDR: Normal

Did I miss anything? GPU usage in MP wouldn't go over 60% in an ideal scenario. I tried lowering settings a bit, but it didn't help much, framerate in this MP scenario would just suffer no matter what, and GPU usage would remain low.

Edited September 29, 2012 by Minoza

[doveman 7]

I was just playing a SP campaign with only a few AI with me and that dropped to 20 FPS with the GPU at around 40% as well, so it doesn't seem to be just a MP issue. I think my CPU total was around 55% with each of the four cores around 80% (not so sure about that though, it's hard to keep track of so many numbers!)

[Minoza 11]

OK, update... I noticed something very interesting, look my GPU usage graph during MP gameplay:

http://imageshack.us/a/img560/6238/gpuusage.jpg

First half of the graph is during normal MP gameplay, running around, looking around, etc... (zero usage was Alt-Tab) Now, see when it goes up? It happens whenever I zoom in, the more in the distance I see, the more the usage goes up, but only when zoomed in... In scoped view, usage goes to 99% and stays that way most of the time, I still get drops in usage, depending where I look at... I would understand that there might be less for GPU to work with when usage goes down, but my framerate goes to like 22... that is unacceptable, in scoped view, same direction, I get 60 lock...

@doveman

Could you try that? Try zooming and looking through scoped view and monitor gpu usage to see if it goes up. We may finally narrow this down if you experience same thing...

edit

Woah! Another one with exact same issue, same card as me, SLI actually, but nvm...

In DayZ at 1920x1080 maxed out with FXAA I get about ~100fps with my 2 670s, usage sits around 75% normally and jumps to high 90s when I zoom in. Do have random drops down to 40fps sometimes though, still playable though. When playing arma2 OA single player missions though I get absolutely horrid performance! Tried to do the shooting range one and it was like a slideshow.. I hope arma3 is better optimised.

Devs?

Edited October 25, 2012 by Minoza

[Minoza 11]

Another small update on the issue. I was just playing Domination, installed latest beta drivers from nvidia, everything was ok for about 20 mins into the game, I was getting 80-99% usage all the time, then suddenly BAM! 40% usage, stutters like crazy, stays like that for 2 mins, then by itself goes up to 75-90 and stays like that for another 20 mins when I quit. Everything happened in the same spot, I didn't move much, so it is not map position related I guess.

[redivider 1]

Yeah I have the exact same problems. We will just have to wait for Arma 3... and play dwarf fortress meanwhile :)

[Kamov 1]

My CPU is like 50% on utilized cores, and my gpu is 40%. Why does arma not want to use my computer?

[spanishsurfer 58]

I'm having the exact same issue as many have posted before. Any update on a fix for this?

[RadicalAtHeart 11]

It's a CPU bottleneck.

You will see one core hitting 100% usage while others sit fairly low. Many people don't seem to notice this. And then they wonder why they have a low CPU usage in total... Then they start blaming the hard drive...

To fix this or workaround:

If you have Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU, you mostly overclock with C3 C6 disabled...

This also brings a disadvantage that all cores run at the same speed.

4.6GHz all cores here requires 1.45v on 2500k

But with C3 C6 enabled I could get:

1 core: 4.6GHz

2 cores: 4.5

3 cores: 4.4

4 cores: 4.3

I believe my vcore was something like 1.35v-1.375v

This will stress the CPU less while playing on the less stressed cores, so less current is needed in total to run that overclock. However voltage is slightly higher...

The real isue is shortly bad multi threading and one core that is spiking. You can use exThreads to offload some to additional threads. But it will add some overhead in general. Again, the main advantage of this is that it will prevent stuttering.

If they can split the network handling to a separate thread this would all be solved I think. I am not sure how everything works exactly but it s an assumption

[finguide 1]

I have this issue too. In SP everything works fine, but in MP the GPU (GTX 670) usage drops under 50 percent. It's quite annoying, because I play Arma only and only in MP.. :rolleyes:

Edited December 13, 2012 by finguide

[desfocado 1]

It's a CPU bottleneck.

You will see one core hitting 100% usage while others sit fairly low. Many people don't seem to notice this. And then they wonder why they have a low CPU usage in total... Then they start blaming the hard drive...

To fix this or workaround:

If you have Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU, you mostly overclock with C3 C6 disabled...

This also brings a disadvantage that all cores run at the same speed.

4.6GHz all cores here requires 1.45v on 2500k

But with C3 C6 enabled I could get:

1 core: 4.6GHz

2 cores: 4.5

3 cores: 4.4

4 cores: 4.3

I believe my vcore was something like 1.35v-1.375v

This will stress the CPU less while playing on the less stressed cores, so less current is needed in total to run that overclock. However voltage is slightly higher...

The real isue is shortly bad multi threading and one core that is spiking. You can use exThreads to offload some to additional threads. But it will add some overhead in general. Again, the main advantage of this is that it will prevent stuttering.

If they can split the network handling to a separate thread this would all be solved I think. I am not sure how everything works exactly but it s an assumption

Unfortunately, I don't think that applies to me. My most used core in MP is at about 50 to 55% usage (sometimes spikes to 70% for BRIEF period of time). I wouldn't consider that to be high core usage...

In SP I get higher values, can't remember but higher in general (though not >90% afaik).

Plus, your fix would only apply to Intel anyways so I'd be fucked in that case as well.

I can't believe how this still isn't fixed. Maybe it's our fault but something tells me it's not us...

[RadicalAtHeart 11]

If your GPU usage is also low then it's probably our HDD holding you back.

You could use EVGA Precision X or MSI Afterburner to see your GPU VRAM usage. If it's using all your VRAM you might want to consider either a SSD or a 3GB+ VRAM GPU. Or maybe a combination of both.

Use Nvidia Inspector and limit the Operation Arrowhead profile to 35-40 FPS. You don't need any more than that to play the game properly. Also leave VSYNC on to prevent tearing. Somethimes my FPS drops to around 30. But with this FPS cap at 40 I will barely see it happening than coming from something like 60.

[desfocado 1]

If your GPU usage is also low then it's probably our HDD holding you back.

You could use EVGA Precision X or MSI Afterburner to see your GPU VRAM usage. If it's using all your VRAM you might want to consider either a SSD or a 3GB+ VRAM GPU. Or maybe a combination of both.

Use Nvidia Inspector and limit the Operation Arrowhead profile to 35-40 FPS. You don't need any more than that to play the game properly. Also leave VSYNC on to prevent tearing. Sometimes my FPS drops to around 30. But with this FPS cap at 40 I will barely see it happening than coming from something like 60.

Since that [low GPU usage] also applies to me, I will try monitoring HDD/GPU VRAM usage and get back to you but I have to say I've tried Arma 2 on a 2nd HDD a couple of days ago (formatted 120 GB IDE Seagate Barracuda, so 45 MBytes/s at the outer plates vs my 500GB SATA Seagate at 120 MBytes/s) with Win 8 x64 but the FPS remained the same. So I highly doubt it's HDD related since my FPS would've either:

-Gone up because my 500GB SATA main hdd was acting stupid;

-Gone down because it's an old and slow IDE HDD.

[haggler 1]

Ok so I kind of ignored the people on here saying arma/dayz was very cpu heavy because my cpu load was not very high in general.. so it didn't make sense to me. I did some testing, I figured the cpu couldn't be affecting the gpu load keeping it at around 30-50%.

Well, I have one computer with 2600k (overclocked to 4.5ghz), 660ti which gets 98% gpu utilization when I check in MSI afterburner. This computer runs silky smooth on max settings basically 60 fps, no hiccups.

I also have a a new msi gt60 laptop with core i7 (clocked at 3ghz) with a 680m, this is the one giving me trouble only on arma, afterburner showed the gpu utilization maxing around 30-50%, it's noticeably choppy.

So I tried to underclock my desktop's 2600k (which was running fine) to 2.4ghz and 3ghz for testing, and the gpu utilization went down 50% just like the laptop..

so that was the problem.

I am currently testing for a sweet spot in the cpu speed where the gpu utilization will jump up, unfortunately its not easy overclocking the cpu on my laptop, so I might have to upgrade the processor in it, just for dayz :( So, it looks like if you want to get arma/dayz to run a lot better try overclocking a few ghz. The funny thing is, the laptop is fine with most other games like battlefield 3, etc. Its just arma that gives me problems with the gpu usage from cpu speed. I guess it's just made to be cpu heavy or else it's some kind of bug. Good luck, I hope this helps someone.

Edited February 14, 2013 by haggler

[Rubber Grunt.dk 10]

I basically solved my fps issue: the problem was in part having to alt-tab(flush didnt work) to reset back to normal fps from very low fps, unfinished drawn graphics and low gpu usage, the fps would then fast decline again and the "fix"

had to be repeated, if it worked at all:

In win7,32bit(Core2DuoE8400@3GHz@4GbRAM) I now use the startup parameters: -cpucount=2 exthreads=0 -winxp -malloc=system

----what solved my fps issues here was setting -malloc=system instead of the Arma 2 default memory allocator (-malloc=tbb4malloc_bi)

hope this help others with the same bad fps issue.

[griffz 1]

people who want 100% GPU load , just need to enable supersampling 8x, and stop to complain.

you are set to play with corridor simulation title in wich CPU are IDLING . arma is not that sort of software.

[Dwarden 1124]

I basically solved my fps issue: the problem was in part having to alt-tab(flush didnt work) to reset back to normal fps from very low fps, unfinished drawn graphics and low gpu usage, the fps would then fast decline again and the "fix"

had to be repeated, if it worked at all:

In win7,32bit(Core2DuoE8400@3GHz@4GbRAM) I now use the startup parameters: -cpucount=2 exthreads=0 -winxp -malloc=system

----what solved my fps issues here was setting -malloc=system instead of the Arma 2 default memory allocator (-malloc=tbb4malloc_bi)

hope this help others with the same bad fps issue.

exthreads=0 ? ...

wth you use do that , you disabled with it threads for geometry, texture and file loading ...

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#exThreads

-winXP disables DirectX9Ex http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#Performance

also I hope you use latest OA beta http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147107-ARMA-2-OA-beta-build-102678-(1-62-MP-compatible-build-post-1-62-release)

[Rubber Grunt.dk 10]

exthreads=0 ? ...

wth you use do that , you disabled with it threads for geometry, texture and file loading ...

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#exThreads

-winXP disables DirectX9Ex http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#Performance

also I hope you use latest OA beta http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147107-ARMA-2-OA-beta-build-102678-(1-62-MP-compatible-build-post-1-62-release)

yes, I use the latest beta, and I should probably use -exthreads=3 and no -winxp, since I get a lot of hdd swapping in cherno(mp) still. it's old parameters from my testing maybe, but -malloc=system fixed the fps-issue I had in multiplayer still.

thnx.

Edit: Last post from me on this topic:

I tried -exthreads=3 and no -winxp and got even better performance in Cherno mp now: so at last the performance is acceptable on my specs(win7@Core2DuoE8400@3GHz@4GbRAM@GTX570) and very playable in mp even with 40 players online and 4.5k view distance :o -exthreads=3 & -malloc=system fixed my fps and slow graphics loading.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Rubber Grunt.dk
more info

[ohhnice 10]

i have the Nvidia 670 GTX and low fps everywhere and my GPU usage is 20-40% same in arma3 is there a known fix?

[chromos 1]

-malloc=system gave me 90-99% gpuload and a performance boost even in mp.

thx