barrance 22 Posted December 3, 2012 Im sorry this seems like a lazy thing to ask. But this really is coming from a good 100+ hours spent tweaking all sorts of setting within dayz to try and get the best balance of good looks/performance for dayz on my computer.Essentially, the better dayz runs the more enjoyable it is. When frame rates are dropping, you tend to look around you less as the stuttery fps makes it very hard to look at. This then decreases the intensity for me as I end up with this "i hope theres noone here!" approach as opposed to making sure there isnt.Anyway, this aside, I have spent many hours trawling through here/google, and have used a whole load of performance enhancing fixes involving config files, ramdisk, nvidia settings and ingame settings themselves and have had alot of success in improving how it runs. Also, recent versions - 1.7.4 especially have given amazing performance boosts and for this im really thankful.But now this is where I get "lazy". I have spent hoours trying to benchmark the impact resolution has on my fps, and find it really hard to get good average. Im not using fraps or any kind of avg framerate recorder, just the gamebooster in built fps shower thing in the top corner. And its hard to really know what your fps is as it can change so much with whats on the screen.Anyway, I cannot for the life of me work out if my framerate is impacted that much when dropping my resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768. For a start, the game looks horrid at 1024x768. Massive step effects on curved lines take away alot visually. But, again, when you havent got a great computer, inc. fps inc. enjoyment!Sooo yeah, I know that if your cpu isnt really up to scratch, lowering your resolution can have no real effect on fps (and understand the reasoning behind this)That said, I was wondering if (and I hate doing this) someone could give me any thoughts on my specific system and whether its worth me lowering the resolution?E7300 dual core @ 2.66ghz8800gts (320mb)2gb RamAll in a 4 year old dell studio desktopI know. I need a new computer...but its reeeally not an option at the moment. By early next year when im earning (and the standalone is out hehe...) ill go with a whole new system, but in the mean time, do you think im going to benefit significantly/noticably from a resolution drop or am I being throttled by the cpu regardless?Cheers guys, hate asking questions specific to myself... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
boneboys 7988 Posted December 3, 2012 (edited) If you know how to, disable DayZ and run the vanilla game.You will find 3 Stress Test missions in the SP list.Adjust your settings until you find what is best for you. Edited December 3, 2012 by Boneboys Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Castle (DayZ) 23 Posted December 3, 2012 Basically your everything is not good enough here. Lower resolution will probably help given your vram, but you will never get acceptable performance. Your CPU and GPU you probably already understand yourself are simply outdated and poor, but the RAM might be your biggest gate here. DayZ often uses 3 gigs of RAM, and though the pagefile can make up for not having enough memory it doesn't run nearly as well as dedicated RAM. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Raible 24 Posted December 3, 2012 You are wasting your time on an exercise in futility. If you are going to tweak something, tweak that video card and RAM. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
barrance 22 Posted December 3, 2012 Hmm so you reckon RAM could actually be affected here? Makes me tempted to have a go at a temporary fix. 2 x 1gb sticks of ram must be close to free these days...Quite often my game will run surprisingly well (say, 50fps avg in the wilderness, 40 or so in avg/small towns and 25ish in cherno/elektro) but I do get the occasional MEGA fps lag spike. Down to say, 1 or 2 fps for a second or so. Sometimes these happen a few times in a row, and yeah, obviously that causes a few gameplay issues...Possible that might be arma running out of RAM and suddenly having to read/write information direct to HD? With of course mega slow perfomance as a result. If so, im sure I can afford the 15 quid or whatever it'll be for 2gb more ram. Bit annoying too, I bought more ram when I first got this computer, but it was corrupt. That was followed by months of having no idea why my computer was going absoloutely bananas. Especially when I even took it out and kept getting problems...(the bad ram had corrupted my install of windows, and to stay shit was kicking off is an epic understatement lol) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
barrance 22 Posted December 3, 2012 oh, and @ Boneboyz, im a little bit lost by that. Dont really know much about arma beyond dayz...Is that a case of just running the normal Arma in singleplayer mode, then tweaking settings from a stress test to get the optimal performance, with the idea that these settings would translate to better performance in full blown dayz? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
terminal_boy 860 Posted December 3, 2012 I'm thinking that it would cost less for you to buy / build a modern gaming PC than upgrade yours as you'd basically have to throw everything away apart from the case. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
barrance 22 Posted December 3, 2012 Oh yeah for sure, im not going to replace anything inside it until I get a new rig next year. The whole thing was alright 4 years ago...but its now 2012. Was just considering buying two 1gb sticks of ram to tide me over for until then, as I figure 1gb ram sticks must be cheap as chips now right? Aslong as someone thinks it might make the slightest bit of difference?...to ebay!Also, i think overclocking my gpu is out of the question now too. The poor thing is on the edge I swear lol Firstly, when I first got dayz it started wigging out big style. It was running fine for 30 seconds to a minute, then going absoloutely loopey. Giving me crazy artifacts, then barely a frame a second. Turned out that when I opened it up (for the first time in 3-4 years) it was an absoloute disaster in there. In the exit of the heatsink distribution plate things, facing the fan, there was a nearly 1cm thick, uncompressable wall of dust and tobacco tar. Literally couldnt compress it with your finger. Came out as one big chunk...was so rank. Cleaned the thing up and it started working again. Until about 2 months ago, when it just stopped registering on my computer. Device manager told me it had been stopped by windows cos it was buggered, and I got red and green vertical stripes on bios screen lol so yeah, didnt play for a couple months until i found some people online saying that people had gotten cards working again by baking them in the oven at 200c for 8 mins...et voila! :D Had to bake it again since when the same thing happened, but fingers crossed shes still doing it just about lol dont think i can push her too much harder...Still, 35 quid off ebay 4 years ago and hideously abused since...thumbs up nvidia! customer for life... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
terminal_boy 860 Posted December 3, 2012 For the price of RAM these days, you could probably stick 8GB in that for less than you'd spend on a round of drinks.This is very handy for finding what RAM you need.http://www.corsair.com/learn_n_explore/ Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
barrance 22 Posted December 3, 2012 cheers man, will grab myself a couple extra soon, website looks handy. And I would go a bit more all out, but a round of drinks is off the cards for me at the moment too ^^ been working unpaid since september, likely to stay that way until about february too...yay me -.- Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
