What DOES it take to run this game smoothly?

[nwkegan 0]

Hello,

Let me preface this by stating that I understand the game engine is unoptimized.

Now, the fact remains that some players seem able to play, and even record said playing, with little to no slowdown and remarkably smooth gameplay. What are THEY doing that I'm NOT? I'm simply not satisfied with the answer that they were luckier than I.

Despite trying many of the numerous fixes and adjustments found on this forum, when I am outside of a town, it's pretty decent, but approaching any kind of populated area, including some of the smaller towns, I start to experience frame drops. Even where my framerate is totally playable, the up-and-down nature causes choppiness where there would otherwise be none.

Given that my specs are as follows, I play on low with no AA, post processing, AF, shadows, etc, AND I have even recently reformatted, I am confused as to why I can't at least get it to run SMOOTHLY at a lower FPS:

EVGA GTX 670 FTW

Core i5 2500k (stock, but I've overclocked to no avail)

8GB DDR3 RAM

Windows 7 64 bit

What the hell do I have to do to get this game to chill out? Buy an SSD? I'd kill to fix this. Seriously.

Thanks for any help, bumps, or insight!

[pieeyedsniper 25]

Really can't see why your having issues. I run the exact same rig except for a GTX570 & I can max the game out. I also turn post processing off.(its annoying) Latest drivers?

[nwkegan 0]

Thanks for the response, man. Yep, running the latest drivers as indicated by my control panel. That's why I'm frustrated - everyone I've asked thus far says it makes no sense.

Gonna run some errands, will come back tonight and hopefully have some more input for testing.

EDIT: I'm also certain I don't have any nasty background processes running. Maybe I'm missing some crucial windows update? I don't know...

Edited December 14, 2012 by nwkegan

[kingochaos 131]

Well it runs smooth as silk on my machine... which isnt as good as yours over all id say... You should look up ram disk(a dude posted a tutorial on it in the forums today), its probably the read speed of your hard drive thats the bottle neck. Or get a SSD to run yah games off.. and another to run yah system off... and another for yah fraps... could get pretty expensive that way.

My rig

i7 920 @ 3.8ghz

12gb ram (run as single channel... because my mother board has hissy fits and has memory dumps when in double or triple)

120 gb ssd system drive (4 other HD, 7200rpm)

GTX 580

It runs on highest settings fine with my rig.

[SmokeyFTM 55]

Cleaned the dust out of my PSU and that stopped it heating up and increased my fps, check for any dust in and behind the fan. My new i5 3450 is no problem but my older processor would only run smooth with video memory set to high, defult was good for 2 minutes then it would lag and my backpack would turn square shaped and sometimes my head would disappear with the hat still there.

Also if you ctrl alt del and go in task manager, go to processes and click show processes from all users then set arma2 oa priority to high, hope something helps for you man it can be a bitch to run at times

[Tarrow 0]

It sound counterintuitive but try turning your detail levels up a bit. Try normal, but leave the AA, ATOC and PPAA disabled and see if that gets you any improvement.

The engine has this trait of throwing more of the graphics processing to the CPU on the lowest settings.

I'm running a significantly less capable rig than you and my framerate is pretty consistent even with excessive numbers of z's around.

[br00mmmm 50]

ARMA 2 is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive -- I'm running two overclocked GTX580s and they always hover around 15 - 30% load (pulling 40-60fps). That being said, so does my 2600k. You could (if you're THAT desperate) overclock your CPU and maybe invest in an SSD. It will probably only get you another 5 frames per second if you're lucky. Your best bet is to (if you haven't already) set some launch parametres to enable the game to use more RAM, VRAM and CPU cores. Apart from that, there's nothing more you can do -- you've pretty much got to accept that you're not going to pull a constant 60fps in this game; It's just that poorly optimised.

Also, how many frames are you getting at the moment?

Note: The frame rate issues should be fixed in the standalone.

Edited December 14, 2012 by br00mmmm

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

I can run DayZ with everything on max with a steady 50 FPS.

i5-3570k

8GB of RAM

GTX 670

[toxicsludge 406]

have you tried different servers? even ones with low pings can lag like hell. it took me a while to find a server that ran smoothly (private hive)

[Lordsarito 42]

In your Nvidia Control Panel make your settings for Arma2OA & Arma2OAbeta the same as mine.

TURN OFF VSYNC INGAME, DAT SHIT LAGGEH!

Those settings improved my performance a fuck-tonne.

[oppa (DayZ) 46]

what i found out:

played on several servers, for example on server 1 I had no lags, no fps issues, on server 2 i had lags, fps drops and so on.. I wondered why.

Then we tweaked our database settings a bit and there it goes: after we tweaked our database a bit my fps and lag issues were gone, like for the most of the players on our servers. So what I think is that the performance depends on the servers database settings as well. but maybe it is just me.

Gonna tweak our database a bit more and try again.

[nwkegan 0]

Well it runs smooth as silk on my machine... which isnt as good as yours over all id say... You should look up ram disk(a dude posted a tutorial on it in the forums today), its probably the read speed of your hard drive thats the bottle neck. Or get a SSD to run yah games off.. and another to run yah system off... and another for yah fraps... could get pretty expensive that way.

My rig

i7 920 @ 3.8ghz

12gb ram (run as single channel... because my mother board has hissy fits and has memory dumps when in double or triple)

120 gb ssd system drive (4 other HD, 7200rpm)

GTX 580

It runs on highest settings fine with my rig.

I honestly think there might be something to this idea, as I've considered it in the past. The way the lags feels no different than before I upgraded my GPU from an HD6850 to the current GTX670 and reformatted, though I do get better video performance overall. When I started the game up for the FIRST time it was completely lagless, but as soon as I hit Cherno everything went downhill from there and it has never been the same since.

I'll take me a little while to set this up, but I'm gonna try it today. Thanks.

Cleaned the dust out of my PSU and that stopped it heating up and increased my fps, check for any dust in and behind the fan. My new i5 3450 is no problem but my older processor would only run smooth with video memory set to high, defult was good for 2 minutes then it would lag and my backpack would turn square shaped and sometimes my head would disappear with the hat still there.

Also if you ctrl alt del and go in task manager, go to processes and click show processes from all users then set arma2 oa priority to high, hope something helps for you man it can be a bitch to run at times

Whoa, lol, that sounds like an awful bug man. Clipping head hahaha. I've recently used my DataVac to blast the shit out of the inside of my comp, but I'll check again in case something has gotten clogged. I've run other games with much better performance, like Portal 2, L4D2, Metro 2033, etc. Tried default, high, very high, none of it seemed to make any difference in performance. It won't let me change priority in Win7, just says access denied. Thanks.

It sound counterintuitive but try turning your detail levels up a bit. Try normal, but leave the AA, ATOC and PPAA disabled and see if that gets you any improvement.

The engine has this trait of throwing more of the graphics processing to the CPU on the lowest settings.

I'm running a significantly less capable rig than you and my framerate is pretty consistent even with excessive numbers of z's around.

I actually started the game out on very high, I've been messing with them all and none of them seem to do it. I'll keep fiddling but I don't think it's making any difference. My FPS seems to stay the same within 10 FPS regardless of the settings, it's just choppy as hell. Thanks man.

ARMA 2 is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive -- I'm running two overclocked GTX580s and they always hover around 15 - 30% load (pulling 40-60fps). That being said, so does my 2600k. You could (if you're THAT desperate) overclock your CPU and maybe invest in an SSD. It will probably only get you another 5 frames per second if you're lucky. Your best bet is to (if you haven't already) set some launch parametres to enable the game to use more RAM, VRAM and CPU cores. Apart from that, there's nothing more you can do -- you've pretty much got to accept that you're not going to pull a constant 60fps in this game; It's just that poorly optimised.

Also, how many frames are you getting at the moment?

Note: The frame rate issues should be fixed in the standalone.

I was banking on the standalone. My FPS is anywhere from mid 30s to 40s when looking at dense parts of Electro, it goes up to 50, 60, and even above 90 inside of buildings, etc. Out in the forest it's a constant 50fps+. I'm perfectly happy with this, I just can't fathom why it's not smooth, even when it's at 60 fps.

I can run DayZ with everything on max with a steady 50 FPS.

i5-3570k

8GB of RAM

GTX 670

This is why I think there must be something I can do - your processor is better, but my i5 2500k isn't even hitting max usage, and I have the same video card.

have you tried different servers? even ones with low pings can lag like hell. it took me a while to find a server that ran smoothly (private hive)

Hard to say, I've been on 10-15 since my reformat and every single one has had this issue. Thanks for the response.

In your Nvidia Control Panel make your settings for Arma2OA & Arma2OAbeta the same as mine.

TURN OFF VSYNC INGAME, DAT SHIT LAGGEH!

Those settings improved my performance a fuck-tonne.

Should I get the Arma2OA beta patch? I just have Arma2OA updated via DayZ Commander. I tried your settings to the letter and it did not help. Thanks.

what i found out:

played on several servers, for example on server 1 I had no lags, no fps issues, on server 2 i had lags, fps drops and so on.. I wondered why.

Then we tweaked our database settings a bit and there it goes: after we tweaked our database a bit my fps and lag issues were gone, like for the most of the players on our servers. So what I think is that the performance depends on the servers database settings as well. but maybe it is just me.

Gonna tweak our database a bit more and try again.

I'll keep trying different servers during my testing to ensure that this is not the issue, but I've played on so many with the same characteristic lag that I think it's something to do with my setup. Thanks.

I appreciate the number of responses I got! I still have the ramdisk thing to try, so I'll probably head into that next.

Edited December 15, 2012 by nwkegan

[br00mmmm 50]

I was banking on the standalone. My FPS is anywhere from mid 30s to 40s when looking at dense parts of Electro, it goes up to 50, 60, and even above 90 inside of buildings, etc. Out in the forest it's a constant 50fps+. I'm perfectly happy with this, I just can't fathom why it's not smooth, even when it's at 60 fps.

To answer the initial question -- ARMA 2 just doesn't run smoothly.