Framerate in cities

[cheezitschrist 15]

I searched the forum and yes there are other threads on this, but I had a couple specific questions.

When I'm running around in fields and stuff my framerate is anywhere from 40-60, and the game mostly runs fine. But when I go into cities that cuts in half, and after an hour or so of playing it will drop down to 15-20 FPS in cities.

I know my PC is more than good enough to run Arma II/DayZ because it runs games like BF3 and Crysis 2 at 50-60 FPS on good settings.

My questions:

1. Is this common?

2. If so, has Rocket addressed this in any news for the Standalone? Cause I don't want to buy it not knowing if it will run at 20 FPS or not.

Edited January 20, 2013 by cheezitschrist

[aussiestig 681]

This is the case for almost any open world game ever made. It makes sense that your frame rate is less in a city with lots of buildings and cars and zombies, than in a field where there is only grass.

You're not the only one, so don't worry. Frame rates will always be lower in cities, no matter how much optimizing they do, all they can do is decrease the difference between cities and fields, which I'm sure they will try their hardest to do.

[Darkwater (DayZ) 63]

1. Yes, it is very common. I remember being close to furious and pissed off at this, I just couldn't do anything in the big cities because the game was so insanely sluggish and jittery. It is very CPU heavy, and I managed to increase my frames when I overclocked my CPU by a little bit, from 15 frames to 20-25. didn't do a whole lot, but it did help abit. Then I upgraded my computer and overclocked abit again and went from 30 to 40. Still, it is bad for what would be a "supercomputer" at the time, but it is playable.

2, Rocket said it will be better, not a whole lot but it will run more smoothly in the SA. You will get better frames, just don't expect it to scale up to the actual strenght of your computer that could easily run FarCry 3 at maximum. It is not the best engine, and I'm assuming it's because there's so much tools and excess programming in it that allow it to be so costumizable.

[beastoverlord 574]

This is pretty common and well documented. Thanks for searching but there are other threads... I remember them, but can't find them.

I'm not a tech guy, but this is what I remember. DayZ is very heavy on the CPU and doesn't always fully utilize the GPU. For this reason, you can't just have a good graphics card. Other games such as BF3/Crysis 2 spread it out better I think. This is very common for most people because cities have more zombies. Zombies use solider AI (which is why they zig zag) and this takes up a lot of processing. Especially because zombies are tied directly to your computer.

For the Standalone, the zombies are going to be stripped down completely along with many other parts of the engine. This will help frames a lot. To replace it though, they are adding more players and/or more zombies. They are currently just testing or will be testing. They say the frames should be similar to DayZ Mod, but I think that there shouldn't be the drops in frames because the zombies should be fixed. So yeah, mostly the zombies, but they have stated in many interviews that this is one of the main things that they know causes bad frames and that they are working on it.

[cheezitschrist 15]

This is the case for almost any open world game ever made. It makes sense that your frame rate is less in a city with lots of buildings and cars and zombies, than in a field where there is only grass.

That's not really true though, yes there's always an FPS drop in more graphic intensive areas, but not to the point where it's nearly unplayable in busy areas. And usually you can turn down settings to fix it but no matter how low I turn settings for DayZ, the framerate never improves in cities.

This is pretty common and well documented. Thanks for searching but there are other threads... I remember them, but can't find them.

You misread, I found the other threads but none that I found directly addressed each question I had.

Edited January 20, 2013 by cheezitschrist

[boneboys 7988]

"and after an hour or so of playing it will drop down to 15-20 FPS in cities."

No, I do not have this problem, you might try this while in-game :: Lshift + keypad - (minus) and typing flush.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?87213-How-to-Memory-flush&p=1447380&viewfull=1#post1447380

"it runs games like BF3 and Crysis 2 at 50-60 FPS" = Does not apply to ArmAII/CO.

System specs ?

[freaky88 13]

"and after an hour or so of playing it will drop down to 15-20 FPS in cities."

No, I do not have this problem, you might try this while in-game :: Lshift + keypad - (minus) and typing flush.

http://forums.bistud...l=1#post1447380

"it runs games like BF3 and Crysis 2 at 50-60 FPS" = Does not apply to ArmAII/CO.

System specs ?

you do have that problem, you just dont realize it. The game starts to run sluggish till you restart it

[Mos1ey 6301]

you do have that problem, you just dont realize it. The game starts to run sluggish till you restart it

No, it really doesn't.

Sounds like you and the OP are possibly having overheat issues. Have you checked your temps after the FPS drops occur?

[boneboys 7988]

you do have that problem, you just dont realize it. The game starts to run sluggish till you restart it

Don't be a Derp, please,,,, if I write " I don't have that problem, it means I don't have that problem.

OK ?

[puppetworx 474]

Yes I have this. I do not get the city lag while playing in the editor but if I jump into a game of DayZ then I will. Some people believe that this is a problem with disk access - I think it's more a problem of code efficiency however.

If you have 8GB of RAM or more it may be worthwhile moving some or all of your game files to a RAM disk to see for yourself (only recommended for somewhat knowledgable computer users). Some people have reported great success with this technique in vanilla ARMA 2, it seems to fix the issue of 'texture popping' if nothing else. I have an SSD so I find it rather surprising that disk access is a problem but I haven't enough RAM to move the entire game directory to a RAM disk, I have tried moving both the @DayZ directory and the building.pbo files to a RAM disk but this didn't fix my city lag.

[Friday N 49]

mine is the opposite, its those brown bushes/ trees that kill me >:(

[PracticalTactical 164]

I am fine in anything other than cherno or electro. When it comes to large, urban areas my fps drops to below 20 and 25 at the highest.

[DanielTy88 133]

Same here:/ I get 50 to 70 fps in fields and small towns. But every time I step into a city it drops to 20 to 30 fps.

Edited January 23, 2013 by DanielTy88

[RJTurneR 112]

Really comes down to your setup. Especially with games like Arma, they are much more CPU intensive. I have recently overclocked my 3570K to 4.4Ghz, it runs anywhere between 80-110fps outside cities, and 30-60 inside cities. I run coretemp and CPU-Z on my second screen at the moment just to make sure everything is stable, my CPU when playing Arma/DayZ is between 60-70% load, although I do play in 1080P, with medium settings.

You can crossfire/SLI and you could still get pretty bad frames on this.

[puppetworx 474]

One thing I've noticed is that I can change my settings from high (AA, AF, ATOC on max) to low (disabled) inside a city and it will have only a negligible effect on frame rate, maybe 5 FPS at most. These variables have a large effect on frame rates in forrests and open fields but in a city it's practically nothing even though they improve visuals dramatically. Even turning object detail and 3D resolution up and down only has a minor effect on frame rates in cities for me.

Like RJTurner said the bottleneck maybe the CPU as I'm still runing an old Core 2 Quad Q6600. The odd thing is I've tried it at stock (2.4GHz) and with a 33% overclock (3.2GHz) and framerates in cities hardly budged. ARMA 2 is a really strage beast.

[Sutinen 635]

My fps is probably around 30 with 300 zombies, 20-30 players and when I'm in a city. And I don't have a supercomputer.

[kkthnx 6]

Lol @ people saying their fps does not drop when going by cities.. You have the issue like we all do. Dont lie or hide it, or maybe you just play it on so low of settings you don't even notice it. I have a 680 GTX FTW+ OC'ed - 6.core proc AMD FX Unlocked - Black Edition 3.9ghz Stable - 8gigs DDR3 Corsair. Water cooled.

I get the same issue as you all and I have more than enough to run this game at max or anything. =) So for the people saying omg its heating issues.. Umm no learn your pc stuff before replying to a post leading someone into false info.

Face it and accept it ArmaII + DayZ is poor and I fucking mean poorly optimized.. Even for newer cpus too. Its very sad

Edited January 23, 2013 by Kkthnxbye

[Gooober 34]

I thought it had to due with more zombies spawning in the cities....

I have a friend that getz pissed when my group start shooting in Starey and Vybor because it creates more zombies and his frames plummets until the zombies unspawn.......

[root 48]

Have you guys noticed usage of CPU and GPU in or outside on the city?

Outside of the city im getting around ~80% usage of GPU but inside the city the GPU usage drops down to ~40% which gets reflected on my FPS. I think the ARMA architecture has some things (bugs?) which are CPU bounded and doesn't matter what GPU you have you CPU will take over in city.

My specs:

i2500k @ 4.5 Ghz

SLI MSI 580 Lightening

8 Gb RAM

SSD drives

[DieBrotmafia 79]

Same for me. I get decent fps (30-40) outside of cities, in cities its about 14. This is really gamebreaking, if you meet anyone who got decent frames ~ 30 then you have no chance whatsoever in a firefight. I can just run into the city and pray to meet no one.

[SmashT 10907]

Because zombies!

[DazTroyer 227]

I can get anywhere from 30-5 fps in cities :(

[smokeeye 8]

I actually get way more fps when setting most of my settings to the highest (Excluding ATOC, AA and Post Processing) as it then takes most of the load of those settings to the GPU and away from the CPU.

Edited January 23, 2013 by smokeeye

[freaky88 13]

Don't be a Derp, please,,,, if I write " I don't have that problem, it means I don't have that problem.

OK ?

no, the thing is, YOU DO have this problem, your telling me you get the exact same frames when you first started the game? highly doubt it

[boneboys 7988]

no, the thing is, YOU DO have this problem, your telling me you get the exact same frames when you first started the game? highly doubt it

Don't tell me what I have,, the real problem is the 3rd part where his fps drop a 2nd time, this DOES NOT HAPPEN TO ME.

Read the OP and then TRY to understand what I am saying instead of being a Derp.

How the heck you can tell me what I have or not, is beyond me.