Rather Odd FPS Drops

[crosa 93]

So, Ive been playing a lot of DayZ lately, and I got myself a vehicle, and when I get to going pretty fast driving through towns and stuff, I get huge FPS drops (from about 50 down to 5-8) the FPS drop is also accompanied by a graphical... weirdness... basically the textures become simplified, the models become super low poly models. And so far the only sure way ive found how to fix it in game is going to my graphics settings and changing my Anti aliasing from whatever it is to a different setting it doesn't matter which, and then it does the "receiving" message and then the game is fine. Now im not exactly sure what could be causing this but im thinking its probably connected to my graphics card somehow. here are my Specs

AMD FX 8350 8 Core 4.0 Ghz

Nvidia GTX 460

8 GB RAM

500 GB HD 5400 RPM (I know... I need a new one)

Windows 7 32-bit

all my drivers are up to date, and my CPU isnt overheating or anything while playing...

So im not really sure.

and ive tried running DayZ through RAMDisk and the game wouldnt get past the lobby for some reason...

any advice is much appreciated...

Edited March 28, 2013 by crosa

[Mos1ey 6301]

I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, it could just be a combination of low-ish spec GPU and slow HDD causing bottlenecking but IDK, but by changing your AA setting you're essentially flushing your VRAM and that's why it's fixing it.

A quicker and easier way to do this is to hold Shift and tap - and type flush.

[attorney1977 311]

Expanding on what mZLY said, once your VRAM fills up, Arma 2 starts to read information directly from disk, which starts to churn up your HDD and if you've got a slow one, the game will suffer as a result.

You coulld temporarily alleviate this by lowering "Video Memory" in the graphics options or setting the MaxVRAM start up parameter to something less than your VRAM on your card

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

But your best solution would be a new HDD.

[crosa 93]

thanks guys, yea just waiting for some extra money to come in before I can upgrade my HDD... its been a slow few months cash wise