Possible fixes to intermittent freezing/stuttering/fps drops

[luxuselg 2]

Hi all, I just thought I'd share my journey to resolve my own performance issues!

Part 1 - The Problem:

I started playing Day Z just a couple of days ago, and bought the complete ArmA package for the occasion.

The game and mod is great, and I love playing it, but I've been having this weird issue where it would quite often (varying from a couple of times per minute to about once every three minutes) experience a sudden and dramatic drop in framerate.

It would stay steady at 60 FPS, then suddenly drop to about 5-6 FPS for 3-5 seconds, then revert to normal again.

At first I wondered if this was an issue with my own hardware or drivers; and proceeded to install new monitor drivers, GPU drivers, chipset drivers and LAN/WLAN drivers; but none seemed to help.

After some rigorous configuration tweaking, the game's performance was improved to the point that my FPS spikes would drop only to about 10-15 fps, making the game at least bearable to play, but in no way optimum condition. At this point I just figured it was a problem with my hardware and ArmA, and let it go.

Later I had convinced a couple of my friends to try the mod as well, and when several of them had similar—if not identical—issues as I were, I decided to get a little more thorough in my problem solving.

Part 2 - The Fixes:

I wrote fixes, because there are several options that people claim have worked for them, so I will list a couple that are likely to work if your problem is anything like the one I was having.

Option 1 - Disable Hyperthreading:

This one is pretty simple, just reboot your machine and enter the BIOS setup. Once inside, proceed to disable Hyperthreading for your CPU.

This will only work if you have a hyperthreading-enabled CPU, such as the Sandy Bridge intel processors (i5, i7). Note also that not all vendors give you the option to disable Hyperthreading in the BIOS setup, and if you are one of the unlucky ones (like myself), I would suggest skipping this step (another option would be to flash your BIOS, but I will not recommend doing that).

Sources: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6427871&postcount=18

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=17109 (this one contains a series of other nifty performance tweaks as well, nice post sir)

Option 2 - Disable Core Parking:

Core Parking is a feature in Windows 7 that turns cores in a multicore processor on and off on demand, mostly to save power. This can (and in my case most certainly did) decrease the stability of your CPU's performance, and lead to stuttering, freezing and other issues.

The fix is very simple, and described in its entirety in this article.

Sources: http://ultimatecomputers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3644 (the fix)

https://blogs.technet.com/b/askperf/archive/2009/10/03/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-core-parking-intelligent-timer-tick-timer-coalescing.aspx?Redirected=true

Option 3 - Disable Intel Turbo Boost:

Again an option only for the Intel crowd (sorry AMD users!), this one will theoretically reduce your performance in office applications and the like, but will most likely only result in less power consumption and lower temperatures when gaming.

Most vendors don't let you disable this manually, but there is a nifty workaround, which is described in this post.

Sources: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/590543-xps-l502x-turbo-boost-2-0-a.html#post7650154 (the fix)

Option 4 - Setting Core Affinities

If you are unable to turn off Hyperthreading, many people suggest setting core affinities at program startup, or through the task manager while the game is running.

This would only help on multicore processors, and is designed to fix the problems Hyperthreading introduces on i5 or i7 processors (or any other CPU with 1 or more logical (non-physical) core).

What we want to do is to restrict the game to only use the primary logical core on each physical core (0, 2, 4, 6 on quadcore i7s), and prevent it from using the secondary logical ones (1, 3, 5, 7).

There are at least two ways to do this, and they should be identical in effectiveness.

The first way is to setup a shortcut to launch ArmA II: OA with a set processor affinity. You do this by making a batch file with the following command:

%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity 55 "C:\ExamplePathToArma\Arma2oa.exe"

In this example, I set the affinity to 55. This is because the affinity switch requires a hexadecimal conversion of a binary switch which in this case was '01010101'. Every '1' in this binary switch corresponds to a core you want to set affinity to, so '01010101' translates to cores 6, 4, 2 and 0, which is what you want if you have a quadcore CPU. Dualcore CPUs would use the hexadecimal conversion of '00000101' (cores 2 and 0) which for the record is '5'.

The second way is to set affinity once the program is running, and the way to do this is described in detail here. Again you would set affinity to only one of the logical cores per physical core, so deselect all of the odd-numbered cores, and you should be golden.

Sources: http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/how-to-set-processor-affinity-to-an-application-in-windows/

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/28868679

http://superuser.com/questions/305887/disable-hyperthreading-in-the-windows-7-registry/318799#318799

Part 3 - Conclusion:

For me, what worked was option 2 and 3 in unison. What works for you might be different, heck, they might not work at all. But I would—after disawowing all liability—recommend trying them out if you have a problem that seems familiar to mine.

Not only did my intermittent spikes disappear completely, my average FPS seems to have increased (when running higher settings) as well.

As always, exercise caution, and don't make any changes you aren't comfortable with.

(These options should be rather safe, though)

Did this work for you? Any other feedback/suggestions? Leave a reply, and let me know!