Neverending FPS/Glitch/Flush Trouble

[Private Poptarts 23]

Hey guys, I made a post of this earlier, thought I had found a solution. I don't know why, but the problem stopped for a while. Now it is acting up again and I decided to 'delete' it to make a new one.

The issue goes like this...

I'm in the wilderness, I get great FPS and no stuttering at all. I go to a major city, get slight FPS drop, but nothing I can't manage. ArmA 2 works fine.

But when the fit happens, my FPS drops to unbearable (no, I'm not talking about "I only got 50FPS in a full city firefight" type of unbearable), I get horrible lag, textures disappear/flicker and all the textures turn low res.

This happens in the wilderness rarely, more commonly in the cities.

Waiting doesn't work, and the only fix is to use the "flush" command. This works, but it is a great pain, since I've had to do it almost regularly lately. I've gotten killed/almost gotten killed several times due this.

I use appropriate settings (match resolution and 3D resolution, disable/high shadows, no AA, no postprocessing, low/no HDR, default vram, et cetera. This happens even if I use the highest, or the lowest settings.

I use these launch parameters -nosplash -world=empty -maxMem=2047 -maxVRAM=1024 -cpuCount=2 -exThreads=1. These did help, but the issue hasn't gone anywhere it seems.

My graphics drivers stopped working a couple of times, could be temperature? Hasn't happened for a long while now.

I don't use 6Launcher, I use the latest beta (94876), DayZ 1.7.2.1 and Steam version of ArmA 2 CO. I use the RamDisk tweak found here:

My system specs are (according to dxdiag, if you need more please tell me);

Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 1905M (what the hell why would dxdiag say that amount...) 512MB (Downloaded the latest drivers few days ago)

Intel Core Duo E8200 @ 2.66GHz (2 CPUs) ~2.7GHz

4GB of RAM

Vista

Please help me out here. NOBODY seems to have this problem. Is the issue serverside or systemside?

Edited July 16, 2012 by Private Poptarts

[Arnie (DayZ) 21]

First of all if I remember reading correctly with the default or even the max video card settings arma won't use more than 512mb of video ram. You need to add a string to the .exe to enable it to use more or you can download arma launcher which enables you to enter a max value of vid ram to use it then adds the strong for you. You can also select how many cores the game runs on in similar way, you'd have to put it on 2 cores. I'm not sure if arma does that by itself unless you tell it to.

Personaly I'm using a C2D E8400 @3.6 ghz and a Radeon 5850 with 1GB of ram. I playing at higher settings than you alltho i played at a fairly low res. (you did not mention yours) I experienced the framerate drop after being ingame for a prolonged time so I suspect a memory leak somewhere. It also occurs faster when I alt tab alot to check the map. Exiting the game completely and restarting fixes it for me. Then I'm good again for an hour or 2 to 3. Hope that helps.

[Private Poptarts 23]

First of all if I remember reading correctly with the default or even the max video card settings arma won't use more than 512mb of video ram. You need to add a string to the .exe to enable it to use more or you can download arma launcher which enables you to enter a max value of vid ram to use it then adds the strong for you. You can also select how many cores the game runs on in similar way, you'd have to put it on 2 cores. I'm not sure if arma does that by itself unless you tell it to.

Personaly I'm using a C2D E8400 @3.6 ghz and a Radeon 5850 with 1GB of ram. I playing at higher settings than you alltho i played at a fairly low res. (you did not mention yours) I experienced the framerate drop after being ingame for a prolonged time so I suspect a memory leak somewhere. It also occurs faster when I alt tab alot to check the map. Exiting the game completely and restarting fixes it for me. Then I'm good again for an hour or 2 to 3. Hope that helps.

I use the vram parameter in the exe and set it to 1024, those parameters mentioned above helped somewhat. Should I still set the vram to high in-game settings, even though people dvise to use default?

I'm using 1600x900 resolution(s), though my monitor is 1650x1050.

Could it be that my GPU can't handle the game? It should meet the minimum requirements of ArmA 2 and DayZ runs smoothly, until those seizures... :/

Edited July 13, 2012 by Private Poptarts

[Arnie (DayZ) 21]

Arma is a very CPU intensive game. You can always go for a slight overclock on your cpu but thats upto you. I'm running at 3.6 ghz myself and have been for 4 years while using the standard heatsink. Upto you.

At 1600*900 it might be too much for your GPU, I'm running it at 1280*1024 so there is a little bit less to process for my card.

Edited July 14, 2012 by Arnie

[Private Poptarts 23]

Arma is a very CPU intensive game. You can always go for a slight overclock on your cpu but thats upto you. I'm running at 3.6 ghz myself and have been for 4 years while using the standard heatsink. Upto you.

At 1600*900 it might be too much for your GPU, I'm running it at 1280*1024 so there is a little bit less to process for my card.

I've usually used 1280x myself so I don't actually know why I'm using 1600x... :D

My guess is that this must be a performance/hardware problem since the problem occurs in the big cities more often. I still don't get it how it runs pretty good both in and out of cities and suddenly starts getting fits. I'd like someone to answer this, this is the main thing that's puzzling me.

I'll try that and after that the GPU overclocking, though I've read somewhere that ArmA doesn't like that though. How should I go on about it? Never done it before, so I'd appreciate a little crash course on the matter :P

Edited July 14, 2012 by Private Poptarts

[unrated (DayZ) 0]

This problem is propably caused by your cpu. It's actually too bad for Arma 2 which needs a lot of cpu power and less of gpu power. I made a thread like you did, i nearly got the same startup parameters and fps issues.

Out of town i got around 22-35 fps in town 17-22 fps.

Specs:

AMD Phenom X4 9750 2,4 GHz Quadcore

NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX

8 GB DDR2 RAM

Bought a few days ago a nearly new system:

Intel i5 2500k 3,3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX

8 GB DDR3 RAM

hope this will change a lot :)

[Private Poptarts 23]

This problem is propably caused by your cpu. It's actually too bad for Arma 2 which needs a lot of cpu power and less of gpu power. I made a thread like you did, i nearly got the same startup parameters and fps issues.

Out of town i got around 22-35 fps in town 17-22 fps.

Specs:

AMD Phenom X4 9750 2,4 GHz Quadcore

NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX

8 GB DDR2 RAM

Bought a few days ago a nearly new system:

Intel i5 2500k 3,3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX

8 GB DDR3 RAM

hope this will change a lot :)

I rather would not go and buy a new processor right away, one of the reasons being that I'm on a shoestring budget lol.

Maybe I could give the overclocking a try? Could you give me lil instructions how to do it, how much, is there any risks etc Nevermind, I can google that... there's plenty of guides around :P

Edited July 14, 2012 by Private Poptarts

[Private Poptarts 23]

Arma is a very CPU intensive game. You can always go for a slight overclock on your cpu but thats upto you. I'm running at 3.6 ghz myself and have been for 4 years while using the standard heatsink. Upto you.

At 1600*900 it might be too much for your GPU, I'm running it at 1280*1024 so there is a little bit less to process for my card.

This seems to have improved my performance somewhat - or maybe it could be that + the latest patches. I played for an hour or two, got only one fit now. If it starts acting up, I'll ask my pal to overclock this thing for me.

Thanks for the replies guys!