Oh COME ON!

**TGZNOL** · 10-24-2009, 10:02 PM

How the hell am I only getting 15 to 25 fps all the time unless I look at the sky? I run it 1920X1200 with 4000 view and all settings almost maxed. Thing is even if I turn down the settings....STILL 15 to 25 fps...no improvement! Watch out for the city areas cause its a freaking slide show. I figure with my system I should be doin better then this:

AMD 720BE Oced to 3.2 gig
8 Gig DDR Ram
285GTX all latest drivers
Vista 64 and using the -winxp command (or it really doesnt work)

Crysis is easily maxxed out by my system...

**Jack Bauer** · 10-24-2009, 10:20 PM

from what i heard and looked around...this isnt crysis and people with twice your system still have trouble

Pistolfied · 10-24-2009, 11:14 PM

It's most likely not those parts but your hard drive that causes that low FPS. Might have to say it's your CPU as well.

**Inkompetent** · 10-25-2009, 08:10 PM

Two reasons:

1) Your HDDs can't keep up with ArmA2. It's a huge game designed for 32-bit systems. To not break memory allocation limitations it can't keep more than 2GB of data loaded at any time. Due to immense amounts of objects and textures needed to draw Chernarus it needs to load new stuff into memory constantly. Get either one (or two in a RAID) 10.000rpm HDDs or a SSD to improve performance.

2) ArmA2 simply isn't designed with techniques that benefits from the most modern hardware. Most notably when it comes to graphics cards, but also definitely noticable for the i7 CPU. Quite a lot of fail, but at least it still runs.

**Spyder228** · 10-25-2009, 10:53 PM

Yeah I'd probably say it's your hard drive. I haven't gotten around to trying my new setup out. I've got ArmA 2 installed to a second 7200 rpm hard drive. Should at least improve performance from just the single drive.

**ChiefBoatsRet** · 10-25-2009, 11:28 PM

if you go by frames you will never like this game, nothing improves the frame rate by more than a few with all the optimizing. You need to run the game so it looks and feels good to you while playing. The best thing I did was to turn fraps off, buy a 64 gb SSD put my OS and this game on it and the rest on my other HDD. This game runs smooth as silk and is beautiful with everything on high... frames? I wouldn't know and don't care. This game chews up your hard drive but loves the ssd, my fix was $149 which might sound expensive for a 64 gb hard drive. A lot of guys have spent much more on new GPU's, CPU's and more memory only to be crying harder than ever when they were done. My rig:
Q6600 cpu, 4 gb DDR2 800 memory, 2 HD4670 in crossfire, and the 64gb SSD. Not a powerful rig but it sure gets the job done now.With Windows 7x64, a few programs and this game I still have 20 gb left.

Romaniac · 10-28-2009, 01:34 AM

As stated above, stop looking at some dumb FPS counter.

A lot of things in ArmA2 will not register as FPS but smoothness. Stop that darn thing, and just play the game and watch for what feels good.

As you said yourself, lowering all graphics and such, will result only in a few more FPS - that's because a lot more is at play.

**Boondocksaint** · 11-09-2009, 08:37 PM

BTW don't know if he solved this, but its confirmed its because of the 8g ram, add the -winxp command to a shortcut, check for more options at thier forums.

Dreadlee · 11-09-2009, 08:39 PM

Or try using RAmDrive ppl i now say it helps a loot.

Gungnir · 11-09-2009, 11:16 PM

So far what I've read is that SSD's help out a lot. It sounds to me like when you turn your settings down you aren't gaining much performance which means graphics aren't the problem here. Perhaps your CPU and HDD are causing a bottleneck.

I've been thinking about getting a SSD myself and the more I hear about them makes me think this would be the best upgrade I could make right now.

If you are running one could you let the people who are wondering know what kind of FPS gain you might expect?

Here are my specs...
I'm running the game with anistropic, antialias, terrain, shadow, and post process on high, the rest on very high, and 3D res at 2100x1310 on a 1680x1050 monitor. VD at about 3000m.

System:
AMD 955 OC'd to 3.6
8GB DDR2 1066 running slightly higher than that, maybe around 1100(knocked down to 6GB because the -winxp fix is not working for me)
4890 1GB clocked at 870MHz memory clock at 1100Mhz
WD 640GB Caviar Black 7200RPM HDD
all on a Gigabyte 790gx board
Win7 Pro x64

This is giving me around 15-25 FPS, which to me looks pretty damn good. Heavy trees and urban setting get a little choppy and I think this where the SSD will come in to play to keep things running smooth. What do you guys think?

**Inkompetent** · 11-10-2009, 11:11 AM

Oh, also. When turning down settings, do NOT touch the shaders. They MUST be at 'High' or higher or they won't be rendered by your GPU, which most likely will cause a huge FPS drop. Lower texture sizes, world detail and so on when trying the stuff.

Fincuan · 11-10-2009, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inkompetent

Oh, also. When turning down settings, do NOT touch the shaders. They MUST be at 'High' or higher or they won't be rendered by your GPU

I guess you mean shadows should be left to high, not shaders? Shading level can't even be adjusted without a mod that enables changing it, or editing of the config with a text-editor.

**Inkompetent** · 11-10-2009, 11:28 AM

Ahh, yeah. Shadows it is

**Spyder228** · 11-10-2009, 11:54 AM

I think I have my shadows set to low and haven't noticed an FPS drop. I'll experiment tonight and see what happens.

I have experienced a slight performance gain by installing the game to a separate physical hard drive than windows. It helps when loading textures, but it's still very slow. Only na SSD would make it better.