Arma II - tweaking - more fps

Discussion in 'Games, Gaming & Game-demos' started by krisha, Jul 9, 2010.

  1. krisha

    krisha Ancient Guru

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    Hi there

    Just got arma2, but i find it relly hard to get it to run at an accetable framerate - any good tweak guides/tips?
     
  2. evilfury

    evilfury Guest

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    Not much to do. Lower your settings especially terrain detail, disable AF, AA, lower view distance.

    And patch arma 2 to 1.07.
     
  3. krisha

    krisha Ancient Guru

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    cheers . i'll give it a shoot - darn it is a system hog this game
     
  4. apo-ttcc

    apo-ttcc Master Guru

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  5. Outrance

    Outrance Ancient Guru

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    I tweaked and tweaked, ran it at absolute lowest possible settings, resolutions, and played around for hours and it was dipping in to the 10's. I gave up after that.
     
  6. Alex.NS

    Alex.NS Member Guru

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    I hear getting an SSD helps but they cost a hell of a allot.
     
  7. Vandrende Pind

    Vandrende Pind Guest

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    with your system i would say view distance=1000, low object and terrain, low AF, no AA, post process low.

    remember fps in campaign is much lower than in multiplayer. it's all the scripting and ai that slows down the game, especially on a single and dual core.
     
  8. Vandrende Pind

    Vandrende Pind Guest

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    yeah, SSD's are great for arma 2. i'm using one myself and it really does remove all stuttering.

    edit: it also get rid of texture lag.
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2010
  9. krisha

    krisha Ancient Guru

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    SSD ?

    vandrende pind - må være en dansker :)
     
  10. Vandrende Pind

    Vandrende Pind Guest

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    godt gættet ;) ordet må være lettere volapyk for en engelsk talende... :)

    back to english: SSD is short for solid state drive (a hard disk that uses microchips and has no moving parts).
     

  11. Outrance

    Outrance Ancient Guru

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    Sorry man, but if you're looking for an enjoyable experience from Arma II with your setup I'm afraid you're SOL. The game code is absolutely terrible.
     
  12. krisha

    krisha Ancient Guru

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    ja tænk på udtalen :)

    well i'm not getting a SSD HDD for a game right now, but thanks all the same:banana:
     
  13. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    Thus much higher read and write performance (speed) even close to the full 300 MB/s offered via SATA2 although Sata3/Usb3 are more or less available now so it'll probably improve further still.
    (Unfortunately flash memory degrades but it's several thousand read/write cycles and lifetime is between 3 - 5 years at the very least on most models now if I remember properly though it's still rare for anything above 200 GB and price is extremely high compared to standard units.)

    Anyway as of 1.07 the game will improve threading and core usage, a quad would help a bit but for general FPS it's mostly related to the GPU.

    You can also use modifications but some might be a bit extreme such as replacing vegetation with the models/textures from Operation Flashpoint content but it would be effective.
    (The red/yellow autumn vegetation has a larger framerate hit than the green one for some reason.)

    I'd recommend 3D resolution above AA as well, AA here is a shader technique whereas 3D resolution upscales to say from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 (Value would be 2000x1500 something even at the 125% setting or so so fine tuning resolution via config tweaks works much better and helps removing aliasing while usually keeping framerate at OK levels.)

    (As a comparison AA disabled to AA low can nearly halve the framerate.)

    (Also for Operation Arrowhead the shader quality low corresponds to v.high in ArmA2, disabled removes all but the essentials, v.low keeps some effects and low keeps all but not the new SSAO technique, normal, high and v.high each offer improvements to SSAO with v.high shaders taking around 20 - 40 FPS depending on the scene rendered at the moment.)

    View distance should be OK but at larger distances more AI is calculated which again affects CPU plus more objects are rendered but LOD scaling is much better since 1.05 (1.07 being the most recent further improving this.) though at very high settings (Above 3400 I think.) other settings scale down to manage performance and memory.
    (Mods can get around this but it'll make the game a bit unstable outside of x64 systems with 4GB or more RAM.)
     
  14. Vandrende Pind

    Vandrende Pind Guest

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    arma 2 and operation arrowhead are demanding, but they scale well with better hardware. i have high settings and i usually have 50-60 fps.

    as mentioned be sure to get arma 2 1.07 patch or latest beta patch for arrowhead.

    consider how much the arma engine does compared to other games. arma 2 has vast maps, highly detailed units, vegetation and buildings. in arrowhead all building also have modeled interior. also arma 2 can do some pretty advanced scripting and handle ai code for thousands of units (thousands will probably make any pc explode though :) ).

    i think the engine is very well optimized. arrowhead seems even better and object and units are more detailed than in arma 2.
     
  15. krisha

    krisha Ancient Guru

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    updated the game to 1.52 and now i get some shader error - game wont even start:bang:
     

  16. Vandrende Pind

    Vandrende Pind Guest

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    make sure you're using the beta exe.

    you could try and delete and let it rebuild your arma2.cfg (or arma2oa.cfg). it's located here C:\Users\*your name*\Documents\ArmA 2

    or make a post at the BIS forum http://forums.bistudio.com/forumdisplay.php?f=9
     
  17. blownapart

    blownapart Master Guru

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    Optimizing Arma 2 settings for my rig is part black magic, part sacrifice. I usually changes setting in-game depending on need. Getting near a city is murder on your frame rate which sucks because the cities are nicely done. It'll be nice to slap in a SSD but I'm waiting for prices fall a bit. Like others have said you should peruse the BIS forums and Armaholic forums.

    Operation Arrowhead however runs WAAAY better for me, I can crank everything and keep a view distance of ~2400-3000 @ 1920x1080. It helps not having all those trees to render as the theater of operations is a knock-off of Afghanistan. Now..if i could just figure out how to control large unit groupings without mucking everything up.
     
  18. JonasBeckman

    JonasBeckman Ancient Guru

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    Using 1.52 should be OK, using the beta would need the new shortcut to properly load the data though you only need those specific lines. (The -Mod Expansion/Beta lines.)

    (1.52 is also what the beta calls itself but it needs the full 1.52 patch first as it contains much more than what the beta fixes as the beta relies on it.)

    Also if you only have ArmA2 then 1.52 shouldn't have worked at all since it's for OA.
    (Certain mods can also give that shader error, noblur for example if you were using it as there's no OA specific version out yet, there is a 1.07 version however for ArmA2.)
     
  19. Deathspank

    Deathspank Guest

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    dont know why but the best tweak for me was going from 32bit os to a 64bit os. arma2 really flys now.
     
  20. Mr.Bigtime

    Mr.Bigtime Ancient Guru

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    I never had texture lag or else. But fps show 40 and u feel it like 20 sometimes. I dont get it. But game is highly playable.
     

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