Arma II, graphics or processor bottleneck?

[sesselpupser]

Hi guys,

So I've just been testing some stuff in Arma II. Running it at almost maxed settings at 5040x1050 (but with 'normal' AA, no post processing and the lowest HDR setting) including draw distance, I get 9fps on average in the Arma II nighttime benchmark. If I quarter the resolution (or is it half? The lowest setting, anyway) I still only get 9fps. If I drop the draw distance down to 500m I get somewhere in the range of 20 to 30fps.

Does this suggest a CPU or graphics card bottleneck? I'm guessing the former, especially as my graphics card doesn't appear to be particularly stressed, going by Afterburner graphs and min/max readings. It seems odd that the draw distance has an effect though as surely the processor is still making physics calculations for things, just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there... Right?

My graphics card is an MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr III OC and my processor is a 3.3GHz i5 2500K, I haven't overclocked either. I remember running a 3D Mark 11 benchmark back when I had a GTX 580 and it fell down a little with processor-based physics calculations, I can't remember exactly what happened nor what the scores were though. So I suppose my next question is, if it is my processor causing the bottleneck, are the results from overclocking linear or do you get diminishing returns as you go faster? So, if I overclocked it by 25%, would I get 25% better frame rates (assuming it's entirely down to the processor's speed)?

Anyway, I'm starting to ramble. I'm updating 3D Mark 11 to benchmark again so I can actually post scores and things if necessary.

Cheers guys.

Edit: Not sure what happened with the benchmark test because it's not letting me see any scores, but the GPU tests ran reasonably well (above 20fps) and the rigid body physics test ran at 20-22fps. The combined test ran at 30fps, so I'm pretty confused.


Edit again: It let me see the scores. I got:
3D Mark score: P8679
Graphics: 9727
Physics: 6621
Combined: 6471
Graphics test 1: 46.61fps
GT2: 46.13fps
GT3: 59.68fps
GT4: 28.83fps
Physics test: 21.02fps
Combined: 30.1fps.

The test was a basic 720p test because that's all the basic edition lets you do.

 

[Ibonibo]

if it is my processor causing the bottleneck, are the results from overclocking linear or do you get diminishing returns as you go faster?

not linear, as it's a mix of both, in your case more Cpu, but still. But I would recommand a bit of OC for your CPU. But the biggest bottleneck is still the engine that isn't really optimized. Arma 3 looks to run a whole lot smoother from what you gather from articles.

That's just my opinion, I am really not pro in this compared to others here ot anywhere. I would go for 4.2ghz on turbo (as of what i read that is still very safe to run)

 

[nick09]

You could try setting the physics settings to the gpu in the nvidia control panel since you are saying that the cpu is doing the physics. You should be getting fairly high frame rates due to the fact that you can play this game with a 2.8Ghz dual core and that's the recommended cpu.

 

[bergauk]

You could try setting the physics settings to the gpu in the nvidia control panel since you are saying that the cpu is doing the physics. You should be getting fairly high frame rates due to the fact that you can play this game with a 2.8Ghz dual core and that's the recommended cpu.

You wouldn't want to run it on a dual core.



I'd say why not bump the settings DOWN. If your computer is struggling to pull 30fps on a single screen it's way too high.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Its both. I would say more CPU than GPU. I run ARMA at 47 FPS at medium setting and my CPU at 50%. I have a 6770.

 

[nick09]

You wouldn't want to run it on a dual core.

It was just an example. I don't use the game myself but this is the reason why we have game requirement lists made up.

 

[bergauk]

It was just an example. I don't use the game myself but this is the reason why we have game requirement lists made up.

To be honest, their recommended hardware looks to be a bare minimum of what it would take to run the game. Their minimum hardware is laughable. Good luck even getting 5 on the hardware they listed.

 

[sesselpupser]

not linear, as it's a mix of both, in your case more Cpu, but still. But I would recommand a bit of OC for your CPU. But the biggest bottleneck is still the engine that isn't really optimized. Arma 3 looks to run a whole lot smoother from what you gather from articles.

That's just my opinion, I am really not pro in this compared to others here ot anywhere. I would go for 4.2ghz on turbo (as of what i read that is still very safe to run)

Yeah, knowing it's an unoptimised game is what made me want to use it as a benchmark, but it's also a game I play a lot. I have no idea if my CPU has a Turbo setting, nor do I have any idea of how to find that out...

You could try setting the physics settings to the gpu in the nvidia control panel since you are saying that the cpu is doing the physics. You should be getting fairly high frame rates due to the fact that you can play this game with a 2.8Ghz dual core and that's the recommended cpu.

Settting Nvidia PhysX to CPU or GPU makes no difference, still 9fps either way.

I'd say why not bump the settings DOWN. If your computer is struggling to pull 30fps on a single screen it's way too high.

Yeah, I do in normal use (all I've really changed is draw distance from 5 to 10km, shadows and object detail from high to very high), but it's not just on one monitor, it's across three 1680x1050s. I find my normal framerates quite playable and at the same time I don't want to reduce the quality nor do I want to go back to just one monitor again. I was looking at my Afterburner graphs after playing some BF3 and noticed that my card wasn't maxing out the VRAM at all ever, and it strikes me as odd that Arma II at the highest settings at 5040x1050 still isn't maxing it out, but I guess it just doesn't address that much VRAM.

Its both. I would say more CPU than GPU. I run ARMA at 47 FPS at medium setting and my CPU at 50%. I have a 6770.

I'll try running it at different settings and resolutions, but as I said before I don't really want to sacrifice graphical settings to run on three monitors, nor do I want to run it on one monitor to have nice graphics, I'd rather investigate overclocking so I can have both. I did try to resist the urge to play it on my sim rig, but that only lasted about 5 minutes, and once you've tried it on a triple monitor setup it's difficult to go back...


From having a play around with some settings, it appears that resolution has absolutely no effect on the frame rate for me, with otherwise identical settings it's the same 9fps at 1680x1050 as it is at 5040x1050. The settings are unreasonably high, way higher than I'd usually use, I'm just curious to know what's holding it back. Maybe it is just the engine being unable to use all 2GB of VRAM that my card has? I really don't know.

 

[nick09]

Then it seems like a problem with the game itself. Check to see if there any new updates and if that does not work then I'd consider sending an email to their support team.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Then it seems like a problem with the game itself. Check to see if there any new updates and if that does not work then I'd consider sending an email to their support team.

There hasn't been an update in months. Try lowering the particle setting and the Antialiasing. Also, the 3D resolution makes a difference too.

 

[tlowr4]

There hasn't been an update in months. ...

Well there's the answer to everyone's problems. Obviously the team that work on the game are too lazy to update it to support new graphics cards that have come out in the last few months. Obviously the driver support will be utter crap, and it dosn't matter weather you're using a GT610 or a GTX690, the framerates are going to be dreadful.

EDIT: Just read the 'minimum system requirements'. What a joke.

 

[Ibonibo]

It ain't a problem of support.. Support for such an old game is more prevalent than on many other big franchises.

The problem is the engine, and rewriting that in patches is a chore, and they rather focus on the new engine for ARMA III than update the old one.

You probably could improve it by going into .ini files, but I don't know how that is recieved on the server end (possible cheat alert).
And I don't know how much you would gain by it.

As it stands, waiting for the optimized Arma III is the only solution to get support for multiple CPU's GPU's, hypertrading, Dx11,...

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

You probably could improve it by going into .ini files, but I don't know how that is recieved on the server end (possible cheat alert).
And I don't know how much you would gain by it.

There is no cheat alert. When you join a game with a mod, it notifies everyone what hte file is and htat its been modded.