FPS issues during FTX's (Great Solutions. Last FTX was 15+ frames at its worst)

[McGraw]

So I'm fresh back to PC gaming and ARMA from a long hiatus, (last played OFP when it came out) and I'm quite rusty on the matter. I have read that ARMA3 still doesn't make use of all the cores of the quad core. During this Last FTX (as well as some large scale fun missions) I experienced increasing fram rate issues roughly an hour in. I'm trying to alleviate this as best I can. My PC seems to be more than adequate based on the recommended ARMA 3 specs. So I'm looking for suggestions on settings to  get the most out of my experience. Nothing ruins emersion more than frame rate that is so low, the game is unplayable which of course is far from fun. Here is the PC I have.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ibuypower-desktop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-black-red/7358029.p?id=1219267042026&skuId=7358029

[Montana]

Try using launch parameters. Here are mine:  -cpuCount=8 -exThreads=7 -maxMem=2047 -maxVram=3729 -noBenchmark -noLogs -noPause -noSplash -world=empty

Check out this link for more info on Startup Parameters.

Also adjust view distance so that objects appear at a distance that is comfortable to play with. I personally set my view distance to 8km while flying but turn off the grass. When I am Infantry this comes down to nearly 2km with full grass on. I try to aim for a steady 30fps. Asking for any more than that during an Op is probably futile unless you have a pretty damn nice rig.

Lastly you can look up some guides on how to set your graphics for optimal performance. Believe it or not some things set to high or even ultra will net you better fps. I think this is the guide I used.

On a side note I would recommend picking up a better video card as your next PC upgrade. It wouldn't hurt having more than 2gb of memory on your GPU.

[McGraw]

Thanks for the info. I'll look into that stuff. I do plan on upgrading my graphics card for sure.  Debating if and when i should upgrade my chip to an i7.  From what i have read i really don't need to unless i want to start streaming or recording for youtube,twitch etc which I don't plan on doing anytime soon if ever. 

Any sggestions for graohics cards?  I feel like nvidia is the way to go.  I would want to get the biggest bang for my buck.  Not sure if that would be something a step down from top of the line, or maybe dual lower level cards??

As of right now i tend to run a steady 30-40 fps in SP and on MP wastland servers.  It's just an hour+ into ops that it gets so low its unplayable.  From what i've seen on Cpt Drumhellers videos, its obvious others arent having such huge issues.  I know that 40+ fps probably isnt going to happen with ARMA due to its level of optimization (or lack of it).  I'd be happy with 20+ for ops. Anything is better than what I'm getting now.

[Montana]

Thanks for the info. I'll look into that stuff. I do plan on upgrading my graphics card for sure.  Debating if and when i should upgrade my chip to an i7.  From what i have read i really don't need to unless i want to start streaming or recording for youtube,twitch etc which I don't plan on doing anytime soon if ever. 

I agree, you probably won't ever need that much power if you plan to do none of those things. Even an i5 is capable of streaming/recording decent quality.

Any sggestions for graohics cards?  I feel like nvidia is the way to go.  I would want to get the biggest bang for my buck.  Not sure if that would be something a step down from top of the line, or maybe dual lower level cards?

Best bang for your buck in my opinion is this card. I personally use it, but it does come with a decent price tag. If you look around hard enough you can get some rebates or deals and knock it down a few bucks. Any cards better than this will not net you as much performance per dollar so this is about as high as I would go. Here is a good article explaining how I came to this conclusion. The author keeps it up to date monthly in case you are planning on purchasing in sometime in the future.

As of right now i tend to run a steady 30-40 fps in SP and on MP wastland servers.  It's just an hour+ into ops that it gets so low its unplayable.  From what i've seen on Cpt Drumhellers videos, its obvious others arent having such huge issues.  I know that 40+ fps probably isnt going to happen with ARMA due to its level of optimization (or lack of it).  I'd be happy with 20+ for ops. Anything is better than what I'm getting now.

Hopefully getting your settings optimized and running those paramaters will help. There have been many times where I personally have encountered frame drops at the end of an OP. I guess it is just something to be expected with the amount of awesome that goes on.

[McGraw]

Thanks a bunch.  I'll definitely look into that card. Working on getting all my settings optimized and doing the parameters. hopefully that will make some progress.

If you were in this past sundays op, I made it to just as we were getting into the second objective with the gas station on the south side.  Then it started going down hill from there.

[Montana]

I was there but things are a bit different in the air.

[cormacc]

I had the same problem took me a month and half to figure it out even bought a Geforce GTX 750 Ti 2gb DDR5. It was my virtual memory.

[SGT (Ret) Falconer]

I had this issue aswell, plus a massive increase in ARMA instability (crashes etc.) Weird thing is that ARMA was running smooth as vanilla cream before the latest ARMA3 and mod pack update. I suspect the behemoth of annoyance that is ACE.

[McGraw]

Just Filled in for FTX with Havoc 2 tonight, barely went below 20fps the whole time. Either the suggestions above worked or it was a combination of them and better cleanup by zues/dropping back to that last version of ACE3 we had to do for the OP.

[SSG (Ret) McAllister]

After running in both the most recent TFC FTX and TFB FTX I can say that these suggestions do help.  Only case of going below 20 FPS was when an A-10 took out a T-72 100m-150m away from me.

[Montana]

Awesome, glad to see these things seem to have worked for you guys!

[SFC (Ret) Lyon]

Hard to nail down what, among all the factors at play in a large-scale FTX, is helping/hurting my FPS, but I will confirm that using the Startup Params above, my initial boot-up and map loading times are much quicker now.

[Barraco]

Try using launch parameters. Here are mine:  -cpuCount=8 -exThreads=7 -maxMem=2047 -maxVram=3729 -noBenchmark -noLogs -noPause -noSplash -world=empty

Check out this link for more info on Startup Parameters.

Also adjust view distance so that objects appear at a distance that is comfortable to play with. I personally set my view distance to 8km while flying but turn off the grass. When I am Infantry this comes down to nearly 2km with full grass on. I try to aim for a steady 30fps. Asking for any more than that during an Op is probably futile unless you have a pretty damn nice rig.

Lastly you can look up some guides on how to set your graphics for optimal performance. Believe it or not some things set to high or even ultra will net you better fps. I think this is the guide I used.

On a side note I would recommend picking up a better video card as your next PC upgrade. It wouldn't hurt having more than 2gb of memory on your GPU.

great info, question. i know i have an i7 core cpu but how do i find out the rest of the settings you use in your launcg parim? or whats best for my set up ect...

[Montana]

My parameters are set to the maximum the game will support. These settings are much lower than what my PC's is capable of. For example, max mem is set to 2 gb approx but my PC contains 16 gb. Video Ram at 3gb, mine has 4gb. Then many people ask, how can you use 8 cores if you only have 4? Well the param forces Hyperthreading with Intel chips. Basically you are allocating those resources specifically for Arma so give it what you can.

[B. Cavanaugh]

I have had the same experiences and I went into detail as to what I found in this post. http://www.506thir.net/forums/index.php?topic=5724.msg34347#new