sooo.... like i said a post or 2 up i got it set at 4.2ghz

did it make a difference? ...well i'd be a liar if i said no
did it make a big difference? no
did it make a worthwhile difference? not really no


/me goes back to EVE

Try the ramdisk

i only have 4 gig of ram i did take a look at that thread tho

also some thing i fergot to add on previous post, cpu usage = not much more than 2 cores total

2 cores would be in the 40 odd % mark and 2 cores in the 0 - 15% mark = dualcore

i also noticed the other day, me in server by myself = much better fps
as soon as 1 extra player joins = half the fps

Yeah, that about sounds right. I think that that node server has some pretty ordinary days too hey. Some days its the link thats poop, always yellow and redchaining (I know its the server link when the whole mob is - sayin "redchainin all day") - other days its like the load balancing is freakin out with ai jumping 20m when your drawing a bead - most frustrating.

I know the games a pig - but wonder if it would be possible to get a dedicated box or, if it is already, if we could get a gruntier box? Does anyone monitor the servers to see how they are going or take proactive steps to keep em all in good performance or just fix them when they grind to a smoking crater?

[RANT ON] It's late I'm tierd, it's not comprehensive though it may feel it.

I suppose we Really shouldn't have expected performance - well a scrap more than what we were already getting out of Arma1 anyhow. However it's bungdled, I'll call it how I see it - and to me - A2 essentially is A1 just with more complex LOD models (eye candy) and a slightly smarter, deadlier ai...

same trademark bugs/features all over, to list some:

• Same crappy vegetation and building destruction animations. (sorry bis if some buildings crash better now - it's still pretty crappy regardless)
• Grass 20m underwater
• Seeing through the surf/water like as if through a polarized filter. Being able to see through water like its air.
• No physics/Crazy stupid physics - tanks flying from a fence/car examples...
• I can still ram a cobra tail 1/2 way up through the ground before object collision detection.
• Squad ai still cant drive for crap.
• Or walk direct to a vehicle to mount. Have to use highly noticeable waypoints (which cannot get interrupted without starting the ordeal over) - walk 10m out then in again, even if standing right next to it.

And then the new things are just ordinary advances:

• The dirt piles jet & helo crashes create that were not in A1 are so "meh" for a game in this age.
• AI kill you without actually pointing a weapon at you. Get that, they have their back to you, you're in the thick vegetation a long way off and if you miss that 1st shot you can die before a follow up shot - by the prey. Just a little bs.

They may well have dumped all ai onto another thread - but it did bugger all to any noticeable performance improvements for the gamers. I wish they would spend some R&D into optimizing the engine and cleaning some of the old bugs up less on the expansions (that only ever exist cause they wanted to ship and all the units weren't yet done and by the time the expansions are out we already are running around with better versions of the added gear and vehicles by community addons - so there's no point anyhow...).

Seriously, if I wanted only new units for Arma1 (essentially A2) - I'd hang out at Armaholics everyday. Which I do. The community already comes up with a phenomenal amount of stuff.

Unfortunately the people I rely on for mods (people who volunteer their time and talent) likely do not have exposed the inner workings of the game to that degree to fix.

I'm just wingeing because I can now. I didn't really expect it to perform like Quake, Americas Army or Doom3 so at least I'm not let down.

I think A2 is a top game and I still play it and love it for what it is obviously, just wish I could run max res, detail and no mouse lag (not even a little bit - ever). [Rant off].

Mouse lag?

Trust me, that RAM drive trick makes that much of a noticeable difference it's almost epic. And I'm going from Raptor to ram drive. It would be even more staggering for someone using a normal 7200rpm drive.

I don't understand why it doesn't use more memory really, the engine definitely doesn't even use its allocated memory as a 32-bit app.

Yeah maybe but we only just discovered that and a RAM drive is probably not the highest priority in life right now

Just saying, it would have been nicer to have it perform like it sounds like it does under a RAM drive off the bat. And even then, it probably wouldn't really surprise me if it still had issues then. I may get one eventually but not just yet.

Yea I have found a few issues, but it seems to depends on the map, which also tells me that's probably a result of scripting issues.
Evo Blue and Evo Red seem to run fine with it, but I had a crack with Evo Blue Marines earlier and it ran like absolute shite. Had a huge lag spike/stutter about every 10-15 seconds.

Saying that, it could be an issue with buildings/building textures, or at least the CementWorks PBO. Normal Evo Blue and Evo Red are based further north, but Marines starts near Chernogorsk which is a pretty hardcore city/town compared to the rest on the map.

I'm going to have a crack at linking a couple of files off my Voyager GT for a laugh just to see what happens.

Best be hijacking this thread back then... *puts on vest*
So not forcing AA/AF outside the game... no overheating issues?
Try reducing your O/C as silly as it sounds. Just for shits and giggles try running it on a stock clock.
Are you running AA or AF within the game? I found with the RAM drive I could run low to normal AA (2x to 4x I assume) perfectly well. The biggest problem I found with the RAM drive like someone else on one of the forums also discovered it seems beautiful while there's only 2-3 people in the server, soon as you get above that it starts stuttering really bad. Like every 10s there's a 2-3s pause.
I would assume this would disappear if I could get the entire addon directory onto either a RAM drive or an SSD. Obviously there's a desync between the files that are on the RAM drive and those that aren't.

Go on Ball... I dare you.

stock? are you crazy? i havnt run a cpu at stock speeds since...... well i dont know when but it would be years

but i did lower the cpu overclock on my E8600 down to 4ghz and it only made it slower tho not sure aboot the games crashing...

Yo ball, I recon we just need to get highest FSB hey. And this is fairly rock solid and it only took me 2 afternoons to get.

I'm sure you know how to OC but if you wanna shoot the breeze sometime I'd be happy to help ya with what I did to get stable. What FSB were you on for your e8600?

The game runs great on the same settings ive always had at 3.3km now. I don't exactly know the frames, I will have to reinstall fraps. I do know ill be playing more.

yeah ok, i'll have a play with my O/C cos i havnt actually tried to max out the FSB i just went to 4.2 ghz and then tweaks the volts till i was happy and stable

so i tweaked for a bit, and played around in BIOS
for some reason i thought this chip ran a 9.5 multi, but its not, its just a 9.0x so that limited my FSB options

if i droped it back to 8.5x to get 4.2ghz i had to use an unstable 525mhz FSB no matter what i changed i couldnt get it to load windows at that, and took me some extra tweaks just to get it to POST
so with this failure i decided to lower the overall cpu speed to 4.1ghz
8.5 x 483mhz which gives me a total rated FSB of 1930 mhz
of course the ram is now slower however it is running at the more preferred 1:1 ratio @ 966mhz
and the cpu is running off lower voltage (tho the temps havnt changed)

so with this change in clock speeds i set off and started arma2 and joined the node server
running around base it felt smoother straight away, but dont ferget that default join in settings is a dumbed down 1500m view distance and terrain detail on LOW

so i first go back into game options and turn everything up, from all 'normal' to all 'high' @1920 x 1200 and i even turned on 'low' FAAA and ansio filtering to 'very high'

back into game and its still all nice n smooth. yay, prss T and adjust view distance to 2800/ 3200m ground /air amd put the grass detail on medium


hmm still fairly smooth, mucked around for 5 minutes but by that time my fps was alreasy starting to drop and becoming choppy
also i was inthe server alone. last time i was in the server alone i got fps till somone else joind. so i dont know . doesnt seem to have made a a large improvement, tho mebbe a small one

one thing i was reading tho, a forum thread on the ramdrive, that was linked.
aussie dave over at SAgaming has done a fairly thorough test on the ram drive and even compared it to RAID'ing a couple raptor HDD's and SSD's
i konw its kinda a rival forum but meh its interesting read

http://www.gamingsa.com/forums/showthread.php?p=88431

and explains what arma2 does to be so bad

so my plan to buy a SSD would prolly be better off scraping that idea and spending the money on a bunch of 2 gig sticks of ram to try and bump my ram upto 8 gig and create a descent size ramdrive

hmm anyhoo its late and this post is becoming yet another of me rambling and grumbling aboot this game

oh on a side note ive even tried reinstalling DX9, next on my list of things to try is a different video driver, mebbe a 195 beta

Yeah, my e8400 was running a 1900 FSB - it ran fine but it did get chunky time to time loading model LODS n stuff.

I linked my ram too on 2.0C on the gigabyte - (333 strapping a.k.a. MCH latch) ending up with 1094Mhz. For arma I also oc my video to 707MHz gpu/ 1571 shadrs / 1300 mem.

I finally have this rig prime stable (for as long as I care to testv - a long bloody time) - VCore on cpuz on idle is 1.424V (yeah I know Intel spec is 1.3625V) solid no V fluctuations. My sensors came stuck @ 40 but read higher readings so idle temp is 40 or under. Full load doesn't crack 62 degs (it may do on a really really hot day I guess).

I'll PM you what I just sent my cousin about the OC process I did this time man, it may be a different way of lookin at OC - but I am stoked with the real world result from what i did and am happy to share. But yeah on a quaddie - it may be harder to get the clocks on fsb. Sorry can't help there, but the process may assist you getting lower volts and a solid stable system thats not stupid thermal requirements.