Pikey~SPARTA~ Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 After some thought one of my components are bottlenecking the rest of the system i just dont know which one, here is my Setup Asrock conroe 1333 crossfire sata2, Duo 2 e6850, nivida gtx280, 4gig Ocz ram, coolermaster real m850 psu, samsung spinpoint 500gig hdd. antec 902 case. My Fps are a bit low around 22 in arma 2 and i think the gtx280 is wasted cos it cant use its full capacity. Any supggestions what would be the best upgrade without breaking the bank ? Cheers Pikey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaiSan Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 DO NOT use ArmA2 as a benchmark program or think that you should be getting better frames than you are mate. I know people with monster systems that get about the same frames as you. I also know people with systems that are lower than yours who get higher FPS. ArmA 2 optimisation and framerates are a totally unknown quantity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ebden~SPARTA~ Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 (edited) Asrock conroe 1333 crossfire sata2, Duo 2 e6850, nivida gtx280, 4gig Ocz ram, coolermaster real m850 psu, samsung spinpoint 500gig hdd. antec 902 case. Pikey, If you've cleaned your various cooling components from any caked dust and grime, defrag'd the HD regularly, kept your ambient/computer room temps to a minimum, perhaps put your paging file in it's own 4-8G partition, then I might point at your CPU. Could you provide a few more details?: Which Asrock board do you have? What is your Ocz memory type (PC2 or 3, rated STOCK speed, CAS, dual-channel mem?) Have you ensured your RAM voltages are correct for the stock RAM speed? If not, the RAM may be underperforming the packaged rating. What's your OS? XP will only ID 3.25g of your memory, but that much is still enough to play. Have you tried a gentle overclock to see if you can squeeze some improvement? They are some painfully long threads, but have you looked through the Bohemia forums NVIDIA posts and Armaholic posts for tweaks to your card's settings? You are running the latest drivers, updates, etc? The reason I suspect CPU, not counting any issues from those suggested above, is the dual-cores. All I've read about ARMAII suggests the quad cores/i7s are optimal for the game (given a powerful machine around the chip, which your PSU, memory, and GPU will provide). I have a C2D E8400, OC'd to 3.6 from 3.0. The key performance difference between our chipsets is a 2M boost between our L2 Cashes. Using Fraps, I get FPS 30-35 regularly, but frequent drops (perhaps different on the new server config) to 15-25. I have a slower card (9800GT) and probably a comparable mobo, and there are other tweaks I'm sure I could try to get everything running faster. The biggest boost I've gained, but which diminishes immersion, is stepping down my display res. At 1024x768 I managed 60FPS steady in SP! But the game just doesn't have the same look. EDIT: considering Dai-San's post, yes-Arma II is a curveball in sorting this stuff out. My comments above all focus on getting a clean, optimized system rather than anything ARMAII-ready, other than a suggestion for further research into dual v. quad cores for the game. Edited October 9, 2009 by Ebden Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pikey~SPARTA~ Posted October 9, 2009 Author Share Posted October 9, 2009 (edited) Tomorrow im gonna clean my compy and get all the identification, hope it helps. Im sorry not into tech stuff About paging files ill get more info tomorrow for ya, Thanks for info on Arma 2 Dai san didnt realise it was causing lots of people fps problems. Edited October 9, 2009 by Pikey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halli~SPARTA~ Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 I have the same CPU and Ram.....make sure ram is set at 2.01volts as stock MB will set at 1.8v. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ebden~SPARTA~ Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Tomorrow im gonna clean my compy and get all the identification, hope it helps. Im sorry not into tech stuff About paging files ill get more info tomorrow for ya, Thanks for info on Arma 2 Dai san didnt realise it was causing lots of people fps problems. Pikey, if you want the easiest route then, here are a few essential tasks (It sounds like you will tackle the first few). Essentials: Clean th' bugger! Ensure airflow is adequate to and through the case. Are the case vents near a wall or drapery? Do you use a small room with a door closed? Keep the door open, crack a window, do what you can to get your ambient room temp down so that-when pushing your computer hard after an hour, the room still feels 70ish. (Ambient room temp is a big performance killer, but is also an easy fix for most of us in the North). Defrag your HD regularly. If you use XP (I don't know on Vista), one easy way to open your defrag program is to open your windows start menu>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. This will open the defrag control window, where you'll see your HD listed and any additional partitions or external HDs connected. Left-click on (C:), or the drive which contains your ARMA II files. Left-click on the button 'Defragment'. It will first analyze, then begin defragmenting your HD. If it takes hours-good. You needed it badly. Done? Do it again. No, really. The first few times will take a while, but as your HD is put into shape then the process will be faster. A program I tried but didn't buy (though I might, it's really useful) is Diskeeper, and automatic defrag program with a trial copy for d/l. The only other bit, which is a little more complicated if you've never worked with your BIOS, is to ensure your RAM voltage and timing are set for your memory. There's lots more to do in BIOS which can help your performance, but the RAM voltage and timing, depending on what you have, are critical settings to check since your computer may not automatically configure to run at OCZ's advertised speed. Many of us on TS know how to do it, so ask away. Forums and VOIP are how I'm learning. Once you have a system performing properly with it's own gear (sorted HD, proper cooling and stock settings, etc), then it's easier to figure out weak spots and tweak accordingly. FYI, your computer setup is still powerful with the existing equipment, and everybody is having issues with ARMA II FPS. It's a wierd game that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PANiC Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 time to warm that processor up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pikey~SPARTA~ Posted October 10, 2009 Author Share Posted October 10, 2009 here is the list of Parts http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=4Core1333-Viiv, motherboard http://www.corsair.com/products/xms2dhx/default.aspx 2nd 1 down Im running Vista home premium atm waiting for 7 to come out then ill switch. Cleaned and defragged first one took hrs and so did 2nd one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ebden~SPARTA~ Posted October 10, 2009 Share Posted October 10, 2009 (edited) Cleaned and defragged first one took hrs and so did 2nd one Pikey, How dusty and clogged were your cooling fans? Much guck? Which of the Corsair kits do you have? the 2nd one from the top, a 2G kit? That's 2x1G sticks, unless you have 2 kits for 4G RAM? Now that you've cleaned and defragged, try Arma again. If it still bombs, then we'll start digging for other triggers (I'm learning just like you, so don't expect a panacea, just what's worked for me in the past). Edited October 10, 2009 by Ebden Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pikey~SPARTA~ Posted October 10, 2009 Author Share Posted October 10, 2009 (edited) it wasnt that dusty tbh as my case has filters and a load of fans just the general dust. Its the 2gig sticks each givin me 4gig overall Ill try out arma2 tomorrow for a couple of hrs to see how it gets on, Ive also stopped the Aero in vista. Edited October 10, 2009 by Pikey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ebden~SPARTA~ Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 it wasnt that dusty tbh as my case has filters and a load of fans just the general dust. Its the 2gig sticks each givin me 4gig overall Ill try out arma2 tomorrow for a couple of hrs to see how it gets on, Ive also stopped the Aero in vista. Pikey, It's been a week since your last update. How is your machine running ARMA 2, continued issues? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xross Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 I just started using Vista on the way to 7 and was amazed at the amount of non-essential processes running in the background robbing the PC of horsepower that could and should be applied to something important like our gaming.. This s/w was highly recommended for Vista users and I've been trying it during the odd moment I can fire a game up. You might give it a spin to see if it helps: Game Booster And of course Dai is spot on about ArmA 2 being a finicky biatch. FPS are pretty much meaningless and only marginally helpful as a tuning indicator. Smooth play is the ideal not high FPS. Ebden nailed several good points (diskeeper is the bomb) and the tuning threads over at BIS are must reads. Someone may say they are getting a certain frame rate but 'forget' to include things like resolution and vid settings. If you use nVIdia setting up with nHancer is also recommended...nHancer Best of Luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ebden~SPARTA~ Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 (edited) I intend to wait for some good reason before buying Vista or Win7; I hear too many program conflicts with our valuable games. I'll have a look at both bits of s/w later today, and I think I'll have to buy diskeeper now. I've been spoiled by automatic defrag. Edit: Diskeeper is on sale-$40US for 2 licences. Edit-to-the-Edit.-Installed diskeeper this AM on two computers at home. I saw a performace gain on my first restart, the greatest improvement on my 7-y/o Sony Vaio laptop. Edited October 20, 2009 by Ebden Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KalXen~SPARTA~ Posted October 19, 2009 Share Posted October 19, 2009 Check out these 2 articles: Arma 2 tested: Benchmarks on 18 CPUs Arma 2: Benchmarks on multiple video cards. Note: Notice that on high settings, NO video card does past 22fps. And in every forum people complain about Arma 2's performance. Crysis is the benchmark for systems nowadays it seems. My CPU (C2D 6400) would be listed on the very bottom of that hardware list and it runs okay when normal/low.. But I think I may move to an i7 64bit Windows 7 setup eventually because its time to upgrade and move on. I have always been a nVidia guy, but pondering ATI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KILLE Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I intend to wait for some good reason before buying Vista or Win7; I hear too many program conflicts with our valuable games. I'll have a look at both bits of s/w later today, and I think I'll have to buy diskeeper now. I've been spoiled by automatic defrag. Edit: Diskeeper is on sale-$40US for 2 licences. Vista 64 is the way to go, have been using it for a long time and I haven´t had any issues with it. I´ve heard that people have had some issues with the 32 bit version, but you don´t want to use that on if you want to really use more than 4GB memory on your system. Current set up: P45 Neo mobo, 9440 2,6GHz quadcore cpu, 6GB DDR2 memory, Nvidia 260 GPU, 2,5 TB of SATA2 diskspace. Be sure to have the latest drivers and patches, haven´t done any special tuning on Vista64 only taken the admin features off to ease the usage. With my old xp system I had to do alot more tuning with the paging files Tried out 64 bit Win7 and it felt a lot better than Vista 64, it uses less memory and all the games seems to run smoother on it. One thing to remember is that Win7 supports only fairly new hardware, so you might run into minor probs with old hw. I´ll propably wait for a one or two months after the Win7 release before installing it to be my main OS, just to be sure that the minor probs which will be found after the release have been patched up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pikey~SPARTA~ Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 heya sry Ebden for late reply ive got Rl probs atm and dont get much time on the compy, Hopefully will be able in the comming weeks. Thx for advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ebden~SPARTA~ Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 heya sry Ebden for late reply ive got Rl probs atm and dont get much time on the compy, Hopefully will be able in the comming weeks. Thx for advice. No worries, sort out your business so we can see you in a tank again sometime soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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