Poor Crossfire results in ArmA II

[RavenGuard]

I'm hardcore into ArmA II. I've heard a few people talk about it around here so I hope I can get a little help. I have a 4890 + 4870, and to benchmark the differences between running the single 4890 vs running Crossfire I used a well known user created map called ArmA II Mark.

Essentially, the framerates were almost identical with Crossfire enabled or disabled. (To enable and disable I simply hit the checkbox in the CCC), and from what I've heard/seen, running these two cards should provide pretty decent results.

I was previously running Crysis, everything set to highest, 1920x1200, 8xAA and was NEVER dipping below 30fps.

The average framerate according to ArmA II Mark was just under 30fps.

I'm running XP Pro (specifically installed for this game) 4gb 1066, Phenom II 940 @ 3.7, 4890 + 4870 on 790fx chipset.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Do you have all the patches? My 9800 GX2 got raped by the demo so imma hold off on that one. :disgust:

 

[Dkcode]

Arma II's engine is rubbish! It's an poorly optimised buggy mess.

Shame because its a really great game. I have a GTX 295 and there is a barely noticeable difference in performance when using SLI. I don't think the GPU is totally limited though, the CPU is the bottleneck on missions with lots of AI, it does not make the most of multiple cores. Load up a mission with no AI and it runs twice as fast.

They need to get it sorted out, a great game ruined by technical problems.

 

[Wartzay]

I have a very similar system to you hardware wise, and I see a decent increase in FPS. (20-35 crossfire off, 30-50 crossfire on). However, some areas of the map (esp with a ton of AI/players around) still make the game slow down by quite an amount.(sub 20fps~)
phenom II 940 3.6ghz on 790gx
x2 HD 4870 512
1920x1080, max settings.

I am using windows 7 with the -winxp parameter on my shortcut.

However, I play multiplayer almost exclusively over the singleplayer, so that may make a large difference.

 

[v8envy]

ArmAII is a CPU hog. You can verify this by setting your resolution to 1024x768. You'll still be getting roughly the same frame rates with either one or two cards -- a 3.5 ghz PII gets around 24 or so minimum, 28ish average. To get over 60 fps you'll need to run it on CPUs which don't exist yet. A 3.5 ghz i7 can get the frame rates to ~33 at 1280x1024 (where the GPU is irrelevant). Even with 100% scaling you can see it'd take a 6 ghz i7 to get high frame rates no matter what your video...

All you can do is crank the resolution and settings and wait until the engine gets optimized to run on existing hardware.

 

[RavenGuard]

Benchmarks like ArmA II Marks only have a few AI, and some of the tests don't include AI at all... I also updated to the latest patch last night with the same story. I ran the tests under Windows 7 as well.

 

[Mogadon]

I run a E8500 @ 3.9GHZ, 4GB RAM, DFI X48-T2RS and 2x4870 512MB's in crossfirex on Vista x64.

I played ArmA for a number of years and there was always very little difference between running it in single card mode and crossfirex.

Now I haven't played/tested ArmA II extensively but I took it for a test drive and it ran very nicely on my system with most of the settings on high, though there wasn't a huge difference between single card and crossfirex. I put down the fact that I get very playable framrates compared to you as being due to the CPU, as has been mentioned earlier ArmA II is very CPU intensive game.

ArmA II doesn't seems to scale well with crossfirex as didn't ArmA before it, although I haven't tested with any of last few month driver releases, since i'm on Windows7 now and haven't reinstalled ArmA II yet, so I don't know if there have been any improvements on that front recently.

 

[RavenGuard]

Originally posted by: Mogadon
I run a E8500 @ 3.9GHZ, 4GB RAM, DFI X48-T2RS and 2x4870 512MB's in crossfirex on Vista x64.

I played ArmA for a number of years and there was always very little difference between running it in single card mode and crossfirex.

Now I haven't played/tested ArmA II extensively but I took it for a test drive and it ran very nicely on my system with most of the settings on high, though there wasn't a huge difference between single card and crossfirex. I put down the fact that I get very playable framrates compared to you as being due to the CPU, as has been mentioned earlier ArmA II is very CPU intensive game.

ArmA II doesn't seems to scale well with crossfirex as didn't ArmA before it, although I haven't tested with any of last few month driver releases, since i'm on Windows7 now and haven't reinstalled ArmA II yet, so I don't know if there have been any improvements on that front recently.

I don't really get this... are you trying to say your CPU is faster than mine and therefor you get better frames? You did read that I'm using a Phenom II x4 940 @3.7Ghz right?

 

[Mogadon]

Sorry, my bad, mis-read your original post.

It was a while back since I was playing with ArmA II but i was getting playable framerates. I presume my in game graphics settings must account for the difference but I have no idea what they were to compare with you. I guess about all i'm useful for in this thread is to confirm that there's very little difference between a single card and crossfirex setup .. .

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Mogadon
Sorry, my bad, mis-read your original post.

It was a while back since I was playing with ArmA II but i was getting playable framerates. I presume my in game graphics settings must account for the difference but I have no idea what they were to compare with you. I guess about all i'm useful for in this thread is to confirm that there's very little difference between a single card and crossfirex setup .. .

There was a big difference in the game between my single 280 and when I downloaded the EVGA patch that allowed SLI to work properly.

@OP: Go into some ARMAII forums and see other people's tricks to getting Xfire to work properly.

 

[RavenGuard]

Well, supposedly crossfire has been working under windows xp since the games release. I've confirmed this with GPUZ. It appears to show load across both cards, except they usually average out at around 50-60% each instead of being pushed to full load.

 

[Mogadon]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Mogadon
Sorry, my bad, mis-read your original post.

It was a while back since I was playing with ArmA II but i was getting playable framerates. I presume my in game graphics settings must account for the difference but I have no idea what they were to compare with you. I guess about all i'm useful for in this thread is to confirm that there's very little difference between a single card and crossfirex setup .. .

There was a big difference in the game between my single 280 and when I downloaded the EVGA patch that allowed SLI to work properly.

Well that's all fine and dandy if you're running EVGA cards in SLI but I was under the impression we were discussing crossfirex.

AMD added official crossfirex support for this game with the 9.7 cats, link.

Like you said though it seems under XP this game has always benefited from crossfirex and you can use the shortcut extension '-winxp' to get it going in other OS's (as was mentioned earlier).

This thread has piqued my interest so i'm going to do a reinstall tonight and i'll let you know if I come up with anything useful.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Mogadon

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Mogadon
Sorry, my bad, mis-read your original post.

It was a while back since I was playing with ArmA II but i was getting playable framerates. I presume my in game graphics settings must account for the difference but I have no idea what they were to compare with you. I guess about all i'm useful for in this thread is to confirm that there's very little difference between a single card and crossfirex setup .. .

There was a big difference in the game between my single 280 and when I downloaded the EVGA patch that allowed SLI to work properly.

Well that's all fine and dandy if you're running EVGA cards in SLI but I was under the impression we were discussing crossfirex.

AMD added official crossfirex support for this game with the 9.7 cats, link.

Like you said though it seems under XP this game has always benefited from crossfirex and you can use the shortcut extension '-winxp' to get it going in other OS's (as was mentioned earlier).

This thread has piqued my interest so i'm going to do a reinstall tonight and i'll let you know if I come up with anything useful.

Well you completely missed my point, but OK.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Dkcode
Arma II's engine is rubbish! It's an poorly optimised buggy mess.

Shame because its a really great game. I have a GTX 295 and there is a barely noticeable difference in performance when using SLI. I don't think the GPU is totally limited though, the CPU is the bottleneck on missions with lots of AI, it does not make the most of multiple cores. Load up a mission with no AI and it runs twice as fast.

They need to get it sorted out, a great game ruined by technical problems.

Did you use the SLI patch?

 

[Mogadon]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Mogadon

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Mogadon
Sorry, my bad, mis-read your original post.

It was a while back since I was playing with ArmA II but i was getting playable framerates. I presume my in game graphics settings must account for the difference but I have no idea what they were to compare with you. I guess about all i'm useful for in this thread is to confirm that there's very little difference between a single card and crossfirex setup .. .

There was a big difference in the game between my single 280 and when I downloaded the EVGA patch that allowed SLI to work properly.

Well that's all fine and dandy if you're running EVGA cards in SLI but I was under the impression we were discussing crossfirex.

AMD added official crossfirex support for this game with the 9.7 cats, link.

Like you said though it seems under XP this game has always benefited from crossfirex and you can use the shortcut extension '-winxp' to get it going in other OS's (as was mentioned earlier).

This thread has piqued my interest so i'm going to do a reinstall tonight and i'll let you know if I come up with anything useful.

Well you completely missed my point, but OK.

I guess i'm having a slow day, sorry, but i'm still not sure what your point was.