@Rubber Grunt: Your machine is better than mine - you should be getting better frame rates than that in the editor. Did you apply all the various settings that have been recommended for getting better FPS? (I know we shouldn't have to tweak everything to get decent perf even in SP/editor but that's a separate topic.)

It's possible you are just hitting the issues worse than I did, but it's worth checking over your settings again. I get decent frame rates in SP/editor - 50-60 FPS with my current settings - it's just in multiplayer that stuff starts getting bad. I'm not trying to discount it - just wondering what you have and haven't done so far. If it's that bad after you do all the various tweaks, that's a pretty huge issue.

"The render thread needs attention. On the editor, master core(thread) activity drops and the render core/thread peaks, allowing the GPU to actually work properly. In game, the render core/thread holds the GPU back, unless looking out over the horizon or the ground or sky."

This is the core (pun incidental) of the FPS problem. The GPU is underutilized because it is bottlenecked by other parts of the game - specifically in my testing it seems to be something in the game that's specific to multiplayer. It's not purely the AI code itself because it takes a whole lot more AI to cause FPS drops in single-player (editor or otherwise) than it does in multiplayer.

" I guess you have a CPU with higher IPC and/or clock speed than I have (i have a core 2 quad Q8400)."

Yeah, I have an i7-2760QM. It's a mobile CPU and not the best one out there but 2nd gen i7 has a much better architecture than core 2, and I generally get the full 3.5GHZ clock speed out of it for Arma since it doesn't utilize all cores at once.

It turns out my view distance was turned down quite a bit in the beta because the settings were reset for the beta and I forgot to set the view distance (and it was turned ridiculously low). In single player, the view distance has very little effect on FPS even with a bunch of AI (I tried turning it up to 12000/5000 and still got 50 FPS), but in multiplayer it has more of an effect.

I have been unable to reproduce the level of better performance I got during that one playing session, either with or without view distance turned up (although as noted view distance did make a difference). The beta is still better for me than the alpha was (although I know for some people it's the reverse) but not as much better as I'd hoped/thought.

What I get 50-60 FPS with in SP, I get 20-30 FPS with in MP. Better than the dips down to 5 FPS that made it totally unplayable, but still pretty annoying. Crucially, GPU usage fluctuates between 50% and 70% in MP, while staying at a constant 99% in SP.

So in short, the beta has improved performance for some (including myself) but NOT for many others, and for those for whom it has improved, it is still not fully utilizing their GPUs. I am still hoping that they will fix it fully, but I just wish they would talk about what they will and won't do, instead of maintaining their silence. Here's hoping the performance blog posts will actually address the issues instead of simply being so much marketing speak glossing over the very existence of performance issues.

Well that sucks. :-( For one thing it can still use improvement for me, and for another it sounds like others still have this issue at least as bad. Are they really going to close this as fixed?

The beta is definitely improved over the alpha in this respect, although it still does not get the most out of my hardware. I played on a server with 40-something players and a fair number of AI and got 70-85% GPU usage with spikes up to 95% at times, and 35-55 FPS with a few spikes up to 65 FPS (this is on standard/medium settings - have not tried other settings).

This is a lot better than highly variable 5-35 FPS I used to get on servers like that, and definitely solidly playable! Hopefully though, by the release we'll be able to utilize the full power of our GPUs and get great frame rates.

Thanks MadDogX!

I hope that's not the case - but I am concerned it could be.

I didn't call anyone names, and was not trying to be inflammatory. I simply wanted to point out that there was another other issue beyond the one that rogerx highlighted, that was the core of what this ticket was about (given that it's mentioned in the title), and that it wasn't just a superficial optimization issue that could be fixed at the end of dev, nor is it an issue of it just being "the way Windows dev works". I guess I did do all-caps for two words and a 3-word phrase :-O

I am a big Arma fan. I encouraged multiple people to buy the alpha (which they did), and I have written custom missions and have run dedicated servers and still run one (A2 OA). I was pleased to see the alpha with the ability to give feedback, and hoped that that meant BIS was genuinely interested in what matters to their customers. It'd be a shame if they let hubris and/or a major unaddressed issue get in the way of the good thing they have here.

Odd - why is my most recent post to this issue missing, along with a few other recent posts?

@Heaney: Maybe read the thread more carefully before saying that 1497 alpha testers are stupid and ignorant. The downward spikes in FPS directly correspond with downward spikes in GPU and CPU usage, indicating that the game is not getting the most out of the GPU and CPU due to something else, whether that be bottleneck points in the code, inefficient I/O, or whatever it might be. The point is, we know that whatever it is should not have to block the GPU from rendering at its full capacity.

I have been a professional software developer for 10 years, and a computer enthusiast for longer. I know a thing or two about software development and how computers work, and so do a number of others on this thread - and we know that something can and should be done to fix this. I am hopeful that it will be fixed at least before the release, if not in the beta.

silenthunter000: those are useful tips for people who have not tweaked their game yet, but the problem persists (even though somewhat less badly) even with those command line options applied (as well as others such as thread count). Also Arma 3 is still a 32-bit executable and cannot address 8 GB of RAM - the maximum amount of RAM it can address is 4GB / 4096MB, so -maxMem=8192 will have no better effect than -maxMem=4096.

I sure hope this can be addressed with high priority. Shortcomings in functionality or behavior can often be fixed by modders and scripters, but this is a core engine issue and as such can only be fixed by BIS. An issue like this that affects so many people and causes such frustration can only spell bad news for the game and its popularity if it is not fixed.

I love Arma, and have successfully referred multiple friends to buy the Arma 3 alpha. However, knowing from experience that this was an issue in Arma 2 and now finding out that the BIS developers shrugged it off in the past makes me concerned that they will do so again, and thus makes me reticent to continue recommending it lest I be causing people to waste their money. It sure would be nice to have some kind of official acknowledgement that the issue is being looked into seriously at least.

My observations:

I get an average of 50-55 FPS in single-player mode, and a nice smooth frame rate, even with a bunch of AI. When I start a server ("dedicated" on another machine or via "New..." on the multiplayer screen) with a very simple mission and just a few AI, I see a decent and smooth 35-45 FPS for a few minutes, followed by frame rates of 25-30 FPS with a high level of choppiness - constant, repeated downward spikes to 12 and even 8 FPS. Every time the frame rate spikes downward, the GPU usage spikes downward as well. Recording GPU usage and FPS using Afterburner and then analyzing it in detail shows that the downward spikes in FPS exactly match up with downward spikes in GPU usage (to 30-40%). When I join multiplayer servers with say 10-15 other players and a good number of AI, I get a low but smooth 20-30 FPS for a few minutes followed by the same choppiness, but the FPS downward spikes occasionally reach as low as 3 FPS.

Changing graphics settings does not significantly affect the FPS average or the choppiness. I have tried messing with command line parameters and changing GPU_DetectedFramesAhead and related settings in the config, with no major difference. My CPU usage is not high and I don't seem to even max out a single core - I see one core with maybe 70% usage and one or two other cores with 30-40% usage.

Machine:

Alienware M17x R3
2nd gen i7 2760QM (quad core, 2.4GHZ / 3.5GHZ turbo)
GeForce GTX 560M w/1.5GB, driver v. 314.07 - mildly overclocked to 860 core + 1401 memory
8 GB DDR3 PC1333 RAM

Issues happen whether or not I overclock the GPU, and it's not heat issues because the clock speeds remain constant and the component temperatures are well within the normal range.