I already posted this at the official boards, but I'm curious to hear the opinion of my SimHQ comrades as well.

I moved from a 5000+ AMD with 2GB DDR2 and a 512MB 9600GT to an i7-860, 4GB DDR3, and a 1GB HD4890 Radeon. Running Win7 x64 off a Patriot Torqx solid state drive, Arma2 1.04 and latest beta.

Yet I still can not get smooth framerates. I'm running 1920x1200, everything on "Normal" besides PostProcessing which is deactivated. View Distance 3000m.

Playing missions like the "converted from OFP" Battlefields or the included SP Scenario where you start as Russian Tank Commander, I see framerate dipping into the low 20s, like between 22 and 25. High average of 30 which is okay, but as I drive trough a village or trough some tense shrubs and foliage, I dip below 25.

I mean, this is basically a cutting edge monster system for any normal gamer who doesn't do watercooling, overclocks an i7 to 3.6 Ghz and runs triple SLI. I can't belive I'm still getting less than 25 FPS even at normal settings. Other visual awesome stuff like Stalker:CS in DX10 runs at better than 30 FPS with max. details. This system runs everything else smooth as butter (60avg. FPS for my flightsims, for Fallout3, for Mount & Blade).

I'm not getting it.

Turn off antialiasing.

have you tried the latest beta? It sounds like you're having texture streaming issues which should be improved with the next patch

edit: never mind just saw your other post in the BIS forums and saw you tried the beta

I've seen where dropping the resolution can help.

I know you don't likely want to play that way, but see what performance you get at 1680x1050 and something like 1366x768.

Try the Proper addons, links are in the Addons thread

I have a less capable system than yours, with several graphic settings at higher levels than normal, and get as good or better results - although there are variations in my rates. What did you set your view distance at? Mine is around 2375. AA is set at "Normal" however; AF at very high. Like adLabs suggests, turning your rez down a notch should help. I can't recall if I'm at 1900 or 1680, here at work.

Regardless, you may well benefit from one in-game option change. If you have shadows set at normal or lower, perversely, that can lower your fps. Set it at Very High or possibly at High. Check your experience, as well as rates. Should be an improvement. Honest!

How are you measuring your frame rates? FRAPS can lower your performance so if that's the method, try running the same area, with and without it running and check how the sim feels, rather than just the numbers. If this doesn't apply, my apologies.

Lastly, I'd assume you have turned off most of any background programs running - no "active" AV checking every bit that is running, no unnecessary utilities, etc?

I am not familiar with the relative performance of the i860 compared to the 900 series, but would assume it is far more powerful than my old e6850. And the Nvidia upgunned 260 is a decent card, but surely the 4890 is a more capable beast. I have a friend with that card and a quad core intel cpu one generation down from yours and he reports his ArmA 2 performance as terrific.

If AA is the culprit, try disabling it and using a higher 3D resolution. I use a 125% 3D res and it's waaaay better than regular AA for looks; but of course it will put a fairly good strain on your card. But with a 4890, I think it should be able to pull it off w/o a huge decrease

I have spent tons of time researching/reading on ArmA2 setup/performance. Here is my config setup. Somewhat similar to yours. I am doing great since the latest beta that fixed the 8gb ram problem.

language="English";
adapter=-1;
3D_Performance=31915;
Resolution_Bpp=32;
Resolution_W=1920;
Resolution_H=1080;
refresh=60;
Render_W=1920;
Render_H=1080;
FSAA=3;
postFX=0;
HDRPrecision=16;
lastDeviceId="";
localVRAM=1059127296;
nonlocalVRAM=2137905152;
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;


Localvram is your video card ram. Mine is 1gb. So that is the number I inputted.

nonlocalVRAM is computer ram. ArmA2 is 32 bit therefore it cannot use over 2gb. That is the number I inputed. Everybody should have that number the same. Arma2 can never see or use any more than that. It is a 32bit app. Setting this also will get rid of the -maxmem=x startup parameter.

I use no pagefile because you don't need it when running 64bit and 4 gig or more ram.

Also use the -cpucount=x in your startup parameter. Count is number of "cores"

There are tons of bugs/settings that BIS won't admit too. You can see on the official forum people figuring them out and posting about it.

One of the things is the texture detail setting in the advanced tab. You must set it to normal or Arma2 will overload your gpu. Thus you get those pop/missing textures. Another is the video memory setting in the advanced tab. You must set it to default. You if don't ArmA2 will not use all the video card memory you have told it in the config file. These are two things that people have figured out that BIS has no comment on.

All other settings are at high. Except PostProcess which is disabled.

P.S. Make sure to set the config to read only after making the changes!

My rig:
Dual 3.4GHz Xeon 64bit
8GB RAM
285GTX 1Gb
Win7 x64.

What number should I set the cores if I have hyperthreading? 8 or 4?

I'm wondering if maybe only two cores would be better so the Turbo mode can kick in.

As someone at the other forum figured out: it seems villages and cities are CPU-limited when you fight with AI in them. Forrest's are GPU limited.

I might try disabling FSAA and using super sampling, maybe the FSAA implementation is so bad that it needs more power than just the additional pixels.

Thanks for the hints so far, but I can't help thinking they still have a very unoptimized game here.

Okay, some testing later...

Shadows on high do at least not cost additional speed, and fix some visual problems in forrest, so that was worth it.

Switching between normal FSAA and 125% or 133% Resolution with FSAA deactivated shows about the same framerate.

I'm not sure, but it might be possible that BIS is actually faking FSAA on ATI cards by using super sampling. It is well known that ATI can't do DX9 FSAA in Stalker where Nvidia could. So maybe for Nvidia FSAA means MSAA, and for ATI FSAA sets Super Sampling which needs the same horse power as higher resolution.

It drops 40 fps to 30fps just setting FSAA on low. In most other games, low FSAA is almost "free" at 5% performance or such, certainly not at 25% performance loss.