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Any Nvidia owners play a lot of Arma 3 MP?

Goose

Goose

Goose

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,780
Location
Kent
I upgraded from an AMD 280X to a 980 a few days ago and Arma 3 Multi Player is behaving very oddly. I'm fully aware that Arma 3 MP is a bit of a mess and most servers are a joke resulting in low FPS on even high end machines but im not sure if that's the problem for me.

I have two issues basically. Firstly, the game stutters so badly, particularly when driving, that it makes for a deeply unpleasant experience. This happens even when my FPS is 45 or higher.

The second problem is a complete bogging down of performance making the game literally unplayable for 5 or 6 seconds. My FPS will drop to 1 or 2 (i'm not exaggerating) and stay there for several seconds and gives the impression that the game has frozen. After several seconds have passed the FPS rebounds to normal levels. This happens at least once every 15 minutes or so.

I've ready countless guides on ARMA 3 performance and have my settings on medium(ish) although playing on higher or lower settings doesn't seems to change things much.

Anyone have any ideas on how i can troubleshoot this to see if my 980 might be behaving oddly?

Thanks
 
I post this quite a lot in a few places but if it doesn't help then feel free to add me on Steam and I'll help you out later on tonight when I'm home. Profile

Go to graphics settings and do the following
Change preset to "low" and then again to "Ultra" and make sure Sampling is 100%. I have everything in the aliasing tab on max (CMAA/FXAA x8 etc etc) as it can handle it and doesn't dent performance.
View Distance around 1600 I find is a good balance.
Make sure that Nvidia control panel quality settings are on "Let application decide".

If you have MSI Afterburner or EVGA Performance X then check to make sure GPU Usage is looking "normal".


The lag spikes to 1 or 2 fps I would normally say is a drive issue - is it on an SSD ? Might be worth verifying game files on steam.

Do you have a Free/G-Sync monitor by any chance? That's what stuttering around the 40-50fps mark can be caused by.

Being passenger in a moving vehicle can give bad fps sometimes.. Not a lot you can do about that, but you shouldn't have any issues if you are the driver.

whyscotty said:
CPU heavy game if memory serves

Can u OC any further?

The above could be completely wrong :)
Click to expand...

Higher clock speeds help a lot in ARMA 3, but 4.4GHz is plenty.
 
Last edited:
No Splash - would not recommend if you play Mods (Epoch, Battle Royale, Breaking Point). Ticking this WILL lose performance.

Cores/threads/mem allocators doesn't seem to have any effect for me.
 
Last edited:
NZXT30 said:
do you have it installed in your ssd?
Click to expand...

Yup

Archeum said:
I post this quite a lot in a few places but if it doesn't help then feel free to add me on Steam and I'll help you out later on tonight when I'm home. Profile

Go to graphics settings and do the following
Change preset to "low" and then again to "Ultra" and make sure Sampling is 100%. I have everything in the aliasing tab on max (CMAA/FXAA x8 etc etc) as it can handle it and doesn't dent performance.
View Distance around 1600 I find is a good balance.
Make sure that Nvidia control panel quality settings are on "Let application decide".

If you have MSI Afterburner or EVGA Performance X then check to make sure GPU Usage is looking "normal".


The lag spikes to 1 or 2 fps I would normally say is a drive issue - is it on an SSD ? Might be worth verifying game files on steam.

Do you have a Free/G-Sync monitor by any chance? That's what stuttering around the 40-50fps mark can be caused by.

Being passenger in a moving vehicle can give bad fps sometimes.. Not a lot you can do about that, but you shouldn't have any issues if you are the driver.

Higher clock speeds help a lot in ARMA 3, but 4.4GHz is plenty.
Click to expand...

It's on my SSD and i do occasionally notice that the voltage and core clock of my GPU will drop slight for a few seconds (despite temps not even reachinbf 70) although it doesn't always coincide with the big drops in FPS i get.

I'm wondering if maybe PrecisionX and/or Nvidia Shadowplay (which is always on but not recording) might conflicting with something.

RyanF said:
I take it you've run through all of the out of game setting changes?
Click to expand...

Not sure which settings you're referring to?
 
Test it in single player , if all is well in single it is server side causing the issues

I just got a GTX980TI this week I will do some tests later on
 
This may sound stupid... bare with me.

There is in windows a very wierd bug, not noticed by many but noticed by them it effects. From a cold boot, load into windows and wait untill your in the desktop with all startups loaded. After this do a Restart, not a shutdown but a restart. When your back in windows, try your game and see if its made any difference.

Dont ask me how or why... i just know. Its as if windows doesn't load drivers successfully from a cold boot :S
 
Goose said:
The second problem is a complete bogging down of performance making the game literally unplayable for 5 or 6 seconds. My FPS will drop to 1 or 2 (i'm not exaggerating) and stay there for several seconds and gives the impression that the game has frozen. After several seconds have passed the FPS rebounds to normal levels. This happens at least once every 15 minutes or so.
Thanks
Click to expand...

This was happening to me, and the problem was 'Shadow mode' (that allows you to save the last x minutes) in Shadowplay, turn it to manual and it fixes it, bit annoying but better than the lock up every few mins!
 
Chvz144 said:
This was happening to me, and the problem was 'Shadow mode' (that allows you to save the last x minutes) in Shadowplay, turn it to manual and it fixes it, bit annoying but better than the lock up every few mins!
Click to expand...

Yeah after playing a bit today i'm fairly certain it's shadowplay causing the huge lag spikes. It's a really bummer because i've started playing Epoch and Altis Life and it's so hand to have shadowplay to resolve disputes.
 
1080p 60fps (native res is 1440p). Even turning shadowtime off makes it useless because the manual recording lags the game so badly its unplayable.
 
Well it's definitely Shadowplay causing the lags but turning the settings down does help.

I do have other issues though. Sometimes shadowplay simply wont load when im in arma3 and alt-tab'ing to turn it off then back on again only works half the time.

More seriously though is that i've started getting crashes, the screen goes a weird sort beige colour for a few seconds and then minimizes to desktop. Nothing will get Arma to come back so I have to kill it in task manager.

Never had crashes like that when i had my AMD card so i have to assume this is either driver related or another shadowplay annoyance.
 
Out of wonderment...
Did you fresh install your OS after swapping AMD>Nvidia or just uninstall drivers and reinstall new ones?
Have you tried the "verify local content" option in steam for Arma3?
 
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