Armed Assault - bizarre performance issues

[[TW]Fox]

Hi guys,

I hope someone can help with my bizarre performance issues ruining Armed Assault for me

Basically, some of the time, the game runs fine. Nice and smooth. Then, all of a sudden, everything goes wrong. FPS dives to less than 10, everything stutters, even voices on Teamspeak stutter and the Menu's are jerky.

If I change the screen resolution, the problem is fixed for another 3-7 minutes. Note, it fixes it irrespective of what resolution I change it to. So, If I am playing at 1024x768 and I change it to 1280x1024, it will fix the problem and go from 10fps to 40fps for another 5 minutes or so before I need to change resolution AGAIN. It's VERY strange.

It started happening last week - until then the game had run flawlessly.

So far I have:

Formatted and completely renistalled Windows - so ArmA is now running on a fresh windows installation
Replaced my SB Audigy with the Gigabyte DS3 onboard sound
Tried the latest versions of all applicable drivers
Tried all available ArmA patches
Reinstalled ArmA many times including onto different hard disk drives

Nothing really helps. I am very stuck and a bit miffed - I upgraded to play this game as the makers intended.

Spec:

BGF GeForce 8800GTS OC 320Mb
Intel Core2Duo E4300 @ 2.7Ghz (Tried at stock, makes no odds)
2Gb OCZ PC6400 DDR2
Gigabyte DS3
Windows XP Pro SP2

Please help

 

[[TW]Fox]

Yes, it's patched. Yes, I've adjusted viewdistance. I can stand in the same place for 5 minutes at 50fps then suddenly, it will drop to 4fps. INCREASING the screen res then restores my 40-50fps level for another few minutes..