Arma 3 Framerate

[Silverwolf_7]

I know Arma 3 is not well optimised as well as the fact that sub 40 fps is the norm for most people. However, recently I have noticed a significant drop into the unplayable fps range (10-20 fps). However I would expect that a modern gaming laptop would be able to at least run the game at a decent framerate without constant stuttering and lag. This is in single player showcase missions not workshop missions. So multiplayer server issues or giant KotH battles aren't the current issue. 

I have an MSI Gs60GhostPro with a i7 6700HQ@2.6GHz and a gtx 970m 6GB. The Issue seems to be a cpu bottleneck as 200% sampling does nothing to the framerate.

 

[WereCat]

Yea it is cpu bottlenech, however throwing that game on SSD will help immensely. Rare game where SSD almost completely reduces stuttering which in this game is closely tied with minimum FPS.

I noticed difference on 4.4GHz 4770k when moving that game on SSD... It is such a huuuuuuuuge difference.

[Flavortown2k16]

If your playing mp, then server caps the fps. Also its really cpu heavy game, so i dont know how laptop cpu's fair on it

[BlazingRaptor]

11 hours ago, Silverwolf_7 said:

Arma 3 is not well optimised

I'd easily say ArmA 3 is far more optimised than most released games today. Although the framerate is lower than most games you may be used to the game runs fantastically for how much is being done.

[Silverwolf_7]

I was running a cpu monitor while playing and it only listed 30-40% usage on both the cpu and dGPU. Also the server may cap the fps but a friend of mine playing on the same server at the same time in the same location on the map gets 40+fps with a 4790k/GTX 970.

[BrightCandle]

On 21/07/2016 at 10:52 AM, Flavortown2k16 said:

If your playing mp, then server caps the fps. Also its really cpu heavy game, so i dont know how laptop cpu's fair on it

It doesn't. Bohemia Interactive's community manager stated 6 months ago that this has never been true for arma 3. It doesn't matter how many times he says it this rumour persists like its "truth" but it isn't true and its easy to verify as a server owner by collapsing server performance with a lot of simple scripts and then see that client FPS is noit impacted.

 

The real reason is a combination of the fact that the game is mostly single threaded and it looses a lot of performance in the simulation and graphics rendering portions of the game. A lot of the effects in A3, like smoke or fog, appear to run on the CPU where on other games they would be GPU calculated. Its more than even that because the simulation is a lot more complex than most games and it grows with more players and so everyone just gets slower the more players are online.

 

Saying that the game is also GPU limited in the forests. You can max out a 1080 in the forests on very high at around 60 fps.

 

To get a good experience from Arma 3 you need a top end Intel CPU, its one of the few games that gains substantially with Skylake and also gains with an i7 (because what is multithreaded matters a lot) and really wants a top end GPU. Anything else and its going to suffer. Given that combination and a well run server below about 30 people with mods its possible to play the game at >50 fps and usually 60 fps almost always.