OC for Arma 3

[Totally-A-Hero]

I have a i7 4770k and a 7870 Ghz edition. I know that there is no "bottle-neck" but, i know arma is a REALLY CPU intensive game. So is it worth a crack? I dont wanna stress my CPU for no reason.  

[Gen. Shepard]

You can always try, if you see an improvement in FPS then it's fine, if you don't, just undo the overclocking settings.

[aduman]

I think you should try to go as far as you can, Arma 3 benefits from every bit of added cpu performance. You can always revert to default settings.

[WereCat]

It will help. Since ARMA cant take advantage of more cores then OC just 2 cores so it will turbo boost when you play if needed this way you will be stressing CPU less than by OCing all cores.

[Vendetta]

Well first of all increasing the clock speed really is not an increase in stress on the cpu. Increasing the Voltage is what causes stress. That being said, in my opinion EVERYONE who considers themselves a pc enthusiast should be increasing clock speeds to the max stable for their chip while keeping stock voltages. It is literally free performance that has no downside since you are keeping the stock voltages.

[D3MON]

any idea why the if single player of arma 3 can use 4, 6, 8...as many cores as you have

, why the multiplayer apparently doesn't (i haven't tested that).

[UnknownEngineer]

You will most-likely see a difference, ARMA 2 got a massive FPS boost as soon as I did my OC, and the 2 games are quite similar in terms of performance.

 

The funny thing about ARMA 2/3 is that the lower the settings the more the game relies on the CPU. Higher settings use the dedicated GPU for rendering, but lower settings don't use it at all sometimes. (depending on the setting being discussed)

 

I recommend you keep watch of your CPU and GPU utilization as you mess around with the in-game settings. SP should certainly benefit from an OC as the AI is run locally, otherwise the increase in performance might not be that massive.

[alihazzi7]

I have a i7 4770k and a 7870 Ghz edition. I know that there is no "bottle-neck" but, i know arma is a REALLY CPU intensive game. So is it worth a crack? I dont wanna stress my CPU for no reason.  

Arma 3 is very very confusing, i had a single gtx 770, fps was around 50-40 on arma 3 a added another 770 the fps now on ultra is 70-90 i have a 6core xeon at 4.4ghz then i overclocked it to 4.7ghz the single core beat the 3770 non k the fps boost was 5-6fps i think you should go with another card not overclock, but little oc wont hurt.

[Faa]

 

any idea why the if single player of arma 3 can use 4, 6, 8...as many cores as you have

, why the multiplayer apparently doesn't (i haven't tested that).

 

Ever heard about threads switching between cores? Open prime95, 4 workers will make 4 threads, basically it can only use 4 cores, watch taskmanager, you've seen activity on all of them. Why? Threads are switching between cores. Taskmanager means shit

 

[D3MON]

Ever heard about threads switching between cores? Open prime95, 4 workers will make 4 threads, basically it can only use 4 cores, watch taskmanager, you've seen activity on all of them. Why? Threads are switching between cores. Taskmanager means shit

 

how long do i have to wait?

and how does thread switching make a game that can use multiple threads become single threaded (im not being sarcastic im genuinely intrigued).

[Faa]

how long do i have to wait?

and how does thread switching make a game that can use multiple threads become single threaded (im not being sarcastic im genuinely intrigued).

4 threads can only be executed on 4 cores and not more than that. Lets say threadA was being executed by core#0 for 30secs and then switches to #core2 and #core0 has nothing to process anymore, Windows logs this and it gets obvious at this point. It's not telling you that the game is "equally threaded" or what you guys call heavily multithreaded.

Do you know what a thread is? I'm not talking about Hyperthreading "8 virtual threads" or 8 cores is 8 threads. If not go google it. Multi means two or more.

Analyzing the threads inside Arma's process: http://i.imgur.com/C6hRfBg.png

What we notice is one main thread (8% load -> max is 8% for me because I have 12 cores so 100/12=8) and 7 smaller ones which you often call trashthreads. Basically it only needs 2 cores and nothing more, anything up is a waste for that game.

This is an example of a proper multithreaded game: http://i.imgur.com/wfPAdDv.png

Seeing 12 threads using each 6% of my CPU is brilliant

 

[D3MON]

4 threads can only be executed on 4 cores and not more than that. Lets say threadA was being executed by core#0 for 30secs and then switches to #core2 and #core0 has nothing to process anymore, Windows logs this and it gets obvious at this point. It's not telling you that the game is "equally threaded" or what you guys call heavily multithreaded.

Do you know what a thread is? I'm not talking about Hyperthreading "8 virtual threads" or 8 cores is 8 threads. If not go google it. Multi means two or more.

Analyzing the threads inside Arma's process: http://i.imgur.com/C6hRfBg.png

What we notice is one main thread (8% load -> max is 8% for me because I have 12 cores so 100/12=8) and 7 smaller ones which you often call trashthreads. Basically it only needs 2 cores and nothing more, anything up is a waste for that game.

This is an example of a proper multithreaded game: http://i.imgur.com/wfPAdDv.png

Seeing 12 threads using each 6% of my CPU is brilliant

 

couldn't agree more, i hate poorly threaded games, I don't mind if a game uses 60% of cores 1, 2, 3 and 4 on a phenom (4++ real cores) i5 (4 real cores) or 1 thread from each module in my fx8 or 1 thread per logical cores on an i7.

i can run these propper games on just 2 modules with 4 threads and not lose 1 fps, i can then have half my cpu spare for other tasks.

if single threaded IPC performance was everything we'd only ever need pentium-k's which as a cpu I love and theres plenty of articles where in single threaded games where the gpu isnt the limiting factor it'll match the same clocked i5's, i7's and 4930k's. but in games that equally use threads and the gpu is the issue...then the gpu is the issue and it usually doesnt matter what cpu you have, who wants to buy a gtx770 and only use 20% of it because thier 4670k is maxed out on core 1 with cores 2, 3 and 4 doing nothing. sure they're getting 150fps because the games obviously an mmo rpg or from 2006 and hence they're crunching amd's performance which is only getting 95fps...but who's going to complain about 95fps (other than 144hz users).

still don't understand why bohemia interactive would make thier multiplayed single threaded, anyone actually got a screen shot showing it is? i can only find single player campaigns plus when i tested it myself ages ago, arma 3 loves logical cores (hates virtual and clusted cores).

[Faa]

if single threaded IPC performance was everything we'd only ever need pentium-k's 

You're misunderstanding singlethreaded performance. In a 4-threaded application the difference in 4-threaded between the two different quad cores will be equal to the singlethreaded performance difference or even more with something like CMT.

You make one core, it's strong as x, you duplicate them. A 4670K will be up to (doesnt mean always) 100% faster in 4-threaded applications than 4300's and slightly less than 8350's because of CMT. If your game only uses 4 cores and you already have a quadcore, you need more single core performance not more cores. If you're trying to decide which quad-core would be better for that game you look at the singlethreaded performance difference. It's the reason why 4670K's outperform 5960x in 4-threaded games such as BF3 because of a higher clock > more singlethreaded performance. You're not going to say the 4670K has better multithreaded performance than the 5960x, that would make no sense.

It's not like this; a 4670K is 70% faster singlethreaded but the 8350 is 30% faster in dual-threaded because it's multithreaded performance is 30% better. You need like 7/8 threads to outperform a 4670k, if you don't you're out lol

Atm for all of my games, I don't need more cores, I'm even better off with less cores and more IPC, thats all people should be interested in. IPC is the reason why 5960x are like twice as fast as 8350's, because again make a strong core and duplicating is better than making a very slow core and duplicating it.

 

 

sure they're getting 150fps because the games obviously an mmo rpg or from 2006 and hence they're crunching amd's performance which is only getting 95fps...but who's going to complain about 95fps (other than 144hz users).

You're GPU bound excluding 25m raids/heavy populated cities/40vs40 bg's as long as there are lots of people surrounding you, although with normal GPU's like a 770, but in SLI forget it. And you can't have more than 30 fps there, not even with Intel. Intel is mostly twice as fast there but that doesn't mean anything if you get 2 fps with Intel and AMD gets 1 fps.

 

 

couldn't agree more, i hate poorly threaded games

Not to break your fun but in a different map in Crysis 3, the CPU was bottlenecking at 10-20% load. (Screenshot I provided was done under a CPU bottleneck and in the jungles). Metro 2033 same thing, hits 70% in the benchmark which is using nearly 9 cores, playing campaign stupid CPU bottleneck at 20% load (moment you'd prioritize a quadcore with high ipc over a quadcore with low ipc). They're not consistently multithreaded. Hence why you see pcgameshardware.de showing the 8350 is faster than the i5 because the map in the jungles tortures loads a 8 core to a much higher load (which is when you would prefer having more cores over your 4670K) and a different source shows the i5 doing better because they tested it in a different map. The moment I got in that level, seeing that grass and my CPU load spiking by 70% was sick. 

I don't recommend 8320's mainly because of the state of current games, if they all were threaded like it should then you wouldn't have that many reasons to recommend a i5 over it unless you're a fanboy. Quite funny that pentium when overclocked outperforms the 1000$ 990x perhaps even with an OC in lots of games..

[Faceman]

You just got @Faa-ked up.

 

Also, MMOs aren't the only games that benefit from strong single core performance.  And MMOs have been made more recently than 2006.  Talk to anyone playing Archeage who is using an FX processor.  They aren't having a good time.

[Cl2G]

Arms is terribly coded game.

I really hope they get it together or get real professionals working for them.

I'm looking at you bohemia.