ARMA 3 Benchmarked: Graphics and CPU Performance Tested

No that's not right, what you are talking about with the GPU acceleration is an optional part of PhysX called "Apex", this enhances special effects etc. The part of PhysX that deals with collisions and other calculations is done on the CPU.

So what is fluid dynamics and 'cloth' effects? These are collisions, are they not?
 
By collisions I meant the type you get when a vehicle crashes etc. From what I understand rigid body physics calculations ie a car hitting a wall are all done on the CPU. Fluids, cloth and particle physics are the kind of effects that can be accelerated by a GPU, however these enhancements are not included in ArmA 3, and this is the reason why PhysX in A3 cannot be accelerated by gpu.
List of GPU accelerated effects.
Blog post on PhysX
 
Interesting, the game does say PhysX enabled so I would assume that it means it will use the GPU PhysX as well. If a game is PhysX enabled and advertises it, they are using the GPU PhysX from at least what ive seen otherwise they don't really mention it. I was under the impression this game also used PhysX acceleration for effects and such, but I could be mistaken as I have not been following this game.

However, I would like to see some more information on this theory for this game as I had understood the PhysX was actually being used on the GPU if available on Arma 3.
 
ArmA 3 is not the only game to advertise the fact it uses PhysX, but does not include GPU acceleration.
Take Bioshock Infinite, on the back of the box it has both the NVidia PhysX logo and the Gaming Evolved AMD logo... which is odd no? this is because they have used the PhysX sdk for rigid body physics, done solely on the CPU. So basically just because a game has the PhysX logo, it does not always mean that GPU acceleration is possible.
This was also news to me, until Bohemia Interactive announced they would be using PhysX and I started looking into it. I just presumed any title with the PhysX logo would have the ability to be GPU accelerated but this is not always the case.

Here's a list of games using the PhysX SDK and which ones actually have GPU support.
 
Interesting, the game does say PhysX enabled so I would assume that it means it will use the GPU PhysX as well. If a game is PhysX enabled and advertises it, they are using the GPU PhysX from at least what ive seen otherwise they don't really mention it. I was under the impression this game also used PhysX acceleration for effects and such, but I could be mistaken as I have not been following this game.

However, I would like to see some more information on this theory for this game as I had understood the PhysX was actually being used on the GPU if available on Arma 3.
TekGun is right. I am working on Arma 3 and I can confirm that all PhysX calculations in Arma 3 are done on CPU. We are working on PhysX acceleration for effects, but it is not in the game yet. Current particle effects don't use PhysX.
 
Thanks for the confirmation, wow PhysX acceleration coming to ArmA3 that's some big news...
 
Placing a high score on this game based on the singleplayer when it doesn´t even have a single player campaign is criminal, it makes people assume they will have decent performance on multiplayer which they wont. Please visit the official game forum and the steam discussion, everyday you will see several topics being created about the terrible unplayable multiplayer performance (less than 20fps with i7 4770 and titans) on servers populated by as low as 20 people, when the official webpage says people can play it with 60 VS 60 players. Also, not only they actively delete most complains but they have a few people (always the same 3) working towards trying to discredit anyone who do.

Reviews on singleplayer are a disservice to the gaming community and excuses the broken product they launched. Also, they actively delete most complains.
 
Re: PhysX - I think you have to view the logo on the box and the use of PhysX as just as you would view the "Havoc" physics logo. It's essentially a pre-packaged plugin they code into their engine. People get confused and assume it's GPU accelerated automatically because it says Nvidia. At one point, they were trying to bring out standalone PhysX cards, iirc, but now it can be CPU based (or else, no-one would use it in their engines in lieu of a more universal plugin).

As for the game itself. I disagree with some of the testing methods for this game. For one, it looks like you're testing on Stratis (all of the showcase missions). The majority of players having performance issues are with the Altis map. Which was released to the dev-branch a few weeks before the official launch, so it's horribly unoptimized (and huge). I was running SP Stratis comfortably with very high settings and a decent mission with around 40+ FPS. On Altis, that same setup was pushing 19-24 FPS.

You failed to minimize variances in your testing methodology. A) You shouldn't turn off AI, as you're most likely lessening the load on the CPU (what are they doing? nothing, there's not a lot of calculations if they don't have to react). B) You should have used a preprogrammed mission benchmark. There's a few out there, but you could also have someone set something up for you. The showcases aren't nearly as complex as a real mission would be.
 
TekGun is right. I am working on Arma 3 and I can confirm that all PhysX calculations in Arma 3 are done on CPU. We are working on PhysX acceleration for effects, but it is not in the game yet. Current particle effects don't use PhysX.
Interesting, ok well that solves that issue then doesn't it.
 
I don't quite understand this performance article. They clearly showed that the game was CPU intensive (40% increase in speed equaled 40% increase in performance) - then went on to say that no, it's GPU-intensive. I didn't see a lot of evidence that ARMA is a GPU-intensive game. There was a 30% increase in performance if you buy the card that is 30% more powerful (and a lot more expensive).

"Before starting the test, we plan to turn the difficulty down to the easiest level ("Recruit") and then further handicap the AI by setting its skill level to 0."

Without the AI there is no point to the game. ARMA is a simulator - if you can't simulate then what's the point? It's not an Environment/ Horizon Simulator - the purpose of the game is to win a fight.
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That's like "performance benchmarking" a chess game where they disable the pieces and wander around the chess board. What's the point? Teaching us which graphics cards can play a broken/ disabled game the fastest doesn't mean anything to anyone in any meaningful way, not really.
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Know what I mean?
 
I don't quite understand this performance article. They clearly showed that the game was CPU intensive (40% increase in speed equaled 40% increase in performance) - then went on to say that no, it's GPU-intensive. I didn't see a lot of evidence that ARMA is a GPU-intensive game. There was a 30% increase in performance if you buy the card that is 30% more powerful (and a lot more expensive).

"Before starting the test, we plan to turn the difficulty down to the easiest level and then further handicap the AI by setting its skill level to 0."

Without the AI there is no point to the game. ARMA is a simulator - if you can't simulate then what's the point? It's not an Environment/ Horizon Simulator - the purpose of the game is to win a fight.
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That's like "performance benchmarking" a chess game where they disable the pieces and wander around the chess board. What's the point? Teaching us which graphics cards can play a broken/ disabled game the fastest doesn't mean anything to anyone in any meaningful way, not really.
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Know what I mean?

Was my comment cut off? I'm a little new to this commenting system.
 
I don't quite understand this performance article. They clearly showed that the game was CPU intensive (40% increase in speed equaled 40% increase in performance) - then went on to say that no, it's GPU-intensive. I didn't see a lot of evidence that ARMA is a GPU-intensive game. There was a 30% increase in performance if you buy the card that is 30% more powerful (and a lot more expensive).

"Before starting the test, we plan to turn the difficulty down to the easiest level ("Recruit") and then further handicap the AI by setting its skill level to 0."

Without the AI there is no point to the game. ARMA is a simulator - if you can't simulate then what's the point? It's not an Environment/ Horizon Simulator - the purpose of the game is to win a fight.
.
That's like "performance benchmarking" a chess game where they disable the pieces and wander around the chess board. What's the point? Teaching us which graphics cards can play a broken/ disabled game the fastest doesn't mean anything to anyone in any meaningful way, not really.
.
Know what I mean?
The ARMA series does scale with CPU's as was shown with the overclocking section of this game. You can overclocked the CPU more and more to up the performance, but that does not define it eas a CPU intensive game, as stock speeds for the CPU's was enough to do well in benchmarks (Meaning overclocking will help get the max, but it was not required of the game). The GPU section showed you needed some pretty powerful GPU's to put the game on ultra (Not as much as a game like Metro 2033, but it needs some umph to play).

The fact the game scaled with overclocking CPU's and different GPU setups shows that the game was just programmed well for all types of setups to help people play.

As for the AI part, they turned it off to make it easier to repeat scenarios. When benchmarking a game, you have to make each scenario as similar as possible to make each test more legitimate and fair. Would it be fair to test the GTX 760 with no guys on the screen moving and record results while testing an GTX 780 with 50 guys running around in front of you? That would change the results and might show the 760 as being better just because the FPS recorded in the situation was easier to obtain without much stuff on screen vs needing lots of power with tons of AI on screen.
 
Theres a nasty bug that may or may not happen to you and it causes to FPS to be worse than what it should it be unless you alt-tab after launching the game or changing the graphics to a preset setting.

Btw, mouse smoothing also makes the game feel unresponsive, did you have it turned off for the test? Just because you said the game felt bad under 40 FPS.
 
Judging by the CPU performance charts; I see an Intel I7-4770k gets 53 fps at 3.5Ghz and/or 4.0Ghz. So which is it? So is a 4770k slower than an I5? What am I missing? Is the data fictional? Biased?
 
Did not read all posts so may have been asked...WHY no SLI TITAN benchmarks???
 
There are no SLI TITAN benchmarks because we know it will increase the community participation of Guests'.
 
Would the Dual 770s run better with a 4770 or a i7-5930k Six-Core 3.5GHz
 
I got 60FPS and more in Singleplayer (on Ultra)
If I set my quality preset to Ultra in Multiplayer, turn down the draw distance and do the same thing with the low preset, I get the same amount of FPS (30)
The draw distance and multiplayer (amount of players, objects and speed of driving...) is killing the FPS for me
 
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