Any one using a good soundcard? Benchmark fps?

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Hi all so i've been playing arma for a little while now and i've always had the same issue like most people... fps. To make it "worse" i have an amd cpu 8350 to be precise.

Anyways i've seriously spend hours, days, month looking around for "solutions" etc. And what my conclusion is, is that the sound engine that arma uses seem to not make my cpu very happr no matter what sample rate i set it to, and i can see my DPC latency get heavy spikes.

So i knew that arma didn't use many cores, and sound "engine" "kills" my cpu so the big question is did any of you upgrade from having onboard sound to dedicated soundcard and see any improovements? And if not would you mind taking out your sound card to see if you get any fps difference even if you have intel cpu i guess?

I love this game so much and i can play it without a problem (can give issues in close quarter combat though, many people shooting, sounds, low fps, i die instead of him) but i wouldn't mind having it to run better, but buy new motherboard and cpu is not an option for me at the moment, but a soundcard shouldn't be a problem. So maybe at least help with the fps drops when there are many sounds being played at once or same period of time.

Ps: my 8350 is running stock, at 4.6 it gives a nice boost but still has "sound" fps drop issues.

[Yannick|i7]

Personnaly I've never heard of that thesis for AMD CPUs performing worse compared to Intel CPUs in Arma. I always thought and actually still think that the source of the problem is the way lower IPC of FXs. Especially ina game like Arma where AMD can't compensate that IPC due to bad Multicore optimization of Arma itself.
I have an i7 3770 @3,4 GHz (37,37,36,35 or somewhat Turbo) a GTX 770 @ 1,2 Ghz AND a Creative "Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express" '07 sound card. And tbh I haven felt any improvements installing it. Ofc I can't speak for AMD users but when you believe in that thesis about sound processing being the issue just buy a sound card. Even if it doesn't solve the problem you'll have a HUGE tactical advantage in games and also music sound WAY better. And that comes from a guy with a '07 sound card (comparing to a 2012 realtek chip).

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Alright that sounds about right. And you might be right about the bad multicore optization, maybe the amd would be able to keep up. Anywaysi actually have the same sound card... buut it died about a year ago and didn't really bother looking for a new one since onboard worked fine.

But now that i pretty much only play arma3 well fps is my issue and i just saw these posts around from other games that got some fps "boost" once using a sound card.

I found their "new" sounds blaster Z pretty cheap and it has onboard sound processor so i hope it will make a fps difference in A3 and if not well at least i'm getting better quality ;) I have a cheap motherboard so nothing fancy on there.

Thanks for your time ;)

[Yannick|i7]

Np. Actually I also thought about upgrading my sound card, but since it's installed unconventually and I don't want to break a newer model. The PCB is bent under of my huge Noctua NH-D14 fan and separated with duct tape to prevent short circuits. Sounds awful, but it works.
Oh, and you said, that it broke 1 year ago. I'm assuming that your system is ~3 years old then. Maybe you should simply tidy up your OS by reinstalling or consider defragmentating your HDDs (don't do that with SSDs).
And if you don't already have an SSD I'd recommend a Samsung 850 Pro/Evo depending on your budget. I installed 3 different Samsung SSDs over the past 3 years (840 Pro OS drive, 840 Evo Arma drive and an 850 Pro for games or as OS drive in case I upgrade my PC anytime soon). In Arma you'll experience quicker texture rendering on the Map+Objects :)

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Originally posted by Yannick|i7:

Np. Actually I also thought about upgrading my sound card, but since it's installed unconventually and I don't want to break a newer model. The PCB is bent under of my huge Noctua NH-D14 fan and separated with duct tape to prevent short circuits. Sounds awful, but it works.
Oh, and you said, that it broke 1 year ago. I'm assuming that your system is ~3 years old then. Maybe you should simply tidy up your OS by reinstalling or consider defragmentating your HDDs (don't do that with SSDs).
And if you don't already have an SSD I'd recommend a Samsung 850 Pro/Evo depending on your budget. I installed 3 different Samsung SSDs over the past 3 years (840 Pro OS drive, 840 Evo Arma drive and an 850 Pro for games or as OS drive in case I upgrade my PC anytime soon). In Arma you'll experience quicker texture rendering on the Map+Objects :)

LOL at your card XD

Well i bought my pc parts 3 years ago, had the card 1 year before that in my old pc.

And i actually install a fresh w7 every 6 month when i do my regualr disasembly of pc for cleaning and thermal paste :P I don't know about ssd yet. They kinda scare me a bit with the issues they can get compared to a good old hdd. And i don't mind loading time and i don't have any issues with objects loading or anything even though i'm using laptop hdd, not sure if it will even help in arma 3 fps wise and if it would well i would rather buy 64gb ram and make a ram disk for arma 3 only.

Maybe i will invest in ssd some day but not at this moment and the money is not really the issue, ssd is cheaper than ram but still not what i'm looking for, either all in or stay hdd :P

But sound card, just to make the explosions not give me 2 fps ;) that would be gold!

[Yannick|i7]

Haha. I get your point about the SSDs, but are you really using a laptop drive? Dude, I can already feel the difference between an Eco 5400 RPM drive and a conventional 7200 RPM drive. How can loading times not annoy you? Or even transfer rates...
I have all importans programs and windows on my SSDs and only raw data like pics and my local onedrive on my HDD and I wound never be going back to my "Office PC loading times".
Because of that RAM-drive Idea of yours: I forgot to mention that you should go with Samsung bc of the "RADIP Mode" feature. It allows ONE (yea, only 1 unfortunately) SSD to use your RAM as Cache. The result is really impressive: https://gyazo.com/e8e1f6ea8a609085812a8afa80636da3
Ofc those aren't real world values, but still damn fast ;)

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Originally posted by Yannick|i7:

Haha. I get your point about the SSDs, but are you really using a laptop drive? Dude, I can already feel the difference between an Eco 5400 RPM drive and a conventional 7200 RPM drive. How can loading times not annoy you? Or even transfer rates...
I have all importans programs and windows on my SSDs and only raw data like pics and my local onedrive on my HDD and I wound never be going back to my "Office PC loading times".
Because of that RAM-drive Idea of yours: I forgot to mention that you should go with Samsung bc of the "RADIP Mode" feature. It allows ONE (yea, only 1 unfortunately) SSD to use your RAM as Cache. The result is really impressive: https://gyazo.com/e8e1f6ea8a609085812a8afa80636da3
Ofc those aren't real world values, but still damn fast ;)

Yeah i actually use laptop hdd's 2 of them ;) and i have 4 more not connected in case these ones die, had a lot of laptops (no i'm not a thief) so i had many hdd and didn't see why i should go spend money on buying some when i had some that worked fine :P i have same loading times as a friend with his normal desktop hdd, they are 7200 rpm though, not the slow 5400.

But yeah i'll check out the SSD some day, getting new parts soon so might pick one up to try ;)

[Yannick|i7]

Oh and why don't you buy a cheap SATA controller to use RAID 0 on those laptop drives? Or even RAID 10 (but that migh require an expensive contoller tho). Maybe your Motherboard even supports RAID with only 2 some SATA ports. Would be worth a try IMO

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Originally posted by Yannick|i7:

Oh and why don't you buy a cheap SATA controller to use RAID 0 on those laptop drives? Or even RAID 10 (but that migh require an expensive contoller tho). Maybe your Motherboard even supports RAID with only 2 some SATA ports. Would be worth a try IMO

haha well i don't know, really cheap mobo, but probably supports it. But i don't need it, since i reset everything every 6 month i don't really have the time to fill them up. Games on a 500gb hdd, and os and programs on a 150gb, one of the most ghetto pc's you might see so not sharing a picture, it would hurt my reputation XD If i had to give it a nam it would be "Mac Gyver"

[Yannick|i7]

If that's ghetto i have some kind of a refinded ghetto PC. I told you about my sound card already. Plus, I only have 5 Sata ports (one of them for my hotswap) - 2 of which are SATA 3 and 3 SATA 2 with 4 drives, a DVD reader and a Hotswap slot. Thus I bought the strangest looking mini-PCI SATA controller with the SATA ports turned 180° and lying sideways to not interfer with my Windforce 770 GTX (huge cooler) lying on top of that port. That way I can still enjoy full bandwidht on my drives. Only my 840 Evo Arma drive (+HDD) is connected via SATA 3 Gbit/s :(

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Originally posted by Yannick|i7:

If that's ghetto i have some kind of a refinded ghetto PC. I told you about my sound card already. Plus, I only have 5 Sata ports (one of them for my hotswap) - 2 of which are SATA 3 and 3 SATA 2 with 4 drives, a DVD reader and a Hotswap slot. Thus I bought the strangest looking mini-PCI SATA controller with the SATA ports turned 180° and lying sideways to not interfer with my Windforce 770 GTX (huge cooler) lying on top of that port. That way I can still enjoy full bandwidht on my drives. Only my 840 Evo Arma drive (+HDD) is connected via SATA 3 Gbit/s :(

XD love it

[Drowning witch]

5-10% cpu usage decrease in the best case scenario. 1-3 % most of the time.

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

Originally posted by Drowning witch:

5-10% cpu usage decrease in the best case scenario. 1-3 % most of the time.

my biggest concerne is mostly the fps drops when there are explosions or amyn people shooting at the same time, And i've set my samples to 24 and all the way up to the 128 i think it is. Same issue, DPC latency is massive everytime. I'll buy a sound card anyways, just wanted to kow if any one had made any test to see the exact difference, i will do it when i receive mine.

Thnx again for info guys ;)

[GuyOnAChair]

Don't buy a soundcard my last CPU was an fx 8350 and it sucked my ass to no end. Arma 3 hates AMD CPU's. I got annoyed enough by the dreadful performance in Arma 3 to practically build a whole new system so I could swap to Intel's i7 4790k Devi;s Canyon. My previous build had a GTX 980 SC ACX 2.0, 16 gigs of RAM and a dedicated Arma SSD. I recycled the old parts and the only change made to my setup was the Intel proccessor which Has allowed me to play with everything that I wan't on Ultra. 2000/2000 view distance.

[✯ CrispyK ✯]

thnx but i'm not buying intel. My 8350 oc at 4.6 gets aroundsame perfs as someone with i7 on arma 3 at least. So nop not buying new mobo and cpu just to get 10 fps more. then i'll buy liquid cooling and run 4.6 24/7, did it on air, but rather have liquid to be sure. SSD should help so i'm looking at prices at the moment. New gpu soon and ram. But nop not changing CPU and not buying intel. Waiting for zen at the end of the year, been used to low fps so i don't really mind it i just wanted to know if soundcard made any difference in the fps drops since other poeple got this sort of issue fixed in other games by buying a dedicated soundcard. And i need one anyways so going to buy that also. Thnx anyways for your time ;)

[GuyOnAChair]

Originally posted by ☬ CrispyK ☬:

thnx but i'm not buying intel. My 8350 oc at 4.6 gets aroundsame perfs as someone with i7 on arma 3 at least. So nop not buying new mobo and cpu just to get 10 fps more. then i'll buy liquid cooling and run 4.6 24/7, did it on air, but rather have liquid to be sure. SSD should help so i'm looking at prices at the moment. New gpu soon and ram. But nop not changing CPU and not buying intel. Waiting for zen at the end of the year, been used to low fps so i don't really mind it i just wanted to know if soundcard made any difference in the fps drops since other poeple got this sort of issue fixed in other games by buying a dedicated soundcard. And i need one anyways so going to buy that also. Thnx anyways for your time ;)

I'm not suggesting to get a new rig for one game I'm just stating a fact. I reccomend a Samsung Solid State drive as it helped me when I had an AMD rig for Arma 3 and has helped me even more since I got Intel. Make sure you get a USB 3.0 that's compatible with the SSD so it will plug in right. Whats your current GPU? Arma isn't GPU intensive at all surprisingly. If you have a decent GPU upping some settings will help perfromance more than help it as it will prevent Arma from using even more of your CPU.