Content
1.General Guidelines
2.General System Optimization
3.General Settings
4.Display Settings
5.AA & PP Settings
6.ArmA3Alpha.cfg
7.Startup Parameters
8.ARMA 3 & GTX 500 Series Cards
9.Field of View (FOV) Settings
10.GimmeMoarFrames
11.LOW FPS issue and fix
12.Memory Flush
13.STEAM performance troubles and how mitigate them
14.Stuttering Fixes
15.tbbmalloc for ArmA
16.My Multiplayer Settings
17.Hardware Recommendations
1. General Guidelines
- No-one can really tell you the best settings for you as it is up to your computers build and your personal preference, this is meant as a guide only to help you make decisions. Running at the settings recommended however will yield good results both in performance and visuals.
- MSI Afterburner(MSI AB) is a good tool to help you tune your settings when you enable the Memory Usage for the On-Screen Display (OSD). MSI AB can also show your FPS to help you discern if a particular setting is giving you a gain or a loss.
- After changing a setting and waiting a few seconds your FPS OSD will catch up so you can quickly see if you get a gain or loss.
- Use ArmA3Mark to fine tune your settings how you like and performance you are happy with.
- For recording footage I recommend any of these solutions: Fraps Alternative: Dxtory, Fraps Alternative: MSI Afterburner, Fraps KILLER: AVerMedia Live Gamer HD or Fraps KILLER: Nvidia ShadowPlay.
2. General System Optimization
Disable CPU Parking, to help steady performance.
Use ProcessLasso (or RadeonPro with AMD GPU) to set ArmA 3 to always run on High Priority, and help steady performance.
Enabling the 3GB switch on 32-bit Windows XP/Vista may improve performance/stability.
Using Razer GameBooster may improve your performance.
Check out the free PC Maintainance, Security and Utility apps here to keep your PC running tip-top.
The TweakGuides Tweaking Companion is all you will ever need to tweak and maintain Windows.
Steam gives you the option to install ArmA to a different internal Hard Disk Drive, this helps to improve load times and
stability.
Update to the latest PhysX driver, not necessary but good habit.
Update to the latest beta drivers for AMD or nVidia to get the best performance.
3. General Settings
Sampling: Use 100% unless you have a very specific reason. *
Texture Quality (HDD/GPU): High to Ultra, High stops a lot of the building pop-in Ultra basically eliminates it.**
Objects Quality (CPU/GPU): High to Ultra,, on a higher setting will reduce object pop-in but comes at the cost of frames.**
Terrain Quality (CPU/GPU): Standard to High, higher means more frame lag for not much gain visually or otherwise.**
Shadow Quality (GPU): DISABLED or High+, lower settings seem to be worse, Ultra seems to give best performance.
Particles Quality (GPU): Standard or High, Ultra seems to have no effect on frames.
Cloud Quality (GPU): Low, this setting is superfluous unless you are really into flying.
PIP (GPU): Low or DISABLED, while better than it was previously keep in mind that it still consumes a lot of frames while driving for a cosmetic effect.
HDR (GPU): Low has better performance.
Dynamic Lights (GPU): Low or High, Ultra seems to have no effect on frames.
Overall (CPU/HDD/GPU): Use something like 1050 as Low, 1600 as Standard, 2150 as High, 2700 as Very High and 3800 as Ultra.**
Object (CPU/HDD/GPU): Use something like 858 as Low, 1105 as Standard, 1353 as High, 1601 as Very High and 2097 as Ultra.**
Shadow (GPU): Leave as 100 or off.
* nVidia users can test setting Sampling to 200% and Anti-Aliasing to x2 for better performance than AA at x8.
** These settings have the largest effect on your performance.
4. Display Settings
Display Mode: Use Fullscreen window if you are streaming, else Fullscreen is fine.
Resolution: Max this, it is almost always better to run at native resolution.
Aspect Ratio: Change this to match your monitor.
VSYNC: Set to DISABLED unless you are experiencing screen-tearing or somehow have a high spec 60+ FPS computer.
Interface Size: Up to your personal preference.
Brightness: Up to your personal preference.
Gamma: Up to your personal preference.
5. AA & PP Settings
Bloom (GPU): Purely cosmetic, set to whatever you'd like recommended 100.
Radial Blur (GPU): motion blur on objects, recommend off or 25.
Rotation Blur (GPU): motion blur, recommend off or 12.5.
Depth of Field (GPU): is the blur effect you get when trying to look beyond your rifle or other object, recommend off or 25.
SSAO (GPU): attempts to approximate the way light radiates in real life, recommend off for performance gain.
Caustics (GPU): light rays under certain situations like on the seabed, recommend off for performance gain.
Antialiasing (GPU): Shouldn't lose much performance having on x4 as compared to x2 (x8 is for over 1080p), if while scoped there is an FPS drop lower the setting. ***
AToC (GPU): Set to DISABLED or Trees only, Grass may make your scope lag.
PPAA (GPU): DISABLED or SMAA High to Ultra, Ultra will likely not impact performance. ***
Anisotropic Filtering (GPU): High to Ultra, will most likely not impact or increase performance.
*** if you disable AA and use just SMAA you should get a similar look but improved performance.
6. ArmA3Alpha.cfg
Located in C:\Users\<username>\Documents\ArmA 3 Alpha\
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=4; This may help smooth your frames and with mouse responsiveness, try settings 1-4.
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=0; This may help smooth your frames and with mouse responsiveness.
refresh=120; This will make VSync work better if you need it.
7. Startup Parameters
You can also use the startup parameters to help in certain situations by right-clicking ArmA 3 in Steam > Properties > Set Launch Options and entering the following.
-enableHT Enables Hyper-Threading on supporting CPU's, this option may be overridden by -cpuCount so if you want to use maximum
number of CPU cores use -enableHT without -cpuCount. ****
-malloc= This can set the particular allocator to be used. Significantly affects both performance and stability of the game. More details.
-maxMem= set this to 2047 as ArmA 3 uses automatic values (512-1536 MB) without the maxMem parameter.
-maxVram= this option will tell ArmA how much Video RAM your graphics card has, 128 is hard-coded minimum (anything lower falls backs
to 128). 2047 is soft-coded maximum, any value over 2GB might result into unforeseen consequences!
-noBenchmark mainly for the development build this option disables any benchmarking that ArmA automatically does.
-noCB Turns off multicore use. It slows down rendering but may resolve visual glitches.
-noLogs mainly for the development build this option disables any logging that ArmA automatically does.
-noPause Does not pause the ArmA window when alt-tabbed in Fullscreen window mode, good for multi-taskers and streamers.
-noSplash gets rid of the intro stuff at startup.
-world=empty Starts up the game faster as it loads empty level.
so for instance my startup parameters look like
-enableHT -maxMem=2047 -maxVram=3071 -malloc=tbbmalloc -noBenchmark -noLogs -noPause -noSplash -world=empty
****enableHT can help smooth the game by letting it know to spread the load properly.
8. ARMA 3 & GTX 500 Series Cards
Our very own L2TG found the solution to this fix for nVidia GTX 510/20/30/45/50 Ti/55/60/60 Ti/70/80/90 cards that are experiencing a black screen, while still hearing full sound (and likely full function, without screen), with or without SLI function.
9. Field of View (FOV) Settings
Use these ratios courtesy of Stabs. Open <username>.ArmA3Profile in your C:\Users\<username>\Documents\ArmA 3\ folder.
70 FoV Default.
fovTop=0.75;
fovLeft=1.3333334;
75 FoV for 16:9 screens.
fovTop=0.82;
fovLeft=1.46;
75 FoV for 16:10 screens.
fovTop=0.80;
fovLeft=1.46;
80 FoV for 16:9 screens.
fovTop=0.89;
fovLeft=1.58;
80 FoV for 16:10 screens.
fovTop=1.0;
fovLeft=1.59;
85 FoV for 16:9 screens.
fovTop=0.96;
fovLeft=1.71;
85 FoV for 16:10 screens.
fovTop=1.06;
fovLeft=1.70;
90 FoV for 16:9 screens.
fovTop=1.03;
fovLeft=1.83;
90 FoV for 16:10 screens.
fovTop=1.13;
fovLeft=1.82;
10. GimmeMoarFrames
CimmieMoarFrames is a very simple tweak that can potentially increase performance. It requires a 64bit OS and at least 8GB of RAM, I gain an extra 8 average FPS in ArmA3Mark. Note that you may not see any performance increase in Multiplayer as it is entirely dependent on the server.
11. LOW FPS issue and fix
The main cause of abnormally low FPS is having VSYNC on, either alt-tabbing out and in of ArmA or turning it off should fix the issue.
12. Memory Flush
In ArmA you can actually flush or refresh the VRAM if you are experiencing graphical glitches or sometimes performance issues. To do this you hold down [shift] and [-], release then type in flush.
13. STEAM performance troubles and how mitigate them
From my own experience this is what eats most CPU from highest to lowest
STEAM friend-list (even while online, just closing friend-list saves most CPU usage)
STEAM chats (the more of them active the worse the overall load)
STEAM updating (as uses checksums it needs some CPU and I/O, so make sure nothing is updating)
STEAM overlay
STEAM IM (switch yourself to OFFLINE for lowest CPU usage)
STEAM website (if you keep website open and minimize, it still keeps playing the flash animations for example, so ideally you visit e.g.
your profile page as last)
+ then set STEAM to lower priority than arma3.exe
14. Stuttering Fixes
Some AMD users may experience stuttering during gameplay, the fix seems to be disabling Tessellation in either Catalyst Control Center or
RadeonPro.
Alternatively virus scanning tools may be causing the issue, try disabling them while playing but remember to re-enable them!
Additionally it is possible is could be your overclock causing stuttering, specifically the VCore setting, changing to auto may smooth
it out while still allowing the overclock.
15. tbbmalloc for ArmA
tbbmalloc for ArmA
is an experimental custom memory allocator modification that can potentially increase performance. It requires a 64bit OS and at least
8GB of RAM, I gain an extra 5-7 average FPS in ArmA3Mark. Note that you may not see any performance increase in Multiplayer as it is entirely dependent on the server, also this is very experimental and may cause crashes or the like.
16. My Multiplayer Settings
These spoilers are my personal multiplayer settings as of this edit 21/10/2014.
General Settings
Resolution: 1920x1080
Sampling: 100%
Texture: Very High
Objects: Ultra
Terrain: High
Shadow: Disabled
Particles: High
Cloud: Low
PIP: Disabled
HDR: Standard
Dynamic Lights: Low
Overall Distance: 1600
Object Distance: 1200
Shadow Distance: 50
AA & PP Settings
Bloom: 0
Radial Blur: 0
Rotational Blur: 0
Depth of Field: 0
SSAO: HDA0 High
Caustics: Activate
FSAA: 8x
AtoC: All Trees and Grass
PPAA: Disabled
Aniso. Filtering: Ultra
17. Hardware Recommendations
In this section I will suggest hardware that I feel is the best fit for ArmA 3, this is as unbiased and as informed as possible based on my experience and the experience of community members. Again this is solely aimed at ArmA 3 not any other games.
CPU: High clock speed Intel CPU's are really the way to go here, either the i5 4670 or i7 4770. You would only get the i7 if you will also be doing multimedia like Adobe or video editing. There is also a 'k' variant for each CPU allowing you to more easily overclock for a little more cash.
GPU: The best choice for this slot will be an Nvidia 760+ series,the 2 reasons being ShadowPlay a free screen recorder that performs much better than FRAPS and AMD GPU's having an inflated price right now due to bitcoin mining demand.
RAM: 8GB+ of the fastest RAM you can afford from a reputable company like Corsair, G.Skill or Kingston.
HDD: Having ArmA 3 on an SSD really helps with load times and texture streaming with the best example being a Samsung 840 EVO.
MOBO: Generally said you want a Z87 MoBo for that Intel CPU the best bang for your buck being ASRock, with Gigabyte boards being among the most reliable around, while high end Asus boards have a feature called Sonic Radar which displays visually where audio in the game is coming from.
PSU: Any Bronze+ rated PSU with enough wattage for your system from a reputable vendor will do the job with standouts for me being Antec, Corsair and Enermax.
AUDIO CARD: If you would like to record teamspeak on a separate track (with Dxtory) you need a sound card capable of stereo mix, an ASUS Xonar DS does the trick for the right price.
VIDEO CAPTURE CARD: This is only necessary if you want to record with no in-game frame loss or don't have ShadowPlay, best of the bunch is probably the AVerMedia Live Gamer HD.
CASE: Cases are a very personal choice but favourites of mine include the Antec Three Hundred Two and the Bitfenix Phenom/Prodigy
CPU COOLER: For a CPU cooler I really recommend the Corsair Water Coolers, the H60/80i/100i depending on your needs and budget.
FAN CONTROLLER: The BitFenix Recon is a great and inexpensive fancontroller for those looking for something to monitor and adjust their case fans
CASE FANS: Noctua are pretty much the best fans for CFM and quietness, cannot recommend them enough.
