Arma 3 Performance optimization guide [2025]

Complete game performance optimization guide for 2025

Before we start

The settings in this guide are my own personal settings that I optimized for mainly playing KoTH over the years but should work for all systems.

My system specs are

• i7 4770k @3.9GHz
  
• gtx 1060 3gb
  
• 16GB 1600MHz ram
  
• OS = W10 64-bit
  
• Game drive = SATA SSD

Video settings

GENERAL

QUALITY

• SAMPLING: 100%
  
• TEXTURE: Very High
  
• OBJECTS: Very High
  
• TERRAIN: Standard
  
• SHADOW: Disabled (fps boost)
  
• PARTICLES: High
  
• CLOUD: Very High (jet eye candy)
  
• PIP: Disabled (If you don't use first person vehicle view monitors to aim / chopper mirrors, disable for fps boost)

VISIBILITY

• OVERALL: 3000 (koth in-game settings override this anyway)
  
• OBJECT: 3000 (keep this the same or higher than overall or you don't see objects such as vehicles!)
  
• SHADOW: 75 (if disabled it doesn't matter, if not, you get the illusion of shadows for most things in your view without a heavy performance hit)
  
• PIP: 100 (if disabled it doesn't matter)

LIGHTING

• HDR: Standard
  
• DYNAMIC LIGHTS: Low
  
• WATER REFLECTIONS: Disabled

DISPLAY

• DISPLAY MODE: Fullscreen (all other options add additional input delay)
  
• RESOLUTION: 1920x1080(16:9) (depends on your specific setup)
  
• ASPECT RATIO: Custom (custom fov, I use 90 hfov)
  
• VSYNC: Disabled
  
• INTERFACE SIZE: Small
  
• BRIGHTNESS: 1.0 (your preference)
  
• GAMMA: 1.0 (your preference)

AA & PP

POSTPROCESSES

• BLOOM: 0
  
• RADIAL BLUR: 0
  
• ROTATION BLUR: 0
  
• DEPT OF FIELD: 0
  
• SHARPEN FILTER: 60 (My preference)
  
• AO: Disabled (massive performance gain)
  
• CAUSTICS: Disabled (irrelevant to gameplay, free fps)
  
• HAZE: Standard (new setting, my preference)

POSTPROCESS COLOR CORRECTIONS

• COLOR PRESET: Custom (my preference)
  
• BRIGHTNESS: 100
  
• CONTRAST: 100
  
• SATURATION: 140 (makes the game look more lively)

ANTIALIASING

• FSAA: Disabled (this adds massive input delay, disabled does not look the best, it might be more difficult to spot enemies but I like the low input delay it provides. Stick to the lowest x2 if you don't like disabled)
  
• ATOC: Disabled (related to FSAA, your preference)
  
• PPAA: SMAA Standard (Not nearly as good as FSAA but does not mess with input nearly as much, you can go even higher but i find standard SMAA sufficient)
  
• ANISO. FILTERING: Ultra (makes textures at distance look better / sharper, not much performance impact, your preference)

This is it for the in-game video settings.

Launcher parameters

These parameters really depend on what hardware you are running, I will mention again that these specific ones are for my specific hardware.

Parameters

• Platform: Default (64-bit)
  
• Show static background in menu: ✔
  
• Skip logos at startup: ✔
  
• Enable Large-page Support: ✔

  (large-page parameter does nothing by itself, we will enable this functionality for your windows user later)

• System memory limit (64-bit): ✔ 12288 (for 16GB RAM)
  
• Video memory limit: ✔ 2688 (for 3GB VRAM)
  
• No Logs: ✔
  
• No Pause: ✔

This is it for the launcher parameters.

Betas

Steam has a betas feature (development branches) that Arma 3 uses to have a default branch "None" and a (performance) profiling branch.

I used the profiling branch for a long time but recent updates added stutters on some KoTH maps so I am using the default "None" and it really seems to help on my system.

To change your Arma 3 branch you

• Click Library on Steam
  
• Right click Arma 3, click properties
  
• Under Betas select profiling, you will get a small download.

Since this is an official feature, you can play on all multiplayer servers just like the regular branch.

If you encounter any issues you can always revert to "None" (default).

The executables this guide reffers to are the default branch executables. I'm to lazy to check if the profiling branch used other executable names but in case it does, use those executables in the steps instead of the ones I wrote

Configuration file modification

Game file (very important)

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Arma 3

• Do windows key + R and paste the path and hit enter, file explorer will open up in that directory
  
• Open the Arma3.cfg file in any text editor (notepad++)
  
• Find these lines with ctrl+f and alter them to these exact values (major input lag reduction)
  

  GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;
  GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;
  

• After you are done make sure to save the file.

User file

Default path to find your configuration files on windows

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Arma 3
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Arma 3 - Other Profiles

if you are using the default profile the game created for you on first launch, it's the first one, the second one is if you created your own profile.

• Do windows key + R and paste the appropriate path and hit enter, file explorer will open up in that directory
  
• Open the folder with your profile name
  
• Open the <<your profile name>>.Arma3Profile file in any text editor (notepad++)
  
• Here are some variables of interest (you can find these variables using ctrl + f and change their values to your desire)
  

  (out of order, find them in the file)
  fovTop=1.03;
  fovLeft=1.83;
  
  mouseSensitivityX=0.70000005;
  mouseSensitivityY=0.70000005;
  
  mouseSmoothing=0;
  mouseAcceleration=0;
  
  headBob=0;
  

  
  my fov settings are for 90 horizontal fov at 1080p, you can use this webapp to tweak it to your preference https://gamecalculator.netlify.app/#/arma3-fov-calculator
  as for the other settings, mouse sensitivity is self explanatory, mouse smoothing and acceleration also (0 = off, 1 = on) headbob can be preference but it does shake your view in first person so it's probably a major advantage to have it off.
  
  
• After you are done make sure to save the file.

This is it for the configuration file part.

Windows defender exploit protection fix (CFG)

This part can (does) provide a boost in most cpu bound games.

• Press Windows + R to open the Run dialog.
  
• Type

  ms-settings:windowsdefender

  and press Enter.
  
• Click on "App and browser control"
  
• Click "Exploit protection settings" in the new window
  
• Under program settings tab click "Add a program to customize" (choose exact file path)
  
• The default path to find the arma 3 executable is

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3

• Select arma3_x64.exe (arma3.exe for 32-bit)
  
• Find "Control Flow Guard (CFG) and ✔ "Override system settings" and select "Off"
  
• Apply and close all windows

Arma 3 executable compatability settings

You can reduce input lag and slightly improve performance by disabling the "fake fullscreen" feature of windows that disables exclusive fullscreen and allows the rendering of other apps over the fullscreen application.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3

• Do windows key + R and paste the appropriate path and hit enter, file explorer will open up in that directory
  
• Right click arma3_x64.exe (arma3.exe for 32bit) and click properties
  
• Under the compatability tab ✔ "Disable full screen optimizations"
  
• Apply and OK

Enable large-pages support for windows user

Large-pages have the potential to reduce stutters and improve performance encountered in large busy servers / maps.

As I mentioned earlier, the parameter setting does not do anything unless you grant your user permission to use this feature.

This feature is easier to enable for your user using group policy editor in windows but that is not available in the home version so I will provide different steps for each version.

Windows 10 Home (or if you wish it also works for Windows 10 Pro), follow these steps:

• go to this link and download a very old 2003 Microsoft program (digital signature is from Microsoft itself)
  

  The original download is no longer available however we can use waybackmachine to view the archived website and download the file (small windows server tools installer file)
  
  file name: rktools.exe
  virustotal: 0/69
  digital signature: Microsoft Corporation
  signing time: ‎Friday, ‎25 ‎April ‎2003 00:41:12
  
  SHA1:
  3F3878FFB2C642E752D811DC05169BFCC2AA97B5
  
  SHA3-512 : EB1957AE19CCD7230C878298C44137F5D7EE5E8D6DA87BE8ABEBAD1CF8C93DD6D4EA0877165D662951AA766DB2C364E33120AD663A77DA028BEFCB381F93154B
  
  
  Note: we are specifically interested in Ntrights.exe which gets installed along with other small programs through rktools.exe.
  
  site (link updated 09/2025): 
  https://web.archive.org/web/20120429213926/http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17657
  
  direct download link (link updated 09/2025): https://web.archive.org/web/20120428175052/http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/e/c/8ec3a7d8-05b4-440a-a71e-ca3ee25fe057/rktools.exe
  
  

• After downloading click through the installer and install, shouldn't take long (ignore incompatiablity warnings)
  
• Verify the installation worked by doing windows key + R, type cmd hold ctrl + shift and press enter (run as admin shortcut, now you know ;) )
  
• Once you have an admin cmd running type
  

  ntrights

  and press enter, if you get a description instead of not found, your install was successful.
  
• Type

  echo %username%

  this is your current username.
  
• Finally execute this command to grant your user the permission to use large-pages
  don't write the << >>
  

  ntrights -u "<<your windows username from the previous command>>" +r SeLockMemoryPrivilege

• If you did everything correctly you should get
  

  Granting SeLockMemoryPrivilege to <<username>>... successful

• RESTART YOUR PC, do not skip this

If you have Windows 10 Pro, follow these steps:

• Windows + R type

  secpol.msc

  and press enter, this will directly open the Local Security Policy window
  
• In the Local Security Policy window, expand Local Policies and select User Rights Assignment.
  
• Find and double-click on Lock pages in memory.
  
• In the properties window, you can add users or groups that you want to assign this privilege to.
  
• Add your current user.
  

• RESTART YOUR PC, do not skip this

After the restart you are ready to play Arma 3!

Guide changes

[09/2025]

• Updated rktools links

Thanks for reading

Hope it helped!

[✠]r4z-0rs./ed-9e[✠]

Thanks for updating. On some machinesit may also help, to increase the task priority for ArmA3 permanently via Registry key:

"CpuPriorityClass"=dword:00000003

[Pelinkovac]

@DEADSOLDIERtr Thanks for letting me know, I've updated the links. As for the large-pages, sure you can do it that way, but the entire point of using rktools is to avoid altering your windows install just to enable 1 feature for 1 game. rktools worked first try on windows 10 home, as for windows 11, there should't be any difference. Windows pro versions can use secpol.msc to achieve the same result.

[DEADSOLDIERtr]

Fix for large-pages:
We need Policy Editor to activate that, but Win 10 & 11 doesn't have that.
Win Pro has it but in Win Home it's in the files but not installed.

Use: (between "----")
--------------
FOR %F IN ("%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~*.mum") DO (

DISM /Online /NoRestart /Add-Package:"%F"

)

FOR %F IN ("%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~*.mum") DO (

DISM /Online /NoRestart /Add-Package:"%F"

)
--------------
Then it will install the files for Group Policy Editor
Now you can activate large-pages.

[DEADSOLDIERtr]

I can't enable large-pages. It says "Granting SeLockMemoryPrivilegeY to Dead ... failed"

[DEADSOLDIERtr]

Unable to open the link, it says (Unsafe Protocol).
Workaround:
Use "web.archive.org" instead of "webcf.waybackmachine.org" in the link.

[Pelinkovac]

@RunForRest while that works for increasing fps, it also introduces additional input latency which is not great for games which involve precision aiming. Additionally, maxing everything and relying on interpolated frames is not performance optimization, it's merely a workaround. The point of this guide is to optimize the performance of the game itself. Lastly, i wanted to mention that if you don't mind the input lag, there is nothing wrong with using LS.

[Pelinkovac]

@Dr.Thrax that is unfortunate, I just tested it and the download link still works. Try to download from another IP address (for example your phone connected to mobile data) to see if that works around the block. I was hesitant to include mirrors but I might consider it if I find a trustworthy one.

[Dr.Thrax]

Sucks that getting Error 1015 from download links as owner for way back machine give you "The owner of this website has banned you temporarily from accessing this website."

[RunForRest]

Crank everthing to max and use LS, nothing else needed!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993090/Lossless_Scaling/
As long as ur GPU has headroom, this works 100%.
Recommended is to lock the game to 60fps and go x2 to 120fps on a 120hz screen.
But u may try a 40 fps lock and go for x3. Results may vary depending on ur GPU, resolution, hz of screen and if the screen supports adaptive sync
I even use this for competitive shooters to get stable 180fps on 180hz. (or save energy consumption on most single player games to get stable 120fps on 120hz)
5600x / 6700xt @ 1080p
Works with most GPUs no matter if Nvidia/AMD and for most games/programms. (make youtube videos run @ 120fps ^^ )
Sometimes works even better than upscaling/frame gen provided by games itself, which makes sense the less support the game gets. Frame gen is constantly improved/updated. Many game devs cant keep up with that.
Make old games that are locked to 60 fps run at higher fps without any issues.

[girk]

whats your average fps in cities and crowded places?