Optimization and Improving FPS [Outdated [2015])

A Guide for optimizing ArmA 3.

Introduction and Information

Hello!
In this guide i will show you all the options you have to improve your FPS and general performance in ArmA 3.

THIS GUIDE WAS WRITTEN ON 5 Feb, 2015 !
EXPECT SOME DIFFERENCES TO THE CURRENT GAME VERSION!

For reference, my specs: ( At the Time i was writing this Guide )

• Intel i5 4670k @4x3.4ghz
  
• Nvidia GTX770
  
• 16 GB Ram

Average FPS and performance before Optimizing:
About 25 - 30 FPS (Sometimes drops down to 20) in cities and about 30 - 35 outside of cities.
Heavy stuttering and loading lag when moving with high speeds.

Average FPS and performance after Optimizing:
Smoother 30-40 FPS inside cities and smooth > 60 FPS outside of cities.
No loading lag or stuttering when zooming in / moving fast at all.

All this was tested on several public servers. Incuding King of the Hill, Wasteland and Altis Life servers.

Best specs?

Well... i would say at least some newer stuff. if you want nice graphics.
But! ArmA 3 consumes more CPU Power than GPU.
The mix between a good CPU (at least a quad core, i5 or i7) and a newer GPU is crucial.

Ingame Settings

In my experience, some of these settings have a great impact on your FPS. While other settings don't. I'll only cover the ones that have a big performance impact.

Here are my settings: (Tuned for my system of course)


If your system is more powerful than mine, then go ahead and set what ever you want.
But the two things you dont want to mess with are:

• Sampling
  
• Maxing out visibility

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Sampling will render your screen x times the selected value (in percent)
Basically at 200% sampling, your GPU needs to render twice as many pixel per frame than your native resolution. Which needs of course a lot more performance. Make sure that this stays at 100%.

Visibility is the distance in game at which the engine will fade out objects in the distance.
The higer the visibility the further you can see objects at the horizon.
I prefer 2500 for objects and overall. Just because my framerate is still very good and I can see enough to scan the enviroment for enemy snipers or vehicles. Also most servers are capping the visibility of the connected clients anyway, so 2500 should be enough.

Anti Aliasing

You'll notice there are two AA sliders. (Excluding ATOC)

• FSAA
  
• PPAA

FSAA - Full Screen Anti Aliasing is a internal GPU render which has the biggest impact on performance of these two AA settings. Basically it renders an upscaled version of the current frame and scales it back down to the native resolution. This results in smoother edges. The higher the setting the more performance it will need.

PPAA - Post Process Anti Aliasing is an Anti Aliasing method which takes place after the current frame is processed. (post process) It's much, much cheaper in terms of performance. but can look blurry or can cause small artifacts.
You have 3 main options for PPAA with each of them has Pro's and Con's

• SMAA: - Needs more performance than FXAA + Sharper edges and best looking.
  
• FXAA: - Blurry and can have small artifacts + Least performance impact
  
• CMAA: - Small artifacts + Middle between FXAA and SMAA, Optimized for Integrated GPU's

Startup Parameters

Here i'll explain and show you the startup parameters that will improve your performance.

You have 2 options to set the parameters. Through Steam's "launch options" menu or through the offical ArmA 3 Launcher (Or any other third party ArmA launcher that has support for that)

List of all avaiable parameters[community.bistudio.com]

Startup Parameter List

-maxMem= (in MB)
or

This sets the max allowed amount of Ram that ArmA is allowed to use. Set this to half of your Ram


-maxVRAM= (in MB)
or

This sets the max allowed video card ram ArmA can use. Set it about the max ram of your card, but leave about 100MB for the OS.


-cpuCount= (1-4)
or

Sets the number of cores used. You want to set this to the number of cores you have.

-exThreads= (0-7)
or

Set this to 7 if you have a Quadcore. and to 3 if you're running a Dualcore.
Although, this valure is autodetected, you can set i manually to be just really sure.

-malloc=system
or

Just set it to system. This works just as it is.

Optimizing outside of ArmA 3

There are many ways to improve your performance though expernal applications, .cfg's and setting outside of ArmA.

Arma3.cfg

You'll find the Arma3.cfg inside your "Documents/Arma3" folder (C:User/Documents/Arma 3)


Open it with a text editor and search for the key:
"GPU_MaxFramesAhead=" and "GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=".
Change thier value to "1"
Like this:



After that search for refresh= and change it to "120"



And if you haven't done it in engine then you also want to change "vsync=" to "0"

Nvidia Control Panel

(Sorry AMD/ATI guys)

Open up the Nvidia control panel and select Arma 3 in 3D Settings

Change "Power management mode" to "Prefer maximum performance"
and "Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration" to "Single display performance"


You also want to change "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to "1"

Leave everything else as it is.

Setting ArmA to high Priority

When ArmA 3 has loaded. Alt-Tab out, open your task manager.
Under "Processes" rightclick the arma3.exe and hover over "Priority".
There select "high"

This prioritizes ArmA 3 over the steam services and can lead to a small performance boost.

Warning: Setting it to "realtime" can cause system freezing if ArmA can't keep up.

CPU Unparking

Another way to boost performance is to "unpark" your CPU cores.
To understand what CPU Parking is, read this.[www.coderbag.com]

Simply explained: Unparking CPU Cores means disabling Win7's CPU power saving feature.

You can visit the website from above and download a CPU unparking tool.
Or click here[www.coderbag.com] to downoad it directly.

Or use any other CPU unparking tool.

Changing some settings in your BIOS/UEFI

Some mainboards offer a simple and easy way to boost your systems performance by having a "turbo" mode setting in the BIOS/UEFI. Asus has a Triangle with "Power Saving", "Balanced" and "Turbo"/"Asus performance mode". Mostly "Balanced" is selected by default.
So boot into your BIOS/UEFI and change that setting to "Turbo" , "Performance" or whatever it's called mode.



Another great thing is to change your fan settings to "Turbo" (If you have a CPU fan installed)
Or if you have an external fan control, crank it up, so your CPU is cooled well.
Some CPU's and Mainboards are decreasing the performance of the CPU automatically when it's getting hotter.

So keep your CPU cool!

CPU Overclocking

Personally i think this will give you the biggest performance increase.
ArmA 3's engine is single threaded optimized.

Means: More power on a single core = Better performance.

ArmA runs on all cores by default, but the 3 main operations are done on 3 single cores

• Geometry Loading
  
• Texture Loading
  
• File operations

By overclocking your CPU you directly givie those 3 operations more power and increase your ingame performance by a significant amount.

Here is a little explanation[community.bistudio.com]

Overclocking

Since not everyone has a overclockable CPU and not everyone has the same CPU i cannot write a step by step guide for overclocking.

Google your mainboard and CPU. Try to find some tips and tutorials in the internet and try it by yourself.

Other Improvements

Now to the last part of this guide.
We only worked with configs and CPU/GPU based improvents so far.
But you can also improve your performance by:

• Installing ArmA 3 on a SSD instead of a HDD
  
• Keeping your drivers up-to-date
  
• Don't overmod your game
  
• Keeping your System partition Clean
  
• Disabling your Virus Scanner while playing (Unsafe)

All those small things can all together increase FPS and reduce stuttering and long loading times.

Installing your game on a SSD reduces loading times, stuttering from moving fast or zooming in (faster asset loading)


Also you want to avoid playing on servers with VERY high playercounts.
Since ArmA 3's Playermodels are very polygon rich and detailed, many players can cause your FPS to drop. Every player has high detailed weapons, clothing, backpacks and probably other stuff on them. Even tough everything has LOD's, it all summs up.

In cities, this problem even becomes bigger. Since ArmA 3 doesn't have a good occlusion culling system ( blending out object that are occluded by something ) every player and object is still rendered when it's behind a wall or inside a house. Even when you cannot see it directly. (As of the time writing this Guide)

Thanks for reading!

Really! Thank you!

You can help me improving this guide by pointing out errors and mistakes.
I wait for your comments! :)

[Eric]

is there a link to a new version for this?

[WolfPax]

@ExpiredEvan

im on a 4090, i9-13900k and it does indeed run like ass. shit i can run alan wake 2 bear in mind.
this game just has a shit engine making you jump through hoops for better performance.
drop the bullshit lol

[ExpiredEvan]

@DixonErHands BF5 is heavily optimized for console. No shit arma performs worse, this game has more then battlefield ever will. get a better pc lmao

[Gunn]

@diveyez wasted YOUR time maybe. You don't speak for the rest of us.

[diveyez]

Sample rate 75%, ultra everything, refresh setting in cfg, done.
None of the other stuff made a difference and wasted our time.

[Tsar. Boris III]

Bro your the best! Gave you an award, but I think I might just give you a second one now too. Yup, doing it!

[Tak45]

lowering the sampling made it not stutter or have fps drops for me

[DixonErHands]

I had high hopes to play this game as it's realistic but this optimization is absolute trash. My computer runs BF5 on high-ultra at an easy 60fps but this game is maxing out at 30 even with all these changes. I forgot why I had deleted it but now I remember. Trash.

[Flavour ツ]

i have an important question can i also set the refresh rate from 120hz to 165hz or does that make no difference?

[LiquidNitr0]

It really doesn't matter how good your PC is, Arma 3 was released in 2013 when the GTX 700 series was top of the line. It is messy, it is unoptimised .