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Arma 3 Optimization Guide [DISCONTINUED]

By mynio

Hello everyone, I would like to help You understand Arma 3 video settings and other variables that will help You hit the minimum framerate to play on and enjoy the war.

Guide aims for: Best Visuals + Best Performance / Best Competitive Advantage for Mid-End PCs.

Arma 3 at this point is very CPU intensive. The better CPU, the better Your game will perform!

There are no best settings for you as it is dependent on your computer’s hardware and your personal preference.
The following guide will help you enhance games appeal along with improving playability.

Update 1.0: APEX update haven't brought any improvements to the engine.
In fact my game's performance decreased by ~2-3%

Update 2.0: This guide is updated to client from february 2017. As for now I have upgraded my gpu to GTX1060 and soon will be deploying more benchmarks and then updates to the guide.

Update 3.0: This guide is discontinued since 2018. It will lack in latest features implemented and tools as well. Any RTX gpu will handle this game with DLSS and vice-versa for FSR. Some people have hinted an app Lossless Scaling that proves to be a good alternative for older GPUs. The guide is now an entry point for you to tailor the game to your needs. Follow others for more in-depth optimization.

Thank you all for incredible journey!

Award

Created by

mynio
Offline

Category: Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

5 Jun, 2016 @ 4:23am

2 Mar @ 8:18am

24,756	Unique Visitors
553	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Benchmarks

Test Rig

Operating System Optimization

In-Game Settings

External Settings

Game Recording/Broadcasting

Summary

Comments

Benchmarks

Yet Another Arma Benchmark

ASUS R9 270X CUII TOP Average FPS - 19.0
ASUS GTX 1060 STRIX 6GB Average FPS - 22.8

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=375092418

Test Rig

-Processor: AMD FX-6300 6x3.9GHz OC (~+9% OC)
-Heatsink: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
-Video Card: ASUS R9 270X DirectCU II TOP (+8% OC)
-New Video Card: ASUS GTX 1060 STRIX 6GB (+11% OC)
-Memory: Kingston 16GB 1600MHz HyperX CL9
-Drives: A-Data SSD 120GB + Seagate HDD 1000GB
-Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P
-Operating System: Windows 10 Pro
-Monitor: LG 22M47VQ
-Headset: Steelseries Siberia v1
-Keyboard: Logitech K740 Illuminated
-Mouse: Asus Republic of Gamers GX950
-Mouse surface: Asus Echelon
-Case: Zalman Z3 Plus
-Frames per Second: Single Player: 60-30 / Multiplayer 60-20

SINGLE PLAYER FOOTAGE (Heavily modded) [AMD 15.11.1 BETA]
Vanilla game achieves way higher framerate.

MULTIPLAYER FOOTAGE (No mods, 60 players Invade & Annex) [AMD 15.11.1 BETA]

Operating System Optimization

Disable CPU Parking, to help steady performance. What that does is simple. Basically it will make sure that Your CPU is running on its maximum set clocks without limitations so it never bottlenecks. Do not use it if your CPU is power hungry or you are using heatsink off the CPU box.

There are two ways to deal with this. You either use program to do everything for You, or You can spend less than a minute to get everything done without trashing Your PC with unnecessary software. I will guide You trough the second method.

Press "START". Type in "Change plan settings", then press enter. On a plan that You are currently using (whether it is power saving, balanced or high performance) on the right You have button "Change plan settings". From there go to "Change advanced power settings" and scroll down to find "Processor power management". In "Minimum processor state" and "Maximum processor state" You should have 100%. Congratulations, Your CPU is now unparked.

DO NOT use it if your CPU is power hungry or you are using heatsink off the CPU box, because it is simply not worth it or/and may damage Your hardware.

SSD or HDD
If you have an SSD with a great capacity, you might want to consider installing Arma 3 on it to improve loading times and help steady performance.(SSD for competitive advantage, since SSD loads up all the game assets faster. For example: in situations like scoping, zooming and similar You will not suffer from stutters because assets will load up on the go way faster than HDD would do)

On the market there are SSHD (Hybrid Drives), those are another solution, but they come in price just like SSDs by themselves.

Video Card Drivers
With all the ups and downs with AMD video drivers. We finally got AMD Relive. Those drivers are just awesome. So far every release was fine. I highly recommend 17.2.1 as for now. Also the DVR is great!

Update: Since I changed to Nvidia I follow AMD driver support no more, I presume the latest is the greatest for now.

In-Game Settings

Always verify game cache after every major update to resolve any problems with the game.

General:

-Sampling: Use 100% (unless you have a very specific reason that is NASA PC)
-Texture Quality: Ultra (lowering the settings make the game loose appeal for no significant performance cost, lowest setting for the competitive advantage)
-Objects Quality: Very High or High (removes texture pop-ins, I hate them. Very performance hungry settings. Ultra for competitive advantage)
-Terrain Quality: Standard or Low (Higher settings smoothens the terrain and add vegetation for huge performance cost, low for the competitive advantage. I hardly ever play with grass obscuring my vision in multiplayer servers so mine is set to "Low")
-Shadow Quality: Standard or Ultra (Almost no difference with Ultra. Ultra for the competitive advantage)
-Particles Quality: Standard (High setting for the competitive advantage)
-Cloud Quality: Low (we are playing a war sim people! Clouds are just a distraction!)
-Picture In Picture: Disabled (huge performance cost, not visible in vast valleys, but in towns it applies the effect in every single mirror, not worth it, ultra for competitive advantage)
-HDR: Standard (makes the game look vibrant and life-like at „standard” for couple fps, low for competitive advantage)
-Dynamic Lights: Standard (no significant performance hits, highly depends on rendering distance)
-Water Reflections: Standard
-Overall visibility**: 1800 for infantry/3500 for air support (my setting: 1300)
-Object visibility**: 1200 for infantry/2000 for air support (my setting: 1300)
-Shadow: 130 (0 for competitive advantage)

**I am playing PvE servers the most so I do not need more

Display:

-Display Mode: Fullscreen Window if you are streaming (otherwise Fullscreen +1 FPS)
-Resolution: Monitor native resolution
-Aspect Ratio: Change this to match your monitor
-Vertical Synchronization: Disabled (unless you are experiencing „screen-tearing” or your GPU suffers from „coil whine”)
-Interface Size: Personal preference
-Brightness: Personal preference
-Gamma: Personal preference

Anti-Aliasing & Post Processing:

-Bloom*: 100 (personal preference) (turned off for competitive advantage)
-Radial Blur*: 0 (personal preference) (turned off for competitive advantage)
-Rotation Blur*: 0 (personal preference) (turned off for competitive advantage)
-Depth of Field*: 10 (personal preference) (turned off for competitive advantage)
-Sharpen Filter*: 80 (personal preference) (turned off for competitive advantage)
-Ambient Occlusion: Disabled (disabled for competitive advantage)
-Caustics: Disabled (disabled for competitive advantage)
-FSAA: x4 or x8 (x8 is for over 1080p, but still smoothens the image for low FPS cost)
-Alpha To Coverage: All trees + grass (disabled for the competitive advantage)
-Post Process Anti-Aliasing: FXAA Ultra (CMAA for competitive advantage)
-Anisotropic Filtering: Ultra

*Every turned on settings on any level take up 0.3% of performance

External Settings

Arma3.cfg***
(C:\Users\*USERNAME*\Documents\Arma 3)

-GPU_MaxFramesAhead=4 (this helps stabilize your frames and mouse responsiveness)
-GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1 (this helps stabilize your frames and mouse responsiveness)
-refresh=120
If you have 60hz monitor, you set it to 60, the same thing applies for 120 and 144hz monitors.

Mynio.Arma3Profile***
(C:\Users\*USERNAME*\Documents\Arma 3)

sceneComplexity=150000 (mine is set to 500000)

***After applied changes save the file as "read only"

Startup Parameters****:

(right-click ArmA 3 in Steam>Properties>Set Launch Options)

****For now what I've noticed is that Arma 3 Launcher bypasses the parameters set on steam so You have to apply them inside the launcher

-high - sets the game process on high priority
-NoSplash - skips the splash arts at the start of the game
-skipIntro - skips all cinematics and intros at the start of the game
-world=empty - loads empty world to game menu (no longer works with APEX)

Any other parameters make no difference at all (in case of used test rig).

Sweet FX (optional):

(SweetFX is a universal image improvement and tweaking mod, that works with almost any 32-bit DirectX 9, 10 or 11 game or application.)
The settings I offer improve the colours of the game and post process effects for the minimal performance costs.

-https://sfx.thelazy.net/games/preset/1355/

With the patch 1.60 BI introduced refined shaders and textures along with other minor visual enhancements. Those provide SweetFX’ish look without compromising game performance.

Recently ran into issues with Sweet FX in APEX update.
I highly recommend not implementing this mod into the game.

Game Recording/Broadcasting

The software I used and I recommend are:
-AMD Gaming Evolved (AMD GPU users) No longer supported by AMD
-AMD Relive (AMD GPU users) Adrenalin Edition now?
-NVIDIA Shadowplay (NVIDIA GPU users)
-Open Broadcasting Software (both for AMD and NVIDIA)

AMD Gaming Evolved uses now third party software called Plays.tv
It is still a pretty good recording software.

Every single one performs really great and has very small impact on game performance. Open Broadcasting Software offers the best file compression of them all.

Update: I was using AMD Relive, best DVR I've been using, EVER!

Summary

For now, this is all we can do with the game, I didn’t want to mess with the game code because the game is being updated quite regularly and using game’s core data in the game (SP and MP) may be treated by BI’s security systems as illegal and thus may grant You a ban.

If You have hardware with more potential than test rig, you can tweak your settings by yourself.

Like I mentioned, this guide will not only help you get the most of your hardware but also helps you understand most of the settings available in the game, so you can make the right decision to tweak the game for the best personal preference.

I will try to keep this thread updated, so stay tuned for the future tweaks!

94 Comments

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mynio [author] 2 Mar @ 8:05am

@RunForRest thanks for insight. It's been years since my guide, now any rtx graphics will really get your game up and going. Todays any mid-end gpu will carry the game easily. I tried to buy 5070ti but no stock, as of now I am still stuck with 1080ti :(

RunForRest 2 Mar @ 7:36am

Crank everthing to max and use LS, nothing else needed!
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/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.

mynio [author] 27 Mar, 2024 @ 3:00am

The guide itself is pretty outdated by now. With no serious updates, still is relevant. Your tool is definately helpful although most people upgraded their PCs to todays standards and can possibly run this game. Now we wait for Arma 4 and new optimization guide ;)

killuminati12891 27 Mar, 2024 @ 12:25am

For those who are not good with tech or who are just too lazy to compare there own specs with the games system requirements, may I suggest this link? {LINK REMOVED} All you have to do is type in the game you want to play, in this case Arma 3 and then just fill in your systems CPU, RAM, GPU and OS and the website will scan your computer and show you on a graph whether or not your system meets the minimum or recommended requirements on each of them. It's a pretty handy website and was a Godsend when I found it. You're welcome. =)

MonkInsane 3 May, 2022 @ 11:30am

@KobiBlade That confirmed? Brand new Engine? Great news if true. ARMA could be so much more amazing if it could utilize hardware properly.

Kobi Blade 3 May, 2022 @ 9:13am

There won't be any engine tweaks, ArmA 3 is no longer getting major updates, and they working on another engine for ArmA 4.

mynio [author] 3 May, 2022 @ 6:59am

@Kobi Blade What if they happen to make an engine tweak? I mean by that time it's hopeless, but still, Your game is ready for the change. :)

Kobi Blade 30 Apr, 2022 @ 5:46pm

ArmA 3 does not take advantage of more than 4 CPU Cores, so is useless to tell the engine to use more, leave it at default settings.

mynio [author] 30 Mar, 2021 @ 11:33am

@MonkInsane that is true, but still, multiple cores are welcome for this game.

MonkInsane 29 Mar, 2021 @ 4:32pm

Issue is not that ARMA is a CPU Hog - it's that ARMA isn't capable of utilizing multiple cores. Game is badly optimized and terrible at multithreading. Onle real help is a FASTER CORE SPEED CPU, higher the Ghz the better, since ARMA utilizes mainly 1 core - it's best if that core is fast.

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