Cobs' FPS Guide (Low and High end PC)

[Cobs 49]

Some things may be familiar, but please read through the whole guide to see if you come across something you have not tried yet.  This helped me and I want to help others.


This guide is intended for users who play DayZ regularly and want to do every possible thing they can short of overclocking to maximize their resources for better fps on DayZ.  This guide is for both low end pc users and high end pc users.  I've collected alot of good information from around the web and credit goes to those great people who shared their information.

So lets get right into it.  Firstly the easy stuff most of you have probably tried and know about:

The config file tweak:

Please backup all files to a separate folder before modifying.  I am not responsible for any problems this may cause.

Find your ArmA2OAProfile.  If you never made a new profile it will be in documents\arma2, if you made a new profile it will be in Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\"ProfileName".

Mine is Cobs.ArmA2OAProfile, drag and drop this into notepad.

Do a "ctrl f" and find sceneComplexity=

Here is a snippet about this value from ArmA 1 on the bistudio forums.

very low 1000000

low 2000000

normal 3000000

high 4000000

V.High 5000000

 

Controls the amount of polygons onscreen at once if im not mistaken. you notice a lot of object pop in at <100000 but it can make a big difference to framerates.

 

I used to run arma run smooth on a terrible machine with it set to 100000.

 

Has drawbacks for example when flying you can see the layout of a town before you can see the buildings themselves.

 

EDIT: this would be pretty useful if we could tinker with the level at sub v.low level while in game. cities like paraiso can be pretty troublesome for many peoples machines this could be a quick fix while ingame you can reset when you leave the area

Thanks Cap n Joff

The very low, low, normal, etc are referring to the in game object detail settings.  After setting this value do not change those settings, and I would even go as far as to say make this file "read only" so it can't be changed again.

I would try a setting at 100,000 or 75,000 to see results.

Second Config file tweak:
Open your ArmA2OA.cfg (located Documents\ArmA 2) in notepad

Find:
GPU_MaxFramesAhead=
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=

Put both of these values to 1. 

It will look like:

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1;
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;

 

             
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;

written by engine each start, changing it manually has no effect!

This is from http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/arma2.cfg, many guides say to change this, some say to put the file to read only.  I actually left mine at 3.

From there you should go to your graphics card control panel and make a new profile for arma2oa.  Find the detected frames ahead setting and match what value you have in your cfg file.  Here is an older picture of the bistudio forums:



Hyper-threading:
If you have a processor that has HYPER-THREADING you must disable this in your BIOS.  For almost everyone this will increase your performance in many games.  I would never have thought so but it does.

Commandlines:

If you use DayZ commander, go to settings then additional launch parameters.  If you use something else to launch dayz you have to put them in manually.  
 

Dual-Core processor:
-nosplash -cpucount=2 -exThreads=1
Quad-Core processor:
-nosplash -cpucount=4 -exThreads=7
Hexacore processor:
-nosplash -cpucount=6 -exThreads=7

Here is my launch parameters:
-world=Empty -noSplash -high -maxVRAM=3062 -maxMem=2047 -skipIntro -winxp -cpuCount=2 -exThreads=1

-high is for cpu priority, -maxVRAM should be set to about 10 below your actual VRAM, -maxMem should never be set higher then 2047.  If it is not set apparently arma 2 only uses about 1.5GB.

If your computer only has 2GB of ram set this value to 1024 or 512.

In game settings:
Head over to a great post by GrumpyGat: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/141305-a-simple-guide-to-getting-the-most-fps/
 
Now that hyper threading is disabled, and you have all these great tweaks that are borderline sorcery it's time to do some real magic.

Real Magic:

You are going to need more than 4GB of ram for this, I recommend 8GB or more.  You need to install the free version of ramdisk.  Ramdisk is easy and free and I've had no problems with it.  You can get it here: http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

You are also going to need link shell extension http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html to link your files back to your game directory.

Follow this guide for RamDisk by OshiSeven  : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkdp07a9Doc
And follow this guide for putting more than just the @DayZ files on RamDisk using link shell extension:
 

 

Dummies Guide, by a dummy.

 

Download this app for the symlinks, saves a lot of time and hassle for those like myself who really have not a clue.

Link Shell Extension

Go to the downloads section and get whatever one is for your OS/system.

Install as per the installation instructions on the page linked.

All the instructions for using are also on that page but I will guide you through it anyway.

 

Fist off create a new folder for putting the files you want separated from the main game folder.

The ones I moved were the following as they are most likely the main streamed ones, these are all located in the file called addons in the main game directory.

Cut and paste these files in your new folder and keep it somewhere as backup, you also need it to reload into the RAMdrive depending on how you use it.

 

buildings.pbo

buildings2.pbo

Buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo

Ca.pbo

chernarus.pbo

chernarus_Data.pbo

chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo

misc.pbo

misc2.pbo

misc3.pbo

plants2_Bush.pbo

plants2_Clutter.pbo

plants2_misc.pbo

plants2_Plant.pbo

plants2_Tree.pbo

Roads2.pbo

rocks2.pbo

signs2.pbo

structures.pbo

utes.pbo

water.pbp

water2.pbo

 

The above files totals at 3.21gb altogether so I went for a 4gb RAMdrive, you can chop and change to suit yourself or do some testing and see what ones really are used most. Don't bother moving the .bisign files, no point doing it really.

 

Ramdisk time:

I used RamDisk Plus but it only has a 15 day trial period, during which time I hope qwertz comes up with the best choice of software to use then I will switch to it. 

I created a 4096mb NTFS format disk within the RAM, easily done with RamDisk using the set-up wizard.

I then placed a copy, I repeat copy, of my new folder with the removed game files in the newly created RamDisk which I named R: just to make it easy for myself. Comes in handy to remember the drives name later in case you need to reinstall it.

Now I go inside this new folder and select all, make sure you installed that linked software first. 

Right click and you have a new option "Pick link source", click on this option then go to the origonal Addons folder in the game directory and go inside to the remaining files.

Right click once in the folder and you get a new option "SymbolicLink", click it and this creates the links to all the files simultaneously.

 

Important shit:

Bear in mind, don't disable pagingfile. Either create it on an unused drive or cheekily add it to the remaining memory in the RamDrive. The game will crash within a few minutes of loading and playing if you disable the pagefile altogether as I found out the hard way.

 

The symlink tool can be used in the same way for just splitting the game files over multiple drives, again make sure you have paging enabled or it also crashes. I tested on a second HDD before creating a RamDisk and found this out the hard way too.

 

For those with 8gb like myself who used msconfig to lower the Ram to get rid of the texture bug, re enable your full Ram again as you will need it. You can use the -winxp command to sort out the texture problem or either that have less Ram for the drive, it's up to you but I went for drive myself.

 

 

What next you ask?

Go play the game and enjoy the smoothness you fool.

Big thanks to liquidpinky.

I used files from both arma 2 and operation arrowhead.  this is my file list:

Files from arma 2:

\@DayZ

\buildings.pbo

\buildings2.pbo

\buildings2_Ind_CementWorks.pbo

\Ca.pbo

\chernarus.pbo

\chernarus_Data.pbo

\chernarus_Data_Layers.pbo

\misc.pbo

\misc2.pbo

\misc3.pbo

\plants2_Bush.pbo

\plants2_Clutter.pbo

\plants2_misc.pbo

\plants2_Plant.pbo

\plants2_Tree.pbo

\Roads2.pbo

\rocks2.pbo

\signs2.pbo

\structures.pbo

\water.pbo

\water2.pbo

\weapons.pbo

Files from arma 2 OA:

\buildings.pbo

\buildings2.pbo

\PLANTS_PMC.PBO

\roads2.pbo

\STRUCTURES_PMC.PBO

This was on the free 4GB RAMdisk.  

For low end PC's that can't use ramdisk, you can use the same idea if you have more than one hard drive by splitting up files across multiple hard drives, and linking them back with the link shell extension.

If you don't have multiple hard drives and you're playing on a pretty slow computer, the best thing you can do is lower your interface and 3d resolution down.  I mean really down.  I used to play DayZ on 640 by 480 I kid you not.  I played like that for almost a year.  DayZ was worth it to me.  

Hopefully this helped people boost a few fps.  I know towns and cities still lag, the best thing you can do is find a server with under 400 vehicles and the less people, usually the better fps.  

Again thanks to all those who I quoted or linked to.

If there was a tweak I missed please feel free to share it with everyone.

Edit: Be sure to set audio samples at 16 as well for lower CPU usage. 

Edit #2: Unpark CPUs
If you have a newer CPU chances are power saving options are in effect called parking, and may be causing issues with older games.  This guide shows you how to unpark your CPUs very easily with a tool that does all the registry work for you.
http://www.coderbag.com/Programming-C/Disable-CPU-Core-Parking-Utility
 

Edited July 27, 2013 by Cobs

[diddums 3760]

BEANZ!!! TAEK ALL MAH BEANZ!!!

Seriously though, excellent job.

[Level19 19]

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