[Guide] How to set up your graphics properly

[nahaz 132]

Will I be able to get 30-40+ fps?

My specs:

Pentium® Dual-Core 2.10GHz

4GB

Geforce GT220M

I have around 20 fps, after tweaking alot of stuff, i just wanna know... is it possible for me to get around 40 fps?

What resolution do you play on? I don't think 40 fps is pssoible with your setup, but 30 might be doable, not 100% stable though.

Can you clarify this for me, how exactly does the server impact the clients pc performances?

If the server has poor performance you will have crap fps, so it might not always be your computers fault if you have poor fps

[Olivere99 0]

What resolution do you play on? I don't think 40 fps is pssoible with your setup, but 30 might be doable, not 100% stable though.

If the server has poor performance you will have crap fps, so it might not always be your computers fault if you have poor fps

well, 720 i think.

[-MadTommy 367]

Why advise people to turn AA off? This should only be done if you suffer low fps. That is not advise on how to 'properly' setup your graphics.

Interface res & 3D res should ideally be set to your default resolution.. and AA should be set as high as your gfx card can handle. Not turned off.

Also advising people to turn off Vsync without any reason is also incorrect. Vsync helps a lot of people who suffer from wildly fluctuating fps. If you have low fps turning it off will not help in any way and if you have high fps it will likely be advisable to turn it on to avoid 'tearing'. I'd advise leaving it on for the vast majority.

Edited July 27, 2012 by MadTommy

[Shaimou 49]

''Any setting lower than high will use your CPU instead of GPU''

-OP

Mind = Blown

This logic works on other games too, yeah?

[JESUSARIUS REX (DayZ) 163]

Why advise people to turn AA off? This should only be done if you suffer low fps. That is not advise on how to 'properly' setup your graphics.

Interface res & 3D res should ideally be set to your default resolution.. and AA should be set as high as your gfx card can handle. Not turned off.

Also advising people to turn off Vsync without any reason is also incorrect. Vsync helps a lot of people who suffer from wildly fluctuating fps. If you have low fps turning it off will not help in any way and if you have high fps it will likely be advisable to turn it on to avoid 'tearing'. I'd advise leaving it on for the vast majority.

You haven't looked into optimizing arma. He's completely right. Only thing he didn't mention was fxaa in the .cfg file. It adds antialiasing with almost no performance loss.

[lightstylez 3]

some of these might come in handy for some people

cmd line stuff :-

-nosplash (removes the BIS splash at start up)

-winxp (this on helps low end systems)

-world=empty (speeds up the loading process by loading an empty world)

-maxMem=2047 (if ya gona use this ya need to read up on it in the BIS forums)

-cpuCount=6 (lets you to tell the game how many cores to use)

ingame stuff :-

options/gameoptions

aiming deadzone = 0

head bob = 0

This is worth reading specially the arma2 and arma2 arrowhead sections

http://community.bis.../wiki/arma2.cfg

AToC is a good thing to play around with for visuals

Could you explain maxMem or possibly link to where you found the info for it? ( im guessing you add how much RAM you want to use, 2047 being 2GB?) i've looked around on BIS forums and cant see anything.

When you say cmd line stuff - you mean you can bring up a cmd in-game and do this or you have to add this info to ArmA2.cfg & ArmA2OA.cfg

Cheers, Lightstylez

[zq7 67]

Why advise people to turn AA off? This should only be done if you suffer low fps. That is not advise on how to 'properly' setup your graphics.

Interface res & 3D res should ideally be set to your default resolution.. and AA should be set as high as your gfx card can handle. Not turned off.

Also advising people to turn off Vsync without any reason is also incorrect. Vsync helps a lot of people who suffer from wildly fluctuating fps. If you have low fps turning it off will not help in any way and if you have high fps it will likely be advisable to turn it on to avoid 'tearing'. I'd advise leaving it on for the vast majority.

I have a pretty decent rig, i5-2500k core, 8 gig of memory and a radeon 6950 2 gig graphics card.

On a medium populated DayZ server I get about 65-75 fps in the middle of a forest with Vsync and AA off.

This has my GPU running at 85-99% and my CPU about 45-55%.

With AA on 'Very high' it drops down to 50-55 fps, with Vsync on it drops to 48-52 fps.

The fps seems to be more steady with AA and Vsync on but with it off I get about 20 fps boost.

If the server has poor performance you will have crap fps, so it might not always be your computers fault if you have poor fps

Well, that doesn't really answer my question.

I'm asking why and how the server is able to affect your computer.

The only things that I could think of was the 'Distance' settings which is set by the server and how the server attaches zombies to the first player entering the 200m radius of the town, other than that I have no idea how a 'crappy' server gives you 'crappy' fps.

If the server is unstable and is dropping packages that is considered net lag, right?

Edited July 27, 2012 by zq7

[john@thesmileyone.co.uk 7]

Thankyou.

Any ideas what the post 27th July 2012 settings do? ATOC being one of them?

[nicolas_scott@hotmail.ca 0]

Thanks!

[Soliloquy 13]

this has been extremely useful, I have now raised fps from 6 to 39, all I need to do is get the extra 21...

thanks:

[nahaz 132]

Why advise people to turn AA off? This should only be done if you suffer low fps. That is not advise on how to 'properly' setup your graphics.

Interface res & 3D res should ideally be set to your default resolution.. and AA should be set as high as your gfx card can handle. Not turned off.

Also advising people to turn off Vsync without any reason is also incorrect. Vsync helps a lot of people who suffer from wildly fluctuating fps. If you have low fps turning it off will not help in any way and if you have high fps it will likely be advisable to turn it on to avoid 'tearing'. I'd advise leaving it on for the vast majority.

AA is essentially the same as playing on a higher resolution, but it takes alot of performance on your GPU. In Arma, you don't get much out of increasing AA, the edges on most objects are pretty smooth anyway since most objects are large and won't have a huge impact from AA.

I have not advised people to turn it off without any reason. Vsync stands for Vertical Sync, vertical is subject to vertical refresh rate of your monitor, which is the refreshrate you can adjust and is most standardly at 59 or 60. Better screens have 100 or 120 hz.

''Any setting lower than high will use your CPU instead of GPU''

-OP

Mind = Blown

This logic works on other games too, yeah?

Arma is the first game I have encountered this logic, but I would not be surprised if this was the case on several games, just not as "black & white" as Arma is on it.

Well, that doesn't really answer my question.

I'm asking why and how the server is able to affect your computer.

The only things that I could think of was the 'Distance' settings which is set by the server and how the server attaches zombies to the first player entering the 200m radius of the town, other than that I have no idea how a 'crappy' server gives you 'crappy' fps.

If the server is unstable and is dropping packages that is considered net lag, right?

Servers have FPS aswell, they usually are 1-3 FPS and depending on if they fluctuate or are barely at 1, clients will be limited due to client/server communication, the client has to wait for the server to catch up.

If packetloss occurs, there will be net lag yes. In arma though there's the term of "desync" where the server actions are running slower than normal due to some reason. One example being helicopters (the vehicles, before they were disabled) caused a ton of desync due to moving very fast and DayZ executing scripts based on distance traveled. This kind of desync causes in game time to run slower, zombies to act weird, item spawn and spawning in general to be erratic.

[Festral 11]

Excellent guide, worked for me perfectly and I am now able to adapt my graphics settings from this to improve it even more. Recommend it to both people with low end PC's and high end PC's.

[BlackDeathX 1]

Sorry I'm not that computer savvy but I need to know how to open the .cfg files that you said near doubled your FPS. Any help is appreciated!

EDIT: Nevermind, I just used notepad and it worked. I'm leaving this comment in hopes that anyone with this problem will be helped.

Edited July 30, 2012 by BlackDeathX

[DarkwaveDomina 1099]

Video memory should be left on default if you use a graphics card with more than 512MB of RAM, because it will then utilise all you have.

[nivi 4]

Video memory should be set at default if you have more than 512mb of video ram.

[nahaz 132]

Video memory should be left on default if you use a graphics card with more than 512MB of RAM, because it will then utilise all you have.

Video memory should be set at default if you have more than 512mb of video ram.

I'm currently looking into this, first time I tried it I didn't get any boost but i'm doing some more tests and it looks promising

[Magic_Burnett 0]

Thank you very much for this usefull guide !

Keep up the good work

[CrowZer0 2]

I'll confirm that Video Memory on Default uses more from your GPU thus increases performance, I run MSI afterburner and keep an eye on my GPU usage and FPS constantly in any game. I'm using an ATI 6990 4gb. So it's a huge difference to use default instead of Very high. I usually get 90-120fps. If I start lagging or server seems to be slowing down it goes down to 40-70. (Very rare).

Thanks for info on Visibility I always have it on max, but whenever I do put it on max it does turn my quality preference to very high.

Post process to always off.

A lil confused by the GPU/CPU usage anything lower than HIGH will use my CPU? I'm confuzzled. As to what to do now. I'm using a 6990 with 4gb of ram with around 90-120 fps. But I also use an i7 2600k overclocked to 4.6ghz. So what should I be utilizing more of?

[ImSnoopy 0]

Processor AMD Dual-Core E2-3000M (1.8 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache)

Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64

RAM 4 GB (Expandable to 6 GB)

Graphics card AMD Radeon HD 6380G Discrete-Class (512MB)

Screen type HD LED BrightView

Screen resolution 1366 x 768

Screen size 15.6"

Screen features LED

Hard drive 500 GB

Please help me get do my settings , i had it to 60 FPS onces , actually twice but not i forgot how i did it

Edited July 31, 2012 by ImSnoopy

[nahaz 132]

I'll confirm that Video Memory on Default uses more from your GPU thus increases performance, I run MSI afterburner and keep an eye on my GPU usage and FPS constantly in any game. I'm using an ATI 6990 4gb. So it's a huge difference to use default instead of Very high. I usually get 90-120fps. If I start lagging or server seems to be slowing down it goes down to 40-70. (Very rare).

Thanks for info on Visibility I always have it on max, but whenever I do put it on max it does turn my quality preference to very high.

Post process to always off.

A lil confused by the GPU/CPU usage anything lower than HIGH will use my CPU? I'm confuzzled. As to what to do now. I'm using a 6990 with 4gb of ram with around 90-120 fps. But I also use an i7 2600k overclocked to 4.6ghz. So what should I be utilizing more of?

Good to know. My last playsession I noticed a more stable framerate when recording (Using fraps) when using the "Default" value. I'm going to update my post when I get back (off abroad on work atm) and have done one or two more sessions.

6990 is ATI top of the line so you can go ahead and max out everything, especially if you run on 1 screen.

I have a GTX 670 (690 being the top card from nvidia) and I have everything maxed, AA off and I run on 3 screens with a resolution of 5760x1200 and my game is around 30 fps when recording, 60+ when not.

[JESUSARIUS REX (DayZ) 163]

Thankyou.

Any ideas what the post 27th July 2012 settings do? ATOC being one of them?

it a good idea to set it to zero. It really helps with performance but can also cause visuals to look funny. Look at my thread if you want more detail.

[soapmak3r 677]

Great guide! Cheers! :)

[h3retic 224]

by the way,

in game settings - video memory, "very high" corresponds to 512 mb of GPU memory or vram. if u have more than 512 mb on ur gpu, u should set "default" which would then use the default amount of vram detected by the game on start up (being the actual amount of vram on ur GPU, and thus higher than the "very high" option).

also, another very decent way to improve fps is to set high priority to arma2oa.exe in task manager processes. (ctrl alt del - task manager - processes - find arma2oa.exe - right click - priority - high) (gave me 10 extra fps = 20% improvement)

Edited August 3, 2012 by h3retic

[brian.rettie@googlemail.com 11]

Video Memory

I havn't been able to find much reliable information, but as to what I have learned is that this controls how much Video RAM arma will use and Very High seems to cap at 512mb, so if you have a graphics card that's not too old you should see a performance increase if you set this to very high.

You need to change this. For people with more than 512MB vram they are better off setting this to default. Default uses all of the vram, very high only uses 512MB.

[nahaz 132]

Yes I will, if you read through my posts in this thread you'd see others have already pointed this out and that I have responded that I want to do more testing.

I will update it to reflect it, even though I have not really gained much fps from it.

Edit: Also updated post on ATOC, PPAA and some extras.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Nahaz