52 replies to this topic

[March1]

Hi! So over the past few days I have been searching around looking how to get the best performance out of ArmA 2 and DayZ. So lets begin!
(Just want to note that this worked for me with the specs that I have, results may vary depending on hardware)

My computer consists of the following specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz
GTX 560Ti
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB
1TB HDD

First in your NVIDIA Control Panel (Not sure how AMD works, I would assume something similar), go to "Manage 3D Settings" then find ArmA 2: Operation Arrowhead in the drop down menu of games.

Set the following settings:

Ambient Occlusion - Off
Anisotropic Filtering - Application controlled
AntiAliasing Gamma Correction - On
AntiAliasing Mode - Application controlled
AntiAliasing Setting - Application controlled
AntiAliasing Transparency - Off
Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames - 0
Multi-Display/GPU Accelaration - Single Display
Performance Mode
Power Management Mode - Prefer Maximum Performance
Texture Filtering Sample Optimization - On
Texture Filtering Negative LOD Bias - Allow
Texture Filtering Quality - High Performance
Texture Filtering Trilinear Optimization - On
Threaded Optimization - Auto
Triple Buffering - Off
Vertical Sync - Off

Make sure you hit apply to save

Then in Documents\ArmA 2 find the ArmA2AO file. Open (will probably need to right click open as "notepad" it and change the following to:

GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1; (Mouse Smoothing - off)
GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=1;
AToC=6;
PPAA=1;
PPAA_Level=1;

My in game settings are as follows (Yours may differ in terms of resolution);




(Note: Interface Size is only set to "Very Large" to get a better screenshot)
Video Memory MUST be set to "Default" to make use of ALL of your video memory
Postprocess Effects I personally have found by disabling this gives me an increase to FPS and gets rid of the blur in the game (As well as smoothing out the experience)
Objects Details by lowering this to "Normal" or even better "Low" you will(should) see a significant increase in FPS and smoothness! The only thing I have noticed this effects is the grass, but by changing AToC, PPAA, AND PPAA_Level which was stated above the picture will still make it look nice!
Vsync making sure this is disabled is important! This will make it so the game does not cap the FPS to the screens refresh rate

While I play with Texture Detail and Terrain Detail at very high, you can bump it down to High (putting some settings to low or very low can actually give your worse performance
I personally like Shadow Detail at high

So I hope some of this helps you out because I know it was a pain in the ass for me to get things going how I wanted them. But of me doing exactly what I posted throughout this post I saw awesome FPS gains and overall smoothness to my game. Even though in major cities I personally still get around 30 FPS when I am outside of the major cities I am easily getting 45+FPS. This may not be much in your eyes but it made playing the game that much more enjoyable for myself!

RAMDisk is a way to create a virtual drive on your memory. Since DayZ is only around 400MB and below you will actually be sacrificing very little RAM to get awesome speeds by loading DayZ through the virtual drive! While I did not come up with this idea first this guy did!

Check out his video guide! While you are there be sure to check out his channel for awesome DayZ videos as well! A thank you always is nice too!


Thank you and below are the links and videos I have obtained all my information from over the course of tweaking and playing around with things!

All credit goes to http://pastebin.com/F7Q8Ne2i as a source of information to this thread
Thank you to http://www.youtube.com/user/OshiSeven for the video guide for RAMDisk

Download Links/Useful links for keeping DayZ up to date:

RAMDisk Download: http://memory.datara...oftware/ramdisk
ArmA2 Beta Patch: http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php (The newest is at the top in the GREEN bar)
BattleEye: http://www.battleye.com/download.html

Edited by March1, 22 July 2012 - 05:25 AM.

[DeTaiLz]

nice post bro

[cripler24]

Hey do you know why when i turn my anisotorpic filtering on it causes the textures in the game to look box shaped? It's very annoying and I don't know why it's doing that

[March1]

cripler24, on 21 July 2012 - 05:43 AM, said:

Hey do you know why when i turn my anisotorpic filtering on it causes the textures in the game to look box shaped? It's very annoying and I don't know why it's doing that

What is your Antialiasing at? Antialiasing smooth'es out edges (and should get rid of the "box" textures)
What did you set your Anisotropic filtering to?

Edited by March1, 21 July 2012 - 12:52 PM.

[cripler24]

Ahh i'm sorry I meant it was my antialiasing. My anisotorpic is at normal and antialiasing is disabled. When I enable antialiasing and put it at even the lowest setting it causes my textures to look box shaped

[WalkingDead]

RAMDISK FIX WORKS. now getting 30-60 fps with 45 being the average . this should be a sticky! Guys i highly suggest doing the ramdisk fix if you have bad fps. BTW i have a gaming pc (ati 6950, amd quadcore, 8gb ram etc etc.) so this is a legit fix! thanks alot!!!!

[Kewee49]

The settings in AMD catalyst are very different, owell:(

Edited by Kewee49, 22 July 2012 - 01:38 AM.

[March1]

Kewee49, on 22 July 2012 - 12:45 AM, said:

um how would I go about locating the control panel at the start? that completely loses me:P

Start and type in Nvidia or it could (for me) always is in the task tray. Next to the time on the bottom right corner of the monitor.

[Kewee49]

March1, on 22 July 2012 - 01:29 AM, said:

Start and type in Nvidia or it could (for me) always is in the task tray. Next to the time on the bottom right corner of the monitor.

The AMD options in the catalyst panel are very different and theres no options like these, owell

[March1]

WalkingDead, on 21 July 2012 - 08:41 PM, said:

RAMDISK FIX WORKS. now getting 30-60 fps with 45 being the average . this should be a sticky! Guys i highly suggest doing the ramdisk fix if you have bad fps. BTW i have a gaming pc (ati 6950, amd quadcore, 8gb ram etc etc.) so this is a legit fix! thanks alot!!!!

Happy to help!

[ZombieSpecialist]

OP Can  you help me via remote desktop? I've stupidly downloaded the terrible Steam version, my folders are all messed up and I have no clue what to do. Would be much appreciated.

I've a 6770HD graphics card 8GB Ram and fast processor, I have high FPS in other games but 15fps in this with all low settings turned down. I really have no idea what to do... I tried the RAMDISK but I have no idea why it's not reading the dayz files from that.

Edited by ZombieSpecialist, 22 July 2012 - 02:34 AM.

[The_Hawk]

When I go into the Nvidia settings, no games are in the drop down menu. Should I add the Arma2 Combined Operations.exe file to the list and customize that?

[boxy0127]

How do you use RAMDisk with SixLauncher?

[March1]

The_Hawk, on 22 July 2012 - 02:37 AM, said:

When I go into the Nvidia settings, no games are in the drop down menu. Should I add the Arma2 Combined Operations.exe file to the list and customize that?

Yes sir.

[LeastDionysus]

I keep getting this error: File C:/Users/Brad/Documents/ArmA 2/ ArmaA2OA.cfg, line 17: '.': '(' encountered instead of'='

I have no idea what this means and if someone does that would be very helpful because if I try to launch DayZ through Six I always get that error.

Edit: Ok now my problem is that no matter what way I launch arma I always get the same Sh**ty error so I just fu**ed up my game for good and have no way of fixing it.

Edited by LeastDionysus, 22 July 2012 - 04:17 AM.

[LeastDionysus]

Ok problem fixed, and Im so glad I read this it works great! I went from roughly 10-20 fps in Cherno to an average of 40-50 and 60 in the Wilderness! Im so happy this works.

Edited by LeastDionysus, 22 July 2012 - 04:35 AM.

[Shaun of the Dead]

How to do RAMDISK with Steam version?

[jeremynative.com]

thanks i went from lowest settings to medium/high

[jeremynative.com]

the top two comments tell you how to do it with steam in the youtube video..

[Shaun of the Dead]

jeremynative.com, on 22 July 2012 - 05:11 AM, said:

the top two comments tell you how to do it with steam in the youtube video..

That is a terribly worded guide but thanks.