Arma 3: Performance Optimisation
- Also known as Arma 3 Performance Optimisation
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Arma 3 performance has always been a great interrogation topic. This page brings light on some aspects of the Video Settings.
General Guidelines
- use auto-detection as a base for other settings - the autodetect button knows best, most of the time
- an exception to that being that auto-detection will set the render sampling to at least 100% - this is not ideal if one wants to play e.g in 1920×1080 on a 3840×2160 screen.
- in order to bring some relief to the CPU, play with (terrain/object) view distance
- to alleviate pressure on the GPU, lower PiP settings and reduce 3D Sampling
- to reduce stutter and greatly improve loading times, it is highly recommended to install Arma 3 on a Solid State Drive (SSD)
Important
- Run tests on a Vanilla (no mods) Arma 3! Some ill-conceived mods can bring performance down.
- Run tests in a Single Player environment. If performances in multiplayer are worse than in single player, the server/connection/mission is at fault; nothing can be done on Settings' side.
Video Options
Settings Impacts
Note
● means a heavy impact on performance ● means an average impact ● means little to no performance impact.
General
| Category | Setting | CPU | GPU | Additional Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quality | Sampling | ● | ● | Defines the game's 3D resolution based on Display's Resolution setting (in %) - e.g 50% of 3840×2160 results in a 3D resolution of 1920×1080 (1/4 of the original resolution) |
| Quality | Texture | ● | ● | Defines textures' quality - dependent on the GPU's memory |
| Quality | Objects | ● | ● | Defines object's details and LOD thresholds |
| Quality | Terrain | ● | ● | Defines terrain's geometry details at medium long range (does not affect textures) |
| Quality | Shadow | ● | ● | Defines shadow precision |
| Quality | Particles | ● | ● | Defines quality and the amount of particles (smoke, fire, dust, etc) visible on screen. |
| Quality | Cloud | ● | ● | Defines if Cloud Simulation should be used and at which level of detail |
| Quality | PIP | ● | ● | Adds (doubles?) the strain on the CPU - another scene has to be calculated in order to do the render. Quality here means PIP drawing distance |
| Visibility | Overall | ● | ● | Terrain's view distance |
| Visibility | Object | ● | ● | Object's view distance - The CPU killer. Set to about 1/3 to 1/2 of terrain's view distance |
| Visibility | Shadow | ● | ● | Shadows' draw distance - range 50..200m |
| Lighting | HDR | ● | ● | Sets HDR quality, 8 or 16 bits |
| Lighting | Dynamic Lights | ● | ● | Sets the maximum number of dynamic lights (light sources that are not the sun or the moon) in the scene |
| Lighting | Water Reflections | ● | ● | Defines quality of water surface reflection |
Display
| Category | Setting | CPU | GPU | Additional Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General | Display Mode | ● | ● | Full Screen can solve some issues, Full Screen Window can fix some others. Windowed is useful for debug purposes |
| General | Resolution | ● | ● | Should be set to the screen's native resolution and use Sampling to lower the 3D resolution if needed |
| General | Aspect Ratio | ● | ● | Set to auto or to the screen's aspect ratio. No impact on performance |
| General | VSync | ● | ● | Vertical Synchronisation |
| General | Interface Size | ● | ● | No impact on performance |
| General | Brightness | ● | ● | No impact on performance |
| General | Gamma | ● | ● | No impact on performance |
AA & PP
| Category | Setting | CPU | GPU | Additional Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PostProcesses | Bloom | ● | ● | |
| PostProcesses | Radial Blur | ● | ● | Adds "speed" blur to the border of the screen |
| PostProcesses | Rotation Blur | ● | ● | Adds screen blur on fast camera movement |
| PostProcesses | Depth of Field | ● | ● | Adds blur to non-focused background |
| PostProcesses | Sharpen Filter | ● | ● | Makes the image sharper, but can also make it more grainy or too outlined |
| PostProcesses | AO | ● | ● | (Screen Space) Ambient Occlusion. HBAO stands for Horizon-Based AO (Nvidia), whereas HDAO stands for High Definition AO (AMD). |
| PostProcesses | Caustics | ● | ● | Water surface reflection on the ocean floor |
| PostProcess Color Corrections | Color Preset | ● | ● | |
| PostProcess Color Corrections | Brightness | ● | ● | Post-process image brightness |
| PostProcess Color Corrections | Contrast | ● | ● | Post-process image contrast |
| PostProcess Color Corrections | Saturation | ● | ● | Colour saturation - the higher the more colours, the lower the more black & white |
| AntiAliasing | FSAA | ● | ● | Full Screen Anti-Aliasing |
| AntiAliasing | AtoC | ● | ● | Alpha to Coverage. Requires FSAA |
| AntiAliasing | PPAA | ● | ● | Post-Processing Anti-Aliasing. Less taxing than FSAA, with very minor graphical glitches |
| AntiAliasing | Aniso. Filtering | ● | ● | Anisotropic filtering |