Arma 3: Performance Optimisation

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 1K on a 4K 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 (e.g 50% on a 4K screen = 1920×1080)
• to reduce stutter and greatly improve loading times, it is highly recommended to install Arma 3 on a Solid State Drive (SSD)

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• Do your tests on a Vanilla (no mods) Arma 3! Some ill-conceived mods can bring performance down.
• Do your tests in a single player environment. If your performances in multiplayer are worse than in single player, the server/connection/mission is at fault; nothing can be done on your side.

Video Options

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  General

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  Display

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  AA & PP

Settings Impacts

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Template:colorball means a heavy impact on performance

Template:colorball means an average impact

Template:colorball means little to no performance impact.

General

Category	Setting	CPU	GPU	Additional Details
Quality	Sampling	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines the game's 3D resolution based on Display's Resolution setting (in %) - e.g 50% of 3840×2160 (4K) results in a 3D resolution of 1920×1080 (1K, 1/4 of the original resolution)
	Texture	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines textures' quality - dependent on the GPU's memory
	Objects	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines object's details and LOD thresholds
	Terrain	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines terrain's geometry details at medium long range (does not affect textures)
	Shadow	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines shadow precision
	Particles	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines quality and the amount of particles (smoke, fire, dust, etc) visible on screen.
	Cloud	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines if Cloud Simulation should be used and at which level of detail
	PIP	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	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	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Terrain's view distance
	Object	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Object's view distance - The CPU killer. Set to about 1/3 to 1/2 of terrain's view distance
	Shadow	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Shadows' draw distance - range 50..200m
Lighting	HDR	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Sets HDR quality, 8 or 16 bits
	Dynamic Lights	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Sets the maximum number of dynamic lights (light sources that are not the sun or the moon) in the scene
	Water Reflections	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Defines quality of water surface reflection

Display

Category	Setting	CPU	GPU	Additional Details
General	Display Mode	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Full Screen can solve some issues, Full Screen Window can fix some others. Windowed is useful for debug purposes
	Resolution	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Should be set to the screen's native resolution and use Sampling to lower the 3D resolution if needed
	Aspect Ratio	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Set to auto or to the screen's aspect ratio. No impact on performance
	VSync	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Vertical Synchronisation
	Interface Size	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	No impact on performance
	Brightness	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	No impact on performance
	Gamma	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	No impact on performance

AA & PP

Category	Setting	CPU	GPU	Additional Details
PostProcesses	Bloom	Template:colorball	Template:colorball
	Radial Blur	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Adds "speed" blur to the border of the screen
	Rotation Blur	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Adds screen blur on fast camera movement
	Depth of Field	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Adds blur to non-focused background
	Sharpen Filter	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Makes the image sharper, but can also make it more grainy or too outlined
	AO	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	(Screen Space) Ambient Occlusion. HBAO stands for Horizon-Based AO (Nvidia), whereas HDAO stands for High Definition AO (AMD).
	Caustics	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Water surface reflection on the ocean floor
PostProcess Color Corrections	Color Preset	Template:colorball	Template:colorball
	Brightness	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Post-process image brightness
	Contrast	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Post-process image contrast
	Saturation	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Colour saturation - the higher the more colours, the lower the more black & white
AntiAliasing	FSAA	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Full Screen Anti-Aliasing
	AtoC	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Alpha to Coverage. Requires FSAA
	PPAA	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Post-Processing Anti-Aliasing. Less taxing than FSAA, with very minor graphical glitches
	Aniso. Filtering	Template:colorball	Template:colorball	Anisotropic filtering

See Also

• Mission Optimisation