Been playing with video settings, few things that may be of interest.

[rotkeps 10]

Hey. Been playing with video settings for the last couple of hours looking at FPS in different areas and here are couple of my findings that some people looking to tweak may find useful:

Prefacing this with my spec, which has a nice CPU but weak GPU setup.

- i5 Quad @ 4GHz

- 460 GTX 1GB VRAM

Basic

- I find 2:1 ratio on Overall:Object visibility provides the best performance to visual trade off. IE. If you have 2000 Overall, a 1000 Object.

Rendering

- If you're on an FPS budget but still want to combat jaggies then I'd try setting it to FXAA + 87% rendering resolution. It looks almost as good as SMAA + 100% rendering resolutions due to the sharpness filter included in the FXAA yet gives 1-5fps more depending on location.

- Anisotropic filtering is essentially free, only maybe decreasing by 1-2fps on Ultra and gives a very nice image quality boost. At the very least I'd put this on High regardless of GPU.

Quality

- As usual texture quality has negligible impact on FPS, it's a case of available memory. Even with fairly poor CPU / GPU but with 4GB+ memory I'd keep this on at least High for a big boost to visuals at no FPS cost.

- Object Quality I'd vouch for putting on High. Below High and you get a very noticeable reduction in image quality for not a huge increase in FPS. Going above high and you get a very minimal increase in image quality for a big decrease to FPS.

- Terrain Quality is a very balanced option in relation to image quality and performance trade off. Going from standard down to low just makes it look pretty bad, however gives a pretty big hit to fps. I'm leaning towards taking the FPS his for standard but I guess if you could stomach it low would give you a very nice FPS jump.

- Shadows are rendered on the CPU on the Low setting and GPU on Standard and above. Therefore if you're on an FPS budget your choice should be between Standard and Disabled.

Hope it helps.

Edited March 9, 2013 by rotkeps

[Minoza 11]

Good observation, pretty much same here. I prefer more view distance, so I pushed it to 5k, but I keep object around 2k. AA is a killer for me, although I can run good enough with high AA, ATOC kills my performance completely when aiming through scopes and looking at grass thus forcing me not to use it, I only use FXAA, I personally like the sharpening effect.

[tremanarch 6]

hmmm but shadow is so beautiful

[rotkeps 10]

They certainly are, but I'd say the issue I've had with their drastically different performance hits is just a case of the level optimization present in the alpha, I'm looking forward to re-enabling them one day.

[[frl]myke 14]

Regarding shadows, back in ArmA 2, Shadow details below normal were rendered by the CPU. On normal and above it was rendered on the GPU, taking load off the CPU and giving higher FPS than on lower settings (as the GPU often has free resources to easily take the additional load). Not sure if with the DX11 engine this is still true but surely worth a shot.

[Vooyek 1]

Setting Object Quality to low give you HUGE boost to fps. If you run low on fps in MP (like Wasteland) it might be good idea to lower this setting.

[rotkeps 10]

Myke;2324310']Regarding shadows' date=' back in ArmA 2, Shadow details below normal were rendered by the CPU. On normal and above it was rendered on the GPU, taking load off the CPU and giving higher FPS than on lower settings (as the GPU often has free resources to easily take the additional load). Not sure if with the DX11 engine this is still true but surely worth a shot.[/quote']

Oh nice. I just loaded up in the editor to my usual spot (Air Station Mike-26). Then went to stand in the bushes just outside the base :)

Disabled: 60fps

Low: 30fps

Normal: 55fps

High: 45fps

So yes I guess we can safely say ArmA 3 works the same regarding rendering of shadows on the CPU on low. I'll update the OP to reflect, Thanks! :)

[-=seany=- 5]

Good to see, I was wondering about this myself.