ArmA 3 Performance Tweaks and Settings Guide

[pierremgi 4739]

I recently migrated ARMA for 1.68 from SSD to HDD. 64 bit + HDD instead 32 bit + SSD doesn't make a real difference for me. Game seems to start with poor FPS during the first minute, then it's not so bad. Sometimes, some optics (CUP mod at least) are making FPS dropping drastically. If I don't quit ARMA and I relaunch the mission (Eden preview for example) the start is far better (same loading time but graphics are more instantaneous at first seconds in game).

[damsous 329]

I got a i7 3370, 16gb ram, HDD, Win 7. I use this computer to set up arma server there nothing else running on it.

 

After many test, i can say the performance on any mission are better on dedicated server (especially  with a high amount of AI +/-150).

 

With my friends (10/20 player) we played the same custom mission that generate 120/180 AI (capture random sector), no mod and low amount of script, and we noticed something about a setting server side "maximum message send & server view distance" that affect negatively performance client side and server side if this value are increased, mostly when there more than 5 player on the server.

So increasing this setting just slowdown everybody, but reduce lag or AI rollback.

 

I recommend to keep the default setting,

maximum message send : 128

And reduce server viewdistance to 1000.

 

We have tried many setting, for exemple,

maximum message send : 512

server viewdistance : 8000

So with this setting and 15 ppl connected every client was capped at 20-25 fps

With default setting the average fps client side was 40-50 fps, so its a huge difference.

 

There is also few mods that kill the performance, for exemple all the balistic ACE stuff, so after removing advanced ballistic and all the features dependent from that (cook off, fragmentation...) the game run better especially on a huge firefight with burning vehicle.