gpu and cpu's allotment in configure

[kgino1045 12]

How can i know which option takes cpu and which option takes gpu

[EDcase 87]

You can't.

A rough breakdown is:

All settings in video options affect GPU.

Number of AI and scripts affect CPU

View distance affects both

And don't forget your hard drive which has to stream the terrain, objects and texure data.

Edited October 23, 2013 by EDcase

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

object and terrain quality are quite cpu heavy as well

[[frl]myke 14]

What a lot people don't know: Shadow quality settings influences if shadows are calculated on CPU or GPU. Low to normal makes them load the CPU, High and Very high loads the GPU. This often leads to the counterlogical situation that higher shadow quality setting might result in higher FPS if the GPU is powerful enough. It takes load from the CPU which often enough gives a nice performance boost.

[mamasan8 11]

Pretty sure particles and clouds are done on CPU only.

[oldbear 390]

As far as I know there is no direct global answer for Arma3 as it has been done by RoyaltyinExile for Take On Helicopters in this thread :

Take On Video Settings!

Take On Helicopters is using Real Virtuality 3 game engine so there are many differences but the basics are the same.

General Information AKA "BIS wai u no give me moar framez" Spoiler:

To start with, it's worth pointing out that there is no 'ideal' configuration. The beauty of the options are their flexibility. It's unlikely that anyone can run everything completely maxed-out; rather, it's about setting up the game the way you're most comfortable with.

Some may prefer to fly with enormous view-distance; others, with highly dense objects or the best possible quality of textures. For example, I've included my personal set up below.

In general terms...

- it's the view-distance that'll get you. If you're having problems, try turning that down first.

- the advanced options will (mostly) get you a few frames here and there, but your first port of call should be the visibility and object-draw distance.

- our engine is CPU and HDD hungry, you'll want to make sure these components are working at their best first (defragment and don't encode a video in the background....)

- you may want to make sure your drivers are up to date, even CEO's need to double check sometimes!

- setting your Resolution to your monitor's native will give you sharper text and textures but, on monstrous screens, will ask a lot of your graphics card.

- setting 3D Resolution >100% will improve things like cockpit textures, but you'll have to make performance trade-offs elsewhere, such as view-distance.

- look for bottlenecks in your set-up! Evaluate whether your CPU, GPU or HDD is capping your overall performance, and work with the advanced video options to give you better quality!

- play around with your configuration until you've found a satisfying compromise!

To be honest, part of the problem with handing to user so many options, is that he can really 'break' his experience. For example, say we let the player set 20K view distance, and hand controls over the textures and shadow draw distance and complexity (we do!). At even the recommended spec, you just can't handle setting all of these to max, and at the same time retain maximum texture quality. Indeed, our engine actively tries to detect a lack of resources, and scales back other aspects (such as picking which LOD to use), which can be often quite frustrating.

However, it's long been our policy to give the user the choice. That's certianly not to say we can't do more to optimise - that work is, of course, important and on-going - but, we feel that if we can provide the player with the tools to understand and tweak his game, he'll be able to set it up to satisfy his own subjective preferences.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Old Bear