I am in the same/similar boat as you. I get below 15 FPS in ARMA2OA and <1FPS in DayZ (unplayable slideshow) with all settings as low as it can go, video memory set to default, all the -nosplash, -winxp, etc.. recommended commands, everything is up to date with patches and drivers. I did the nvidia control pannel stuff, and I can't get anywhere. I've spent 2 days now looking online for answers. The game's menu's work fine. If I push escapse I can navigate the options lag free. If I alt-tab, I can open google, or other smaller programs, and there is no slow down, but this game is barely running. It's like it isn't even trying to use the resources available to it.
My system is currently:
AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core 2.3Ghz
4GB ram
Nvidia GTX 550ti 1gb
the OPTIMAL specs for arma2 are:
CPU: Intel Core 2.8 GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or faster
RAM: 2 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT / ATI Radeon 4850 with Shader Model 3 and 512 MB VRAM or faster
My specs are twice the Ram, 2 more cores and 100mhz faster processor, and a video card that has almost twice the rating on Tom's Hardware. That is just optimal, it is even more beyond the minimum.
How can this game barely work on the lowest of low settings when I more then meet all of the Optimal requirements? I feel like there is some "silver-bullet" I'm missing that will fix this and make the game playable. I'm going to try a few more things and look some more, but I might have to try the refund route and just skip this game, which is a shame because I've heard good things from lots of places. :\
I'm not looking for 45+ frames, but ~25 on normal settings would be good enough for me.