every single thing that I did to get this game running perfectly

Hi everyone, I've been a huge fan of Bohemia Interactive since the beginning :) and have absolutely loved everything that they have done. That being said I have also had performance problems with their games since the beginning haha. When ArmA 2 came out I had just bought a brand new PC and was eager to spend hours tweaking the game ;). lol It literally took me weeks here and there to get this game running like butter, and it was a long process but I knew that the game could do it.

Finally I got it running perfectly and I wanted to share with people exactly what I did to get this beautiful game working the way it should. I know that people have posted various threads on this subject here and there. If this needs to be moved for some reason, or consolidated into another thread that's alright. I just hope people that need help will see it, and I hope it helps in some way.

Anyways, I am going to explain every single thing that I did.

first, here are my system specs...

Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz

12 gigs DDR3 ram

GeForce GTX 295

SAMSUNG SSD Hard Drive 256GB

Vista 64 bit

With my system I was getting very poor performance, and the frame rate was constantly in the low 20s. Unplayable. I was not mad though or bewildered, because I knew that that was just the nature of ArmA lol.

First I installed the latest nvidia drivers, and I also installed the SLI patch from nvidia.

Here are my settings in the nvidia control panel... I tested every single setting combination and this is what worked best.

Also I disabled Physx...

UPDATE: enable multi display performance mode as this will enable both GPUs on a gtx 295 to work in arma. This doubled my performance, you can see a screenshot on page two.

After setting up the control panel I created a new shortcut for ArmA 2 on my desktop and I added these launch parameters to its properties....

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe" -nosplash -winxp -cpuCount=8

(I know that the cpucount set to 8 probably doesn't do anything but im just superstitious like that lol, plus it didn't hurt my performance at all.)

here are my in-game settings...

After testing every single setting every way I could I found these settings to be the best trade off for performance and graphics beauty for a wide range of missions. On some missions I can turn up my settings and resolution and still get great frame rates.. What I have come to understand though is that there is a great deal going on under the surface of this game. In most full scale war missions I have found that 15 fps or more will be taken away by the computer crunching all the AI code. Without anything going on I can turn everything to high at 2500 x 1600 and still get around 40 fps...

So after I did all of this... I was still getting some lag in forests. What I found was the key to running this game perfectly... I installed this mod...

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=7252

Its the PROPER - Vegetation Tweak Visuals - Low mod and it did wonders and gave me a huge FPS boost. The game still looks pretty good too, and I hardly notice the reduced LODs on the trees and bushes. It really is so worth getting this mod. It gave me wonderful fluid performance.

One final note, the SSD drive is absolutely amazing. There are zero hiccups or stutters in the game and textures load instantly. I think that if you really want to bump up your performance in this game... and your computer in general by a great deal.. try and get an SSD drive. You wont be sorry.

Anyways I hope this helps some of you.

first, here are my system specs...

Core i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz

12 gigs DDR3 ram

GeForce GTX 295

SAMSUNG SSD Hard Drive 256GB

With my system I was getting very poor performance, and the frame rate was constantly in the low 20s. Unplayable. I was not mad though or bewildered, because I knew that that was just the nature of ArmA lol.

You got better specs than me and still i never had such performance issues as you describe!

My specs & settings:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1465788&postcount=609

You got better specs than me and still i never had such performance issues as you describe!

My specs & settings:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showpost.php?p=1465788&postcount=609

yeah I don't know what it is man, I've just always had terrible luck when it comes to these games no matter what computer I have at the time lol.

yeah I don't know what it is man, I've just always had terrible luck when it comes to these games no matter what computer I have at the time lol.

But anyways, great to hear you got it running properly :cool:

Forget my post, just waking up ;-)

Why do you have HDR and Shading settings?

Is this a seperate mod? I like some of the blur but glowing animals are annoying : D :D

And thanks for the tweaks will try them out, much appreciated bud.

Why do you have HDR and Shading settings?

Is this a seperate mod? I like some of the blur but glowing animals are annoying : D :D

And thanks for the tweaks will try them out, much appreciated bud.

Yes the addition of the HDR and shading settings are from a mod. Its one from PROPER.

they just released 90 separate tweaks that you can download and put in your addon folder. Theres some pretty cool stuff there.

http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/proper-projects/PROPER_projects#Unsorted-releases

Also I disabled Physx...

I just tried that, never heard that one before... game felt smoother, got some more FPS, cheers :)

Yes the addition of the HDR and shading settings are from a mod. Its one from PROPER.

they just released 90 separate tweaks that you can download and put in your addon folder. Theres some pretty cool stuff there.

http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/proper-projects/PROPER_projects#Unsorted-releases

Very cool, thanks man. :cool:

they just released 90 separate tweaks that you can download and put in your addon folder.

?!

Edit: hehe awesome

I would suggest trying "Video Memory" on VERY HIGH as DEFAULT seems to reduce some peoples FPS.

I would suggest trying "Video Memory" on VERY HIGH as DEFAULT seems to reduce some peoples FPS.

Video memory on DEFAULT gives me CTD's!

I can`t understand why turning off physics would do anything. The game doesn`t support physix. So no physixs calcs are being done= not utilized.

I would suggest trying "Video Memory" on VERY HIGH as DEFAULT seems to reduce some peoples FPS.

I tried it on that setting but it doesn't use all my memory and gives lower performance.. I do crash to desktop on occasion and maybe its because I use default but the performance gain is worth some crashes I guess. Would be nice if it didn't crash lol.

I can`t understand why turning off physics would do anything. The game doesn`t support physix. So no physixs calcs are being done= not utilized.

I don't know either but maybe the nvidia card sets aside some hardware for the calculations even though the game doesn't use them, or maybe the card tries to force itself on the game. I don't notice a huge difference with it on or off but turning it off saves me wondering about it.

OK WTF!!!!! I just doubled my performance.... I can now run the game at 2560x1600 with more game gfx settings turned up lol

All I did was turn on multi display performance mode in my nvidia control panel... I had it turned off before thinking that it would hurt performance as I am only running one display...

NEW FPS WITH BETTER SETTINGS

OLD FPS WITH LESS RES AND LESS SETTINGS

part of me is pissed!!! and part of me is very happy! haha

its so annoying that one little setting can make or break performance so drastically.

Yeah , good post Jack , i also really URGE anyone who has performance issues to try the PROPER Vegetation and the PROPER Building Mod .

It really changes a lot to my ArmA2 experience , i recently bought a new rig with Intel i5 overclocked to 3.2ghz and a Radeon 4890 , i could have decent performances on high settings and 1980x1050 rez although they were always some little lags(when you zoom/aim or look around you while zooming in a big city or forest ) and fps below 30 in the cities (which is unnaceptable for me ) . But with these mods , it makes it completely smooth in urban environments , when you suddenly aim/zoom and twist around , there is not a single lag anymore when you suddenly aim in environment like big cities or forest , even at very high settings , i can't believe it .

I tried it in the single mission "counter-attack " (when you attack Elektrozavodsk as a Russian soldier ) and also in other urban sceneries and forest , and it's awesome now

Really , these mods made by PROPER should be in a official BI patch or at least put as a sticky or something , cause for me it changed a lot my experience , now i can finally play on very high settings without a single lag or the slightest concern about FPS and smoothness (it's not that my FPS increased , it did only marginally , but what improved is that the fps is always stable now whatever i do and wherever i am , very smooth ) , it can be quite useful for people who just bought the game to know quickly about these mods , i wish i knew about those before , thank you Jack for posting this . I also use maxmem=2047 , but i don't know if it really makes a difference , i just let it and it's fine

here is what i have done so far

1)create 4GB RAMDISK (see sig)

2)tags

-winxp (literally vital for me as no textures otherwise)

-cpucount=4

-maxmem=2047 (made a real difference i think, no idea why)

3)very high settings -->lower view distance to 3K, lower terrain to normal, lower AA to normal, everything else very high

4)latest beta patch (dont know if it makes a diff in performance or not)

5)advanced CCC settings for ati 4890 - defaults except v-sync always off

looks gorgeous and runs smooth, though i know i am not done optimizing yet.

this is what my string looks like now and it will only get bigger lol

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\beta\arma2.exe" -winxp -cpuCount=4 -maxmem=2047 -nosplash -mod=beta;x\oac\oac_core;x\caa1;@littlebirds;@Mi-28;@LandTex;@CBA;@TRSM_Tracked_Vehicles;@Commanche;@FFAA;

I can`t understand why turning off physics would do anything. The game doesn`t support physix. So no physixs calcs are being done= not utilized.

I tested it again both on and off, definitely less stuttering and a few gains in FPS, something happens?

Well look at that. I tried reducing interface resolution by one notch, 3d-res seemed to sync with it automatically and gained almost +10fps! And no annoying blurriness compared to if you keep interface resolution higher than 3d. And it is logical actually if you think it, if 3d-res is lower than interface then video card must set resolution match to interface and downsample 3d-stuff on-the-fly causing more stress.

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\arma2.exe" -nosplash -winxp -cpuCount=8

that could be the source of the problem.

-cpuCount=4 should be the right value for i7 cos they have 4 cores and HT is causing troubles in Arma.

that could be the source of the problem.

-cpuCount=4 should be the right value for i7 cos they have 4 cores and HT is causing troubles in Arma.

well I have tried it both ways, and I have also tried the game with hyper threading turned off. In arma mark I get about 200 more points with it set to 8 cores rather than 4. I also did not notice anything with hyper threading on or off. I didn't test it extensively though. My game still crashes alot with those graphical artifacts and ive been trying to sort them out to no success. I have been trying everything :( thats the only problem I have now, the game runs perfectly other than that at high frame rates

Yes the addition of the HDR and shading settings are from a mod. Its one from PROPER.

they just released 90 separate tweaks that you can download and put in your addon folder. Theres some pretty cool stuff there.

http://dev-heaven.net/wiki/proper-projects/PROPER_projects#Unsorted-releases

UnlimitedTransportOfWeaponsAndMagazinesInVehiclesToAvoidAmmoSpillingBug Fix C PROPER

Now there is an interesting addonname. :p

Well, I did everything you suggested and now I'm getting lots of skipping and crashing, mostly when the enviornment spazzes out and turns into triangles and such. Not sure what the problem is, has anyone had this problem? Maybe it's the new nvidia patch?

usually artifacts mean it's a hardware issue like overheating or bad VRAM. Not in every case; but that's where I would start

this is what my string looks like now and it will only get bigger lol

"C:\Program Files\Bohemia Interactive\ArmA 2\beta\arma2.exe" -winxp -cpuCount=4 -maxmem=2047 -nosplash -mod=beta;x\oac\oac_core;x\caa1;@littlebirds;@Mi-28;@LandTex;@CBA;@TRSM_Tracked_Vehicles;@Commanche;@FFAA;

lol ^^

You really should get a launcher. I use this one: http://arma2.ar.funpic.de/?page_id=18

All your tweaks and addons can be clicked on/off instead of having edit shortcut everytime.