How to increase FPS in ARMA 3?

[Jerahmy]

Hello!

 

SPECS:

 

MOBO: Crossfire V Formula-Z

 

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 970 (OC'ed a little)

 

CPU: AMD FX-8350 (Not OC'ed, not planning on OC.)

 

PSU: Rosewill 650 watt

 

RAM: Crucial 8 GB

 

I enjoy playing games like ARMA 2/3 and DayZ (Mod and standalone), but the issue is that I get low frames from these games. Usually only these games. I have friends that have the same CPU as me and get 60+ fps while playing high/ultra. I was wondering if there was a way to increase fps in these games with having some graphical appearance in the game. If you guys need any more information please ask! Thanks.

 

(I have tried guides throughout the internet, none of them work.)

[ShadowCaptain]

2 minutes ago, Jerahmy said:

Hello!

 

tweaking with the graphics options is the best idea

Turning off AA, turning down shadow details, etc  while keeping textures at ultra can help

ARMA is a CPU bound game and the 8350 is not the best CPU for that, 

[DannyRyu]

OC that CPU. make sure you aren't hitting about 3.5 gb of VRAM

or better yet an i5. but we know thats a bit extreme.

[Jerahmy]

1 minute ago, ShadowCaptain said:

tweaking with the graphics options is the best idea

Turning off AA, turning down shadow details, etc  while keeping textures at ultra can help

ARMA is a CPU bound game and the 8350 is not the best CPU for that, 

I have literally EVERYTHING on low and I still have issues with FPS.

[Jerahmy]

1 minute ago, DannyRyu said:

OC that CPU. make sure you aren't hitting about 3.5 gb of VRAM

or better yet an i5. but we know thats a bit extreme.

Im not planning on OC this CPU, I'm not going to put more money into this CPU. Im planning on getting an intel CPU in mid/late this year.

[ShadowCaptain]

3 minutes ago, Jerahmy said:

I have literally EVERYTHING on low and I still have issues with FPS.

No turn the settings UP! If the graphics are on low, then you are not utilizing your graphics card relying on your CPU to do all the heavy lifting

Your need your GPU to do more work so UP the graphics settings

[Jerahmy]

1 minute ago, ShadowCaptain said:

No turn the settings UP! If the graphics are on low, then you are not utilizing your graphics card relying on your CPU to do all the heavy lifting

Your need your GPU to do more work so UP the graphics settings

What setting should I turn up?

[ShadowCaptain]

5 minutes ago, Jerahmy said:

What setting should I turn up?

the graphical settings... textures, objects, shadow, particles etc

[Jerahmy]

Just now, ShadowCaptain said:

the graphical settings... textures, objects, shadow, particles etc

Okay, I will try this when I get home, thank you.

[typographie]

29 minutes ago, ShadowCaptain said:

No turn the settings UP! If the graphics are on low, then you are not utilizing your graphics card relying on your CPU to do all the heavy lifting

Your need your GPU to do more work so UP the graphics settings

The CPU has the limit it has. You're right that the GPU has a lot of idle time, and therefore it may be possible to increase the graphics detail without further harming the framerate within that limit… But if the CPU is the problem, you aren't going to get past it without a faster CPU.

[ShadowCaptain]

1 minute ago, typographie said:

The CPU has the limit it has. You're right that the GPU has a lot of idle time, and therefore it may be possible to increase the graphics detail without further harming the framerate within that limit. But if the CPU is the problem, you aren't going to get past it without a faster CPU.

 

Agreed, but if the GPU is doing no work then you can offset that by making the GPU work more, thus removing the bottleneck off the CPU (since the CPU is basically rendering the game instead of the GPU)

 

The 8350 is not the best CPU, especially not for ARMA, but what i said should hold true

Running games in LOW settings on high end hardware, can sometimes be MORE taxing

[typographie]

14 minutes ago, ShadowCaptain said:

 

Agreed, but if the GPU is doing no work then you can offset that by making the GPU work more, thus removing the bottleneck off the CPU (since the CPU is basically rendering the game instead of the GPU)

 

The 8350 is not the best CPU, especially not for ARMA, but what i said should hold true

Running games in LOW settings on high end hardware, can sometimes be MORE taxing

The GPU is still rendering the game either way. The CPU isn't doing more work when there's a lighter graphical load; it's that with a light graphical load, the GPU is removed as the bottleneck and CPU performance becomes more apparent as it begins to be what limits the game's framerate. The CPU is basically doing the same work either way, and therefore it generally hits the same framerate limit regardless of what the video card's workload is.

 

My prediction is that by increasing graphical detail the OP is going to see one of two scenarios play out: better visuals with no apparent framerate penalty (since it's just using the excess GPU capacity that was sitting unused before); or, if he increases the detail to the point where the GTX 970 is starting to struggle, he may see performance decrease a bit as the bottleneck shifts back to the GPU. I do not see any possibility for better performance without a faster CPU, if this is a "real" CPU bottleneck situation.

[ShadowCaptain]

3 minutes ago, typographie said:

SNIP

yeah I was trying to explain it in too simpler terms

 

But sometimes upping GPU loads can result in smoother performance 

[BrightCandle]

In the case of arma 3 effects are moved from the GPU to the CPU, and since its also single thread the low settings destroy performance. You want to start with the very high setting and tweak from there.

But honestly AMD users don't get good performance even after tweaking settings. The only way to get good fps on this particular game is a high end Intel CPU.

 

 

 

[trufret]

View Distance is a huge FPS hog in Arma aswell. Try reducing that and see if you can get acceptable performance. Anything above about 5km is generally overkill because objects and units don't show up past that anyway.  Aim for 2-3k maybe less if your playing in towns or forests for that mission.

 

Multiplayer missions generally do not follow the view distance you set in you video settings.  They are instead hard coded by the mission maker or adjustable from within the mission.  

This can be confusing as it's up to each mission maker how this is implemented.

It can vary from having a keyboard key bring up a menu, to having to be near a specific ingame object (Flag pole, bulletin board, ammo box, whatever the mission maker decides) which adds an option to adjust view distance to your action menu (options that come up when you scroll your mouse wheel).  

Most decently made missions will at least have some instructions on how to do this in the info on the map screen if it's possible in that mission.  

Those are the most common ways I've seen it implemented in Arma 1,2,3.

Edited February 5, 2016 by trufret
Multiplayer View Distance

[totjup5]

Arma is cpu bound, so either overclock more or consider upgrading to a cpu with higher ipc.

[Jerahmy]

7 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

tweaking with the graphics options is the best idea

Turning off AA, turning down shadow details, etc  while keeping textures at ultra can help

ARMA is a CPU bound game and the 8350 is not the best CPU for that, 

You sir, are a god among men! Turning everything to ultra (Believe it or not) brought my FPS up from 25max to around 50-60FPS

 

Thank you!

[ShadowCaptain]

1 minute ago, Jerahmy said:

You sir, are a god among men! Turning everything to ultra (Believe it or not) brought my FPS up from 25max to around 50-60FPS

glad to hear it