The ARMA series is by far one of the most popular first-person shooters. She stands out from the rest by the fact that she has incredibly strong and single-user, and multi-user modes, which practically no other shooter has. Most recently, another game was released, which was called ARMA 3. Optimization of this project on your computer is the main goal of this article.
The fact is that this shooter has rather high requirements, so you will have to try your best to run it on your computer so that it demonstrates the maximum of its capabilities. Naturally, this is especially true for multiplayer mode, where performance is much more important than the beauty of what is happening around. You can enjoy the graphic delights of the project in a single mode, and now you will need to do everything to make this game called ARMA 3 work as efficiently as possible. Optimization takes place in several steps and starts from a rather radical stage. Not everyone will decide to go through the first stage, so you can skip it, but in this case the maximum performance of the game is not guaranteed. So, it's time to set up the project so that the gameplay is as smooth and comfortable as possible.
Training
In the case of the ARMA 3 game, the optimization will be quite lengthy, so you need to prepare in advance. In fact, for the next stages you will not need almost any special software - only this guide will be enough. But here the first step will require you to format the hard drive and reinstall the operating system. Yes, this is a very serious and global step, but if you continue to read, you will find out why you should definitely make it. In the meantime, attention should be paid to the preparatory process. This means that you need to save all your tabs in browsers, passwords, move the necessary files and documents from the desktop to a more reliable place, and also stock them with the installation disk or flash drive, that is, the medium from which you can install the operating system you need.
It should be noted that this game interacts best with the latest version of Windows - with the "top ten". However, if you do not want to switch to this operating system, you can install the "seven" or "eight". You will also need all the drivers - for an audio card, for a video card, as well as for other devices that require additional software to work. When all this is in your hands, you can proceed to the first stage of improving the performance of the game ARMA 3. Optimization, as you already understood, will begin with a complete reinstallation of the operating system.
Formatting a disk and reinstalling the OS
Given this first step, optimizing ARMA 3 can take a lot of time, so you should start the process when you know that you can do without your computer for several hours, and also give it about the same amount of time. So, formatting a disk is quite simple - you just need to go into the BIOS when the computer boots up and select the necessary menu item there, after which the formatting process will start, during which absolutely all the data contained on this disk will be deleted. It's no secret that launching programs, in particular games on a pure hardware, always happens much more smoothly, software performance can increase several times, which is why such a large and impressive first step is taken. By the way, you can do everything through the OS installer, which is recorded on the installation disc or any other medium. Run it and follow the steps step by step, among which the first item will be the formatting of the disk. Then you will need to install a new operating system - the process is mostly automatic, but sometimes the program will ask you some questions and require certain data in order to configure the new system as accurately as possible. And after several painful hours that will last forever, your computer will find its pristine purity, after which the ARMA 3 optimization will begin.
Software installation
Yes, you have a pristine hard drive that will show much better performance when something appears on it. What can be tuning and optimization for ARMA 3 if there is no game on the computer? That is why, in parallel with the drivers and software, you need to install the Steam gaming platform , and install the game itself directly from it. It can also take a lot of time, but it all depends on the speed of your Internet connection, as in "Steam" the game is downloaded from the server in real time. If the connection is not very fast, the installation may take another hour or even more, but you should not spend this time solely waiting for the moment when the installation of the ARMA 3 game is finished. Optimization for weak PCs, as well as for strong PCs that want to squeeze the most out of the game, it starts right now.
Swap file
So, while you are installing drivers for your computer and downloading the game client, you can perform several actions that will provide you with the maximum performance of your computer, regardless of which particular program or game will run on it. These settings are ideal for the project in question, so you can safely follow the instructions without loading your head with unnecessary information. So, the ARMA 3 optimization guide does not begin with setting up the game, but with setting up your freshly installed system. The first step is to increase the swap file. To get to the swap file, you need to go to the properties of your computer, go into the advanced system settings there, find yourself in the performance section, where you also go to the settings subsection and find an additional item there. Once in the window with the swap file, you will be given the choice of determining its size depending on the size of your hard drive. The swap file is a kind of reserve - it uses a certain amount of space as an emergency reserve, just the one that happens when you turn on a particularly demanding game. If you set a small swap size and fill all your place on the computer with data, then if necessary the computer will not have a reserve, and you will not be able to achieve maximum performance. Therefore, you are better off setting the maximum size of the page file for your hard drive, this will reduce the amount of space available for use, but it will give you a large reserve, which can positively affect performance.
What else can please optimize ARMA 3? Multiplayer in this game is designed for a large number of people, so you better not be limited to one step.
Aero Graphics
Everyone knows that at some point, the rather crooked-looking Windows operating system received an add-on called Windows Aero, which allowed the user to choose whether he wants the same curve, but a productive system, or if he wants to add a little beauty, which, of course, will be eat resources, reducing productivity. In the ARMA 3 project, the optimization of FPS and other indicators is carried out directly in the game itself, but much can be done even before the installation of the game. For example, you can again go on a journey through the system parameters and on the performance tab you will find the settings of the Aero indicated above. There are two quick solutions here that allow you to provide the best view or increase productivity to the maximum. Below you can find a complete list of effects that are used in the operating system, disable them all for best performance. Of course, this is not the only thing that implies the configuration of ARMA 3. AMD-optimization, for example, will be considered a little later, as well as optimization for Nvidia.
Cores
It doesn't matter if you are optimizing ARMA 3 for Xeon X5460 or for another processor (possibly much weaker), you need to specify the number of cores used. The fact is that the processor can use one core, or maybe as many as six, while each of the six can have a lower frequency than a single core, but in total they will give much higher power. The problem is that the system does not always use all the kernels by default, so you need to manually tell it how many kernels to use. To do this, you will have to tweak the msconfig config a little, which you can call using the console. If your processor has four cores, check the box next to "number of processors", this will make it possible to manually change the number of cores. Enter the desired number and save the changes.
Launch parameters
Well, all the settings of the operating system have been made, and by this time, if you are lucky, your game along with all the necessary programs and drivers has been installed. This means that you can run it and play - the difference between what was before the start of the whole optimization process and what you will have at that time, you will notice right away. But do not think that this all ends. No, you still have a few important things to do that will allow you to further increase your FPS and overall game performance. And the first of these actions is setting specific launch parameters in the Steam for your game. Go to “Steam” and look for ARMA 3 in the game library. Select the option to set the launch parameters, after which you will need to enter a line containing the necessary parameters: -maxMem = 2047 -noBenchmark -noLogs -noSplash -world = empty. Of course, each item can be disassembled separately, but this makes no sense - knowledgeable people have already created you the perfect config, so you just have to use it. When you enter the necessary launch parameters, the time for the first test will come.
First launch of the game
Well, launch the game and wait for it to fully load. However, take your time - you do not need to play yet. The fact is that at the time of installing the shooter on your computer, you get only a game client, which is universal. But when you start the game, a configuration file is created in the system that will contain absolutely all data regarding your interaction with the game itself, that is, all your characters, all your settings, and so on. For this, and not for the game itself, you need the first launch - turn off the game and look for the config file, you have to make a couple more changes.
Config change
You will find the config in the folder with users by selecting the username that was used to log in when you started the game. There you can easily find a folder with the name of the game, and inside it there will immediately be a configuration file. Open it as a text document and look for two lines - GPU_MaxFramesAhead and GPU_DetectedFramesAhead. As in the previous case, you can spend a lot of time explaining what each of these points does and how it will affect the performance of the game, but there’s no point in it, since you only need to set the first point to “1”, and the second - the value "0".
Graphic Settings
Depending on which video card you have, you need to download special software specifically for your device. Then configure the card so that it does not work on the ideal display of graphics, but on performance.
Game settings
As for the settings in the game itself, here you need to already try everything yourself. Set everything to a minimum, and later gradually increase the different parameters, checking the performance in multi-user mode. One piece of advice - always keep your landscape display to a minimum.