Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

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Terminal Boy
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:14 pm
Location: London

Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Terminal Boy »

Being a notorious adjuster of settings, I spent a couple of happy hours playing with the graphics in A3.

Before going any further, I found SideStrafe's YouTube guide invaluable and provides not only a very sensible way of testing, but also a good set of starting values.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hnmCyP5Ufu4

TBPC Specs: i5 2600K OC'd to 4 GHz / ASUS P8P67 / 16 GB of DDR2 1866 / 2 GB HD7870

Top Tip: Don't try to adjust settings in on of the SP Showcases. Use the Editor as shown in SideStrafe's video to drop your player into an area of mixed terrain and then move around to test FPS in different environments.

Note: I haven't set any Launch parameters or made any changes to the A3 config files.

Catalyst driver: 13.10

No additional graphical enhancements and everything set to "Application Controlled" in Catalyst Control Centre.

Basic Settings:

Resolution: 1920x1080x32 (native res of monitor)
Interface Size: Small (personal preference)
Aspect: 16:9 -Wide

Visibility - This is where A3 starts to need a little tweaking..

Overall: I set this by looking at a middle distance hill through the scope on the rifle and reducing the value from the resource eating 3000 that A3 gives you out of the box until large features start to disappear from the ridge line and then raise it slightly. I find around 1800 works for me.

Object: Links to the above and controls the draw distance of smaller objects on the far hills. I found around 1250 enough to show the smaller rocks etc without the game wasting resources drawing stuff way beyond what you'd focus on during combat.

Shadow: An odd one this as it's very dependant on your rendering settings. I found 80 to look about right in terms of how much shadow you can see in the middle distance.

Rendering:

Your chance to decide on fast, but ugly or slow, but very pretty. And 1 badzillion points in-between.

Resolution: 1920x1080x32 (100%) didn't play with this to see if you can achieve a pseudo-AA effect without switching AA on as per A2.

Vertical Sync: Disabled. Enabling this is supposed to stop image "tearing" when your GPU is generating more FPS than the monitors refresh rate, so above 60 FPS for a 60Hz monitor. What it actually does with my 60Hz 24" Viewsonic 2mS monitor is lock the frame rate to 30 FPS. Not good.

HDR: Standard. Purely a personal preference as I couldn't see any impact on FPS at any HDR setting.

Anisotropic Filtering (AF): Very High. Again, no impact to FPS that I could see and Very High just makes the whole thing look a little more "real" to my old eyes.

PIP (Picture In Picture - images in mirrors etc.): As I didn't drive any vehicles during this test, I left this at High.

Dynamic Lighting: As I didn't test in low-light/night conditions, I left this at High.

Anti-Aliasing (AA): The big frame rate killer. I have this disabled in A2:OA and DayZ as it eats FPS and actually makes it look worse in my opinion.

This is not the case in A3. Setting AA to X2 is basically pressing the "make it look natural" button on my machine and worth the 15-20 FPS hit in complex environments. Setting AA to X4 doesn't to make any additional improvement I could spot and it does eat another 10 FPS.

PPAA - Additional AA added during Post Processing: I found FXAA crisped things up nicely and SMAA actually introduces a little blur on sharp edges such as the accessory rails on the standard BLUFOR rifle. Didn't spot much difference between Disabled and FXAA Standard, but moving to FXAA High has a very nice effect. No obvious frame rate hit either. Very High and Ultra didn't improve things over High as far as I could tell.

ATOC: On my machine, All Trees & Grass is visually well worth the 1-2 FPS it costs as it gets rid of the "grid" effect you see on grass that's lit from behind. No change from how I have it set on A2. Unlike A2, ATOC is disabled when Post Processing is disabled.

Post Process Quality: How much depth of focus blur you see. I find the higher settings make things look somewhat artificial as my eyes don't focus like an SLR camera. Which is just as well as this feature is as hungry for FPS as AF.
I found Low to be the most visually realistic setting and it only costs 2 FPS and enables ATOC.

Quality:

Here's where you start turning things down for easy FPS gains. The Auto Detect feature set most of these to Ultra for my 7870. The weird thing is that I can't see any difference between Ultra and Very on these settings.

Here's what I ended up with:

Texture: Very High - Only a small FPS hit over High, but looks much nicer.
Object: Very High
Terrain: Very High - Turning this down gains performance at the expense of bare hills in the middle distance
Cloud: Only tested during a sunny day, but couldn't see much performance difference between Low and Very High. High looks great, so I left it there.
Shadow: Not the big FPS hit it was in A2. High looked the most realistic on my machine.
Particle: Again, I couldn't see a significant visual or performance difference above High despite throwing smoke grenades around me.

As SideStrafe pointed out in his video, settings chosen during mucking about in the Editor are only an indication of how the game might perform during MP play as there's obviously a very low CPU load using the Editor with just one character model being generated.

Hopefully, this technodrivel might prove useful for others.

Terminal Boy
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:14 pm
Location: London

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Terminal Boy »

All the settings without the waffle..

This gives 40-45FPS in very mixed trees/shrubs/buildings on my PC.

Switch things off/down in the order below to increase frame rates:

Disable AA > Disable Post Processing > Reduce Texture/Object/Terrain Quality > Overall/Object Visibility

Specs: i5 2500K OC'd to 4 GHz / ASUS P8P67 / 16 GB of DDR2 1866 / 2 GB HD7870

Note: I haven't set any Launch parameters or made any changes to the A3 config files.

Catalyst driver: 13.10

No additional graphical enhancements and everything set to "Application Controlled" in Catalyst Control Centre.

Basic Settings:
Resolution: 1920x1080x32
Interface Size: Small
Aspect: 16:9 -Wide

Visibility:
Overall: 1800
Object: 1250
Shadow: 80

Rendering:
Resolution: 1920x1080x32 (100%)
Vertical Sync: Disabled
HDR: Standard.
Anisotropic Filtering (AF): Very High.
PIP: High.
Dynamic Lighting: High.
Anti-Aliasing (AA): x2
PPAA - FXAA High.
ATOC: All Trees & Grass.
Post Process Quality: Low.

Quality:
Texture: Very High
Object: Very High
Terrain: Very High
Cloud: High
Shadow: High
Particle: High.

tryteyker
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:17 pm
Location: Sweden / Germany (depends really)

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by tryteyker »

This is retarded Arma 3 -.- Why does it work better on Ultra High than on low, it's just like A2. And I told BI that it helps to turn stuff to low :/

Well, thanks for the tips I guess. Went from 15-20 FPS to 30 easily.

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head
Posts: 133
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2011 4:22 pm
Location: Sweeeden

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by head »

Low == Use CPU (
Above high == GPU.

Pretty fucking silly.

tryteyker
Posts: 104
Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:17 pm
Location: Sweden / Germany (depends really)

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by tryteyker »

Yes it is pretty fucking silly but at the same time it's extremely good for me because I need to utilize the GPU as much as possible. == higher graphics.

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Nothun
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Joined: Wed May 01, 2013 9:15 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Nothun »

I have a wierd issue...

I have the HD 7950 3GB GPU, whenever I turn on ATOC (on any setting) my Trees and Bushes flare up in white particles, if I walk through woods or alike, I just see white Bushes and trees.
This is true for Arma 2 and 3. I know this is an AMD problem, but maybe you guys can help me?

Thanks
Nothun

Edit: Nevermind, I should have googled it. Apparently AMD GPU's have the standard "Adaptive AA" in the Catalyst Center, Must be set to "Multi-Samoling-AA" to work properly...
"We all make mistakes, just none as grave as yours" -Spitnam after a Blue on Blue

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Terminal Boy
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue Feb 12, 2013 4:14 pm
Location: London

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Terminal Boy »

Good tip!

Having just upgraded to a 7950, I'll have to play with CCC and ATOC to see what gives the best look without overly hurting performance.

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Nothun
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Location: Germany

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Nothun »

To my expertise, ATOC can be cranked up fully and losing only bout 2-3 FPS
"We all make mistakes, just none as grave as yours" -Spitnam after a Blue on Blue

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Mojo
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Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Mojo »

Thanks for this. I was running Arma 3 on standart and I have cranked the graphics up a bit without loss of fps thanks to your tips.
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Nothun
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Location: Germany

Re: Early Graphics Setting Experiments.

Post by Nothun »

Beta Graphics Test

I have waited for Beta to arrive, as there where a lot of Tickets on Feedbacktracker concerning the Graphics Settings of Arma 3. Yesterday I took the time to really find out what Settings have the highest performance impact.
Here are my relevant PC specs:

Windows 7 64bit
AMD FX-8120 8x3.1GHz
AMD Radeon 7950 3GB, Catalyst 13.4
12GB RAM
DX 11
Fraps was used to determine FPS

Important Info
Generally speaking, low settings use the processor, high settings the GPU, this is most noticable for Shadows, Particles and Lighting. Trying to balance load on CPU and GPU is important for good FPS results.
Every PC is different! You should not copy my settings, this is to give you an Idea what setting has the highest Performance Impact!

Testing Ground
I used the Editor to place myself in a mix of Urban, Hilly and Forest environment (moving around a little). Interestingly my Frames are at around 100 FPS on the below settings (being a lone soldier on the map), to compensate I inserted: 1xHeli, 1xTank, 1xIlfrit, 1x Quad and 6xSoldiers. This caused FPS to drop by 20!

Testing
I did the Testing by turning everything to low, except the Resolution which stayed at 1680x1050. The next step was to increase the View Distance to 1500, Object Distance to 1000 and Shadow to 60, which is fitting for me. Pilots might find it helpful to have a higher View Distance.
The above settings where my base, levelling in at 80 FPS.
Now I cranked up one setting, wrote down its performance impact on FPS, and then returned the setting to low. I then did the same procedure for every other setting, so that I could have a representing value for each setting. This is what found:

The number behind the setting is the FPS drop at MAX setting, first value corresponds to open field, second value is urban/dense foilage environment.
Quality

Texture: 3,6
Object Detail: 9,11
Terrain: 29,30 :fry:
Shadow: 3,5
Particles: (using smoke grenade) Standard 10, High 15

Cloud: 1
HDR: None
Dynamic Lights: (at night) 1,3
Shadow: 3,5

AA & PP

Bloom, Radial Blur, Rotational Blur and Depth of Field only have a marginal impact, but these should be balanced to personal preferance.

Bloom: max 1 FPS drop
Radial: max 1
Rotational: Causes Headache
Depth of Field: looks Ugly

SSAO: no performance Impact
Caustic: 1,2
FSAA: standing: 25,30
______moving: up to 42!
ATOC (with 2xFSAA): 2,3
PPAA: FXAA: 1
______SMAA: max 1
Anistropic Filtering: 1,2

Conclusion

I will not Include View Distance as it is a blessing and a curse, effectivly whipping your system at long Draw Distance, and helping you to get 3 or 4 Frames back from the dead by turning it down.
The biggest Baddies are as follows:

1. FSAA biggest impact with up to 42 Frames!
2. Terrain really chews on your GPU with 30 Frames on max
3. Particles smoke really is a FPS killer (15)
4. Object Detail depending on Object Draw Distance up to 14

With the above Info, I could run at 68 FPS, with the Baddies at low (only FSAA at 2x), since this looks kinda wierd I moved the Baddies to standard or High, resulting in my Frames to drop to 43. But even with smoke, running and shooting, the Picture is smooth, sharp, looking good and i never dropped below 30 FPS. :dance:

Notes
One cannot add up the FPS drop of each setting to get the total FPS drop with everything on Ultra! You might get a negative value. The values above represent only which setting has the greatest impact!
When switching to Beta i got an instant boost of performance, having about 7 FPS more. This gives me hope that in the Final release, we might be able to get even more out of the engine.
Every PC is differnet!

I hope this helps in understanding which setting has the highest impact!

Greetings

Nothun
"We all make mistakes, just none as grave as yours" -Spitnam after a Blue on Blue

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Nothun/

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