Make your DayZ FPS go from this…      

to this…..                                                        

Arma 2 is very hard on older hardware, however in the recent patches it performance has increased the DayZ FPS a great deal.  Some people playing on older hardware still have a hard time getting a good fps in-game.  Arma 2 has plenty of config files that you can mess around with, but if you put in the wrong information,  it can have the opposite effect.

I use to play on older hardware and had to edit the config files myself.  I found a great site that gives explicit instructions on what to edit and the kind of performance increase you will see.  Most of these will increase your DayZ FPS, while some make the graphics better while avoiding a performance hit. I found these instructions at http://www.dayzpvp.com/ultimate-dayz-graphics-settings-and-tweaks-guide/

Config Settings for DayZ FPS

The settings will be in:

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\ArmA 2\arma2oa.cfg

Or

C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\Documents\ArmA 2 Other Profiles\arma2oa.cfg

ShadingQuality=0 // this will lower the shader quality, but give an fps increase

mouseSmoothing=0 //this will turn off the “rubber band” feel of the mouse

AToC=6 //disables antialising on grass = huge fps boots

PPAA = 1 //enables basic FXAA, which gives back a bit of AA on grass

PPAA_Level=1

In-Game

This comes straight from the other website

View Distance: 1600 (rumor is that this is the max that DayZ allows)
Brightness: 1
Gamma: 1

Texture Detail: HIGH (just my personal pref.)
Video Memory: Default (using a setting other than Default can be very bad)
Anisotropic Filtering: HIGH (makes things like the lines in the roads less blurry)
Anti Aliasing: OFF or HIGH (find out what works for you)
ATOC:  All Trees (this is setting 6 in the .cfg)

Terrain Detail: Normal (that’s what mine is)
Object Detail: Very Low (my attempt to squeeze more FPS out – adjust to your liking)
Shadows: OFF or HIGH
HDR: Normal (supposedly you can set this higher with no FPS hit)
PPAA: FXAA Low

Quality: leave this alone, should say Custom
Interface Resolution: best to set to your native resolution
3D Resolution: same as above
Post Proccessing Effects: OFF (this setting causes major lag)
Aspect Ratio: leave alone (mine says Custom)
Vsync: OFF

Launch Parameters

These should be added on to the launch options of arma2 OA or whatever program you are using to launch DayZ.  Also comes straight from the mentioned website.

-cpuCount=3 -maxMem=2047 -world=chernarus -skipIntro -nosplash -noPause

-cpuCount=3 (put this to how many cores you have)

-maxMem=2047 (anything higher than 2047 just reverts back to 2047. 2047= 2 gigs of RAM)

-world=chernarus (loads the only world DayZ uses)

-skipIntro (get’s rid of the movie playing behind the menus)

-nosplash (removes the intro logo’s and screens)

-noPause (this is huge – makes it so that when you alt-tab out the screen still shows live action instead of freezing)

Additional arguments that I don’t use (thanks longshot)

-winxp This obviously runs things in Windows XP mode. This makes the game run in Direct3D 9, not the Vista/Windows 7 version . might give a boost for some people.

Ending Thoughts

These options should give you a major fps boost with an accepted hit in graphs, however you don’t have to follow this exactly.  Mess with the settings to get an optimal configuration for your specific system.  A good balance between graphical performance and fps is always best in my opinion.

Happy Zombie Killing!

-Nelmeco