To have a stable system and good ingame FPS are the basic requirement to be able to play properly.

Make sure to have your system up-to-date and prime stable first.

WinXP or Win7 are recommended. With the 64 bit OS version the game makes use of 3+ GB if available.

Update your bios, operating system, motherboard with the latest drivers available. Recent GPU drivers are recommended - yet not always the latest are the best. Consult the BIF to find out which ones are to be used momentarily.

Use software to stress test your system for stability and not to overheat. Recommend ones by BI:

• CPU: CPU Burn in (can be run in Windows)
• Memory: memtest (can be run in Windows; sometimes finds errors missed by memtest86)

In addition to being very CPU intensive the game also is loading data from the HDD a lot. You may want to consider buying a HDD with low access time; especially a SSD is a good idea these days. A Intel or another high quality drive is very much recommended. It will speed up the game loading times significantly and texture loading/switching is improved as well.

• In addition lowering the texture detail, video memory and object detail will help.
• For non SSD drives you are recommended to defragment regularly.
• Put ArmA to a separate hard drive.
• Put the swap file to another separate hard drive.

With more than 2/3GB system memory, you are very much recommended to use a Ram drive (German), (English) for the swap file and/or (some) games files. Dummies Guide, by a dummy.

• Disable HT (hyper threading) for an i7 CPU:
  The ArmA engine is confused by HT. HT active leads to micro stutters and worse FPS.

• Download latest ATI drivers / NV drivers

• PhysX off (just in case).
• Single monitor display.
• AF/AA settings: use game settings.
• Max pre-rendered frames: 1 (or try 2/3). Less should make mouse movement more smooth.

The standard way of doing is to create a link to the arma2.exe.

You are recommended to you use an application like the ArmA II Launcher app to simplify the management of various launch configurations.

For beta patch and especially modfolders use you will be more than happy with the tool.

Note that there is the target line and the start in line. The standard non beta example:

Target: C:\ArmA\arma2.exe -noSplash -world=empty -window -noFilePatching -profiles=C:\ArmA -name=ProfileName

Start in: C:\ArmA\

Beta patches have the exe in a subfolder C:\ArmA\beta\arma2.exe and require the -mod=beta extension.

Beta patches have the exe in a subfolder C:\ArmA\Expansion\beta\arma2oa.exe and require the -mod=Expansion\beta;Expansion\beta\Expansion extension.

• -noSplash: Speed up game launch by disabling the game intro.
• -world=empty: Speed up game launch by loading no world intro in the main menu.
• -window: Launch the game in window mode to ease alt+tab and reduce HDR issues.
• -noFilePatching: Ensures that only PBOs are loaded and NO unpacked data.
• -profiles=Path: Define an absolute path for the profile files to be put at. Should be the path to the game folder.
• -name=ProfileName: Naming of your profile name just like done ingame to launch game with the given profile automatically.
• -noPause: Allow the game running even when its window does not have focus.

More of possible interest:

• -maxMem=2047: Enforce memory allocation limit to number (in MegaBytes). 256 is hard-coded minimum (anything lower falls backs to 256). 2047 is hard-coded maximum (anything higher falls back to 2047). Engine uses automatic values (512-1536 MB) w/o maxMem parameter.
• -winxp: Forces the game to use Direct3D version 9 only, not the extended Vista / Win7 Direct3D 9Ex - the most visible feature the Ex version offers is a lot faster alt-tabbing. May help with problems using older drivers on multi-GPU systems.
• -noCB: Turns off multicore use. It slows down rendering but may resolve visual glitches.
• -cpuCount=<number>: Change to a number less or equal than numbers of available cores. This will override auto detection. Details below.
• -exThreads=<number>: Change to a number 0,1,3,5,7. This will override auto detection (which use 0 for dualcore and 7 for quadcore). Details below.

The full list of startup paramaters is available in the BIKI.

-cpuCount= is option which allows define number of CPUs/cores available.

The best way to simulate dual core on quad core is to use -cpuCount=2 when you run the game and then change the affinity to 2 cores to make sure additional cores can never be used when some over-scheduling happens. It might be also possible to set the affinity in the OS before you launch the process, that would work as well.

-exThreads= is option to define extra threads.

All file operations go through a dedicated thread. This offloads some processing from the main thread, however it adds some overhead at the same time. The reason why threaded file ops were implemented was to serve as a basement for other threads ops. When multiple threads are running at the same time, OS is scheduling them on different cores. Geometry and Texture loading (both done by the same thread) are scheduled on different cores outside the main rendering loop at the same time with the main rendering loop.

• Visibility: Set by the server in MP.
• Brightness: By default use a very low if not the lowest value. Set to the max value during night, sunset or sundown.
• Gamma: Has no effect when using window mode.
• Interface resolution: Windowed or the same as 3D resolution.
• 3D resolution: MSAA
  Nvidia: Native monitor resolution. Use the ArmA antialiasing setting instead.
  ATI: Very recommended to use 3D resolution - instead of the ArmA antialiasing setting.

• Texture detail: Depends on your GPU VRAM. 1024 = very high, 512 = normal.
  Very important for visual quality.
• Video memory: 1024 = very high, 512 = normal. Default on stability issues.
• Anisotropic filtering: Normal. Higher if enough FPS.
  Very important for visual quality.
• Antialiasing: FSAA
  Nvidia: Depends on your FPS. Disabled or low.
  ATI: Very recommended to use 3D resolution instead.

• Terrain detail: Set by the server in MP.
• Objects detail: Normal or lower. Big FPS drain / texture loading issues.
  Mainly how many objects are drawn at the same time. Slightly reduced visual quality.
• Shadow detail: Disabled. Big FPS drain, little visual advantage.
  Optional: high/very high with great FPS. Normal is CPU calculated.

• Postprocess effects: Disabled. Big FPS drain and visual disadvantage.

• Interface size: Small (personal preference).
• Aspect ratio: According to your monitor native resolution.

• Effects: Max. To hear units at max distance, units footsteps walking nearby etc.
• Samples: 8-128 (in 8 ticks). Number of sound channels. Maximum is limited/set by your sound card.

• Blood: Low. Depending on FPS disabled or high.
• Aiming deadzone: 0 / very left. Personal preference.
• Head bob: 0 / very left. Personal preference.

-profiles=c:\arma2 is used for all examples.

Default location: c:\arma2\Users\SystemProfile\arma2.cfg

-cfg=arma2.cfg used: c:\arma2\arma2.cfg

Both using -profiles=c:\arma2

Settings:

• GPU_MaxFramesAhead: 1 or 0 recommended. 0 might cause a FPS drop. Less should make mouse movement more smooth.
• HDRPrecision: 8 default. 16/32 can improve HDR a bit.
• localVRAM: Should equal your GPU memory. Written by engine each start, changing it manually has no effect!
• nonlocalVRAM: Unknown.

• winX: 0. Top make window aligned at the very top left.
• winY: 0. Top make window aligned at the very top left.
• Adapt height and width accordingly to your native resolution:

Render_H=960;
Render_W=1280;
winDefH=960;
winDefW=1280;
winH=960;
winW=1280;

• Description of all arma2.cfg entries in the BIKI.
• Sample ArmA2.cfg

-name=MyAcc used: c:\arma2\users\MyAcc\MyAcc.arma2profile

sample.ArmA2OAProfile

Tweak the sensitivity in the ingame control options to your preference.

Smoothing: Default is 30. Recommended is 0-15.
Too low values can mouse jumping. Can also be set in the ArmA2Profile.

Make sure to disable mouse smooth and acceleration in the windows settings.

Basically recommended to remove all default settings and build them from the ground up yourself.

Either drop and drop the assigned keys away in the controls options ingame or remove all numbers in your arma2profile.

You can try the controls by kju. AWSD centered and designed with much thinking and testing: sample.ArmA2OAProfile

No knowledge available.

• Descriptions for every arma2.cfg entry.
• Arma2: Startup Parameters
• Excellent ARMA2 Performance Guide by defunkt
  It adds a lot more detail and explanations.