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94 ratings

Friendly FPS

By Capitoneo

Advanced manual about optimization DayZ Standalone client and increasing framerate.
The full list of options and ways to increase FPS in DayZ SA.

Disclaimer
This guide is outdated. It was made before the v0.60 patch era. I left it as is for those who might want to use an old version DayZ client for whatever reason.

Warning! Lot's of reading!

The goal of this guide is to help players get the optimal graphic settings and framerate for comfortable gameplay. That's why this manual is not small at all. It's more like a reference book for any kind of PC user. The guide consists of 3 parts:

Game Options - options in the game menu. That's the easiest part for everyone.
Launch Parameters - here you need to be aware of your hardware and software.
Config Files - In the very last part, you'll need to edit the configuration files of the game. A non-primitive text-editing app would come in handy. e.g. VSCode, Atom, Sublime, Brackets, Notepad++

Award

Created by

Capitoneo
Offline

Category: Gameplay Basics, Modding or Configuration, Secrets

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

25 Oct, 2015 @ 12:40pm

21 Jun, 2023 @ 7:50am

9,083	Unique Visitors
141	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Ingame settings

Game settings | User Interface

Game settings | Quality

Game settings | Textures

Game settings | Rendering

Launch options

Configuration files

DayZ.cfg file

username.DayZProfile file

Testing PCs

Word from the author

FAQ

Comments

Ingame settings

The ingame settings are shown in a 3-column table:

Parameter and category they are in
Description of parameter and recommendation of settings
Impact - shows the impact of parameter on GPU (graphics card) and CPU (processor and RAM). There you can see how much impact does it take (low, medium, high)

You can try tweaking settings by impact, if you know for sure that either your CPU or GPU is weak.

Parameter

Description

Impact

Configure

└ Field Of View

Field Of View. The wider your FOV is - the more objects you have in the scene and performance goes down. Sometimes, however, you may have lots of complicated objects in front of you and some simple objects around your character, in this case narrow FOV can result in less FPS than wide one. I wanna say that playing on narrow FOV is not comfortable, especially when looting, so I'd suggest adjusting this parameter on the fly (sniping/looting).

CPU GPU

Video

└ Overall quality

Overall quality settings. Ready to use presets from the developers, not quite optimal. We wouldn't change this setting. When you change any of other settings, "Overall Quality" will switch to "Custom" automatically.

CPU GPU

Video

└ Rendering resolution

Rendering resolution. That's the resolution that the GPU uses to draw the scene. After being drawed, the frame is rescaling to resolution that was chosen by "resolution" parameter in "User Interfase" section. That's why you should choose "Rendering resolution" after "resolution" in UI. The best option is to choose 100%. The setting has a straight impact on GPU, you can get an FPS boost when lowering rendering resolution, but the graphics will get significantly worse. You should use lowering rendering resolution as a very last option.

GPU

Video

└ Brightness

Brightness. Does not affect performance, set as you like to. Does not work in windowed mode. Almost everyone is abusing this parameter while playing at nighttime servers.

Video

└ Gamma

Gamma. Does not affect performance, set as you like to. Does not work in windowed mode. Can be used as a sort of nightvision.

Video

└ VSync

Vertical syncronisation. This parameter enables syncronisation of ingame rendered frames and the display refresh rate. It is used when average FPS ingame exceeds display refresh rate (usually 60 Hz). With this option you can avoid the "tearing effect" in high-motion scenes. Also "Vertical Sync" is needed with 3D technologies (nVidia 3DVision and so on), virtual reality (OculusVR and others). Turning this on will result in lowering FPS, so my choice - Disabled

GPU

Game settings | User Interface

Parameter

Description

Impact

Video
└ User Interface

└ Resolution

Resolution. The best way is to set this parameter according to your gaming display native resolution. That is usually 1920x1080 (standard FullHD) or 1366х768 (common on laptops). You can shoose "Windowed" mode here as well. You can't adjust brightness and gamma in windowed mode.

Video
└ User Interface

└ Size

Interface size. Choose any size you like. It doesn't affects performance.

Video
└ User Interface

└ Aspect Ratio

Aspect ratio should be chosen according to your display aspect ratio, otherwice you'll get a streched picture. The most common aspect ratio is 16:9 (for 1920х1080 and 1366х768 resolutions).

Game settings | Quality

Parameter

Description

Impact

Video
└ Quality

└ Objects

Objects quality. This parameter is setting up maximum amount of polygons in the scene. For better performance each model in game (like a tree or a house) has several levels of detalization. When a frame is rendered, if the number of polygons is reaching the limit, game engine starts to use less detailed models for faraway objects. That's why a house in a distance looks like a brick. (clay box) This should be done with GPU, but with DayZ engine this CPU dependable. So if you have a weak CPU you should use LOW setting. Also, if you have a bad performance in towns, you can set this on minimum.

CPU GPU

Video
└ Quality

└ Terrain

Terrain quality. This was working in DayZ mod, but in DayZ SA it works only on the title screen. This does not affect the game terrain settings. So every player on the server has the same setting.

Video
└ Quality

└ Clouds

Clouds quality.
3D clouds do look better, but they drop FPS.

CPU GPU

Video
└ Quality

└ Shadows

Shadows quality. One of the most important settings for those who have a weak GPU. Should be low or even disabled. The game looks worse without shadows, but you can save a lot of FPS turning them off.

GPU CPU

Game settings | Textures

Parameter

Description

Impact

Video
└ Textures

└ Video Memory

Amount of Video Memory. Maximum amount of GPU memory that the game can use. "Auto" recommended.

GPU CPU

Video
└ Texuters

└ Texture Detail

This sets up the maximum textures resolution. The higher detalization is the less performance will be. If your GPU has low vRAM (less than 1.5Gb) you should choose low settings. High and Very high is for 2Gb and higher. Also, even if you have a weak GPU with 10Gb vRAM, GPU wouldn't be able to draw scenes with lots of textures as in towns.
The optimal setting for good FPS is "low".

GPU CPU

Video
└ Textures

└ Texture Filtering

Texture Filtering algorithms on modern GPU do not affect the performance a lot. Does not affect FPS much, so you can choose yourself. To see the difference you can look at the long straight road and try low and high settings.

GPU

Game settings | Rendering

Parameter

Description

Impact

Video
└ Rendering

└ Antialiasing

Antialiasing makes the game look better, with smoothing the edges of diagonal lines. Should be turned on only if you have a decent GPU. If you use shadows, it's better to use "Edge Smoothing" instead of Antialiasing, this will use less resources and does not have a conflict with shadows. Using both has no sense. For the best FPS should be disabled.

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ Alpha to Coverage

The multisampling algorithm is mixing the transparent textures for more realistic look of grass, bushes and trees. Does not affect the GPU much in comparing to antialiasing. The best option is to use "All trees + grass". Does not work well with shadows and does not work without antialiasing.

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ Edge Smoothing

This is smoothing on post-processing stage. Does not affect performance much. It's low cost comparing to antialiasing and does not conflict with shadows. In FXAA low, normal and high here is a strange effect of black contours. I prefer to set "FXAA Very high".

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ HDR Quality

"High Dynamic Range" quality for lighting. This effect is hard to see. If you want to make a decent screenshot with some bright light (sun or any other), you should set this on "Low". Otherwise - very low. "-winxp" launching parameter is not working on "Low".

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ Ambient Occlusion

This is the global shadowing. This one of the high-cost effect in DayZ. Looks weird on every setting post process quality except Very High and is disabled on "Very Low" and "Disabled".

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ Postprocess Quality

The quality of post FX. All film-looking effects are here. This affects Ambient Occlusion, Bloom and Rotation Blur. So if we turn Postprocess Quality off, these will be off too. This is what you need for FPS - "Disabled".

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ Bloom

Effect of glares on the water, surfaces and objects. Does not work with Postprocess off. Set as you like.

GPU

Video
└ Rendering

└ Rotation Blur

This adds blur when you turn your head. Works only from 1st person point of view.
Does not work with Postprocess off. Set as you like.

GPU

Launch options

Launch options (parameters) are short commands that are given for the game when launching. To add these you can open Steam - Library - right click "DayZ" choose "Properties". In "General" click "Set Launch Options". There you type in parameters and click "OK".
Every parameter should start with '-' and all parameters should be divided by space.

All these options do affect the performance.

Parameter

Description

-winxp

The most effective way of increasing FPS. It makes the game use DirectX 9 instead of DirectX 9Ex which s used in Windows Vista, 7,8,10. The performance may be increased by 30% with the cost of stability. For example, when minimizing the game will crash. Also will crash when changing video parameters. Can crash randomly. So you should choose what you need more: FPS or stability. You don't need this if you run Windows XP because there it's used by default. If you can't launch DayZ with this parameter, try setting Windows XP compatibility in the DayZ.exe properties. Also try HDR Quality on "Very low".

-cpucount=#

Setting the count of CPU cores. This is detected by default. So we recommend NOT TO USE this parameter, because you can make worse. If you think that you are smarter than your computer, you can choose this yourself. This parameter was made to emulate the weak CPU.

-exthreads=#

Sets up the profile of additional threads (NOT THEIR COUNT). This is chosen automatically. We recommend NOT TO USE this parameter.
The profiles were made to distribute operations with files, textures loading and geometry with different threads. Multithreading needs synchronization for calculations, but smart use of multithreading will help to get rid of FPS drops and will decrease the loading time. By default, "3" is used for 2-core CPU and "7" for 4-core.
There is a table of profiles:

Profile

Separate thread for
file operations

Separate thread for
texture loading

Separate thread for
geometry calculations

The operation system can distribute flows between CPU cores itself. If you have used this parameter as other manuals say - delete it. "3" for 4-core CPU and "1" for 2-core is not right. Also "2, 4, 6, 8" - does not exist.

-maxvram=#

Sets the max vRAM. Can be set instead of "#" in Megabytes. Minimum is 128. Maximum is 2047 (2Gb). You can set more. We didn't have a GPU with more than 2 Gb, so can't check this. On my GTX 760 2Gb are used by default. So if you have 2Gb or less don't use this parameter.

-maxmem=#

This sets up the maximum amount of RAM used for the game. In Megabytes. Minimum is 256. Maximum is 2047. By default the game used 512-1536 megabytes till the 0.54 patch. Now the game can use more than 1536 Mb without this parameter. Should NOT be used.

-malloc=$

This sets up the allocator for memory that is used by the game. Should be used without ".dll". Also can be set as "system" (windows default). All allocators are in the game folder in "dll" subfolder. You can add your own allocator there (i.e. from Arma3). We tested some allocators but didn't find any big difference. This is not worth using for now.

These parameters do not change the FPS, but are useful:

Parameter

Description

-nosplash

Removes the splash screen. This makes the game load faster.

-nopause

The game will not stop after being minimized. This is single game parameter. In multiplayer DayZ does not work. This can be useful for a streamer with two displays. If the DayZ window is losing focus when switching windows DayZ will continue rendering. Seems to make switching windows faster.

-window

Makes the game launch in window mode. Does not affect the performance. Reminder: brightness and gamma settings do not work in windowed mode.

Options that we do not recommend:

Parameter

Description

-skipintro

Turns off the world loading in menu. Yes, the game starts faster, but the map will be loaded anyway when you connect to the server. So the time will be sent anyway, but you will not have a chance to choose your character. Plus when reconnecting you may get graphic glitches.

-world=$

Sets the world loading when launching the game. You choose the name with $symbol. Some people advice to use with "empty" parameter, which works same as "-skipintro". But the world will be loading when you connect to the server. This parameter will be useful when there will be several worlds in DayZ.

My launch parameters:

-winxp -nosplash

Configuration files

Every time you switch settings or exit the game, these files are rewritten. We can use these files to change parameters that are not available in the game menu. These flies are in "DayZ" subfolder of "My Documents" folder. We need DayZ.cfg and %name%.DayZProfile (You'll have your windows profile name instead of %name%).

We recommend using Notepad++ for editing these files. If you make any mistakes, you can delete files. Next time being launched the game will create files by default. So be careful and don't lose your settings. And exit the game before editing the files!

The settings are existing in pairs:

key=value;

DayZ.cfg file

In this file you should change only one value.

Find "GPU_MaxFramesAhead". This is 1000 by default. This value is setting up the number of frames that can be prerendered by GPU with some special prediction algorithm. The bad thing is that it can't predict the net frames in multiplayer game. So for high FPS PvP game this should be set to "1". "0" - will mean that videodriver will choose the parameter itself. This will not increase your FPS but will remove the output lag, the game will be more responsive.

There is no sense of changing GPU_DetectedFramesAhead, 3D_Performance, localVRAM and others. Watch the table below why.

Parameter

Description

language

Choose the language.

adapter

setting the GPU. Useful with several displays. Default: -1. Use 1st display: , second: - 1 and so on.

3D_Performance

Diagnostic information, re-written when the game starts. No sense to change.

Resolution_Bpp Resolution_W Resolution_H

Resolution and bit deth in fullscreen mode. Menu analog: Video > User Interface > Resolution

refresh

Refresh frequency in full-screen.

Render_W Render_H

3D rendering resolution in fullscreen mode

Windowed

windowed mode: "1". full-screen mode: "0".

winX winY

Window position from left top corner

winW winH

Window size in windowed mode.

winDefW winDefH

3D resolution in windowed mode.

FSAA

Full screen antialasing. Same as Video > Rendering > Antialiasing

postFX

Post FX qualty. Same as Video > Rendering > Postprocess Quality

GPU_MaxFramesAhead

Maximum pre-rendered frames. See above.

GPU_DetectedFramesAhead

Diagnostic information. Is being re-written. No sense to change.

HDRPrecision

The quality of HDR for lighting. Same as Video > Rendering > HDR Quality

lastDeviceId

Diagnostic information. Is being re-written. No sense to change.

localVRAM

Diagnostic information. Is being re-written. No sense to change.

nonlocalVRAM

Diagnostic information. Is being re-written. No sense to change.

vsync

Vertical synchronisation 1 - enabled. 0 - disabled. Same as Video > VSync

ssaoEnabled

global shadowing. 1 - enabled. 0 - disabled. Same as Video > Rendering > Ambient Occlusion

AToC

Multisampling regime. Same as Video > Rendering > Alpha to Coverage

SWLayersCount

The clouds quality Same as Video > Quality > Clouds

PipQuality

Picture in Picture quality. Should be used for mirror in vehcles.

PPAA

Post FX smoothing. Same as Video > Rendering > Edge Smoothing

username.DayZProfile file

In this file you can also find the last server you played at.
Also there are all your key binds. This makes easy to copy and backup them.

preferredObjectViewDistance - setting the objects viewing distance in game (houses, trees, etc.) This can't be changed in the game menu. From the last update the default is about 1700. For better FPS you can set this to 1000. If you do this, you wouldn't see any objects/trees more than 1000 meters away.

sceneComplexity - sets up a maximum amount of polygons in the scene. Same as Video > Quality > Objects. "Very Low" is equal "200000", and "Very High" is for "1000000". If your PC is pathetic, you can try to set less than "200 000". The less you choose, the more FPS you'll get and worse the game will look like. Loot, being the smallest object in the game starts to disappear at some distance. We make a conclusion that loot visual appearance is sceneComplexity dependent.

shadowZDistance - this sets a shadows drawing distance. Can't be changed in the game. Default is 250. I prefer to turn shadows off, but other way is tweaking this parameter. Not recommended to set less than 100. This also affects some other effects in game, i.e. water quality (see FAQ section).

mouseSmoothing - mouse smoothing. Does not affect performance, but can reduce the input lag. I recommend to set "0", can be useful when shooting fast.

viewDistance - setting the viewing distance in game. This can't be changed in the game menu. Default is about 3000. Recently was made ignored by servers. Now this affects only the game menu.

terrainGrid - terrain quality. Same as Video > Quality > Terrain. The smaller value is - the better quality is. This parameter is ignored by servers. Working only in menu.

Some other options are in this table:

Parameter

Description

anisoFilter

Anisotropic filtering of textures. Same as Video > Textures > Texture Filtering

TexQuality

Textures quality. Same as Video > Textures > Texture Detail

TexMemory

Video memory size. Same as Video > Textures > Video Memory

shadingQuality

...

shadowQuality

Shadows quality. Same as Video > Quality > Shadows

bloom

Bloom effects. Same as Video > Rendering > Bloom

rotblur

Rotation blur. Same as Video > Rendering > Rotation Bloom

fov

Field Of View. Same as Configure > Field of View

headBob

Character's head waving. Same as Configure > Gameplay > Head Bob

mouseSensitivityX

Horizontal mouse sensitivity.

mouseSensitivityY

Vertical mouse sensitivity.

playerName

Name of character. Can also be changed in the game menu.

remoteIPAddress

IP server address in "Remote" tab.

remotePort

server port in "Remote" tab.

lastMPServer

IP and port of the last server you joined. Is re-written when connecting.

lastMPServerName

The title of the last server you joined.

Other options description will be added if needed.

Testing PCs

Core 2 Quad Q9550
@ 3.0Ghz
8GB DDR2
GeForce GTX 760 2GB
Win 10

Core i5-4670
@ 3.4Ghz
8GB DDR3
GeForce GTX 460 1GB
Win 7

Core i5-2450M
@ 2.5Ghz
8GB DDR3
Radeon HD6630M 1GB
Win 7

Word from the author

The reason to write this guide was because I found no decent DayZ manuals in Steam Community. A lot of guides are not accurate or give wrong information. As an example I would mention some guides which advise to use launch options from other games engines! But mostly authors are idle to make a deep research. I decided to make it clear and get rid of wrong information. I tried to share in a most appropriate way everything I learned about.

I'll be glad to receive critics and proposals from you in comments. Please, don't post flood and useless debates. If this guide helped you, or you find it useful, don't hesitate to vote for it, add to favorite, and share with friends! This way you'll help to spread the word and make Chernarus more friendly place. =)

If you want to thank me, consider supporting these trusted Ukrainian funds:
https://comebackalive.in.ua
https://prytulafoundation.org
https://bank.gov.ua/en

PS I had to remove dayzru from contributors list because, unfortunately, he was poisoned by russian propaganda. Having knowledge of English language and access to independent sources of information he chose to support army of russian invaders that perform genocide against innocent Ukrainian civilians. I have zero tolerance for such people.

FAQ

[Q]: Textures look weird, low polygonal models, other graphic issues, what's wrong with that?
[A]: Try Windows x64. No guarantees, but this helped out many times.

[Q]: The game crashes, does not start with "-winxp". Any advise?
[A]: Try turn on the Windows XP compatibility mode in the file parameters. Also, "HDR Quality" must be "Very low".

[Q]: After an Experimental update the game is lagging. The stable is working fine. What's the problem?
[A]: Sometimes the game is ignoring the "GPU_MaxFramesAhead" parameter from DayZ.cfg after the update. nVidia users can adjust this manually in nVidia Control Panel.
You need to go to Manage 3D settings - Program Settings, then add and choose DayZ_Experimental.exe and set the "Maximum pre-rendered frames" to "1". I don't know about AMD, if you know about that, just let me know.

[Q]: The water looks worse than in Quake 1. WTF?
[A]: For some odd reason, this is influenced by "shadowZDistance" parameter from username.DayZProfile. Being set to 250 make it work like a charm.

18 Comments

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Capitoneo [author] 4 Apr, 2023 @ 9:19am

Hey, thank you for the feedback. No, I don't have one for the server. Also, I haven't updated this guide for years, so most of the points might not work anymore. Now, DayZ has a new rendering implementation, and I think you don't need this guide anymore. However, I left this guide as is for folks who might want to use an old version of DayZ client.

MadSilence 4 Apr, 2023 @ 2:23am

EPIC Do you have or know of a similar guide for Dayz Server on a Dedicated PC? Maximise performance etc

ed 23 Nov, 2021 @ 6:29am

thx

Holden_Mcgroin 2 Nov, 2021 @ 10:44am

Cheers, I'm getting very comfortable frame rates out of a 750ti - great guide.

Mehrshad 5 Jan, 2021 @ 3:49am

good guide

Customer ******* Stole My Money! 12 Sep, 2017 @ 9:30am

i just want to add

that vsync will also prevent certain audiocards from making innapropriate noises
(this will work in all games if your PC can run faster than 100frames per second)

Capitoneo [author] 24 Dec, 2015 @ 3:32am

To test cases when cpu much better than gpu and vice versa.

Kyzer 21 Dec, 2015 @ 5:28pm

Why the fuck do you have a core 2 quad with a 760 and a i5 with a 460?
460 is shit compared to 760, and core 2 quad is shit compared to i5.

skOsH♥ 6 Dec, 2015 @ 9:00pm

Thanks for telling people how to edit the game's files to run better than they are at default...which is sad that the developers themselves cannot, won't, or don't know how to edit the files to make the game perform better.

Having said that, I guess anyone who enjoys this game might get slightly more fps from this.

Capitoneo [author] 28 Nov, 2015 @ 5:21am

Hello!
Nope, i'm from Ukraine and DayzRU is from Russia. He helped me with translation of this guide.
If you find any mistake, just let us know where is it exactly.
Frequently Asked Questions as far as i know is pretty much English. =)
But, anyway, thank you for your advice.

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