How to improve FPS in Arma Reforger (PC)
Arma Reforger is Bohemia Interactive's military multiplayer simulator built on the new Enfusion engine, designed as a testbed ahead of Arma 4. Unlike a conventional shooter, here the terrain is huge and persistent, logistics and vehicles matter as much as gunfights, and dedicated servers can host up to 128 players simulating AI, vehicles, and destruction simultaneously. The engine puts much of that simulation on a single main CPU thread, so client-side performance depends heavily on per-core processor power and, decisively, on the load and tick rate of the server you connect to, more than on raw GPU power.
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Calculations based on our FPS model combined with the % gain of each setting (measured in public benchmarks).
1. Quick wins (no visual loss)
Start here. Each one adds a little, but together they give +44% free FPS.
Object Draw Distance
Controls how far away buildings, vehicles, and scenery objects are rendered on the open maps of Everon and Arland, which are massive compared to a conventional shooter. Lowering it to Medium noticeably reduces geometry load without the nearby environment losing detail.
Grass Draw Distance
Everon's dense vegetation renders in a wide radius around the player and has a noticeable GPU and CPU cost, especially in rural areas with tall grass that also affects camouflage.
Terrain Quality
Defines the level of detail of the terrain mesh and its blend textures across the map's 51 km²; on Ultra the engine recalculates more detail than you'd notice from the normal infantry combat perspective.
Shadow Quality
Dynamic shadows from vegetation, buildings, and vehicles are constantly recalculated in Enfusion, and their cost grows quickly on open maps with lots of vegetation and scattered structures.
Frame Rate Limit
Since this is a game with single-main-thread simulation, a poorly set FPS limit can introduce extra input latency with no real benefit; leaving it unlimited or matched to your monitor's refresh rate avoids that unnecessary cost.
2. Medium impact settings
Here's where most of the FPS is. Minor visual impact, major performance impact.
Grass Quality
Besides draw distance, the density and individual detail of each grass patch has its own rendering cost, especially when moving through rural areas in ground vehicles.
Texture Quality
Uniform, weapon, and structure textures mostly consume VRAM rather than compute power, so Medium is usually enough on GPUs with 6-8 GB without noticing any real loss of combat detail.
Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
Enfusion's TAA smooths the edges of vegetation and distant buildings well, but at its highest level adds a noticeable sampling cost at 1440p/4K resolutions.
Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
Reinforces the visual contact between vegetation, vehicles, and buildings, but its cost grows in interiors and dense urban areas without providing a decisive improvement for spotting enemies.
Postprocess (Bloom/Motion Blur)
Motion blur and excessive bloom make it harder to track weapon fire and vehicle trajectories at a distance, on top of adding a small per-frame post-processing cost.
3. Upscaling (DLSS / FSR / XeSS)
The biggest gain in the game. Compatible with almost any modern GPU.
NVIDIA DLSS
+8% FPSArma Reforger doesn't include native DLSS in its options menu; the game's only internal scaling is Resolution Scale. On NVIDIA GPUs the real alternative is forcing NIS (NVIDIA Image Scaling) from the driver control panel combined with a Resolution Scale below 100%, which gives a moderate gain without the sharpness of built-in DLSS.
AMD FSR
+7% FPSThere's no native FSR in the game either. On AMD cards the equivalent route is enabling RSR (Radeon Super Resolution) at the driver level while lowering Resolution Scale in the game's video options, with a similar performance result but somewhat more visible smoothing than a built-in upscaler.
Intel XeSS
+5% FPSXeSS isn't implemented in Reforger. On Intel Arc GPUs the practical option remains manually lowering Resolution Scale from the game's graphics options; the built-in TAA helps mask part of the resulting sharpness loss.
4. Tips by GPU
NVIDIA
- •Lower Resolution Scale to 85-90% before touching other settings if your bottleneck is the GPU at 1440p/4K, since Reforger has no DLSS to absorb that load for you.
- •Keep Game Ready drivers updated; NVIDIA has published several Enfusion-specific optimizations since early access launched.
- •Enable Low Latency Mode in the NVIDIA control panel to reduce input latency when firing, especially noticeable in medium/long-range fights with a scope.
AMD
- •Enable RSR from Adrenalin if you need more FPS headroom at 1440p/4K, since it's the closest thing to a real upscaler available for AMD cards in this game.
- •Enable Radeon Anti-Lag to offset the extra latency from AI and network simulation on heavily populated servers.
- •Check that Smart Access Memory (Resizable BAR) is enabled in the BIOS; it helps CPU-GPU bandwidth on Reforger's large open maps.
Sistema
- •Prioritize a CPU with high per-core performance over core count: Enfusion's main simulation (AI, vehicle physics, network) relies heavily on a single thread, so a fast single-core processor makes more difference than one with many slow cores.
- •Reserve at least 16 GB of RAM and go up to 32 GB if you often play on full 128-player servers with lots of active mods, since memory usage grows with session length.
- •Install the game on an SSD to reduce terrain and vegetation streaming while moving fast by vehicle, and pick servers with a good reported tick rate in the server browser: in Reforger, server performance matters as much as your own hardware.
5. Known game issues
FPS crashing on 128-player servers
On community servers at the player cap, the combined load of AI, vehicles, and network sync saturates the main simulation thread on both server and client, causing framerate drops that no graphics setting alone can fully fix.
Stuttering loading terrain in fast vehicles
Moving at high speed by helicopter or ground vehicle across the map's 50+ km², terrain, vegetation, and structure streaming can generate occasional hitches while the engine loads new sectors of the world.
High RAM and VRAM usage in long modded sessions
Long matches, especially with active Workshop mods, tend to build up memory usage progressively, which can lead to performance drops or unexpected crashes on systems with a tight 16 GB of RAM.
6. Frequently asked questions
Does Arma Reforger depend more on the CPU or the GPU?▾
Why do FPS drop so much on certain servers?▾
Which setting gives the most FPS with the least visual loss?▾
Does Arma Reforger have DLSS, FSR, or XeSS?▾
Want to know exactly how many FPS YOUR PC will get?
Enter your GPU and CPU in our calculator and measure the real impact of each setting.
Calculate FPS for Arma Reforger →Calculations based on consensus of technical sources and our own FPS model. More about our methodology →