Unexplainable issues regarding installation and setup

Lets start with my specs first:

-Windows 8 Consumer Preview 64-bit

-i7 2600 @3.8ghz

-Radeon HD 6750 w/ 1GB VRAM

-8GB RAM

So, I bought Arma 2 CO on Steam about a month ago. I wanted to play DayZ but none of my friends bought into it. I decided I would try and play by myself. I spent about 3 hours setting the game up, but I couldn't get it to run at any playable FPS.

A few friends recently wanted me to play with them, so I figured I would give setup a shot again. I uninstalled all Arma related stuff, and reinstalled it. I opened each game before messing with installed DayZ, as suggested. I will post a few screenshots, just so there is no confusion about what I am discussing here.

Note the the text/menus were not all pixelated/blurry the last time I had installed the game. The first thing people told me to do was make sure that in the in game video settings, I used "default" for the video memory option. I tried this, but I was given no "default" option. Only "low" and "normal", as seen here Screenshot. I have no idea what the issue here is. It didn't allow me to select the "default" option either time the game was installed. Maybe it is an issue with the game detecting my video card or something? I installed the newest drivers for my GPU right before I installed both games.

I scoured the web, Reddit, and 4chan, and tried all of the tweaks suggested at both of all places (mouse smoothing, shadow quality, editing config files, editing user files, etc), and tried all of them, but each showed no significant or noticeable increase in performance or graphics quality.

No one I know has ever had this issue with the game, and I am completely lost here. I have tried basically everything. I am at my wit's end with this.

If you think knowing a specific piece of information could help you assess any issue that I might be having, just ask me and I will gladly tell you everything I know about it. Thanks for any and all help.