We compared three formulations of the discrete dipole approximation (DDA) for simulation of light scattering by particles with refractive indices m=10+10i , 0.1+i , and 1.6+0.01i . These formulations include the filtered coupled dipoles (FCD), the lattice dispersion relation (LDR) and the radiative reaction correction. We compared the number of iterations required for the convergence of the iterative solver (proportional to simulation time) and the accuracy of final results. We showed that the LDR performance for m=10+10i is especially bad, while the FCD is a good option for all cases studied. Moreover, we analyzed the detailed structure of DDA errors and the spectrum of the DDA interaction matrix to understand the performance of the FCD. In particular, this spectrum, obtained with the FCD for particles smaller than the wavelength, falls into the bounds, physically implied for the spectrum of the infinite-dimensional integral scattering operator, contrary to two other DDA formulations. Finally, such extreme refractive indices can now be routinely simulated using modern desktop computers using the publicly available ADDA code, which includes an efficient implementation of the FCD.