What hardware should I upgrade from?

[sothis 10]

Hi!

As I recently found out, my hardware, in some respects, was pretty outdated.

Especially when playing ArmA 2 (plus AO and other expansions/addons) I've noticed this.

As we all know, ArmA 2 is a pretty resource-hungry game. When OA came out, I was sure that they had optimized it better. And really, I'm still sure they did. But when I started playing on the different DAO.nu valhalla maps, I noticed that the FPS dropped very drastically when Chernarus maps were loaded. This made sense because of the high abundance of trees and foliage, thus I started to consider upgrading. I went from a crappy Q8200 at a stock 2.3 to a Q9550 clocked to 3.4, and I noticed differences, but not anything drastic unfortunately. So I started wondering what else could be the cause of the FPS drops. - Mind you, I have ALWAYS played with medium to low details on everything except resolution, which is on 1920x1200.

The obvious to look at is the GFX card of course.

I have these current specs:

ASUS P5Q SE/R S776 P45 ATXSND+GLN+UB2 (hooray for big product names)

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 at an overclocked 3.4 (bonus info: Stock cooler because there is no voltage gain = no significant temp gain)

ASUS ENGTX260TOP 896 ram. Entirely stock.

2 sticks of cheap'o Kingston DDR2-800, 2048MB, CAS 5 entirely stock as well.

+ Entirely clean install of windows 7 on SSD, and everything that is ArmA 2 is on SSD aswell, whilst running gamebooster.

This along with a Recom Powerstation. I'd say it is a considerable powerhouse for the more than casual on-a-budget gamer.

But tell me; What in these specs need a REAL upgrade, to get me from the Chernarus fps of 20 or less, and Takistan fps less than 40?

I've seen people after a few googles that use an nvidia 285 gfx card and DDR3 ram with details on high or very high running a stable 25 FPS!

I keep asking myself the question if the switch to DDR3 (which includes a new motherboard since the one I got only supports DDR2) or a step up in graphics card would do the trick, but I really can't figure it out.

If anyone can help with some information, I'd love to hear it. I'm on a budget of 730$ (or 540€), in case you have products in mind.

Thanks!

[flattermann 12]

try lowering your resolution to 1050p. Other than that, changing the GPU could do the trick. Thats where i would start, then maybe later gradually upgrade the board and the ram..

Edited January 24, 2011 by Flattermann

[sothis 10]

I've tried that aswell.

The problem persists as always unfortunately.

Sorry for not mentioning that I had tried it.

[Gunter Severloh 4070]

This is the thread you want to discuss this in:

Will my PC Run this? What CPU/GPU to get? What settings? System Specifications.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=72181

[TechnoTerrorist303 10]

The graphics card should be fairly ok for a while but I would consider putting some more/faster ram in. Don't forget your 2gb has got to handle the OS as well as the game and Windows 7 needs a fair bit.

I had a gtx260 for ages and it ran Arma 2 fine... Don't forget though if you put more than 3gb ram in you'll need 64 bit Windows instead of the 32... Why people use 32 in this day and age though is beyond me.

[seelix 10]

Do what Günther said.