ArmA 3 System Requirements

[Dawks 10]

Just tell your friend to visit TechReport to read the latest system guide.

Thanks kylania. I crawl Tom's pretty routinely as a way of stayingin touch; this is new to me.

* Betcha my buddy would start bleeding from the ears reading through all this.

* Idea is to scrape this sorta source and boil it all down into something like an interactive spreadsheet like dashboard. I think that would make a really sexy page.

There's no way BIS knows what the system requirements for A3 is going to be at this point

I'm sure they're closing in on that. I mean, with release Q4, they have to have nailed down a lot of the foundational design decisions. No?

80 / 20 ... it's the last 20% that busts our guts.

if you built the best computer you can at this point you might be close.

heh ... might get close? I doubt ArmA3 will be that demanding.

FWIW I keep my eye on "diminishing returns". With good decisions a $3K box would probably perform as well (I mean practically) as his $4.5K shopping list. If someone can actually buy best of breed in every category w/o breaking sweat then more power to them, but I don't think that describes the average player.

I'm not average. I don't much care about eye candy. No glitching, no lag, FPS between 40 and 55 ... good comms and sound ... I'm happy with that.

[naizarak 4]

I'm probably not adding anything to the discussion at this point, but I think that a

quad core CPU

and at least 4gb of ram

are a requirement. That said, not all quad-cores are the same. AMD's old phenoms are fading fast, and bulldozer variants are even slower. Personally I'm going to be running a 2600k with 8gb of ram. Hopefully Arma 3 will support hyperthreading.

Graphics on the other hand scale very well, so maybe a decent mid-high end card would be fine for high detail and a short draw distance.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

There's no way BIS knows what the system requirements for A3 is going to be at this point, but if you built the best computer you can at this point you might be close.

I wouldn't dare visiting the computer shop at this point - unless you are running something that can't handle current games at all, you risk disappointment if you upgrade before release. Allah knows that BIS releases haven't been "recommended specs" friendly in the past.

[CTCCoco 1]

Please, stop compare BF3 with ArmA, it just hurts my eyes. BF3 don't have to calculate all the complex things which ArmA have to. A huge, I mean HUGE map, free AI (complex AI) moving in a free world, complex ballistic for weapons, complex systems. Guys, BF3 is just a shooter, maybe more serious than CoD but still a shooter. It's not a bad thing, but ArmA is a simulator, and as a simulator it takes much more resources... and from CPU, RAM, GPU and everything.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Please, stop compare BF3 with ArmA, it just hurts my eyes. BF3 don't have to calculate all the complex things which ArmA have to. A huge, I mean HUGE map, free AI (complex AI) moving in a free world, complex ballistic for weapons, complex systems. Guys, BF3 is just a shooter, maybe more serious than CoD but still a shooter. It's not a bad thing, but ArmA is a simulator, and as a simulator it takes much more resources... and from CPU, RAM, GPU and everything.

Needs to be added to forum rules :p

[onlyrazor 11]

It hurts my eyes when people call Arma a simulator and all other games 'shooters.' While Arma is a military simulation game, it is also just that, a game. I'm sure all sorts of games can get along just fine without the fandumb bashing them. Except for OFpDR, of course :p

[CTCCoco 1]

It hurts my eyes when people call Arma a simulator and all other games 'shooters.' While Arma is a military simulation game, it is also just that, a game. I'm sure all sorts of games can get along just fine without the fandumb bashing them. Except for OFpDR, of course :p

Who says that's not a game? It's a simulator game, while the other games are just fast shooters, without almost any simulator element.

[onlyrazor 11]

I think we're going offtopic here with the "shooter vs. simulator" seeing as this thread is dedicated to Arma 3 Requirements.

[griffz 1]

Rise of Flight.

ArmA 2 is poorly optimized because a few trees (no AI, only 1 unit, the player) can take your frame rates from 60 down to 23. And various other things. To say the game is optimized is just being naive. Compared to RoF, the performance is very consistent. Another example of a poorly optimized game/engine is Lock On FC2 and DCS Black Shark. No matter what PC you seem to have, there are always some stutters.

absolutly ! the proper vegetation addons is still a must have. who need 10K poly tree ?

fuke these orange tree

[abdel 1]

Hello Gents,

I was wondering can my PC run Arma 3?

OS: Win7 x64

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad (2.7Ghz) Q7600

RAM: 8 GB

Video: AMD Radeon HD 6570 (2GB dedicated)

HDD: 1TB

Currently it runs ARMA 2 on high settings with vsync and AA turned off at 1280x1024, also BF3 at the same resolution with many of the settings at medium....

Thanks in advance

[CTCCoco 1]

Hello Gents,

I was wondering can my PC run Arma 3?

OS: Win7 x64

Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad (2.7Ghz) Q7600

RAM: 8 GB

Video: AMD Radeon HD 6570 (2GB dedicated)

HDD: 1TB

Currently it runs ARMA 2 on high settings with vsync and AA turned off at 1280x1024, also BF3 at the same resolution with many of the settings at medium....

Thanks in advance

Your graphic card is not so good... but surely you can run it at low or maybe medium settings with AA off, of course, and not too high resolution (1280x1024 will be fine).

[abdel 1]

CTCCoco, thanks for your reply.

Medium-low mixed settings would be more than enough for me :)

[CTCCoco 1]

CTCCoco, thanks for your reply.

Medium-low mixed settings would be more than enough for me :)

BTW, I think you will be much better with a 7770 or 6770-6790.

[abdel 1]

A month ago I was going for 5770, but my crappy HP minitower is frustratingly designed in a way that prevents you from installing such big sized cards.

Damn you HP!!!!

[PuFu 4600]

A month ago I was going for 5770, but my crappy HP minitower is frustratingly designed in a way that prevents you from installing such big sized cards.

Damn you HP!!!!

Nobody made you buy a crappy pre-built system, isn't it? HP is not to blame in this case.

[abdel 1]

Just was talking out of frustration, why would they put everything just behind the PCI-x port, else where on the motherboard is really just empty!

anyway I'm swaying away from the topic...

[Clarkey1 10]

I guess this thread is for ArmA 3 as in the final product but I can't see the point of creating a new thread for a question that most likely can't be answered in depth just yet. Do you think a system that can run the Alpha would be able to run the final product? Now this is only assuming we get the full map of Limnos with just a few small bits of content to drill for bugs with more gradually added over time. Does anyone have any sort of insight though? Could it maybe even be possible with this scenario that it would actually run even better leading up the final release as it will be better optimized? I'm nowhere near an expert on game development but I thought maybe some of you guys that make mods or happen to be computer hardware guru's might have an idea (or even a BI dev?;)). I guess that if we just get a small flat terrain to test vehicles and weapons on the performance will be drastically reduced when running the actual Limnos map.

tl;dr If I can get the A3 community Aplha running smoothly (or not) on my computer do you think this is any indication of how the final product will run or will it be too soon to tell?

Note: to be more specific when I say 'run' I mean a decent frame rate anywhere from 30-40 with whatever graphics settings are necessary to achieve this.

[CTCCoco 1]

Who the hell says that the BIS requirimenta are the minium requiriments? These are recommended... if not, you are telling me that an i5 can't run it well, because minium requiriments always sucks for the game.

[PuFu 4600]

If I can get the A3 community Aplha running smoothly (or not) on my computer do you think this is any indication of how the final product will run or will it be too soon to tell?

Note: to be more specific when I say 'run' I mean a decent frame rate anywhere from 30-40 with whatever graphics settings are necessary to achieve this.

It could be. But it depends on the content that will be provided with the Alpha. It is really hard to say, but if for instance the alpha comes with the final version of the island, as well as with a few units and vehicles from the final product, and it includes most new techs such as PIP/RTT and the likes, then yes, it could be considered a testbed (which is in fact one of the main objectives for BIS with their community alpha plan).

Who the hell says that the BIS requirimenta are the minium requiriments? These are recommended... if not, you are telling me that an i5 can't run it well, because minium requiriments always sucks for the game.

It is a mix between the two actually.

I am pretty sure what they want to achieve is to raise the requirements that high in order to be able to say: this is a minimum if you want to be able to enjoy the game as it was meant to be played, with decent framerates running smooth. Anything less, although i am sure some older rigs are more than capable of running the game, saves BIS the heaches with troubleshooting and the likes (for instance, for A2 the sys req are way to low if you ask me.).

Quick answer: they want to switch from system requirements that (barely) are able to run the game to ones that allow their users to play the game. There is a huge difference.

[rjc0235 1]

well all i can say is Bohemia interactive have a record for making games that dont run so well, probarbly due to a lower budget, but with arma II i think it has become a sort of hit.

now if take on helicopters is anything to go by (which it probarbly isnt, as less detail) ARMA III will definately need more to run, but i wouldnt say too much more

[excess3 11]

Will that pc run arma 3 ?

[PuFu 4600]

yet it will. get a ssd as well

[excess3 11]

yet it will. get a ssd as well

I hope arma 3 installation folder will fit into ramdisk , don't really see how ssd could help

[NeuroFunker 11]

well all i can say is Bohemia interactive have a record for making games that dont run so well, probarbly due to a lower budget, but with arma II i think it has become a sort of hit.

now if take on helicopters is anything to go by (which it probarbly isnt, as less detail) ARMA III will definately need more to run, but i wouldnt say too much more

my buddy, for some reason is sure, that with dx11 renderer, the game will run alot better. Don't ask me why, but when todays fastest renderer dx9, cant run arma smooth maxed out on most of the rigs, then it can be only worse with dx11 renderer.

[Clarkey1 10]

Thanks for the answer PuFu, sounds pretty reasonable, I hadn't actually thought about the rtt aspect or whether or not it would be in the Alpha. If the current screenshots (the majority of which are pre-alpha I think) are anything to go by I think my current rig might have trouble running it on anything above low-medium. The view distance of objects and terrain and the actual vd look huge (but honestly I can't run A2 maxed out so they might not look that big to users who can). If I remember correctly though, it was stated by Ivan (maybe someone else from BIS) at Gamescom that the data streaming would be improved by up to 4 or 6 times the speed of Arma2? Does this mean the speed at which the game grabs info from the hard drive? Or is there more to it than that, as in does this effect other pieces of hardware or just the hard drive? I'm thinking about getting an SSD anyway but will this mean the possiblity of having larger view distances and terrain/object detail without needing to get an SSD? The view distance and shadow distance increase just in the ToH community preview looked pretty amazing to me. Well I was actually more amazed by the fact that I had basically no noticeable performance hit from having a 10km vd which if I try at the moment in A2, kills my PC. I'm hoping to see similar tech for A3, it's very impressive and I might be able to run the Alpha at a decent frame rate for the time being without having to upgrade anything straight away.