ArmA 3 System Requirements

[guttersnipe 1]

Hi guys, mind if i pick your brains on a similiar line of tech/spec queries ?

Building a new system (yes, for Arma 3!)(mostly) atm & would appreciate any opinion on the following choices I've yet to make.

Motherboard - have three in mind, same-ish prices (in the uk)

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP5-TH Intel Z77 (most expensive) (£200)

or ?

Asus Z77 Maximus V Gene Intel Z77 (£154)

or ?

Asus SABERTOOTH Z77 (£160)

I intend overclocking, so that's a big factor in choice, as is the dual GPU performance. Not in the position to afford multiple displays yet, but does the Thunderbolt tech warrant the higher price if I did?)

Memory

(all in the same ball park spec-wise that I can discern)(but I'm no expert) - I'm after 16 Gs (I run some video editing software but that's about it). From what I can see all three flavours are supported by any of the boards above)

GSkill Ripjaws Z Series 1866 CL 9.0 16GB Memory Kit £84

or ?

Corsair Dominator PLATINUM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz £180

or ?

Corsair CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9R Vengeance Performance 16GB DDR3 1866MHz CL9 £80

I'm really a bit confused by the amount of choice on offer & would appreciate any help in picking out the best deal from these choices (or if you have alternatives in the same price bag). . .

{Bought already :

i7 3770k

H100 cooler

Cooler Master 840

Additional fans etc

(keeping my old PSU (900W), my 3 SSD drives, and my 2x 5970's (gawd bless 'em) from my old rig for now)(on Win 7 64, and not touching Windows 8 for all the RAM in Korea)}

[scarecrow398 43]

Hi guys, mind if i pick your brains on a similiar line of tech/spec queries ?

Building a new system (yes, for Arma 3!)(mostly) atm & would appreciate any opinion on the following choices I've yet to make.

Motherboard - have three in mind, same-ish prices (in the uk)

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP5-TH Intel Z77 (most expensive) (£200)

or ?

Asus Z77 Maximus V Gene Intel Z77 (£154)

or ?

Asus SABERTOOTH Z77 (£160)

I intend overclocking, so that's a big factor in choice, as is the dual GPU performance. Not in the position to afford multiple displays yet, but does the Thunderbolt tech warrant the higher price if I did?)

Memory

(all in the same ball park spec-wise that I can discern)(but I'm no expert) - I'm after 16 Gs (I run some video editing software but that's about it). From what I can see all three flavours are supported by any of the boards above)

GSkill Ripjaws Z Series 1866 CL 9.0 16GB Memory Kit £84

or ?

Corsair Dominator PLATINUM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-15000C9 1866MHz £180

or ?

Corsair CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9R Vengeance Performance 16GB DDR3 1866MHz CL9 £80

I'm really a bit confused by the amount of choice on offer & would appreciate any help in picking out the best deal from these choices (or if you have alternatives in the same price bag). . .

Unless you plan on doing 3D rendering and such don't bother with 16gb of ram, save some money and get 8gb, also you don't need to spend a huge amount on RAM, i spent 40 (aud) for 8gb of ram from a Taiwanese brand (Transend) and its lasted for 2 builds, both based around gaming/Photoediting and its got me by fine

Same with the Mobo, Thunderbolt while cool isn't really in use, you may aswell just get a USB 3.0 drive for external stuff (They're cheaper too.)

I hear the Extreme4 is good for overclocking (mine came with a software package and such plus a onboard reset switch for the CMOS but i haven't touched anyof it as O/Cing isn't my thing) i hear the same for the P8 Z77 pro as well by Asus.

What about GPU's? also, if you're interested in Multimontoring to get a seccond monitor and leave out the second GPU, you won't need it for a while at least.

[colossusking 1]

So guys I need a new computer for ArmA 3 my laptop will not run it. I was hoping you guys could help me out. I have a budget of 500 USD. What ever I can get that will run ArmA 3 and other similar games will be fine. Thanks.

[Llano 11]

So guys I need a new computer for ArmA 3 my laptop will not run it. I was hoping you guys could help me out. I have a budget of 500 USD. What ever I can get that will run ArmA 3 and other similar games will be fine. Thanks.

Well, i would recommend you to buy a second-hand computer. It will be hard to find a new computer that will be able to run ArmA 3 that cost 500 USD.

Edit: Fixed spelling

Edited December 12, 2012 by Llano

[colossusking 1]

Well, i would reccomends you to buy a second-hand computer. It will be hard to find a new computer that will be able to run ArmA 3 that cost 500 USD.

I want to build a computer. So i need your guys help to get the best parts for under 500 USD. I am pretty new at this so I dont know the best places to look. Any help appreciated. Thanks

[Kovy 1]

I want to build a computer. So i need your guys help to get the best parts for under 500 USD. I am pretty new at this so I dont know the best places to look. Any help appreciated. Thanks

Read his reply again. You'll have a hard time running ArmA 3 with a PC worth less than $500.

[guttersnipe 1]

Thanks @ Scarecrow.

GPU - I'm using my old system's 5970 x two for now - don't see any performance increase worth upgrading for in the current crop of cards (esp at the top end prices, maybe only gaining 5-10%)

I think I will stick to the 16 g's of ram some of my editing software is pretty beef/greedy.

Any opinion on G-Skills ram ? Had heard their aftersales can be a bit poor. Also, reading further into the Corsair Vengence I've seen lots of bad feedback re 1 stick out of 4 not workign properly & needing to be RMA'd. That said, I agree with you re:prcing - I think the £180 Dominators might be a tad over the top for my needs. ...

[Covert_Death 11]

get some of this wonder RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147096

you are already saying you are going to be overclocking so i assume you know how to adjust RAM timings and speed... set those sticks to 1866 and 9-9-9-24t @ 1.41V and go like mad... these sticks have DECENT stock settings but can clock and time like no other ram out there. they are amazing, and cheap

[guttersnipe 1]

@Covert Death - what are you using to cool those sticks with ? don't even see basic cooling measures on them (the stock timings aren't great). Thanks for the cooment though.

[Covert_Death 11]

you don't need spreaders if you have any airflow. these chips are reallllly low voltage. at 1866 and 9-9-9-24t and 1.41v it still is gonna put off less heat than most naked stick out of the box.... most out the box sticks are 1.5v or 1.6v

[SPAZZx7 10]

Well i planned to wait until arma 3 came out, then build a computer to run arma most effectively based on others experiences and to get the most out of the game... However an unfortunate incident left me without a hard hitting desktop and guess whats put ahead of schedule. I was hoping yall would be kind enough to point me in the direction of the gear best suited to make sure to make it happen.

Goals are to run on high, no AA or anything, but distance view to be at 3000 to 5000 range.

My budget is around 1500.

[chortles 263]

Is anything salvageable from the prior desktop? If not then you can reuse, if not... have you taken a look at this Small Gaming PC build from Maximum PC? It's declared at $1655 so just by reusing an existing Windows 7 key/license you should get to about $1515.

To me the biggest cost savings priorities would be on the video card and the storage -- after all, that's a claimed $380 worth of storage with the SSD being by far the bulk ($220 for Corsair Force GS 240 GB?! I got an Intel 330 Series 240 GB for $133 over Black Friday weekend!) of that cost, and it's your call how much mechanical/spinning/platter hard drive storage you need. Personally I'd absolutely go further and downgrade from the MSI GTX 670 Power Edition 2 GB (I've heard accusations of them overvolting 660 Ti and 670 cards in such a way as to lead to real stability issues) in favor of something in the 7850/7870/660/660 Ti range; 7950 frankly is a maybe depending on what you can find.

(The official word from Something Awful's systems-building thread is that good conventional cooling is more worthwhile than watercooling, but an all-in-one CPU liquid cooler is nowhere near as much a severe case of "mark up" as the storage and video card in the Maximum PC build.)

EDIT: Here is an example build using the same case but with a 660 Ti video card, no SSD and the i5-3570 with stock cooler so no overclock capability plus a relatively cheaper Z77 chipset (OC-capable, I say the user should have just paid the barely-extra for the i5-3570K) motherboard; even with the monitor and OS included, this build comes out to just under $1300.

Edited December 26, 2012 by Chortles

[iceman77 18]

You can get a heck of a computer nowadays for 1500$. One that will run A2 smooth as glass anyhow. Given that you buy parts online (newEgg etc) and build it or have it built even. You could even go cheaper and still run the game like liquid. Not saying it's not good to plan ahead, I'm just saying it's not completely about $ amount. Alot of it's about the combination of parts used. For example my pc is modestly powerful for ~700$ (10 months ago) and runs the game smooth, anywhere from ~(40 - 180 fps). It's a good combination though and should still be more than viable for A3, given that hardware demand increase of A3 is similar to that of the transition from A1 to A2.

i5-2500k cpu
asus gtx560
asus p8p67 mobo
8GB corsair 1600 ram
antec900 case
corsair 750w ps
250G hdd

[chortles 263]

Iceman77, I'd say rather that you can get a heck of a computer nowadays for well less than $1500, even (well) sub-$1000 -- it's all about where you make the sacrifices, though honestly if it's being built as "my Arma 3 machine" and there's a spare hard drive laying around, I'd rather that SPAZZx7 just use a single SSD than be stuck installing Arma 3 on a HDD.

Iceman77, your build seems sound enough -- but if a community alpha does come out, I hope that it runs well enough that you won't need to upgrade any of that. I'd suggest that a i5-3570K, 7850/7870/7870 GHz Edition (apparently any of these exceed the 560 Ti by now) or a 660 Ti and a Z77 motherboard seem like natural successors, while the RAM and PSU should be retainable... haven't gotten a SSD yet though?

[SPAZZx7 10]

Chortles-

Based from your reccomendation, i realized it was a few (2) Months old, and hence how the computer seems to evolve on a scale that could rival a virus, i looked around for a build closer to date. (Getting a little lazy)

Ive stumbled upon this... (Not much digging but the site seems pretty sound) The "High End Gaming PC Build"

http://www.build-gaming-computers.com/high-end-gaming-computer.html

Something else came up from an old friend and he recommended

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=dpcwxy3&model_id=alienware-x51&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19

A previous self wouldnt even think of going to a overhyped pc build company, but i got to looking at it and it nearly matched what my first spot build was. Only thing that bothered me was it probably has a stock fan.

Actually dosnt seem that bad, the only up performance up on the Build is the Video card runs around 25% faster from videocardbenchmark.net It also has blu-ray burner and a larger chassie. Which is a significant difference but the alienware is also cheaper which baffled me.

Im going to assume i havent found a platinum rated build yet if alienware seems up to par. Ill keep looking an get back on here in a few days.

Any input is appreciated, ill be sure to share anything i find as long as your willing to do the same.

Im out,

[Gustafson 1]

Arma3 will no doubt be a beast, all I know is that I have some serious upgrading to do!

[raistpxs 1]

What he said

[chortles 263]

SPAZZx7, in fairness (to me :P) do you mind a mini ITX (or rather "mini-tower") sized desktop or would you rather go ATX or micro ATX? The first link goes to an ATX-sized build that seems basically on par or only slightly better than the Maximum PC build -- and though you should be able to go with the Galaxy-branded 670 and put the price difference into an i7-3770K (the step seems too little for gaming to justify the price difference over a 3570K).

Note that the Alienware X51 is actually a mini ITX (small form factor) build -- I don't know if the motherboard is proprietary, only that it'd be mini ITX, but the CPU in a X51 cannot overclock, while the video card at that price point is a basic 660 instead of the stronger 660 Ti -- and it's only got one native HDMI port, though at least the motherboard has its own (and the CPU in the linked "build" has the higher-end Ivy Bridge integrated graphics). Depending on what deals you can find and what amount of storage you need, if you go the X51 route I'd suggest maybe add $50 to your linked "build" for the two-terabyte (2 TB) hard drive and then buying your own solid state drive for the OS and Arma 3 -- either move (or clone?) the hard drive's contents to that or create your own fresh install on the SSD.

[SPAZZx7 10]

Chortles-

Although the conservative side of me tells me to get bang for the buck, I do alot of moving being in the military, and for the sake of that i must say i would prefer a smaller chassis. Thats something i wasn't putting much thought in. Is is a mistake on my part.

And as for the quad core, i do alot of video editing on the side for various paintball teams and scenario play.

Edited December 28, 2012 by SPAZZx7
Just fixing it up a bit.

[chortles 263]

I'd definitely suggest the Maximum PC build as a guideline for your computer build then -- there are even smaller case/chassis options, but (as you'll see below) that also means less room for certain video cards, CPU coolers, power supplies, and just sheer less room to maneuver one's hands to remove or install parts with while remaining inside the chassis! The X51 seems to have "small size uber alles" as its design vision, while the BitFenix Prodigy case seems to be somewhat larger than mini-ITX cases usually are (now if only they gave this much room to the power supply enclosure! Aim for a power supply that's 140 or 150 mm in length) to accommodate "full sized desktop" CPU coolers and video cards.

If you go the X51 route then I'd also pick the $650 configuration and add the 330 W external power supply... although it's clearly price gouging in action ($100?!) that gives you more head room both budget-wise and power-wise for replacing the CPU, RAM and video card with your own preferences... though there's a limit on how far you can go with the video card, according to this anecdote from GameSpot about replacing the stock video card (had a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555 GPU) with a significantly larger card with a GTX 680 GPU... the swap was very difficult to physically perform due to the case size, they ended up having to "bend back part of the power connector, allowing it to fit the 680's recessed sockets" (the "odd" right-angled six-pin power connectors on the X51 motherboard to the video card wouldn't normally fit because of the new video card's design) and while games had "significant (sometimes huge)" frame rate increases, "The system was very unstable, and most games killed the system after around half an hour. We tried benchmarking in 3DMark Vantage too, but it simply wouldn't finish before the system caved in." According to this though, supposedly people have video cards with GTX 660 Ti and GTX 670 GPUs installed in their X51s and those work... when using the 330 W power supply anyway.

[ScorpionGuard 10]

I have read through page one to page sixty-two. And what I'm seeing is that the technology that the engine is build for is at a loss for most of the communty member that have posted their replies to the form. In the begening there was posts speaking about consol platform based games being compaired with ArmA 2-3. A large porsion of the posters have forgetten, are do not know that the engine code was devopled for military organization that have hardware above and be on what the public had/has at the time. 12 - 24 Core CUP's, GPU's that holds up to 8-12 GBs memory. Just starting there puts things into focus. The engine codeing is more for an simulation that BIS tried to pass off as a game. The game would have to be ran on a rig with at less a 6 core cpu, and 4 gb gpu to max out for game play. I, in the past tried to understand the coding aspect of the platform. But not until after my sumester in IS 101 Programming did I truely understoud the level of diffecuty to run such a heavy haved program on a civilain rig. What the devs have to do (wittch is not going to happen thank god) is to lower the coding for the rigs that are on the market at present. Are like me. Plan to spend 6,500.00 to 7,000.00 on a rig with 6 - 12 core cpu , ,gpu with 4 - 8 gb memory, 10000 - 15000 rpm hhd, and ram from 64 - 512 gbs. Not everyone will agree with these. But my outlook is from a Computing and Information Studied prospective.

[Tonci87 163]

I have read through page one to page sixty-two. And what I'm seeing is that the technology that the engine is build for is at a loss for most of the communty member that have posted their replies to the form. In the begening there was posts speaking about consol platform based games being compaired with ArmA 2-3. A large porsion of the posters have forgetten, are do not know that the engine code was devopled for military organization that have hardware above and be on what the public had/has at the time. 12 - 24 Core CUP's, GPU's that holds up to 8-12 GBs memory. Just starting there puts things into focus. The engine codeing is more for an simulation that BIS tried to pass off as a game. The game would have to be ran on a rig with at less a 6 core cpu, and 4 gb gpu to max out for game play. I, in the past tried to understand the coding aspect of the platform. But not until after my sumester in IS 101 Programming did I truely understoud the level of diffecuty to run such a heavy haved program on a civilain rig. What the devs have to do (wittch is not going to happen thank god) is to lower the coding for the rigs that are on the market at present. Are like me. Plan to spend 6,500.00 to 7,000.00 on a rig with 6 - 12 core cpu , ,gpu with 4 - 8 gb memory, 10000 - 15000 rpm hhd, and ram from 64 - 512 gbs. Not everyone will agree with these. But my outlook is from a Computing and Information Studied prospective.

Well you know that Arma doesn´t support such a number of cores or so much RAM?

[ScorpionGuard 10]

Well you know that Arma doesn´t support such a number of cores or so much RAM?

You are correct, ArmA does not support a high level of cores and ram. On the other hand VBS 2.0+ does. BIS has down geared ArmA from VBS for the civilian market. But the coding is still there in ArmA to access a high level of cores and ram. It is just being block as one of the community member found out and posted his findings. And when he did. BIS had him band for an year for breaking the gaming agreement. Due to the coding be culculis based (like the Mars Rovers for NASA for example). It take a high level of hardware to run it. Put a "governor" on some of the aspects of the code has helped to control the level of hardware needed to run ArmA on lower level hardware. But not low enough to run smoothly. It takes years to rewrite the code (to compact and make it less lenghty) so that a non military grade computing system can run the code. But due to ArmA being simi open to moding. There are work arounds for some coding heavy handness. As long as someone from the community knows how to do so. Without breaking the game agreement.

[maddogx 13]

You are correct, ArmA does not support a high level of cores and ram. On the other hand VBS 2.0+ does. BIS has down geared ArmA from VBS for the civilian market. But the coding is still there in ArmA to access a high level of cores and ram. It is just being block as one of the community member found out and posted his findings. And when he did. BIS had him band for an year for breaking the gaming agreement. Due to the coding be culculis based (like the Mars Rovers for NASA for example). It take a high level of hardware to run it. Put a "governor" on some of the aspects of the code has helped to control the level of hardware needed to run ArmA on lower level hardware. But not low enough to run smoothly. It takes years to rewrite the code (to compact and make it less lenghty) so that a non military grade computing system can run the code. But due to ArmA being simi open to moding. There are work arounds for some coding heavy handness. As long as someone from the community knows how to do so. Without breaking the game agreement.

Do you have any proof for this?

[dmarkwick 261]

Do you have any proof for this?

It's all a dream :) "military grade computing system"...? laptops mate, laptops :)