ArmA 3 System Requirements

[ruhtraeel 1]

either way point its, yes on a CPU intensive game like ArmA series you most certainly see an improvement with overclock

I'm wondering, if the reason why I get very similar framerates no matter what the settings are is because of my CPU, I would definitely try overclocking.

[DavidSoares 1]

Hi all,

Not long ago ive got hooked on arma 2, and im looking forward for arma 3!

My current setup is kinda low for arma 2, i play it with every setting as low as possible. Now, im planning to get a new pc but on this matter i also lack knowledge, thats why im asking for a bit of advice from more experienced ppl.

The pc that im thinking about to buy has these specs:

Intel® Core™ i7-3770k 3,5GHz

Windows 8 oem

16GB DDR3 1600 MHz

128GB sdd + 2TB hdd

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX680 2GB DDR5

Dual Layer DVD-ReWriter

High Definition Audio (8-channels)

Intel® Z77 Express Chipset

4x USB 3.0, etc

In the same store they have another setup that costs exaclly the same, here is the other:

Intel® Core™ i7-3770 3,4GHz

Windows 8 oem

16GB DDR3 1600 MHz

128GB sdd + 2TB hdd

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX680 2GB DDR5

Blu-ray burner incl. Dual Layer DVD-ReWriter

High Definition Audio (8-channels)

Intel® Z77 Express Chipset

4x USB 3.0, etc

The only difrences ive spotted are posted in bold text. Now, im askin, are these 2 setups good enough to play arma2 and 3 decentlly? and wich of the 2 would u guys recomend me? (Both cost about 1500euros each.)

[raptor90 1]

ATM evga 560, I7 3930k, corsair dominator platinum 16GB 2400 MHZ CL10, Samsung 840 Pro, asus rampage 4 extreme...

I hope it will even run A3 though...

[kualus 1]

Hi all,

Not long ago ive got hooked on arma 2, and im looking forward for arma 3!

My current setup is kinda low for arma 2, i play it with every setting as low as possible. Now, im planning to get a new pc but on this matter i also lack knowledge, thats why im asking for a bit of advice from more experienced ppl.

The pc that im thinking about to buy has these specs:

Intel® Core™ i7-3770k 3,5GHz

Windows 8 oem

16GB DDR3 1600 MHz

128GB sdd + 2TB hdd

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX680 2GB DDR5

Dual Layer DVD-ReWriter

High Definition Audio (8-channels)

Intel® Z77 Express Chipset

4x USB 3.0, etc

In the same store they have another setup that costs exaclly the same, here is the other:

Intel® Core™ i7-3770 3,4GHz

Windows 8 oem

16GB DDR3 1600 MHz

128GB sdd + 2TB hdd

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX680 2GB DDR5

Blu-ray burner incl. Dual Layer DVD-ReWriter

High Definition Audio (8-channels)

Intel® Z77 Express Chipset

4x USB 3.0, etc

The only difrences ive spotted are posted in bold text. Now, im askin, are these 2 setups good enough to play arma2 and 3 decentlly? and wich of the 2 would u guys recomend me? (Both cost about 1500euros each.)

Both are good enough, but I would build my own PC to save money and prevent bloatware. You shouldn't need a stronger CPU than the i5-3570K (or the Haswell equivalent if you're willing to wait until June). The GTX 670 delivers 95% of the performance of the GTX 680 for 80% of the price. 240 and 256 GB SSDs have come down in price enough that you could buy one. 16 GB of RAM is overkill unless you are doing video editing.

[chortles 263]

If the screen is going to be 1080p at most and single-monitor, feel free to drop down to a 660 Ti video card instead of a 670. As far as the CPU goes neither the i7-3770 nor the i7-3770K is an "actively" bad choice, just that it may be overspending unless you end up FRAPSing or streaming Arma sessions -- but the i5-3570K should be well near enough for anything else you might play, which also matters, because I believe that anywhere else but Microcenter (and in-store only at that!) the price difference is around $100!

Oh, and you don't need a Z77 chipset if you go with a "non-K" CPU like the i7-3770; you can safely drop down to H77 since CPU overclocking support is the main chipset difference... which, if you decide against overclocking, can save you a bunch of money: anecdotally speaking, that's $85 in price difference between the ASUS P8H77-I and the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe.

Between 240 GB and 256 GB, going with 240 GB can be safer because that 16 GB difference means that you'll either have error correction or you won't... I personally find that error correction potential worth 16 less GB in "normally" writable capacity. On RAM, I'll agree as well that 16 GB is overkill, 8 GB is fine.

[katsopolis 1]

How would you guys expect this to run ARMA 3? Will not be overclocking (at least initially) and game will be installed on the SSD.

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme6 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard

Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk

Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card[

[ruhtraeel 1]

How would you guys expect this to run ARMA 3? Will not be overclocking (at least initially) and game will be installed on the SSD.

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme6 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard

Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk

Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card[

High.

[chrisb 196]

Quite a lot of these pc’s look to me like they will probably run A3, I hope my new one does.

But BIS don’t even know what will run it really well, I don’t suppose, so what hope have the rest of us got...;)

[katsopolis 1]

My current, non-gaming PC is old and slow, so I decided to get into PC gaming primarily for this game (never played any of the previous games)...so I hope it runs it nicely, lol.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Well,following a simple logic ,BIS will try to make their baby playable on the current gen of PCs,so they can sell as much copies as they can at the begining ...

[Ezcoo 47]

This huge test made by Polish website might interest people who are going to upgrade for A3 (pay attention especially to the 2 ArmA 2 tests):

Test Processor – AMD vs. Intel. 160 units in 52 tests. Which CPU is the fastest? PCLab.pl ::

[De_little_Bubi 1]

the improvements between arma 2 and oa are amazing

[NeMeSiS 11]

the improvements between arma 2 and oa are amazing

What do you mean?

Edited February 14, 2013 by NeMeSiS

[Covert_Death 11]

I think he means optimizations

[skulldragon 1]

Nice link! Thanks for that

Any idea which benchmarks they're running, though? 'Noc' and 'Wioska', mean 'Night' and 'Village' (or so Google Translate tells me), so I'm assuming the two Chernarus-based benchmarks.

Sorry if these seems picky, its just I'd like an indication of the situations that those benchmarks represent.

[OLO 10]

I've got the Polish version of the game and both chernarussian benchmarks are called 'Benchmark 1' and 'Benchmark 2'. Google translation is correct though and I would say you're right. Also framepoints indicate those 2 benchmarks indeed.

[Aquaahcinema 1]

I hope it isn't as heavy on the computer system as ARMA 2 is as I run on a 2.5 ghz and 4 gb ram on lowest settings at like 10-15 FPS...

[jiltedjock 10]

How much can I OC my rig

and will I get any performance gain in games

4.7Ghz stable on air.

Yes.

Edited February 15, 2013 by jiltedjock

[Ezcoo 47]

The test indicates quite clearly that there is absolutely no reason to buy AMD processor because Intel has ridiculously more powerful processors even with lower price. Before you call me Intel fanboy, I'll state here that I'm not one: That's also bad thing that Intel dominates the CPU market nowadays, because it has no competitors and the first consequences of the lack of competition are appearing already.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Ezcoo

[kualus 1]

The test indicates quite clearly that there is absolutely no reason to buy AMD processor because Intel has ridiculously more powerful processors even with lower price. Before you call me Intel fanboy, I'll state here that I'm not one: That's also bad thing that Intel dominates the CPU market nowadays, because it has no competitors and the first consequences of the lack of competition are appearing already.

The gap isn't as wide as you think, but it is still there. Intel's CPUs are also much more power efficient. And what consequences of lack of competition are you talking about? i3-3220 is still Intel's best value for the money, and with the i5-3350P CPU at the same price as the FX-8320, Intel has matched AMD in price. So what if you can't overclock either of them, try something new like undervolting instead to cut your power consumption under load even further, and thus reduce you CPU cooler fan speed to make your gaming PC even quieter.

[Ezcoo 47]

The gap isn't as wide as you think, but it is still there. Intel's CPUs are also much more power efficient. And what consequences of lack of competition are you talking about? i3-3220 is still Intel's best value for the money, and with the i5-3350P CPU at the same price as the FX-8320, Intel has matched AMD in price. So what if you can't overclock either of them, try something new like undervolting instead to cut your power consumption under load even further, and thus reduce you CPU cooler fan speed to make your gaming PC even quieter.

Programs perform differently on on different CPUs of course, some programs may perform better on AMD processors than Intel processors for sure. But the number of those programs is pretty small, and Intel beats AMD especially in gaming. Here are the two summaries with comparison charts of the CPUs tested in the test that I linked earlier: The best processors for gaming (stock clocks) and The best processors for gaming (overclocked)

Here's an example of news that has been estimated to be caused by the lack of competition in CPU market: Intel Delays Unification of Titanium and Xeon Platforms

[kualus 1]

Sigh, Itanium never had competition due to its specialized design. As for summaries: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427.html http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested

[Ezcoo 47]

Sigh, Itanium never had competition due to its specialized design. As for summaries: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427.html http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested

I consider the test in my post much more reliable, because the number of tested games and applications is many times higher than in the test that you linked. You can check the number of tested applications and testing methods: Polish website vs. Tom's Hardware. Also, the games used in the Tom's Hardware test are known to be especially GPU-limited, and when we take into account the fact, that the GTX 680 used in the test is not that powerful (they could have used the e.g. GTX 690 to eliminate the unwanted effect of GPU from the test), it does raise the question that why did they select just those games with GTX 680 to the test? In addition, the last page of the Tom's Hardware test shows this.

On the other hand, the second test in your post shows that AMD beats Intel pretty often in other software than games that can use the benefits of e.g. 8-core systems.

In my opinion the final words of Tom's Hardware test sums it up pretty well:

The Pentium isn't bad, to be sure. In fact, for $70, it still does really well against the FX chips we tested that cost $125 and up, use quite a bit of power, and generate significantly more heat. Nevertheless, we see the trend toward more threaded titles continuing, compelling us to start distancing ourselves from dual-core non-Hyper-Threaded CPUs in 2013. At least for the time being, whatever quad-core Athlon II and Phenom II processors that are still available seem like smart buys.

Once those dry up, what then? Intel still holds the aces. For your dollar, the Core i5 has no competition above $160. At $130, the Core i3-3220 is tough to beat. It no longer humiliates the FX line-up in games thanks to AMD's most recent architectural update, but it's still cheaper, faster, and more power-friendly than most of the Vishera-based models.

Fortunately for AMD, its chips fare better in the non-gaming components of our benchmark suite, where its modular architecture is better able to benefit from today's threaded software. In a general-purpose workstation, that's certainly something to think about. But in a pure gaming machine, there's just no ignoring the effectiveness of Intel's Sandy and Ivy Bridge designs.

Edit: I did some googling and found out that e.g. Skyrim is CPU-limited and SC II is not especially GPU-limited, so I'm sorry for the false statement. I had a strong gut feeling that both of those are also GPU-limited, but it seems so that I was wrong.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Ezcoo

[_Hawkeye_ 43]

My gaming pc

AMD Phenom IIx4 955 processor 3.20 ghz 4 gig ram all but imploaded on me the other day.(compressed air/waccumaleted fumes/basement furnace pilot light) no need say any more. So I thing ding maybe this a good time to think about upgrading for ArmA3 question for me mainly is processors. I've always been diehard AMD but have ppl say Intel so tthought I'd post here on other ppls thought 1. Strong AMD Quad core,2 Intel I5, 3. Intel I7.What yal think?

[Angle 10]

My gaming pc

AMD Phenom IIx4 955 processor 3.20 ghz 4 gig ram all but imploaded on me the other day.(compressed air/waccumaleted fumes/basement furnace pilot light) no need say any more. So I thing ding maybe this a good time to think about upgrading for ArmA3 question for me mainly is processors. I've always been diehard AMD but have ppl say Intel so tthought I'd post here on other ppls thought 1. Strong AMD Quad core,2 Intel I5, 3. Intel I7.What yal think?

As a fellow diehard AMD user i have to say that AMD is not good for gaming rigs. Intel managed to "win" and AMD cant compete anymore. Their next gen desktop chipsets where indefinitely postponed and Intel now has a monopoly on high end desktops. And for Intel the extra features for the i7 does nothing for gaming compared to the i5.

For the best price/performence go for an intel i5.