Arma 3 too heavy for your computer?

[IsrTGMahalGroup 10]

I've seen a lot of arma 2 players fall out of love with Arma 3 simply because for the little graphical detail you receive: it slows even the most medium-sized computer with good processing speed and graphics card. It's a very heavy game, even just in the alpha. Has anyone else found gameplay difficult for arma 3? I feel that lowering the settings on Arma 3 makes it look even worse than on low in Arma 2. Very odd observation since you'd expect it to be a lot better, even on low.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your replies! :D

[toiletguy 1]

Try switching shadows off or on normal will yield better FPS than low as it will use up CPU instead of GPU. Arma 2 is heavily depended on CPU due the amount of shadows by CPU. Maybe i'm wrong.

[EDcase 87]

Must be very individual experience because for me ARMA3 runs much better than ARMA2

[samco 1]

for me its the same when running on my laptop , settings things to low especially terrain causes some things to glitch

[gliptal 25]

Tone down the view distances, since they are automatically set too high by the game and are really heavy performance hogs, and if you're looking for a crisp image put FXAA Ultra as PPAA with no performance loss and a much clearer image...

Yay!

[gpha5e 1]

arma 3 runs better for me than arma 2 definitely, but i'd still love to see some tasks offloaded to gpu, and more CPU threads

[Sneakson 1]

I'm probably gonna upgrade my computer by the end of summer.

[Alabatross 1]

When a game is for PC developers usually don't put as much effort intro optimizing compared to a console developer (because they have to work with crazy old tech)

So the end result is a game that only top of the line cards can run and if you complain the #1 answer you'll get is "buy a better card"

Edited June 11, 2013 by Alabatross

[no use for a name 0]

Another big FPS hit for me is object distance, which has more of a hit than VD. Going past ~3km for objects (my VD is set to 5km) kills my fps drastically.

[Raible 1]

"Medium" is an awfully broad term to use to describe the power of one's computer. And pretty objective at that.

[tortuosit 486]

Try switching shadows off or on normal will yield better FPS than low as it will use up CPU instead of GPU. Arma 2 is heavily depended on CPU due the amount of shadows by CPU. Maybe i'm wrong.

I'm having massive problems with mouse lags. I.e. I turn my character 90° very quickly. Its e.g. at the very start of the infantry showcase. When the physical mouse stops, the character starts turning. Core i7 2600k 3.4 ghz, GTX-570. And I must say no matter what other settings, if shadow is on "low" this pretty likely happens. Shadows to off is the best. But hey, I really don't want to play without shadows. Shadows to "standard" and above is not good as well, but better than "low".

So shadows are a big problem here. In Arma II this is not the case.

I don't think Arma 3 is too heavy. It feels good, but the strange lags that I get with shadows destroys playing fun.

[jumpinghubert 49]

@tortuosit

please try shadows from low/med to very high/ultra. shadow on low is processed by your cpu, shadow on very high/ultra is processed by your gpu. Another thing is: try to overclock your cpu a little bit, maybe to 4,4 GHZ.

[mr.g-c 6]

With my 4 year old hardware, A3 Alpha runs as good as Arma2. With better graphics! :-)

[Beagle 684]

Try switching shadows off or on normal will yield better FPS than low as it will use up CPU instead of GPU. Arma 2 is heavily depended on CPU due the amount of shadows by CPU. Maybe i'm wrong.

Why should I get a new game to switch off all gfx advancements... A2 looks liek OFP with all gizmos off...It cant be the intention for a new game to have it playable in MP only when you make iot look like a 10 years old title. Edited June 11, 2013 by Beagle

[b00tsy 28]

Playing with the settings does not do all that much for me, I have the same fps with 8Km draw distance as with 500 meter draw distance. Turning AA of and shadows, results in less stutters, but not better fps. The only thing that boosts the fps a little bit is setting the resolution to 50% making it look like a game from 20 years ago. When I look at AI units in arma2 it is no problem, looking at infantry AI in ArmA3 it drops the fps. Looking at the sea drops the fps, probably because of all the coral and fish. With my (old) PC I could run ArmA2 with medium settings and get a playable fps, ArmA3 I get maybe 10 to 15 fps on any setting.

[giorgygr 61]

The game still needs tons of optimization.

Performance and packets transfer -both areas

[Tyl3r99 41]

I have a 3970x 3.5ghz cpu and still have trouble at times...

[b00tsy 28]

The game still needs tons of optimization.

Performance and packets transfer -both areas

Not trying to be pessimistic, but I doubt that optimizations will make it magically run a lot better. A small town like Agia Marina lags the hell out of me (not even including the AI), just like towns in OA, it is still based on the same lagging stuff as in ArmA2. It is a nice looking slideshow though.

But I will nock on wood and hope for the best.

[ric 1]

"Medium" is an awfully broad term to use to describe the power of one's computer. And pretty objective at that.

here is the "minimum" requirements

OS Windows Vista SP2

Windows 7 SP1 (Apple OS not supported)

PROCESSOR Intel Dual-Core 2.4 GHz

AMD Dual-Core Athlon 2.5 GHz

GRAPHICS NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT

ATI Radeon HD 3830

Intel HD Graphics 4000

GPU MEMORY 512 MB

so i guess anything above this would be considered "medium" :o

[Fuse 1]

I have a 3970x 3.5ghz cpu and still have trouble at times...

So you have a water-cooled machine running a CPU that literally costs as much as my entire PC... And the CPU is running at the stock clock? Fix that and you should see noticeable framerate gains. My i5 2500k @ 4.8GHz has out-benched some much more expensive machines because they weren't overclocked.

[grillob3 11]

So you have a water-cooled machine running a CPU that literally costs as much as my entire PC... And the CPU is running at the stock clock? Fix that and you should see noticeable framerate gains. My i5 2500k @ 4.8GHz has out-benched some much more expensive machines because they weren't overclocked.

yes tyl3r99 you should oc that 3970! My is a 3930k @4.8 and i don't have to many problems running the game (should be problem free but is alpha). Since arma 2 i notice that ocing memory helps a lot too! i have mine 16gb@2133 and video card gtx 680sli @1320/1750.

[zipgun 0]

For me its the opposite A3 runs better than A2 I can run ARMA3 at Full everything and get 40-50 FPS with our slowest rig. Here are some pics of the slowest rig we have.

http://imageshack.us/a/img252/8041/arma32013030519414654.jpg (519 kB)

http://imageshack.us/a/img831/386/arma32013030519421105.jpg (111 kB)

Don't know why the last 2 images keep showing links only. Man hate Imageshack... I tried but I give up, don't have time for this and will find another host.

i7 960 3.2

Intel boards

dual Gigabyte 6970's 2gig

32GB ram

2 3 TB HD's

5 Antec 120mm case fans

Antec full size cases

EVGA 1500 watt PSU

Win 7 black edition I think it was or something like that.

With Arma 2 I we used to get maybe 30-40 FPS with the distance at 3800+

Our fastest rig which we use for video and photography as well is kinda overkill for playing games but it gets about a 20% boost. I think ARMA has caps in FPS. Just imo so no hate mail. ;)

i7 990x 3.6

64GB ram

Tri 7970's

3 3tb hd's

12 3TB in a hard drive case. HD's video takes up HD space like nothing. Btw Now its 20 HD's.

6 fans

2 2000 PSU's

And all of our DT PC's are water cooled.

Edited June 20, 2013 by zipgun

[ric 1]

So you have a water-cooled machine running a CPU that literally costs as much as my entire PC... And the CPU is running at the stock clock? Fix that and you should see noticeable framerate gains. My i5 2500k @ 4.8GHz has out-benched some much more expensive machines because they weren't overclocked.

we have the same chip and i don't think it is going away anytime soon as a powerful chip :) i am pretty sure i have another 2 years before i have to replace it :)...i hope :)

[Zecele 10]

The game is going into beta in 4 days and in my opinion still needs a ton of optimization.

[gossamersolid 155]

Must be very individual experience because for me ARMA3 runs much better than ARMA2

Same thing here.

Especially when I boot All in ArmA and play around in Chernogorsk. Much better framerates.

In ArmA 2 I also seem to get an issue once in a while where if I zoom in at foliage, I go down to 20 frames or less no matter what.