Something odd...did I just waste $160 ??

[BeerHunter 0]

I've been playing around with the Beta in the editor and some of the scenarios.

I have quit a few settings on Ultra or High and seem to get comfortable frame rate of about 30-35 fps. Everything runs smoothly , no stuttering and the game looks absolutely gorgeous...and this is on an old ATI 4870 1G card!!

I just ordered an ATI 7770 2G and am starting to wonder if that was really necessary (even if it does come with far Cry 3. :p ).

I don't know what difference the new card will make..any comments??

[chortles 263]

The "waste" depends on what else you do besides Arma 3. ;) Remember that Arma is notoriously CPU-dependent (that is, GPU-less-so) and in particular in clock speed over multiple cores (since the engine's roots are from the days when multi-core was pie-in-the-sky thinking).

[Zorg_DK 10]

If you have more than, say, 4ghz on the cpu, it will be worth it I think.

[Sneakson 1]

Your card is 5 years? Naturally your framerate should improve.

You should experience an instant about 50% gain, I think.

I would strongly recommend increasing your framerate somewhat. I remember playing Crysis at about 20-25 fps back when it was new but in ARMA there’s so much weapon sway and recoil against small enemies with sharp reaction times.

When I increased my framerate to average 50+ my aim became significantly better instantly and now there’s no way I would go back to playing it in 30-40 fps again.

Note: I don't know a lot about ATI cards but did a comparison of the equivalent NVidia cards for what it's worth.

What's your processor anyways? If it's similar to mine (2.84 GHz) you can check my sig to see about the settings you'll be running because I think the 7770 is about a 560.

[St. Jimmy 272]

I've been playing around with the Beta in the editor and some of the scenarios.

I have quit a few settings on Ultra or High and seem to get comfortable frame rate of about 30-35 fps. Everything runs smoothly , no stuttering and the game looks absolutely gorgeous...and this is on an old ATI 4870 1G card!!

I just ordered an ATI 7770 2G and am starting to wonder if that was really necessary (even if it does come with far Cry 3. :p ).

I don't know what difference the new card will make..any comments??

I can say that Radeon 4870 1GB runs pretty nicely this game with i7 2600K @ 4,4GHz but I changed it to second hand GTX 560 Ti 1,2GB couple months ago and now I can squeeze a bit more. I knew that the improvement won't be huge but enough for me.

[RuecanOnRails 10]

Not so much a waste, personally I would have gone for a little higher end but that's just me ;)

I believe your 4870 was a higher end card than the 7770 is even though they are from different generations. The 7770 will get better performance and much better power consumption, but won't be a massive upgrade.

You can check out this thread which has someone asking about 4870 vs 7770

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1736727

[BeerHunter 0]

Just FYI : CPU is AMD Phenom II X4 965 at 3.4 GHz.

Guess , from reading that article , I should have gotten the 7850..or something in the 8000 series..ah well..the 7770 will still be some improvement so not all is in vain.

Txs for the input though.

[Alabatross 1]

lol 30-35 fps

Just wait until you feel 60 with vsync. You won't want anything less ;)

[Zorg_DK 10]

np, hopefully it'll run Arma3 well. my 5870 1gb also needs upgrading at some point.. it runs arma3 pretty good without aa, but with aa fps drops quite a bit.

Edited June 30, 2013 by Zorg_DK

[nodunit 397]

If you are a PC gamer at heart and have a liking for demanding games (in terms of system specs) then no it's not really a waste since you won't have to upgrade your card for a while..and in all honesty, 160 for a pretty good video card is a great price.

I would like to warn you however that you may or may not see an drastic increase in performance for a game like Arma 3. Reason being is that the series tends to be more CPU demanding than GPU.

[Guest]

I don't know what difference the new card will make..any comments??

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