CPU for Arma3

[krazikilla 5]

Hey gents,

as Arma3 is now fully released, i unfortunatly must buy a new Mainboard and CPU.

For now i am running a nice MSI Mainboard (870A-G54 AM3 Socket) with an AMD Phenom 1090T 3,2Ghz x6 Cores Black Edition CPU (overclocked @3,8 GHZ) together with a GTX670/2GB graphic card, 8GB of RAM and a SSD for the Arma and a seperate one for Windows.

Even i think i have a quite nice system, I am getting like 15-25 fps on nice multiplayer games, where my mates with INTEL CPUs and worse graphic cards, less Ram, no SSD, get like 40 fps with similar settings.

I tryed everything on LOW and everything on Ultra, the FPS change is about 1-2 fps, thats it. I tryed to add several attributes like (-cpuCount=6 -high -maxMem=6144) and so on. Nothing will increase my fps.

Sooooo, as Arma doesnt support AMD, or AMD doesnt support Arma (i can play all other games perfect) i need to buy a nice new INTEL CPU + Mainboard.

I want the best, affordable thingies i can get. I am goin to waste like 400€ for this 2 components.

Anyone can tell me where i can find some nice benchmark thingies, or can just give me some information /experience points - What i should buy?

Thanks in advance :)

Edited September 13, 2013 by KrAziKilla

[jumpinghubert 49]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2306247

buy a 3570k and overclock it to the kotzgrenze. The new haswell 4570k isn´t as good for overclock.

189 Euro for the 3570k http://geizhals.de/intel-core-i5-3570k-cm8063701211800-a761894.html

104 Euro for the asrock extreme4 z77 board http://geizhals.de/asrock-z77-extreme4-90-mxgkx0-a0uayz-a746839.html

don´t save on the cooling to get good overclocking result.

[krazikilla 5]

Thanks Bert,

what do you think bout the i7 2600k? I thought about that in first place.

I see that you overclocked your system to the max., how is your experience on good servers, Arma3 - Multiplayer?

And wtf, you mean with a toyota hilux radiotor- watercoold, srsly? xD

[jurrasstoil 10]

Make sure to get the boxed version tho. Better warranty.

[Furret 0]

Thanks Bert,

what do you think bout the i7 2600k? I thought about that in first place.

I see that you overclocked your system to the max., how is your experience on good servers, Arma3 - Multiplayer?

And wtf, you mean with a toyota hilux radiotor- watercoold, srsly? xD

You do not need an i7, stick with an i5. A 4670k if you want to overclock, 4670 if you don't .

Hyper 212 EVO cooler.

Don't buy new components for a videogame. The game runs horribly for practically everyone right now. Wait a few months and see what the developers can come up with.

Edit: an example

http://cdn.overclock.net/f/fa/fa844785_vp4Lspb.png

Edited September 13, 2013 by Furret

[jumpinghubert 49]

Thanks Bert,

what do you think bout the i7 2600k? I thought about that in first place.

I see that you overclocked your system to the max., how is your experience on good servers, Arma3 - Multiplayer?

And wtf, you mean with a toyota hilux radiotor- watercoold, srsly? xD

the 2600k model has hyperthreading. its useless in arma3. The sandy bridge is the easiest overclocking cpu so you may prefer the 2500k.

related to the car radiator.....call me McGyver :p.

I am not playing much mp but i get "good" results: 30-40fps, with lots of ai and crap servers 25-30. But with maxed out motion blur its ok for me.

[pawelkpl 29]

Thanks Bert,

what do you think bout the i7 2600k? I thought about that in first place.

I see that you overclocked your system to the max., how is your experience on good servers, Arma3 - Multiplayer?

And wtf, you mean with a toyota hilux radiotor- watercoold, srsly? xD

I do have watercooled i7 2600k at 4.8ghz with 670gtx, running arma 3 at ultra in MP - 300AIs at 30-60fps

[verstand3n 13]

guess the only reason to get an i7 is that you might be able to oc it higher (because of highter base frequency). Since arma (barely) only utilizes one core, power per core is essential. I'd still go with the quadcore.

Isn't there a performance gain per megaherzt between the i5 generations. So wouldn't a haswell i5 with the same frequency be faster then a sandy bridge? Or in other words does it really give you an advantage that you can clock the sandy bridge a little higher then a haswell?

[krazikilla 5]

Thanks so much for your help so far :)

Hmm, ok sounds like CPU is quite clear now:

either 3570k or i7 2600k or 2500k (guess its just a price question) and the asrock extreme4 z77 board.

I want to overclock it a bit, but is it really necessary to get a watercooler though, for really nice improvement?

i would actually like to avoid that and prefer to go on, just with a very good fan.

....

Don't buy new components for a videogame. The game runs horribly for practically everyone right now. Wait a few months and see what the developers can come up with.

...

Thanks man, but as i got this PC basicly only for ArmA - i would like that it runs on it, so i gotta try ;)

Question to DEVs though: Any chance this game is goin to run better on AMD CPUs with 6 cores soon? I dont wanna buy a new system and 2 weeks later, it would run just as fine on my "old" thing, because you fix something :D

Edited September 13, 2013 by KrAziKilla

[verstand3n 13]

found some interesting benchmarks for singlethreaded testing:

http://www.cpu-world.com/benchmarks/desktop_CPUs_single.html

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

the first one does not cover the most recent cpus but the second one seems pretty comprehensive. Although these benchmarks don't show 100% how the cpus perform in arma, i think these benchmarks can help a bit in choosing a good cpu. Now what we need is the gain in performance when the K Models are overclocked. That would be interesting. Anyone with a K-Modell wanna benchmark his/her cpu at cpubenchmark? :-)

[Furret 0]

I'd argue that the efficiency improvements of Haswell outweigh the pure overclocking of ivy bridge. The cpu benchmark.net link seems to confirm this.

[jurrasstoil 10]

Theoretically the performance will scale linearly. So, if you overclock it by 20%, you get 20% more performance.

[jumpinghubert 49]

I'd argue that the efficiency improvements of Haswell outweigh the pure overclocking of ivy bridge. The cpu benchmark.net link seems to confirm this.

its really speculative, but I think the average overclocking result of haswell is 4,2GHZ and the av. of ivy is 4,6GHZ. I bet Ivy @4,6 wins (in arma3). Ivy and haswell have overheating issues http://wccftech.com/intels-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-overheating-issue-detailed/ instead of sandy, so sandy may be still an option for arma3.

@Krazikilla

arma3 cpu rating :) http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2306247

Edited September 14, 2013 by JumpingHubert

[Katana1000 12]

One point I'd like to make here when recommending new PC hardware is to ask what other games/simulations they play as well.

This is something I see all the time in the Flight Sim world on forums asking the same, hardly any of us build a PC on the merits of one PC Game/Sim alone, most of us play many different Games/Sims too and a lot of them have different demands for hardware.

Its never this black and white easy.

In Fairness though most of the answers here are good for ARMA 3 and most high end Games/Sims, but some do demand more from the GPU and SLI/Crossfire and some more from CPU/Multicore, some need more ram, some work better on 64 bit OS's and so on, so this should all be considered too in the equation.

I'd recommend if you are struggling with ARMA 3, read some of the tweaking posts here first, especially regarding view distance ETC, then if you still need more performance, go ask on forums on other Games/Sims too that are important to you.

Enjoy your upgrade and build if needed OP, but your current system aint too bad :)

Edited September 14, 2013 by Katana1000

[Furret 0]

Comedy answer: Alienware laptop

[Katana1000 12]

Comedy answer: Alienware laptop

Comedy reply: Definitely not, not even an Alienware Desktop.

Even if I won the lottery I'd not buy one of those abortions, you dont need to be a computer geek to put a high performance PC together these days, just know what you want to achieve and pay for it.

As for using a Laptop with ARMA 3 ... :rolleyes: But I know you were joking.

[suprememodder 11]

you only need two cores since that's all the game uses. although every other game though there uses 4 cores now so you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. but be advised using a 4 core to play this game means only 2 cores will be utilized, yielding less performance than if you simply had a dual core that was being fully utilized. actually, if you have a good sound card, you can play this game with one cor.e since the second core is only used for sound processing.

welcome to 2013

[jurrasstoil 10]

you only need two cores since that's all the game uses. although every other game though there uses 4 cores now so you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. but be advised using a 4 core to play this game means only 2 cores will be utilized, yielding less performance than if you simply had a dual core that was being fully utilized

That probably beats the guy who thought that a 6mbit internet connection wasn't enough to play this game...

[tremanarch 6]

Thanks Bert,

what do you think bout the i7 2600k? I thought about that in first place.

I see that you overclocked your system to the max., how is your experience on good servers, Arma3 - Multiplayer?

And wtf, you mean with a toyota hilux radiotor- watercoold, srsly? xD

2500K is better for OC and better for A3 - you dont need those virtual cores.. and you save 33% $

[Furret 0]

you only need two cores since that's all the game uses. although every other game though there uses 4 cores now so you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. but be advised using a 4 core to play this game means only 2 cores will be utilized, yielding less performance than if you simply had a dual core that was being fully utilized. actually, if you have a good sound card, you can play this game with one cor.e since the second core is only used for sound processing.

welcome to 2013

I believe what you're saying is incorrect. The game can utilise 4 cores, main game process, geometry loading, texture loading and file operations.

see here: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma2:_Startup_Parameters#exThreads

[Katana1000 12]

you only need two cores since that's all the game uses. although every other game though there uses 4 cores now so you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. but be advised using a 4 core to play this game means only 2 cores will be utilized, yielding less performance than if you simply had a dual core that was being fully utilized. actually, if you have a good sound card, you can play this game with one cor.e since the second core is only used for sound processing.

welcome to 2013

Can you even buy a high performance dual core CPU any-more? also why would you want to? with at least a quad you have room for ARMA and your OS and its overheads while the game plays.

[jurrasstoil 10]

The i3 4340 is the fastet dual core you can buy. It runs at 3.6ghz and has hyper-threading (which Arma won't use of course). The i5 4570 runs at 3.2ghz, has 4 cores and turbo which overclocks one core to 3.6ghz (heavy load on a single core) or all cores to 3.4ghz (heavy load on more than one core). If an application can make use of only 2 cores, both CPUs will perform about the same (difference of 2-5% tops).

[Katana1000 12]

The i3 4340 is the fastet dual core you can buy. It runs at 3.6ghz and has hyper-threading (which Arma won't use of course). The i5 4570 runs at 3.2ghz, has 4 cores and turbo which overclocks one core to 3.6ghz (heavy load on a single core) or all cores to 3.4ghz (heavy load on more than one core). If an application can make use of only 2 cores, both CPUs will perform about the same (difference of 2-5% tops).

But why would you honestly recommend or suggest that if that is the minimum ARMA 3 gets bye with? dont you consider he might play something else too or might need room for an upgrade? also a dual might just scrape by on ARMA but a quad has room for more overheads for the OS during gameplay.

Forget ARMA 3 needs, look at the bigger picture if you are upgrading.

Make any upgrade last a while.

[jurrasstoil 10]

Err, yeah... that's what I'm saying. Buying the i3 is pointless. It won't perform any better in Arma than the i5. But the i5 is a lot better than the i3 for everything else that can make use of more than 2 cores. Considering that there's only like a 30€ price difference between them, it would be even more foolish to buy the i3.

[krazikilla 5]

Thanks for all ya help gentleman/woman