Will-my-pc-run-Arma3? What cpu/gpu to get? What settings? What system specifications?

[chrisb 196]

With the present dev build..

I have the following settings on Ultra:

PPAA = FXAA Ultra

AF = Ultra

Dynamic Lights = Ultra

Texture qual = Ultra

Objects qual = Ultra

Cloud qual = Ultra

Shadow qual = Ultra

Particles qual = Very high (highest it goes on mine)

Others are:

Terrain qual = Standard (fps can be lost and gained here, alot)

HDR qual = Standard

Atoc = All trees

AA = 2x

Rendering Res = 1920x1080

The ones I have disabled:

PIP = disabled (waste of time, just need ‘blakes mirrors’ to be ported over, far better)

PP = disabled (I don't like fuzzy, keep it sharp)

V-sync = disabled (I never have v-sync)

Now view distance (visibility), is variable, flying I have it on 5000 max, its enough for Stratis. On the ground, if in a mission, then 1200-1500, this will allow upto 250-300 ai max, present on the map with the settings above, provided I don’t meet them all at once.

I can have more vd if I’m just driving/walking around on my own. Visibility object, I keep to default wherever it goes to when setting overall visibility. Visibility shadow I have at 101.

This is on my A2 pc, which is an Athlon II x4 640 quad. I have had very few problems with performance/fps in A2, its been a very good gaming pc, just make missions to suit your pc. I never really have above 200 ai at any time anyway, skirmish type battles are what I tend to play (its a gaming pc, nothing on it, other than the games and whats needed to run them, thats it)..

Its specific to every pc i.e. no one can tell you how yours is going to perform, it would depend on so many factors.

If however you buy a new pc then its easier to say, providing you keep it as a gaming pc, then you shouldn't have too many problems if buying 'mid-high end' pc's, imo..

[gliptal 25]

Chris B, consider putting PP on and only disabling Motion Blur with the NoBlur Mod, so to retain the other Post Processing effects...

Yay!

[bangtail 0]

No thanks, PP makes the game look like Fable and comes with a ridiculous performance hit.

[chrisb 196]

Chris B, consider putting PP on and only disabling Motion Blur with the NoBlur Mod, so to retain the other Post Processing effects...

Yay!

Its not the blur as in when moving quickly around, thats not a problem, I don't have that. Its the fact it makes everything go 'soft focus' which I don't like, I'm a sharp clean pic fanatic :p can't help it..;)

_______

Just a footnote: I would say the AMD FX8350 would be a very good gaming pc, I looked at it myself before going intel (sig/rigs), I only went that way for a complete change, had AMD a while now...

Edited March 31, 2013 by ChrisB

[gliptal 25]

I don't like Depth of Field either, but I find that the Ambien Occlusion implementation makes the game a lot more immersive (at least for me)...

Yay!

[chrisb 196]

I don't like Depth of Field either, but I find that the Ambien Occlusion implementation makes the game a lot more immersive (at least for me)...

Yay!

We're all different, thats what makes the world go round..:)

[bangtail 0]

Its not the blur as in when moving quickly around, thats not a problem, I don't have that. Its the fact it makes everything go 'soft focus' which I don't like, I'm a sharp clean pic fanatic :p can't help it..;)

I found this especially annoying on the VTE maps (Vietnam the Experience), it was practically impossible to spot people in the foliage with PP on (because of the soft focus).

It may 'look nice' but my eyes certainly don't see the world that way and I don't care for the performance hit either ;)

Edited March 31, 2013 by BangTail

[zorrobyte 30]

I average 30 FPS or so on a 5.1GHZ 2500K & 670GTX OC. My GPU sits at 50% while my CPU hovers around 50%. Object draw distance plays a huge factor irrespective of other settings.

[AlphaNinerTwo 1]

Something I came across this morning was the Alienware M14X. I'm thinking about getting it with the recommended specs for ARMA III: Intel Core i5, 6 gigs of memory, and 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT650M video card. How does that sound?

[bangtail 0]

The 650M is really, really weak.

I would not go lower than a 660M (even that is not-so-hot-so) but it's passable.

[ruhtraeel 1]

The GX60 is an ok choice (although it is an AMD CPU and chipset - I'd stick with Intel personally) and $50.00 cheaper at NCIX but avoid Lenovo like the MFing plague, they are awful.

http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=77720&vpn=9S7%2D16FK11%2D021&manufacture=MSI%2FMicroStar&promoid=1424

My friend and I both have Lenovo's; I have a Y470, and he has a Y580. We both haven't had any issues with our laptops.

If anything, Lenovo makes incredibly beefy Thinkpads, but that may or may not transfer over to their multimedia laptops.

But at $300 cheaper, they're pretty much uncontested.

[RadicalAtHeart 11]

Playable on Lenovo Y500 I5-3210M GT650M-GDDR5 on tweaked standard settings

Disabled PostProcessing, Terrain Quality low, disabled shadows, view distance 2500

30-50 FPS

ill get the ultra bay SLI card

[bangtail 0]

My friend and I both have Lenovo's; I have a Y470, and he has a Y580. We both haven't had any issues with our laptops.

If anything, Lenovo makes incredibly beefy Thinkpads, but that may or may not transfer over to their multimedia laptops.

But at $300 cheaper, they're pretty much uncontested.

While I am happy to hear that you've had good luck with your Lenovo(s), that was not my experience at all - lousy build quality, horrible support.

On top of the fact it's an extremely average AMD CPU and chipset - sure the Video card is ok but what good is that with a weak CPU (especially when A3 is so CPU dependent)?

When something is way cheaper than it's nearest competitor, there is usually a reason - and it's never a good reason.

Always keep in mind that one person's idea of playable isn't necessarily someone else's ;)

Edited March 31, 2013 by BangTail

[M.Andersson(SWE) 4]

you dont, you have to make up your mind before going to the shop.

And how do you do it?

Do you buy both and compare?

How do you mesure the speed?

And if i have to make up my mind BEFORE,

How do i do that...

Look at other ppls reviews?

Trust their words for it?

Hope?

All this sounds verry similar to some kind of religion.

[averagejoe620 1]

I'll be rolling with an ASUS G75VX in a few weeks and I'm pumped:

core i7 3630QM

3GB (dedicated) DDR5 GTX 670MX

16 GB DRR3 RAM - I could go up to 32GB RAM if I wanted to though.

1920x1080 resolution

Best part: $1250 (unless I add RAM and an SSD, but that'll put me around $1500 which still isn't bad at all I think)

[Leon86 13]

;2361463']And how do you do it?

Do you buy both and compare?

How do you mesure the speed?

And if i have to make up my mind BEFORE' date='

How do i do that...

Look at other ppls reviews?

Trust their words for it?

Hope?

All this sounds verry similar to some kind of religion.[/quote']

not that many tests around

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2012/05/01/intel-core-i5-3570k-cpu-review/6

you could try and poke around in the armamark topic, but everybody is using different settings.

[M.Andersson(SWE) 4]

But there has to be a test.

Since you say this and that is faster than this and that...

And why Intel over AMD..

The ONLY way for ME

is to compare ghz. Right..

And maybe L2, L3

And for me 4.1 is faster than 3.5.

Since there are NO other measurments

to make...

[Leon86 13]

only way to compare intels with amd's is looking at tests. a 3570k quad will beat all amd's at an ai heavy arma game. if you dont want to spend that much you're probably best off with amd, especially if you know how to overclock.

If you're comparing intels with intels and amd's with amd's you can look at specs as well.

[M.Andersson(SWE) 4]

These tests, are they performed

on system with EXACT same specs?

Same hardware, same software?

Im sincere with my questions cause

i want to know.

For a layman, the only way is to look at

the specs the dealers give..Thats it.

Looking at random tests on internet

is nowere NEAR conclusive.

Its a jungle out there

[Leon86 13]

random tests on the internet are a better way to judge performance than looking at specs, which tells you very little.

as for the tests, gotta read the entire article if you want to know specifics.

[chrisb 196]

I found this especially annoying on the VTE maps (Vietnam the Experience), it was practically impossible to spot people in the foliage with PP on (because of the soft focus).

It may 'look nice' but my eyes certainly don't see the world that way and I don't care for the performance hit either ;)

I've never liked PP really, I know many do and its each to their own, but for me PP off and FXAA to ultra with 2xAA and its sharp and crisp, obviously with the rest of the settings as said in my post a few pages back.

VTE maps are great, lots of foilage with very little hit to performance, our group made some really nice up river missions at night, fantastic..

[Bravo_Two_Zeroq 10]

Not sure if you're having your own joke on 1st of April or if you are serious Andersson. Assuming you may very well be and I happen to work for one international website specialized in testing consumer electronics (especially computer hardware), let me elaborate. It's an ancient mistake to simply compare processors the clock speed in GHz of processors (or graphics card for that matter). The speed of a processor -how fast can a processor do it's tasks- does not only depend on clock frequency, but especially on other matters such as architecture of the processor as well design decisions (how does the processor communicate with other parts, how much and how fast is the cache memory and are there any special designs to speed up calculations by changing the hardware design). If you look at Intel for example, they currently employ a "tick-tock"-strategy meaning during a "tock" they update the complete architecture of processors, while during a "tick" they make transistors in processors smaller (die-shrink) to allow more chips per square inch, meaning a processor of the same dimensions has more transistors and can therefore calculate your things faster. There are very few people who can predict performance by only looking at specifications of a processor, so that's where reviewers come in to actually review performance of products and compare different products.

This is done on test systems with standardized hardware to allow for comparisons. There are multiple benchmark tools available fortenately enough, for example for graphics cards this is done by testing a lot of games (at least 10 games at different resolutions and settings), next to some synthetic benchmarks. Synthetic benchmarks, like Futuremark publishes, try to test performance of various components like processors, graphics cards, memory and even hard drives (/SSD's), by creating a standardized benchmark which ought to capture real-life performance. Although synthetic benchmarks are not real-life benchmarks people will experience day-by-day, the scenario's are specifically designed to be as representative as possible, and although I use to look at entire tables full of numbers before I can say if product X is faster than product Y, the PCMark scores often offer a good identification of what to expect. The company I work for uses an almost scientific approach to testing hardware in a standardized environment from routers and monitors to simply processors and memory, although there are plenty of other sites capable of running extensive tests in standardized environments to compare consumer electronics in a reliable way.

So please never again compare Intel and AMD (nor ARM processors) by looking only at GHz, this only applies if the architecture is the same as well as other characteristics such as L3-cache memory, controllers and amount of cores which per definition is different for the two manufacturers. It is not even possible to say that a processor with four cores with a higher frequency is faster than a processor with two cores with a lower frequency, as architectural changes have been significant in the past few years as well. To give an example, our current test methodology for testing only graphics cards is:

"We tested the <<graphics card>> on our graphics card testing platform, which consists of an Intel Core i7 3960X, 16 GB DDR3-1600 memory, a Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB hard disk, a Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W PSU and Windows 7 x64. We tested the card in 1920x1080 Full HD resolution. We tested games on "normal" settings and also on the best possible settings (highest/ extreme/ ultra). We enabled 4x AA for the test on the highest settings, when possible. The <<graphics card>> is not powerful enough for three monitors, so we didn't include the scores in the article, but you can find them on the page with all the specs and scores. In a number of benchmarks we also looked at the render times of individual frames, and calculated the 99th percentile score. You can read an in-depth article about our frametime test here. We used GeForce driver version 314.21. On the product page for each of the other GPUs you can see the driver version we used at the time. The <<graphics card> is blue in the charts, existing Nvidia cards are green and AMD cards are red. "

Naturally to say, after each test the entire system is reïnstalled with exactly the same programs (done by copying a mirror to the hard drive in the test system). It is also important to note that performance of specific hardware components is dependent on the specific configuration of a system. For example, combining a very fast graphics card with a very low processor will not give you enough performance to play a game, while tests would have indicated the graphics card would be sufficient for the task. So although the performance may differ from your own system and the most test systems which are state-of-the-art, the test systems do enable relative comparisons between hardware as only one part of the system is changed at a time. So for a graphics card test, all other components would remain constant, and are also of course chosen in such a way that they limit the component tested as little as possible (so no slow processors are used which bottleneck performance of the fastest graphics cards).

Edited April 1, 2013 by Bravo_Two_Zeroq

[M.Andersson(SWE) 4]

Ok then..

You seem to have a "relativ" insight..

This is a DIRECT quote from a swedish

retail:

The new integrated graphics, HD Graphics 4000, involves a

substantial increase in performance over its predecessor and

works great except for the most demanding games.

Guess wich card that is about....

And to clarify:

Yes its aprils fool, NO im not having a blast on

your account..Im ACTAULLY interested.

AND i want a harmonized system that will allow

me to play A3 with good performance/graphics,

and for my musicstudio..

[halisray 1]

Will this run Arma 3 well?

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

Mobo: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard

GPU: XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB Video Card

Memory: 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance

[Bravo_Two_Zeroq 10]

That's about an Intel Ivy Bridge processor with a fully integrated GPU chip, although there are multiple models (from Core i3 to Core i7 desktop and laptop models) with the Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip so I can't give you an exact model number, my guess would be you're looking at an Intel Core i5-3570K processor. Although the increase over the older Intel HD Graphics 3000 chip is indeed substantial, the HD Graphics 4000 chip is designed to perform simple GPU tasks like viewing movies or playing not-so demanding games (The Sims 3, Simcity, old shooters and the like). It is unsufficient to play Arma 3 with a decent frame rate at a Full HD resolution of 1920*1080 pixels.

Giving a full advice is difficult without knowing what your requirements are (or a budget). Also, don't fall for marketing. Fixed the description for you:

The new integrated graphics, HD Graphics 4000, involves a

substantial increase in performance over its predecessor and

works great except for the most demanding games.

@halisray

Should be fine for high settings, although the memory is overkill (8 GB is more than you need the following 5 years unless you intend to make a RAM drive). For graphics card you can also look at the HD 7870 XT which is similar priced as the card you selected, but significantly faster as it doesn't use the Pitcairn GPU of HD 7850/7870 but the Tahiti chip of 7950.

Edited April 1, 2013 by Bravo_Two_Zeroq