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

[antipr0duct 1]

Let's put it this way,

the PSU is required as my current PSU just does not support 2x6 pins for the PCIe graphicscard, I am using a workaround there so a replacement is required.

To upgrade to a intel CPU would cost me +300€ as I can no longer use my old MoBo.

Do the benchmarks you posted actually have an impact on Arma3? You are playing on a Phenom II x4 955, are you not? How is your performance?

Edited January 28, 2014 by antipr0duct

[doveman 7]

Let's put it this way,

the PSU is required as my current PSU just does not support 2x6 pins for the PCIe graphicscard, I am using a workaround there so a replacement is required.

To upgrade to a intel CPU would cost me +300€ as I can no longer use my old MoBo.

Do the benchmarks you posted actually have an impact on Arma3? You are playing on a Phenom II x4 955, are you not? How is your performance?

Pretty awful. I regularly see 15fps or 20fps.

Those are scores for single-threaded operations, which is what ArmA3 mostly uses so yes, they will translate into ArmA3 performance. You only have to look at the number of posts showing how Intel systems perform better with ArmA3 than AMD to see that this is true.

If you're using a workaround with your PSU, you could keep using that workaround so there's no real need to replace it. Yes, I said that upgrading to Intel would cost £200 rather than £100 for the FX-6350 but it still seems more sensible to me. It's not for me to tell you what to do though, I've given you the information so that you can make an informed choice.

[antipr0duct 1]

Pretty awful. I regularly see 15fps or 20fps.

Those are scores for single-threaded operations, which is what ArmA3 mostly uses so yes, they will translate into ArmA3 performance. You only have to look at the number of posts showing how Intel systems perform better with ArmA3 than AMD to see that this is true.

If you're using a workaround with your PSU, you could keep using that workaround so there's no real need to replace it. Yes, I said that upgrading to Intel would cost £200 rather than £100 for the FX-6350 but it still seems more sensible to me. It's not for me to tell you what to do though, I've given you the information so that you can make an informed choice.

This is an really awful situation. To my knowledge the PSU currently does not provide full power to the GPU since I've to use an adapter to somehow add another 6pin power supply for the PCIe GPU.

Are there no AMD CPUs out there which actually manage that game? Or are there anymore workarounds?

Any people here who actually PLAY Multiplayer with a FX-6300?

Edited January 28, 2014 by antipr0duct

[griffz 1]

i'm looking for people with crossfire, trying to figure if adding an R270X to my 7850OC will make me able to play @ 200% 3D resolution @1920x1200. no benchmark , ever tested with game oversampling 200%.

shame ...

[Sneakson 1]

Hey guys. I used to be here a lot during the Alpha/Beta. I’m a techy guy so I’ll drop back in with some buyer’s/set-up tips:

1. Case:

Very personal! Towers, cubes or blocks in various sizes. Decide what size and appearance you want. The smallest cases may not hold standard size motherboards and some graphics cards. Different cases also have different cooling capabilities and noise blocking capabilities.

If you don’t know where to start check out Corsair.

I use an excellent Corsair Carbide Air 540.

Costs $60 to $160.

2. Motherboard:

“Motherboardâ€. The name says it all doesn’t it? This is where you attach all your components.

Asus and MSI are the best brands. Motherboards are complex however the most important aspects are that it has a Z87 chipset and supports as many graphics cards as you want. Easy.

Asus Z87-A

MSI Z87-G45 Gaming

Both of these support Haswell CPUs and at least two graphics cards of any sort (AMD/NVidia). You won’t need anything “stronger.â€

Both cost about $150.

3. CPU:

CPUs are the magic crackers that do all your calculations. They are made my AMD or Intel and I believe there is a consensus that Intel CPUs work better with ARMA and I’m no AMD expert so I’m only going to mention the one and obvious choice here:

Intel Core i5-4670K

This Haswell boy will do all your calculations in a hurry. It’s the one every should buy and one of the best CPUs available to anyone while at the same time it is very cheap compared to any graphics card.

It costs $220.

4. Memories:

If you want to be able to do more than one thing at a time you’ll need some solid memories! Corsair are the best though many other brands are in the competition and the difference between brands is actually small. In other words you can use basically any big name brand and won’t see any difference whatsoever however if you want the best there can only be:

Corsair Vengeance

Next is how much and what speed? You’ll want 1600 MHz which I believe is the highest you can use without memory overclocking. A 32-bit OS can only use 4GB however a 64-bit OS can use a lot more. 4GB on a 64-bit OS can be a bit difficult and memories are not expensive at all so buy 8GB. 16GB is a waste of money unless you know exactly how you’re going to use it. Finally you may want to divide your memories onto smaller sticks so 8GB should be divided onto two separate 4GB sticks. Note that the colour of the memories makes absolutely NO difference: it’s only for appearance actually.

In the end you’ll have:

2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz

Costs about $90.

5. Graphics card:

Here you can spend $70 to $7000 and needless to say this is what will decide how well you can finally play your games. Graphics cards are made by AMD or NVidia where AMD are usually cheaper and NVidia are usually stronger however you will want a graphic card made by a third party including Asus and MSI as two of the best brands.

Again I’m not AMD expert so I will only cover NVidias selection. NVidias cards are named 560, 660, 760 where a higher hundred is newer and 760 or 770 where a higher ten is stronger and sometimes there are Ti models that are stronger than the non-Ti model.

A typical choice is the GTX 760. Now if you want a 770 you will have to pay 50% more and your games will run 33% quicker. If you want a 780 you will have to pay 40% more and your games will run 25% quicker, compared to the 770 now. Finally a Titan will cost several times more with only a 10% boost.

As you can see the more expensive cards are less cost efficient. You can also use several graphics cards at once however doing so is also not very cost efficient at all compared to waiting two years for graphics cards that are as strong as two were two years ago and costs only what one does.

What you should do is buy a 760 or 770 depending on your situation and again Asus and MSI are excellent choices though it has been said that you can’t go wrong with most of the 700-series.By the way you may see cards that have 2GB or 4GB VRAM. This is important to take into consideration if you are using a screen significantly bigger than 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 including XHD, 2K and 4K screens and whatever else they may call themselves. 2GB is enough for an HD screen however if your screen is bigger you’ll want 4GB.

I use an MSI 770 Gaming 2GB.

6. Storage:

Currently HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) are being succeeded by SSDs (Solid State Drives) and buying an SSD often said to be one of the best investments you can do to speed up your computer and especially shorten boot time significantly!

What you should do today is buy one 64-256GB SSD by Samsung that are the very best in SSDs that you install your OS on and a cheap and massive 1-2TB HDD that I would say should be by Western Digital that you can store basically anything and everything on.

Samsung 840 Evo

Western Digital Blue

Only you can decide how much space you need. Your SSD should be at least 64GB so you can store your OS and documents however 128GB is even better and will also let you install games though this doesn’t make much difference. 256GB is also quite cheap however buying more than that is not cost efficient considering that SSD costs are dropping quickly and in a year or two it will only cost a small bit of what it does today actually. A 1TB HDD is cheap today and 2TB doesn’t cost much more however how much do you really need?

I use a Samsung 840 250GB and Western Digital Blue 1TB and the SSD holds my Windows 8.1 64-bit (20GB), 50GB documents, 80GB games and 20GB extras for a total of 180GB which is only 80% of the total 250GB. I have 180GB of downloads on the HDD and that’s only about 20%.

Samsung 840 Evo 120GB costs $90 and Western Digital Blue 1TB $60.

7. Optical drive:

Not much to say here. Any CD/DVD or Blu-ray will do.

8. Supply unit:

Now all we need are some watts! How much does a 4670 and 770 use? 800W? Closer to exactly 300W. Unless you use several graphics cards (you don’t) then you will actually only need about 500W. Again Corsair is one of the best brands however Seasonic are the, the, best. Some of Corsairs best units are made by Seasonic and all of XFXs units are actually only modified Seasonic units. Seasonic also sell their own units under their own name.

It’s difficult to name one unit for everyone to buy because availability differs quite a lot in different countries, unfortunately. Search by yourself and only consider units with 80+ Bronze or higher! 80+ is a certification system and indication of quality.

Costs $60 to $160.

9. OS:

Windows 7 or 8, 32-bit or 64-bit. Unless you already have decided on anything else. Easy.

Windows 8 is the exact same as Windows 7 99% of the time. The big difference is Start which can be modded and so can most if not all other arguably negative news. However Windows 8 is actually quicker than Windows 7 both overall and in boot time.

Naturally if you buy a new OS today it should absolutely be 64-bit, $100.

10. Monitor:

Monitors is a big discussion and I’m not going to go into detail but I will mention two important matters:

60 Hz vs 120/144 Hz. How many Hz can the human eye see? You’re lucky because I’m an expert on this subject and the answer is that the eye can see infinite Hz! Eyes don’t send one image to the brain every time unit; they send an image to the brain every time they are hit by light. They are analogue. Anyone that says that our eyes only can see 24, 60, 120 or 240 Hz or any value is wrong. A 120 Hz monitor is a lot smoother than a 60 Hz monitor however also bear in mind that you will need twice the computer to view 120 Hz and if you only can play a game in 30 fps than that would be about 90 Hz wasted. Console games usually run in 30 fps. Movies are shot in 24 fps actually. How come movies don’t stutter? Because of motion blur actually! Motion blur decreases temporal aliasing just as anti-aliasing decreases spatial aliasing. Motion blur does apparently (!) increase your fps even when ironically sometimes motion blur decreases your fps. I think you should always have motion blur activated unless it causes slowdowns. A 120 Hz monitor can definitely be worth it and only you can decide if you want one or not. Your choice.

Another big issue is TN vs non-TN screens. All (few exceptions) 120/144 Hz monitors are TN screens which have a lot worse image quality than many non-TN alternatives. So you will have to choose between a 120 Hz TN monitor that’s smooth with lower image quality and bad viewing angles and a 60 Hz non-TN monitor with superior image quality.

In my opinion the best choice is a 60 Hz non-TN monitor with the best image quality available because that makes literally everything look better while 120 Hz will only be noticeable when playing games that are old enough for your computer to be able to run them in 120 Hz. However if you are into Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, StarCraft or Quake a 120 Hz monitor may definitely be the better monitor for you!

The cost of your monitor doesn’t have to match your other components at all though I would say $150 to $500 is comfortable.11. Audio:

This involves speakers and headsets. I’m not expert on audio however a good set of speakers cost about $250-$500 and a great set can cost many, many times more. Speakers that were good 20 years ago are still good today though. They’re not something you upgrade often at all. Headsets can save a marriage.

12. Controls:

A mouse and a keyboard, or keypad and maybe even a console controller!

Again this is very personal. When it comes to mouse the important things are appearance, ergonomics and sensitivity. Having at least 5 buttons (scroll wheel counts as one) is also swell. When it comes to keyboards there are very, very many aspects to consider. There are also many keypads that are ergonomic mini-keyboards and you can buy both wired and wireless Xbox 360 controllers that work with your PC and that are great for playing games such as Assassin’s Creed, Dark Souls or emulation.

Starting with mice there’s a big elephant issue. CPI/DPI (counts/dots per inch, synonymous) is a major marketing word and many mice boast 6400 DPI. However DPI is not any indication whatsoever of the quality of a mouse sensor. At all. DPI is a measure of how closely a mouse scans the surface it is being used on and not how well it scans it. A mouse can scan closely but poorly leading to a lot of noise being scanned and shaky mouse movements. If you make it scan even more closely it will only scan the noise more closely instead of scanning less noise. Close to all professional players use 400 DPI.

So how much DPI do you need? Go to the Control Panel, then Mouse, then Pointer Settings and set Pointer Speed to 6/10 and disable acceleration first. Now when out in Windows nothing affects your mouse movements, so the DPI that your mouse is set to will be your final DPI. Adjust the DPI on your mouse to something that you think is comfortable and so you can easily click on small objects while also being able to move your mouse across the screen. On a 1920x1080 monitor you will probably want about 1600 DPI. On a small monitor less and on a bigger monitor more since it takes more counts and more hand movement to move across the screen.

In games you should do the same thing and experiment. A good suggestion in first-person shooters is to adjust your sensitivity so you can easily shoot targets and do a 180 degree turn comfortably. However while in-game you should adjust the in-game sensitivity and not the DPI on your mouse because then your sensitivity outside of the game will change too! Some old games don’t have sensitivity adjustments in which case you should adjust your DPI on the mouse instead. Note that in StarCraft and other strategy games it is a bad idea to adjust in-game sensitivity and you should always adjust your DPI. In StarCraft II as I remember your in-game sensitivity should always be at 51-54% because that will make your mouse move exactly the same in the game as outside of the game. First-person games work completely different due to them being set in inverted world transform matrixes and if you have no idea what that means don’t question it.

Do this and you will always have maximum accuracy. I use 1200 dpi without any adjustments in ARMA (in-game sensitivity at default value) and outside of the game that lets me move diagonally across my 1920x1200 screen with a flick of my wrist and in-game it lets me do a 180 spin with the flick of my wrist. I hold my mouse in a swipe grip and only move my mouse a few centimetres which the high sensitivity (1200 high, that’s right) compensates for which is what I personally enjoy. I’m also deadly accurate which is important because I like being accurate in games. Someone else may enjoy a much lower DPI or in-game sensitivity settings and move their hand around on the mouse mat a lot more. Someone else still may have a much higher DPI or in-game settings and move their hand a lot less than I do. Someone else still may have a much bigger monitor than I do and need a higher DPI because of that.

Anyways there are many different mouse brands.

I’m going to mention one excellent mouse: the SteelSeries Sensei. This is a cheap, excellent starting and advanced mouse for everyone. It has a classy appearance, ambidextrous ergonomics, 7 buttons plus a DPI-switch, three-zone customizable backlighting and thanks to a built in CPU (!) you can adjust DPI between 1 and 5700 (and boost it up to over 11000) acceleration, deacceleration and smoothing all directly on the mouse without any need for hardware so you can plug it in anywhere you want and it works. The intricate customisation will let you discover which DPI is good for you and if you enjoy acceleration or not. It is considered one of the best mice ever. Still it’s only $60. Buy a $10 SteelSeries QcK (also available in bigger or smaller sizes) mouse pad while you’re at it too. It really does make a noticeable difference over your average office mouse pad. Did I mention the Sensei has a screen on its underside? It is out of control.

Anyways, this is turning into a long text so I’m only briefly going to mention keyboards: the Corsair K70 is amazing. Mechanical Blue/Brown/Red switches, three different colour styles, backlighting, USB… it has everything. At $130 it is definitely worth it because you will love it a long time.

13. Extras:

An external HDD like the Western Digital My Passport is excellent for back-ups!

Also: cooling. CPU cooling and graphics card extra cooling exists. This is mainly for overclocking, cost inefficient and will not be covered by me.

Total about $2000-3000 will get you a really nice computer set-up.

The computer only (without monitor, audio, controls) usually costs $1400 to $2400. Used computers or older components and cheaper components can save you a lot of money sometimes.

All prices calculated from Amazon.com. International prices are usually a bit more.

I have a Corsair Carbide Air 540 with an MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, Intel i7-4770K, 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz, MSI 770 Gaming 2GB, Samsung 840 Evo 250GB, Western Digital Blue 1TB, Seasonic P-520FL 520W, Corsair Hydro H110, Windows 8.1 64-bit, HP ZR24W, 20 year old 4.1 speakers, Corsair K70, SteelSeries Sensei, Xbox 360 wireless controller and Western Digital My Passport 1TB. It starts to the desktop in about 16 seconds and plays ARMA3 on all max settings except for view distance 3000/3000/200 in 50 fps.

Quick tips:

Motherboards are full of crappy, useless features you’ll never use.

Overclocking is not cost efficient, since you need better cooling.

Hyperthreading (3770K, 4770K et cetera) does nothing useful.

More than 1600 Hz or 8GB memories is basically useless.

One graphics card only. Accept that you won’t play the newest games on the highest settings and wait two years.

OS should be on an SSD. Everything else on HDD.

Blu-ray blows.

Unless you break all my other advice 500W is enough.

Windows 8 isn’t that bad.

Monitors cost a lot but last a long time.

Audio costs a lot but last forever.

The best of the best near exclusively use 400 DPI.

Don’t forget a mouse mat. They do matter.

Your keyboard is your friend.

Back-up every now and then.

Does it seem I'm breaking my own rules with a 4770K, 16GB memories, water cooling and Windows 8.1? Well I'm the master and I can do whatever I want!

Final note: my sig is slightly out of date.

[antipr0duct 1]

...

Well thank you for your input. Having read the entire post, I do appreciate the gesture to help. However, there is a somewhat elitist attitude hidden between those lines I can not ignore.

It appears that people who can not or don't want to afford as "little" as 1400$ or more should go ahead and f*ck themselves.

In conclusion they should just stay from the holy world of gaming, or in this case ArmA. I am not saying these are your personal intentions or even attitude, it's just one interpretation.

This is nothing personal but rather some sort of annoyance towards the gaming community itself...

Having said that, your signature does state the fps values in midgame. Are these actual values from MULTIPLAYER or just sp missions?

Thank you.

PS: I am still interested in any reports of people playing on a.machine with a

AMD fx-6300 CPU

[griffz 1]

...

thanks for your post dude , but it's quite irrevelant. especially when you leave out AMD GPU choice... and declare ASUS and MSI as best choice for MB AND GPU card.

all that can vary depending of the seasons ,

anyway , guys , i'm still looking for 78xx crossfire review with 3D resolution oversampling @ 200%.

[Leon86 13]

These are arma 2 cpu tests, arma 3 will probably be similar.

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/897-21/cpu-jeux-3d-crysis-2-arma-ii-oa.html

Doesn't look like 6300 will help much, but at least it shouldn't be slower.

Intel can be expensive, but you dont have to get a topend model, i5-4440 + a basic board (overclocking is disabled anyway, so no need to go expensive) will get you great performance. Haswell doesn't overclock that well anyway, so you'll only miss out on 25 - 30% performance.

[Sneakson 1]

Well thank you for your input. Having read the entire post, I do appreciate the gesture to help. However, there is a somewhat elitist attitude hidden between those lines I can not ignore.

It appears that people who can not or don't want to afford as "little" as 1400$ or more should go ahead and f*ck themselves.

In conclusion they should just stay from the holy world of gaming, or in this case ArmA. I am not saying these are your personal intentions or even attitude, it's just one interpretation.

This is nothing personal but rather some sort of annoyance towards the gaming community itself...

Having said that, your signature does state the fps values in midgame. Are these actual values from MULTIPLAYER or just sp missions?

Thank you.

PS: I am still interested in any reports of people playing on a.machine with a

AMD fx-6300 CPU

Actually, playing ARMA 3 on high settings will cost you.

If you buy an entirely new computer you really should spend about $1400 on it if you want to be able to play current and upcoming games on high settings and remember that a monitor and audio basically lasts a lifetime and all other components will be great for 5-7 years as long as you upgrade the graphics card every several years. And even then you’ll be able to sell it for some hundreds of bucks used. So it’s an investment.

I could have included some cheaper options for the graphics card such as the 660 Ti and maybe even some 500-series card though that will probably proportionally affect your performance. Writing a guide is the easiest when it’s about the newest, widely available products and you do not consider buying used products but if anyone wants to buy anything used they can. To be honest I’ve never considered it a good idea to save a hundred bucks here and a hundred bucks there on components that have 7 year or lifetime warranties because in the long run such small amounts of money are a piss in the river if you know what I mean. If you are a young student chances are you don’t know but if you have an income or student grant I think you will agree.

So I didn’t include some cheaper options because of 1) time constraints, 2) unsure of how well cheaper options handle ARMA3, 3) don’t know AMD well and 4) the used market varies from day to day.

I could write a more complete guide of sorts but after writing the monitor and mouse sections I thought it was getting a bit out of hand and it was originally only going to be some advice.

A sticky thread somewhere would be nice but in that case I would also need some AMD advice because I really don’t know AMD well and don’t understand their numbering of CPUs or graphics cards at all.

Would be time-consuming.

Anyways just to throw together a cheap variety on the above:

Corsair 200R ($60)

MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate ($85)

Intel Core i5-4670K ($220)

2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz ($88)

MSI 760 2GB ($260)

WD Blue 1TB ($60)

DVD ($20)

Seasonic G-360 360W ($55)

Windows 8 ($100)

Still comes down to about $950 though if you already have Windows 8 that’s $100 off. All students should also notice that they can usually have Windows cheaper if they buy it using a student card, for free if studying at certain universities and in Sweden any student can buy all Windows versions for only 150 SEK ($23) through a company that acts as a virtual Microsoft DreamSpark university basically, very nice.

A cheapskate case, the cheapest Haswell motherboard, the i5 (I checked a benchmark for the i3 and it did not do well), memories, a 760 (660 is 20% weaker and 20% cheaper at $208, Amazon.com), a big HDD (cheap anyways), no SSD, a DVD (you probably already have one) and quite amazingly the Seasonic G-360 (80+ Gold) is only $55. Seasonic, in other words it’s not going to blow up on you and should be quiet while also being able to handle the 250-ish W that I would estimate the system should use.

If you already have a DVD and Windows that’s $828 for a computer that may play ARMA3 about 75% as well as my $2400 does. You can save about $800 by buying a cheap case, cheap mobo, 760 instead of 770 and skip the SSD and the final about $800 my computers worth I basically wasted because I could afford it (nicer than average case, an i7 because I’ve never had one and want to try one, the 770, an extra size 250GB SSD, a fanless Seasonic because I don’t want any noise, water-cooling because I’m planning on some overclocking which I have yet to apply and a back-up HDD).

Better?

And here are some suggested prices which you shouldn’t go too far below for the extras:

Monitor ($200)

Audio ($200)

Mouse ($60-ish)

Mousepad ($10)

Keyboard ($100-ish… for a gaming-oriented keyboard that is)

Fps values are singleplayer. Measuring online is useless.

thanks for your post dude , but it's quite irrevelant. especially when you leave out AMD GPU choice... and declare ASUS and MSI as best choice for MB AND GPU card.

all that can vary depending of the seasons ,

anyway , guys , i'm still looking for 78xx crossfire review with 3D resolution oversampling @ 200%.

Caught me. Yes, I use Corsair and MSI a lot and I both stand by that they are great and am sure of this because I own the components in question and can say with perfect certainty from browsing through a hundred benchmarks and testing my own components that they are no slackers. Asus also usually end up extremely close to MSI and Gigabyte are usually in the fight too but they never seem to win it. I mentioned EVGA too I believe because sometimes they are cheaper and they have good warranty conditions as I’m told. With motherboard I wouldn’t really go with any exotic brands but with graphics card I did mention that you can’t really go wrong… the differences between the cards are small but so are the cost differences so why go with a card that’s twice as loud? Why not just go for the best?

They may “change with the seasons†but this is the current state of things. I'm going by current benchmarks and current statistics.

AMD I’m unfortunately unfamiliar with.

[antipr0duct 1]

Actually, playing ARMA 3 on high settings will cost you.

If you buy an entirely new computer you really should spend about $1400 on it if you want to be able to play current and upcoming games on high settings and remember that a monitor and audio basically lasts a lifetime and all other components will be great for 5-7 years as long as you upgrade the graphics card every several years. And even then you’ll be able to sell it for some hundreds of bucks used. So it’s an investment.

I could have included some cheaper options for the graphics card such as the 660 Ti and maybe even some 500-series card though that will probably proportionally affect your performance. Writing a guide is the easiest when it’s about the newest, widely available products and you do not consider buying used products but if anyone wants to buy anything used they can. To be honest I’ve never considered it a good idea to save a hundred bucks here and a hundred bucks there on components that have 7 year or lifetime warranties because in the long run such small amounts of money are a piss in the river if you know what I mean. If you are a young student chances are you don’t know but if you have an income or student grant I think you will agree.

So I didn’t include some cheaper options because of 1) time constraints, 2) unsure of how well cheaper options handle ARMA3, 3) don’t know AMD well and 4) the used market varies from day to day.

I could write a more complete guide of sorts but after writing the monitor and mouse sections I thought it was getting a bit out of hand and it was originally only going to be some advice.

A sticky thread somewhere would be nice but in that case I would also need some AMD advice because I really don’t know AMD well and don’t understand their numbering of CPUs or graphics cards at all.

Would be time-consuming.

Anyways just to throw together a cheap variety on the above:

Corsair 200R ($60)

MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate ($85)

Intel Core i5-4670K ($220)

2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz ($88)

MSI 760 2GB ($260)

WD Blue 1TB ($60)

DVD ($20)

Seasonic G-360 360W ($55)

Windows 8 ($100)

Still comes down to about $950 though if you already have Windows 8 that’s $100 off. All students should also notice that they can usually have Windows cheaper if they buy it using a student card, for free if studying at certain universities and in Sweden any student can buy all Windows versions for only 150 SEK ($23) through a company that acts as a virtual Microsoft DreamSpark university basically, very nice.

A cheapskate case, the cheapest Haswell motherboard, the i5 (I checked a benchmark for the i3 and it did not do well), memories, a 760 (660 is 20% weaker and 20% cheaper at $208, Amazon.com), a big HDD (cheap anyways), no SSD, a DVD (you probably already have one) and quite amazingly the Seasonic G-360 (80+ Gold) is only $55. Seasonic, in other words it’s not going to blow up on you and should be quiet while also being able to handle the 250-ish W that I would estimate the system should use.

If you already have a DVD and Windows that’s $828 for a computer that may play ARMA3 about 75% as well as my $2400 does. You can save about $800 by buying a cheap case, cheap mobo, 760 instead of 770 and skip the SSD and the final about $800 my computers worth I basically wasted because I could afford it (nicer than average case, an i7 because I’ve never had one and want to try one, the 770, an extra size 250GB SSD, a fanless Seasonic because I don’t want any noise, water-cooling because I’m planning on some overclocking which I have yet to apply and a back-up HDD).

Better?

And here are some suggested prices which you shouldn’t go too far below for the extras:

Monitor ($200)

Audio ($200)

Mouse ($60-ish)

Mousepad ($10)

Keyboard ($100-ish… for a gaming-oriented keyboard that is)

Fps values are singleplayer. Measuring online is useless.

Caught me. Yes, I use Corsair and MSI a lot and I both stand by that they are great and am sure of this because I own the components in question and can say with perfect certainty from browsing through a hundred benchmarks and testing my own components that they are no slackers. Asus also usually end up extremely close to MSI and Gigabyte are usually in the fight too but they never seem to win it. I mentioned EVGA too I believe because sometimes they are cheaper and they have good warranty conditions as I’m told. With motherboard I wouldn’t really go with any exotic brands but with graphics card I did mention that you can’t really go wrong… the differences between the cards are small but so are the cost differences so why go with a card that’s twice as loud? Why not just go for the best?

They may “change with the seasons†but this is the current state of things. I'm going by current benchmarks and current statistics.

AMD I’m unfortunately unfamiliar with.

Sneakson,

I can not talk for everybody here, but my guess is, that we mainly discuss FPS in multiplayer here, so what would be interesting is to actually tell us what your FPS in multiplayer are!? Your would be surprised what my FPS count in SP and Benchmarks is, it isn't bad and more than playable, even though I am using a small&cheap PC setup compared to your "standards". Onlineplay is where it is at, struggling with 12FPS, this is actually pissing people off. I really would not care to play on 30FPS, no matter what quality setting. But when it comes to quality settings, it doesn't get better or worse by changing them. The FPS is identical in "high" or "low" setting, even on "very high" with a few sliders to "ultra" does not alter the FPS at all, not to the better, or to the worse. So in the end, it appears to be an issue just with AMD CPU.

And here we are again: A game that is already not designed to be played by everybody, makes AMD CPU obsolete. Cool, can it be more elitist?

"Intel users yay"

"AMD users go f*ck yourselves"

I think I am going to just get rid of ArmA3, which is just a shame really, but I fail to see a reason spending 300€ just to play this game. There are other titles out there, which run just fine on "very high" settings despite using AMD.

[Sneakson 1]

Sneakson,

I can not talk for everybody here, but my guess is, that we mainly discuss FPS in multiplayer here, so what would be interesting is to actually tell us what your FPS in multiplayer are!? Your would be surprised what my FPS count in SP and Benchmarks is, it isn't bad and more than playable, even though I am using a small&cheap PC setup compared to your "standards". Onlineplay is where it is at, struggling with 12FPS, this is actually pissing people off. I really would not care to play on 30FPS, no matter what quality setting. But when it comes to quality settings, it doesn't get better or worse by changing them. The FPS is identical in "high" or "low" setting, even on "very high" with a few sliders to "ultra" does not alter the FPS at all, not to the better, or to the worse. So in the end, it appears to be an issue just with AMD CPU.

And here we are again: A game that is already not designed to be played by everybody, makes AMD CPU obsolete. Cool, can it be more elitist?

"Intel users yay"

"AMD users go f*ck yourselves"

I think I am going to just get rid of ArmA3, which is just a shame really, but I fail to see a reason spending 300€ just to play this game. There are other titles out there, which run just fine on "very high" settings despite using AMD.

Fps can't be accurately measured in multiplayer, that's why I don't. ARMA3 is too unstable and the fps in multiplayer depends greatly on the host, server, map, internet connection and client...

Also the game isn't designed to not be played by AMD users as much as AMD insists on making multi-core CPUs with substandard per-core performance and ARMA relies on only a few cores and doesn't scale optimally last time I heard.

According to my standards by the way a game runs well when it runs 60 fps. If you’re willing to settle for 30 fps then congratulations, you can probably get away with a much cheaper computer. If you’re willing to play in sub-HD resolution that will be extremely significant as well.

I wish I could settle for less, that's why I'm not upgrading to 120 Hz. I hear it's too good.

By the way, I agree. ARMA3 is messy. That's why I've left it until the campaign is complete. However most believe that after some years of modding it will be about as good as the other ARMA games have been after their shaky start.

The next time however, ARMA4, I really hope that BIS go for stability instead of being too ambitious and ending up with a buggy mess. They’ve got a bad case of the Daggerfalls.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Sneakson

[antipr0duct 1]

...That's the attitude I talked about.

I am settling for 30FPS in Multiplayer in ARMA3, that would be nice actually.

I do not settle for less than 60FPS, 1920x1080 (which is not sub HD to my knowledge) in other MP games though.

Also, I did not claim the game was designed NOT be played with AMD, I'd rather say the game was designed NOT to use the potential multi-core CPUs have, which is a shame really. But this is a fact that can not be changed, which is also, a shame.

Edited January 30, 2014 by antipr0duct

[Leon86 13]

Arma scales quite well to 3 cores, but 4 to 6 cores sadly doesn't give that much extra, true.

multicore and having a complex game is difficult apparently, total war, arma, planetside 2, all have this problem.

[Sneakson 1]

Battlefield 3 and 4 to my knowledge use many cores very well and Battlefield 3 even utilized hyperthreading in a good way if you had some certain specs. Wish all games did.

Hopefully this years controversy of Arma, Battlefield, Call of Duty and Total War all being extremely buggy will mean developers start paying more attention to perfecting their engines from the very beginning instead of having it at the end of their schedule then have it be cut off completely when they’re asked to have the game done early not to clash with other games.

It’s funny how most games only uses two or so cores well and 2GB RAM and then we have games like CoD: Ghosts that won’t even let you start the game without 6GB RAM installed when it still actually didn’t use more than 2GB, which was patched out after much controversy. And don’t get me started on i7s being marketed to a general audience. I have one, only for curiosity’s sake.

[drexvil 10]

I'd like to get into Arma 3 and but need to upgrade first. I'm just starting Arma 2 OA and like it a lot, but I'm getting around 15-25 fps on singleplayer low details no AA with 2560x1440 resolution. I read that Arma is very CPU dependent, but the Techspot article seems to show that GPU matters just as much.

I only have $150-$200 to spend on either the video card or the CPU/motherboard. I know I won't play anywhere near 60fps, but I just want to know where to put my money into for the best value. I can always upgrade more later. A requirement is that I play at my current resolution.

Considerations:

FX 8320BE $100 from Microcenter + a budget OC motherboard (which one?)

--OR--

Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 2GB: $120

--OR--

Something else!

Current Setup:

CPU: Phenom II x2 560, no core unlocks and overclocked to 3.7Ghz stable.

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

MB: MSI 870a-g54, non FX (not AM3+)

VIDEO: Galaxy GTX 460 768MB

PS: 500W

RAM: 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600

[drexvil 10]

I'd like to get into Arma 3 and but need to upgrade first. I'm just starting Arma 2 OA and like it a lot, but I'm getting around 15-25 fps on singleplayer low details no AA with 2560x1440 resolution. I read that Arma is very CPU dependent, but the Techspot article seems to show that GPU matters just as much.

I only have $150-$200 to spend on either the video card or the CPU/motherboard. I know I won't play anywhere near 60fps, but I just want to know where to put my money into for the best value. I can always upgrade more later. A requirement is that I play at my current resolution.

Considerations:

FX 8320BE $100 from Microcenter + a budget OC motherboard (which one?)

--OR--

Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 2GB: $120

--OR--

Something else!

Current Setup:

CPU: Phenom II x2 560, no core unlocks and overclocked to 3.7Ghz stable.

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

MB: MSI 870a-g54, non FX (not AM3+)

VIDEO: Galaxy GTX 460 768MB

PS: 500W

RAM: 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600

[doveman 7]

I'd like to get into Arma 3 and but need to upgrade first. I'm just starting Arma 2 OA and like it a lot, but I'm getting around 15-25 fps on singleplayer low details no AA with 2560x1440 resolution. I read that Arma is very CPU dependent, but the Techspot article seems to show that GPU matters just as much.

I only have $150-$200 to spend on either the video card or the CPU/motherboard. I know I won't play anywhere near 60fps, but I just want to know where to put my money into for the best value. I can always upgrade more later. A requirement is that I play at my current resolution.

Considerations:

FX 8320BE $100 from Microcenter + a budget OC motherboard (which one?)

--OR--

Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 2GB: $120

--OR--

Something else!

Current Setup:

CPU: Phenom II x2 560, no core unlocks and overclocked to 3.7Ghz stable.

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

MB: MSI 870a-g54, non FX (not AM3+)

VIDEO: Galaxy GTX 460 768MB

PS: 500W

RAM: 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600

I'd recommend you look at an i5-4440 and motherboard, as ArmA needs good single-threaded performance and Intel is much better than AMD in this respect and you won't see any benefit from extra slower cores that you'll get with the AMD.

The GTX460 isn't terrible and should suffice for now. Obviously you won't be able to have everything on High/Ultra but it's better to have a CPU that's capable of handling the AI, etc and have to turn some of the graphics down than a poor CPU that's going to limit you to 15-25fps and a powerful GPU that will let you turn on some effects to make those 15-25fps look prettier.

[Sneakson 1]

I'd like to get into Arma 3 and but need to upgrade first. I'm just starting Arma 2 OA and like it a lot, but I'm getting around 15-25 fps on singleplayer low details no AA with 2560x1440 resolution. I read that Arma is very CPU dependent, but the Techspot article seems to show that GPU matters just as much.

I only have $150-$200 to spend on either the video card or the CPU/motherboard. I know I won't play anywhere near 60fps, but I just want to know where to put my money into for the best value. I can always upgrade more later. A requirement is that I play at my current resolution.

Considerations:

FX 8320BE $100 from Microcenter + a budget OC motherboard (which one?)

--OR--

Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 2GB: $120

--OR--

Something else!

Current Setup:

CPU: Phenom II x2 560, no core unlocks and overclocked to 3.7Ghz stable.

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

MB: MSI 870a-g54, non FX (not AM3+)

VIDEO: Galaxy GTX 460 768MB

PS: 500W

RAM: 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600

First of all: 2560x1440 is a lot! That's "XHD" and to my knowledge graphics performance is usually proportional to screen size so you should expect only 60% the performance of someone playing the game in 1920x1080... that's the downside with a big screen.

Also graphics cards always matter. ARMA3 being called “CPU dependent†is a misnomer. Also all talk about bottlenecking is usually simplified.

By the way I would upgrade the graphics card. The new CPU is octa-core which means it’s not ideal for playing ARMA (what I’ve heard anyways is that it doesn’t scale well across more than a few cores) and only marginally better than the one you have it seems while the new graphics card is about the strength of the weakest ones of the latest generation instead of your old one which is the weakest three generations (years) ago.

So I would buy the graphics card which will bring your graphics performance up to this generation and if you’re not satisfied with the performance you can continue saving for a maybe a MSI Z87-G41 ($70 at Microcenter) and i5-4670K ($180 at Microcenter) or some similar alternatives to bring your CPU up to the current generation. Note that Microcenter may not be the cheapest alternative and that buying used components may be cheaper (eBay or local auction/trading sites) and that there may be good alternatives to the 4670K (Intel or AMD alternatives) however generally I would not advice upgrading to something that isn’t the latest (or second latest) generation since that will probably mean you have to upgrade soon again if you want to continue playing the latest games.

By the way I'm pretty much saying the opposite of doveman. Not sure who's right. Searching for benchmarks would be pretty wise.

[Leon86 13]

Yeah, a 460 might be a bit light for 2560x1440, unfortunately the powerful gpu's have gotten more expensive the last few months because of coin mining.

[doveman 7]

By the way I'm pretty much saying the opposite of doveman. Not sure who's right. Searching for benchmarks would be pretty wise.

All I know is that with my Phenom II x4 955 @3.5Ghz and HD6950 2GB unlocked to 6970 shaders and OC'd to 880/1350, I still regularly suffer from terrible fps, so I don't believe that the HD7850 paired with a Phenom II X2 560 (or a FX 8320BE) will do any better, whereas there's lots of reports from people with i5/i7 CPUs having much better fps than those with AMD CPUs.

I calculated the improvement my Dad would get in single-threaded performance (mainly for X-Plane) from upgrading his Phenom II X3 425e, so I've added the comparison below:

(Bracketed numbers are the Passmark scores from

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

NB. The Phenom II X3 425e isn't in this table, so I used the results from the closest CPU, which scored 972

FX-6350 3.9Ghz (1,491): £100 53% improvement

i5-4440 3.3Ghz (1,889): £130 94% improvement (£115 s/h)

i5-4570 3.6Ghz (2,076): £145 113% improvement (9% faster than the i5-4440 for 11% extra cost)

i5-4670 3.8Ghz (2,186): £160 125% improvement (15% faster than the i5-4440 for 23% extra cost)

i5-4670K 3.8Ghz £172. Only the K chips can be overclocked and the 4670K can easily overclock from it's default 3.8Ghz to 4.2Ghz, perhaps as high as 4.4Ghz. At 4.2Ghz, it's about 27% faster than the i5-4440 for about 32% extra cost, (12% faster than the i5-4670 at 3.8Ghz for 7.5% extra cost). At 4.4Ghz, this increases to 33% faster than the i5-4440 (15% faster than the i5-4670).

So clearly the i5-4440 wins for price/performance but I guess if you can afford the 32% more for the i5-4670K (plus an extra £20+ for a decent heatsink+fan, unless you already have one, so that you can safely overclock it to 4.2Ghz+) to get that 27% extra performance and feel that will be essential, then that's what you should get.

[antipr0duct 1]

I'd like to get into Arma 3 and but need to upgrade first. I'm just starting Arma 2 OA and like it a lot, but I'm getting around 15-25 fps on singleplayer low details no AA with 2560x1440 resolution. I read that Arma is very CPU dependent, but the Techspot article seems to show that GPU matters just as much.

I only have $150-$200 to spend on either the video card or the CPU/motherboard. I know I won't play anywhere near 60fps, but I just want to know where to put my money into for the best value. I can always upgrade more later. A requirement is that I play at my current resolution.

Considerations:

FX 8320BE $100 from Microcenter + a budget OC motherboard (which one?)

--OR--

Powercolor Radeon HD 7850 2GB: $120

--OR--

Something else!

Current Setup:

CPU: Phenom II x2 560, no core unlocks and overclocked to 3.7Ghz stable.

Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

MB: MSI 870a-g54, non FX (not AM3+)

VIDEO: Galaxy GTX 460 768MB

PS: 500W

RAM: 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600

Hi,

I am suffering from the same problem here. I had an HD 6850 before I finally got my HD 7950 PCS+. And guess what, the upgrade did change the performance of other games, but with ARMA3, I am having the same performance as I had with the old HD6850, so really bad FPS in Multiplayer and somewhat "decent" FPS in SP.

Although I do not fully agree with what Sneakson has posted earlier on, I do agree using ANY AMD CPU seems to be an issue, so if you can afford it, buy a decent Intel CPU and MoBo instead of a new GPU.

I am playing with several people now, and everybody on an AMD machine suffers from the same problem, bad FPS that is. I really hope, the next ArmA will run on a new engine, one that can deal with multi core in a better way.

Edited February 1, 2014 by antipr0duct

[rowi324 10]

the laptop name is k55n-db81 the specs are

Operating System: Windows 8 (64-bit)

Display: 15.6" HD (1366*768) LED

Processor: AMD A8-4500m (1.9GHZ)

Graphics: Radeon HD 7640

Memory: 6GB DDR3

Storage: 750GB (5400 RPM )

thanks people

[antipr0duct 1]

Hello,

I really considering an upgrade here. As you might be aware of, I run on AMD and wanna play this game decently. So I am browsing several shops on- and offline.

I now got a quite interesting offer.

Instead of an i5 or i7, I stumbled over another type of CPU made by Intel.

I am talking about the XEON series.

As a matter of fact, I could purchase a E3-1225V3 rather cheaply. To my knowledge the processor is pretty much the same as an i7 without the internal GPU (which I don't need anyway).

This I would combine with a ASRock Z87 PRO3 MoBo.

Any thoughts on that?

Thx

antipr0duct

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

Hello,

I really considering an upgrade here. As you might be aware of, I run on AMD and wanna play this game decently. So I am browsing several shops on- and offline.

I now got a quite interesting offer.

Instead of an i5 or i7, I stumbled over another type of CPU made by Intel.

I am talking about the XEON series.

As a matter of fact, I could purchase a E3-1225V3 rather cheaply. To my knowledge the processor is pretty much the same as an i7 without the internal GPU (which I don't need anyway).

This I would combine with a ASRock Z87 PRO3 MoBo.

Any thoughts on that?

Thx

antipr0duct

i wouldn't bother with xeons, no overclocking (which will add a lot for arma) and i5 4670k is cheaper over here

[antipr0duct 1]

Infact I could get it a lot cheaper than the i5 with the same specs. Also I am not a huge fan of overclocking.

Edited February 2, 2014 by antipr0duct