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

[wrongbanana 10]

Hello,

I recently ordered an MSI GT70 Dominator notebook[/url] from XoticPC. I ordered this specifically for gaming and the one game I am most excited to play (besides Arma 2) is Arma 3. However, I am a little bit worried that this notebook wont be good enough to enjoy the high settings of either game as I am now learning that they are very CPU dependent. Could I get some feedback on this notebook pertaining to the enjoyment of Arma 3 (and possibly Arma 2 that would be allowed in this thread)?

Here are the specs for the notebook:

Operating System: Windows 8.1

Processor: 4th Generation Intel® Mobile Core i7-4800MQ Haswell Processor (Quad Core 2.7-3.7GHz)

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 870M GDDR5 (3.0GB) w/ Optimus Technology

RAM: 12GB DDR3 1600MHz

Display: 1920x1080

With "Cooler Boost Technology." From what I understand this is just a really powerful fan system inside the notebook.

Please post thoughts and suggestions. I am so excited to play Arma 3 (and 2) and really want to be able to enjoy them. I am very excited to join this community.

Thank you so much in advance

[Maio 293]

Hello,

I recently ordered an MSI GT70 Dominator notebook[/url] from XoticPC. I ordered this specifically for gaming and the one game I am most excited to play (besides Arma 2) is Arma 3. However, I am a little bit worried that this notebook wont be good enough to enjoy the high settings of either game as I am now learning that they are very CPU dependent. Could I get some feedback on this notebook pertaining to the enjoyment of Arma 3 (and possibly Arma 2 that would be allowed in this thread)?

Here are the specs for the notebook:

Operating System: Windows 8.1

Processor: 4th Generation Intel® Mobile Core i7-4800MQ Haswell Processor (Quad Core 2.7-3.7GHz)

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 870M GDDR5 (3.0GB) w/ Optimus Technology

RAM: 12GB DDR3 1600MHz

Display: 1920x1080

With "Cooler Boost Technology." From what I understand this is just a really powerful fan system inside the notebook.

Please post thoughts and suggestions. I am so excited to play Arma 3 (and 2) and really want to be able to enjoy them. I am very excited to join this community.

Thank you so much in advance

Well if you are going the laptop way, it is good enough. You will have to play around with the game settings to get the best out of them. Don't expect to set both games on ultra high and run at 30+ frames.

[oldbear 390]

@ PoorOldSpike : Arma3 don't work with XP, have a look at Requirements

-Minimum

OS : Windows Vista SP2 / Windows 7 SP1 (Apple OS not supported)

-Recommended

OS : Windows 7 / 8 64-bit (Apple OS not supported)

[wrongbanana 10]

Well if you are going the laptop way, it is good enough. You will have to play around with the game settings to get the best out of them. Don't expect to set both games on ultra high and run at 30+ frames.

I had to go the laptop route bc I am teaching English in a foreign country and need something I can move back home with easily in a year or two / take with me on trips. It's a shame bc I know that a desktop would be so much better for everything excluding mobility, but I hope that this machine will do well with Arma 3. I am so excited, mostly for the helicopters as I love to fly them in games, but also for the realistic scale and highly detailed terrain for infantry combat. Thank you for your reply

[pooroldspike 129]

Hi guys, AA3 runs a bit jerky on my system even with the vid settings on lowish, it's playable but only just, and I'm disappointed.

These are my specs, can anybody see what might be a weak link in there?

Processor: Intel® Core 2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~ 2.8GHz

Memory: 4096 MB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 (1024 Mb)

O.S: Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601)

BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG

DirectX 11

HannsG HL249 24" LCD monitor

[Sneakson 1]

Hi guys, AA3 runs a bit jerky on my system even with the vid settings on lowish, it's playable but only just, and I'm disappointed.

These are my specs, can anybody see what might be a weak link in there?

Processor: Intel® Core 2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~ 2.8GHz

Memory: 4096 MB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 (1024 Mb)

O.S: Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7601)

BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG

DirectX 11

HannsG HL249 24" LCD monitor

Hah... dreamer...

* CPU: OLD! It's a third as strong as current generation CPUs... I'm surprised the game starts. What settings are you on?

Don't expect to play one of the heaviest, new games with a 5+ year old CPU... 5 year is the limit to when you should upgrade to stay in shape for gaming.

* Graphics card: WEAK! It's only a fifth to a tenth as strong as current generations graphics cards...

I''ll be surprised if you can play anything made this decade on max settings at 60 fps using your current graphics card.

* Memories: 4GB 1333 MHz means your memories are only slightly slower than the current standard but could use a big upgrade because ARMA apparently utilizes quicker than standard memories well and more importantly you only have 4GB.

What's your memory use after having played any game for about an hour? 4GB might be quite insufficient...

Your entire computer is only worth about $100 bucks nowadays...

You're going to want a complete upgrade. Thanks for the laugh though, no offense.

So how does the game work for you?

And yes, you are nearly at the recommended specs and above the minimum specs but they are the bare minimum.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Sneakson

[KrazyBee 8]

Nice to hear that mate :) I hope you are happy with the ASUS GTX 770.

Yeah dude thanks again for ur help.lots of things went wrong building this rig.graphics card from msi was bad,thermaltake 3.0 extreme water cooler was defected so bad that CPU temperature was climbing 99 degrees upon staring the pc.now I got h80i and working awesome.didnt had thT kind of problem when I built the last one.so if any one wants to go with CPU and graphics card,from my own experience go with either 3570k or 4670k(oc it if u want max fps outta it) along with 770 or 7970 hd

[pooroldspike 129]

Your entire computer is only worth about $100 bucks nowadays...

You're going to want a complete upgrade. Thanks for the laugh though, no offense.

So how does the game work for you?

AA3 works, just!

My PC is about 5 years old, I said to the local computer shop back then "build me a PC capable of playing all the latest high-end games" and it's performed fine with every game i've thrown at it until AA3 came along.

What shall I do, ask the shop to fit a new super-duper processor and graphics card in it or simply write it off and tell them to build me a brandnew all-singing all-dancing PC?

[oldbear 390]

@ PoorOldSpike : here we are not speaking about the "...latest high-end games", but only about Arma3.

Your rig "E8500 / GTS 250 / 4Go / Win 7 64-bit" is matching the "Minimum" official specs, but is well under the "Recommended" ones.

You can have a look, here,at the results of my experiments with my own "Athlon II x2 250 / GTS 450" rig.

So you will have to upgrade in order to get an enjoyable experience with Arma3. but you don't need a "super-duper" rig.

Well ... as I have already written down elsewhere what can be the "Recommended" specs from my point of view, here they are :

- PROCESSOR : Intel Core i5-4440 [socket 1150]

- GRAPHICS : Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 / R7 270

- GPU MEMORY: 2 GB

- SSD : 240 Go

- HDD : 1 To

- RAM : 8 GB

- OS : Windows 7 SP1 64 bits / Windows 8.1 64 bits

From my point of view, these ... Recommended Old Bear's specs :cool: ... are what you need to start fully enjoy Arma3.

[pooroldspike 129]

- PROCESSOR : Intel Core i5-4440 [socket 1150]

- GRAPHICS : Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 / R7 270

- GPU MEMORY: 2 GB

- SSD : 240 Go

- HDD : 1 To

- RAM : 8 GB

- OS : Windows 7 SP1 64 bits / Windows 8.1 64 bits

From my point of view, these ... Recommended Old Bear's specs ... are what you need to start fully enjoy Arma3.

Ok thanks it looks good and i'll bear it in mind, but I don't mind paying a bit more for more horsepower so what would be your recommended specs for an even better PC capable of playing AA3 and all other games on high vid settings?

Edited March 29, 2014 by PoorOldSpike

[oldbear 390]

Well ... just because you asked, here are the "Recommended Special Old Bear's specs" ... from my totally subjective point of view a good plan to enjoy playing Arma3.

- PROCESSOR : Intel Core i5-4670K [socket 1150]

- GRAPHICS : Nvidia GeForce GTX 770

- GPU MEMORY: 2 GB

- SSD : 240 Go

- HDD : 1 To

- RAM : 16 GB DDR3 2400

- OS : Windows 7 SP1 64 bits / Windows 8.1 64 bits

[pooroldspike 129]

Ok thanks again, i'll nip down the shop next week and get a quote for building me a super-duper PC to your specs..:)

PS- you mentioned earlier that AA3 is not a "high end game". Which games would you call high end?

[Sneakson 1]

AA3 works, just!

My PC is about 5 years old, I said to the local computer shop back then "build me a PC capable of playing all the latest high-end games" and it's performed fine with every game i've thrown at it until AA3 came along.

What shall I do, ask the shop to fit a new super-duper processor and graphics card in it or simply write it off and tell them to build me a brandnew all-singing all-dancing PC?

In your situation I would do a complete $1000+/- upgrade.

Your old computer can be well utilized as a back-up/home computer, or whatever.

Here's a go-to gaming computer:

Any attractive, cool and quiet computer case

Motherboard: MSI Z87-G45 Gaming or ASUS Z87-A

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K

Memories: 2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 2400 MHz, or Kingston Hyper X equivalent

Graphics card: MSI GTX 770 Gaming 2GB or ASUS GTX 770 2GB

HDD: Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 1TB (64MB cache) or Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB (64MB cache)

SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB

Optical drive: ASUS DRW-24F1ST (Not sure about international availability)

Supply unit: About 500W minimum. Quiet one! Not quite sure which though...

OS: Windows 7/8 64-bit

I would also make sure to have nice monitor (1920x1080/1920x1200, non-TN or 120 Hz if you can afford it), speakers, headset, mouse, mousepad, keyboard, external back-up HDD and whatever else you may need depending on how much you game naturally. It varies.

---------- Post added at 17:42 ---------- Previous post was at 17:37 ----------

Well ... just because you asked, here are the "Recommended Special Old Bear's specs" ... from my totally subjective point of view a good plan to enjoy playing Arma3.

Isn't 16GB $100 down the drain though? 8GB is more than enough.

I have 16 since I basically got some for free. I've been considering deactivating half of it and see if it makes any difference what so ever when I have the will to do so though I doubt it will.

PS- you mentioned earlier that AA3 is not a "high end game". Which games would you call high end?

He said "high end games" but not only ARMA3. ARMA3 is high-end, certainly.

[pooroldspike 129]

Okay it all sounds a bit techy for a neanderthal wargamer like me, so what I'll do is go down the shop next week and ask for a quote to build me "a very powerful PC to play all the latest high-complexity games and flight sims."

I'll get them to write a list of the components they suggest, then post it here so you guys can give it a thumbs up or down..:)

[jumpinghubert 49]

Okay it all sounds a bit techy for a neanderthal wargamer like me, so what I'll do is go down the shop next week and ask for a quote to build me "a very powerful PC to play all the latest high-complexity games and flight sims."

I'll get them to write a list of the components they suggest, then post it here so you guys can give it a thumbs up or down..:)

here you can see how much the system your shop offers costs minimum in pure hardware.

For europe:

http://geizhals.de/eu/

For usa:

http://www.pricegrabber.com/

http://www.bizrate.com/

for example

[pooroldspike 129]

Thanks, hopefully my local shop will have all the bits and pieces in stock, this is them-

http://www.computerbase.co.uk/index.html

[mollski 10]

Hi to all ive come on here for a bit of help and advice please,ive always been a console guy,and never ever been into pc games.but after seeing arma 3 I would like to give this a go,im lost into what pc to buy,i would like to buy one of the shelf but ive not got ££££ to spend,any advice on what to buy please ive got around£700 thanks for you help and time

[Sneakson 1]

Hi to all ive come on here for a bit of help and advice please,ive always been a console guy,and never ever been into pc games.but after seeing arma 3 I would like to give this a go,im lost into what pc to buy,i would like to buy one of the shelf but ive not got ££££ to spend,any advice on what to buy please ive got around£700 thanks for you help and time

£700 should be about enough for a current generation gaming computer actually, give or take some.

Do you only need the computer or do you need a monitor with that money too? You should ideally have a 1920x1080 monitor today.

Also where will you be buying it and will you be buying it in parts and assembling it or have someone tech savvy assemble it for you or will you be buying one that’s already assembled?

Usually it’s the best to build one yourself but not by an awful lot.

I could make a budget based of Amazon.uk prices later.

[mollski 10]

I was hopeing to buy one from of the shelf,has I could not build one,and I do need a monitor thanks,ive looked on amazon at the gameing pc but donot which one to buy,i want to play games like arma 3 and company of heros

[Sneakson 1]

I was hopeing to buy one from of the shelf,has I could not build one,and I do need a monitor thanks,ive looked on amazon at the gameing pc but donot which one to buy,i want to play games like arma 3 and company of heros

Well, if youre buying one as a whole then you're best of searching yourself on websites in your country that deal with that sort of thing and search for something like this:

Okay, so there are 8 essential parts in a computer:

A case. Different cases have different cooling capabilities and different noise dampening abilities not to mention they will be the outward appearance of your computer.

Motherboard: must be compatible with the Haswell CPU. In other words must have an 1150 socket that you insert the CPU chip into and ideally also have a Z87 chipset usually indicated in the name of the motherboard because Z87 is the only 1150 chipset that allows for overclocking which you may or may not use though is always handy to have around anyways.

MSI has a whole series of them called MSI Z87-GXX where the weakest one is 41 (“41 PC Mateâ€) and the most common choice is 45 (“G45 Gamingâ€) that vary in cost and the more expensive ones usually support using more graphics cards simultaneously, have marginally better audio and have different amounts of USB slots basically.

The most common choices are currently ASUS Z87-A and MSI Z87-G45 Gaming which both will let you do basically everything you would want to. They can both use at least two graphics cards simultaneously (you can’t mix AMD and NVidia graphics cards though, ever), have good audio and many USB 2.0 and 3.0 slots and support a bunch of complicated technologies… more expensive motherboards are usually only better at serious overclocking and only marginally so.

That’s all for motherboards actually.

Motherboards don’t matter much. Many serious builders chose the one with the colour they like the most even and match it with appropriately coloured memories.

Unless you have something specific in mind you can’t go wrong as long as it is Z87 and I don’t think anyone is going to sell you one that isn’t.

So…

CPU definitely Intel Core i5-4670K.

Memory: basically 2x4GB amount, 1600-2400 MHz speed and an as low CLX value at the end.

Difference between brands is small though Corsair Vengeance and Kingston Hyper X are considered “the best.â€

4GB may be too small, 16GB nearly useless so 8GB is the place to be today and 1600 MHz is the age-old standard but the 4670K and ARMA3 has been shown to benefit from quicker memories and finally there’s usually a CL9, CL10 or CL11 at the end which you’ll want to be as low as possible if there are two identical ones at basically the same cost and one is lower than the other.

The only difference between different coloured memories is the colour despite what anyone else tells you. Memories come in different colours to match with the motherboard because that’s what nerds like doing.

Graphics card: MSI GTX 760 Gaming 2GB (cheaper) or 770 Gaming 2GB (stronger) are both great. The ASUS equivalents are close however noisier so unless they’re noticeably cheaper I wouldn’t buy them.

Interestingly the 760 and 770 are about as cost-efficient so if you do buy the stronger one you will get what you pay for unlike an upgrade to an even stronger card which is increasingly more cost-inefficient.

2GB at the end is video memory and you won’t need with a 1920x1080/1920x/1200 or even 2560x1440 monitor based on what I’ve heard though all of those cards also come in 4GB variants.

Storage: the current standard today is to couple a big, cheap HDD with a small SSD.

The Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 1TB (64MB cache) and Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB (64MB cache) are the most common HDDs I believe and both offer 1TB of storage which is more than any casual user can utilize without doing something illegal basically though I think they both also come in only marginally more expensive, massive 2TB variants if you think you’ll ever need it.

Couple that with an SSD. SSDs (Solid State Drives) are quiet since there are no moving components and very, very quick. The main differences you will notice on a daily basis is that your computer will boot quicker and if you install your OS on the SSD I’ve heard everything turns marginally quicker though I’ve never seen any hard measurements on this actually. Still everyone are installing their OS on SSDs nowadays and computer experts all over the world can’t be wrong and additionally when your OS is on your SSD then your HDD will stop spinning when not in use so that’s one source of noise out of the question.

Currently my HDD is the loudest component in my computer and I have only downloads on it so it should only start spinning when I access my downloads… some-why it starts spinning all the time anyways though and I can’t understand why.

The best SSD is Samsung 840 Evo, then I would say Samsung 840 if you can have a nice deal on one.

After installing Windows 64-bit you will have 100GB free on an SSD that says 120/128GB on the box and 212GB on one that says 250/256GB.

Buy 128-256GB. Note that the boxes say 120/128 or 250/256 interchangeably and they’re actually the same.

Optical drive not much to say. I doubt someone would sell you one that doesn’t work.

Finally you will need to get your electricity through somewhere… however now I’ve got to go!

In summary:

Motherboard: MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate (cheapest), ASUS Z87-A or MSI G45-Gaming (strongest)

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K

Memories: 2x4GB 1600-2400 MHz CL9 (Corsair Vengeance brand if available)

Graphics card: MSI GTX 760 Gaming/770 Gaming 2GB or ASUS GTX 760/770 2GB

HDD: Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 1TB (64MB cache) or Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM003 1TB (64MB cache)

SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 128-250GB

Optical drive: ASUS DRW-24F1ST (Not sure about international availability)

Supply unit: About 500W minimum. Quiet one! Not quite sure which though...

OS: Windows 7/8 64-bit

[mollski 10]

SNEAKSON many many thanks for your time and help with your reply very helpful thank you again

[pooroldspike 129]

I was hopeing to buy one from of the shelf,has I could not build one,and I do need a monitor thanks,ive looked on amazon at the gameing pc but donot which one to buy,i want to play games like arma 3 and company of heros

Just a couple of points-

1- it says on the box that AA3 requires Win Vista SP1 or Win7 SP1, so whatever computer you get, make sure its got one of them.

Also I should think Win 8 is capable of running AA3.

(As an experiment I installed AA3 on my spare computer which has Win XP but it wouldn't run at all, it only runs on my other computer with Win7)

Which do the forum experts recommend, Vista, Win7 or Win8? (and I hear there's a Win8.1, does that mean the earlier Win8 is obsolete?)

2- Can our experts also tell us if monitor choice is important? Will any off-the-shelf monitor do?

Edited March 30, 2014 by PoorOldSpike

[mollski 10]

thank you for the advice again guys

[Sneakson 1]

Just a couple of points-

1- it says on the box that AA3 requires Win Vista SP1 or Win7 SP1, so whatever computer you get, make sure its got one of them.

Also I should think Win 8 is capable of running AA3.

(As an experiment I installed AA3 on my spare computer which has Win XP but it wouldn't run at all, it only runs on my other computer with Win7)

Which do the forum experts recommend, Vista, Win7 or Win8? (and I hear there's a Win8.1, does that mean the earlier Win8 is obsolete?)

2- Can our experts also tell us if monitor choice is important? Will any off-the-shelf monitor do?

Win 7: great OS. I've loved it since day 1.

Win 8: Win 7 to 90% except quicker (including boot times) with a better Task Manager and various other improvements… however also some annoyances.

The Start Screen (“Modernâ€, called “Metro before lawsuitâ€) is basically another desktop and what you’re going to do is clean your desktop off completely and move everything to the start screen basically… makes for a clutter-free desktop however then your start screen will be cluttered instead and you’ll start deleting a lot of small utility shortcuts trying to clean it up and in the end lose a lot of shortcuts that in Win 7 would have been hidden away in the start menu instead.

It’s acceptable but on a theoretical level it’s a massive misstep. There are inofficial mods to bring the start menu back though.

There are also “apps†now that are basically full-screen applications that can’t be multi-tasked more than two at a time which is completely useless and I’ve never used any of them, bah.

Also every time you touch the southeast corner of the screen a completely useless menu shows up that has a ton of even more useless menus many of which do absolutely nothing unless you have apps already connected to it… and that’s the biggest annoyance in Win 8. It just beats me why there’s a menu down there that’s so quirky to access and still easy to accidentally bring up that’s COMPLETELY useless… EXCEPT it also contains the off button!

To turn off your computer in Win 8 you have to swipe down to one of the east corners of the screen, then click three times to turn off your computer instead of the two clicks in Windows 7 and overall it’s a massive step in terms of user accessibility.

8.1 makes some things better and some things worse yet again. It adds an option to stop the new useless menu from appearing when you touch the northeast corner so you won’t bring it up all the time when trying to close windows however beyond that there isn’t much of a noticeable difference. All tiles on the start screen are now automatically coloured… the colour is hit but the automatic colouring is miss.

8.1 also has OneDrive (called SkyDrive before another lawsuit) integration that’s basically Windows version of Dropbox except with extremely shady user conditions that say that Microsoft at any time can delete your entire Microsoft account including denying you access to anything and everything you’ve ever bought from Microsoft if you store anything in your OneDrive that is “hateful†or sexual and it is up to Microsoft to determine what content is hateful or sexual… avoid it.

One neat thing in 8.1 is that you can name your “My Computer†to anything else you want however on the minus side there are now 6 shortcuts (desktop, documents…) whenever you open My Computer next to your hard drives and disk drives and they very much in the way in my opinion and impossible to delete unless you do a quite minor hack.

Overall 8.1 is hit/miss compared to 8 and 8 is hit/miss compared to 7. There are some user interface improvements however Microsoft insists on trying to shove useless shit down our throats and stopping us from controlling certain things in our computers which is because a lot of the world’s big companies have completely boycotted Win 8 and in some cases even are going back to Win 7 after having changed. There are also some completely astounding user interface missteps that shows Microsoft clearly has no idea what users want which also shows in everything else they are currently up to: see the Microsoft Surface disaster or the Xbox One disaster.

Again, even 99% of the time Win 8 is exactly Win 7 is… if you already have Win 7 64-bit then stick with it however if you don’t have any OS then buy 8 64-bit and upgrade to 8.1 instantly.

I have Win 8.1 now however if I did not have access to all Win versions nearly for free since I’m a student I would never have upgraded from 7.

Monitor choice is completely user-choice. You can spend as much as you want on computer and nothing on the monitor or have a cheap-ass computer and a billion dollar monitor. Audio too.

Today you should have 1920x1080 or 1920x1200. It’s very spacious and a lot nicer than anything less however if you buy more you may have stuttering because your graphics card starts suffering. 1920x1200 is a nice chunk of extra screen size however a 10% bigger screen also means approximately 10% less fps in video games unfortunately.

Other than screen size there are two things to note: if it’s 60 Hz/120 Hz (120 Hz basically means it can view 120 fps which is a lot smoother) and if it’s a TN monitor (bad viewing angles, not the best image quality) or if it’s a non-TN. Most non-TN monitors have superior viewing angles and image quality however none of them are 120 Hz whereas TN are often 120 Hz or even 144 (12*12, for your information about this apparently quite arbitrary value) Hz today and though some claim to be it they don’t do it well.

Basically there are two choices today:

120 Hz TN monitor, smooth.

60 Hz non-TN monitor, high image quality and awesome viewing angles.

Viewing angles means that you can view the screen in any direction without the colours changing. Note that in monitor specs you will nearly always see viewing angles close to 180 degrees however that has nothing at all to do with image quality.

A cheap monitor today is about $150 and a quality one about $300-500, I believe.

I also consider it worthwhile to actually examine your monitor’s settings once you have it home. Search on the internet for colour calibration settings though the best colour calibration is obviously done with calibration hardware and maybe more importantly search for information on what your monitor brightness should be to meet ergonomic standards.

My monitor was seriously bright as the f**king sun out of the box which meant instant headache then I used a hardware calibration unit and it told me to turn the brightness setting all the way down to zero I think and it was still slightly above the standard brightness that you’re supposed to have if you work a lot with computers. Now I have it set to 11% brightness… not sure why.

If you have an iPhone 4-5 they are beautifully colour-corrected and if you set your iPhone 5 to 50% brightness that’s basically the same brightness as you should ideally have on your monitor. No more headaches. So try holding it up to your monitor and compare the colours and brightness.

Colours should ONLY be adjusted on your monitor though and not in the Windows settings because all Windows colour settings change to default whenever you play games so you’ll have seriously screwed up colours in games if you do that.

Currently I have my monitor on default settings because my calibration device is a bit worn out and my monitor is very well calibrated by default, only a bit warm (aka orange).

I’m not sure which monitors are the best on the market nowadays. Asus, Dell, HP and Samsung are good standard brands (especially Dell/HP, experience) while Benq, Eizo, Nec and the like are brands for professional editors, gamers or anyone who wants great image quality.

I have a HP ZR24w which has been succeeded by the HP ZR2440W which I can attest for if it’s still around.

Great image quality, 60 Hz and it also has 4 USB slots… two on the left side and two on the bottom. That’s handy.

By the way: the SteelSeries Sensei is a great, cheap mouse, the SteelSeries QcK is a great mousepad series that really makes a difference and the Corsair K70 is an amazing keyboard.

I could create a complete buyer's guide thread and ask the mods to make this one only about settings but meh... I probably wouldn't be able to stop writing. Maybe.

Edited March 30, 2014 by Sneakson

[pooroldspike 129]

Thanks, from what you say it seems Win 8/8.1 has some improvements over Win7 but also some annoyances.

But dear old Win7 is a tried and tested pussycat.

Hmm so it's a difficult choice which to get, decisions, decisions..

Edited March 30, 2014 by PoorOldSpike