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

[fngmace 1]

Thanks for you reply man! I know what you mean about hardware getting old fast. Fact of life :)

The reason I chose more expensive parts is because I was hoping to not have to update them for several years, thus saving money in the long run. So in your opinion, do you think your build would be as future proof as mine? I mean, at what point do you think your build would become "old" as compared to the build I had picked?

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

Thats the cool thing when building PC´s, u dont need to buy the most expensive Hardware to have good performance. I suggested you to buy a 4690K, it´s 100Bucks cheaper, is a little bit cooler with temperatures as the 4790K and with 2 klicks u can adjust the 4690K to 4,5Ghz. I have one myself, no voltage increse needed when rising from 3,5Ghz to 4,6Ghz. The Mainboard i suggested to you is the same as mine,SLI & Crossfire is of course possible with this Mainboard, it has a very good bios and a ton of possibilitys to safley overclock the system, when you want to i could help you then with overclocking. The Noctua cooler with 2x120mm Fans is a perfect choice for this setup, i have a Noctua myself, CPU doesnt go over 55°C @ Load.

So you can save bare money and you will have a great PC which should run most of Games fluid, expect Arma of course ^^ And talking about buying a pc for years, well, something like that doesnt exist. In a couple of months the companys will present "the next Generations" of Hardware, when this day is reached your Hardware is old again ^^

Hope you understand what i mean, English isnt my native language :)

[Nicholas 5]

I'm currently looking for suggestions on what GPU/CPU combination I should get for ArmA 3. I would prefer to remain below $2,000 total on the PC build.

So far I have a SSD, HDD, 16GB of RAM, power supply, mid tower. Looking at getting an AMD R9 290X with an AMD FX-9590BE processor.

Thoughts, suggestions?

[donwilli72 10]

If you're looking to upgrade the motherboard as well and go for a later generation cpu then you need to be looking for a k suffix processor (4xxxk), the k denotes an unlocked clock ratio that will allow you to overclock.

* FX8350 eight core CPU 4.0GHz

* Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5

* 970 chipset motherboard

* 2TB HDD

* OCZ ZT 650W modular PSU

* 8GB DDR3 system RAM

[donwilli72 10]

* FX8350 eight core CPU 4.0GHz

* Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 video card. Yes, new video card, not a used retired miner.

* 970 chipset motherboard

* 2TB HDD

* OCZ ZT 650W modular PSU

* 8GB DDR3 system RAM

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

* FX8350 eight core CPU 4.0GHz

* Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 video card. Yes, new video card, not a used retired miner.

* 970 chipset motherboard

* 2TB HDD

* OCZ ZT 650W modular PSU

* 8GB DDR3 system RAM

I wouldnt do it. Buy an Intel setup, it has much more power than such lazy AMD^^

[shx 11]

* FX8350 eight core CPU 4.0GHz

* 970 chipset motherboard

If we're talking about an upgrade exclusively done for ARMA, go for Intel.

* Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5

Combined with that CPU and ARMA 3, that's a overkill. Your problem is definitely living in the CPU camp. ((empty map vs tons of action is around +15% GPU load))

AMD FX-9590BE processor.

Since you've got a formidable budget, consider going for a Intel CPU - AMD is years behind, and ARMA makes you notice this hard.

[esfumato 75]

Does anyone knows what software and how to use Ramdisk with Arma3?

Why isn't this thread on sticky?

[Nicholas 5]

Since you've got a formidable budget, consider going for a Intel CPU - AMD is years behind, and ARMA makes you notice this hard.

Now I'm torn between the Intel i7-4770k or the AMD FX-9590.

[DancingDirty7 10]

Now I'm torn between the Intel i7-4770k or the AMD FX-9590.

go for intel, i5-4690k is the best for just playing arma 3 but if you need to do other stuff while playing get the i7-4790k (which is essentially the new version of 4770k plus clocked higher)

whatever cpu you get, also get a very good overclocker motherboard as well as water cooling. Why? Because arma 3 benefits of the single core intel clock overclock.

this guy here gets 40% more fps in a mission by overclocking https://steamcommunity.com/app/107410/discussions/0/627456487021605436/?insideModal=1

If you plan to play vanilla arma 3 MULTIPLAYER, amd is a total disaster. See this guy (also read all the following replys very interesting): http://www.thezombieinfection.com/topic/21069-just-replaced-my-cpu-ermgherd-the-fps/

When I get around the money I will do the same.

Edited February 2, 2015 by DancingDirty7

[Nicholas 5]

Okay, I've got an AMD build and an Intel build. AMD build is obviously cheaper, but the Intel one is tempting. Intel build right now is at about $2,009.26 total.

Intel Build:

Motherboard: MSI Z97 Gaming 7

PSU: Corsair 1,000w

CPU: Intel i7-4790k

GPU: AMD R9 290X

Ram: Corsair 16GB DDR3 1866Mhz

HDD: WD 2TB Sata III 7200RPM

SSD: Samsung 256GB M.2 SSD

OS: Windows 7 Pro

Mid Tower: Corsair C70

Total: $2,009.26

AMD Build:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P

PSU: Corsair 1,000w

CPU: AMD FX-9590

GPU: AMD R9 290X

Ram: Corsair 16GB DDR3 1866Mhz

HDD: WD 2TB Sata III 7200RPM

SSD: Samsung 500GB Sata III

OS: Windows 7 Pro

Mid Tower: Corsair C70

Total: $1,778.89

Thoughts, suggestions?

Forgot the water cooler, but I'd most likely get the Corsair H100.

Edited February 2, 2015 by Nicholas

[St. Jimmy 272]

If yout think you won't go for two or more cards in the future then something like 700W is well enough. Just if you want to save somewhere.

[Nicholas 5]

Went with a smaller PSU as well as Windows 8.1, added in the water cooler, and the price is now about $1,950 shipped.

Edited February 2, 2015 by Nicholas

[shx 11]

Basicly it´s legit to say that Arma´s Utilization of GPU&CPU is a joke, its ridiculous.

Personally I'd put it differently:

Most games are made for a specific reference system, Arma to be as close to reality as the budget allowed.

((As for draw calls: Arma 3 uses actually quite good code here. More or less all of the tricks other developers use to limit draw calls won't work for Arma without significantly altering the (sandbox) experience.))

So in your opinion, do you think your build would be as future proof as mine?

If we're talking about a (potential) Arma 4, both builds are equally not future proof.

If we're talking about more or less any other game, it's the GPU anyways.

[...]

Crossposting is somewhat rude, hijacking a thread as well.

As for your question, refer to my answer in the generic 'will this run with my rig'-thread.

One thing for me is sure, he wont get this 60 fps constantly. No chance.

A good quad socket board.

4x a current gen Xeon E7 4-core of your choice, with three cores permanently disabled (usually done via BIOS/(U)EFI) - OC'ed, Watercooling.

48 Gigabytes of RAM (preferably 6x8GB or 8x8GB in case you have a quad channel memory controller) - per socket.

The entire game (+mods) saved on four identical Ramdisks (one per node).

Titan Z QuadSLI with the primary card on Node 0 and a secondary card on each of the other nodes.

--

That's the furthest you can get with current hardware - even such a setup will drop below 60fps in complex situations (on Ultra settings).

Not to mention that one could easily get a middle class car instead.

[SafirXP 10]

I've been told an overclocked G3258 would be okay for a budget Arma2/3 PC. Since I live in a very warm country and can't afford an aircon, I tend to stay away from overclocking. So I was thinking, would an i3-4150/4160 be a good pick? Compared to the G3258 the i3s have faster clock speeds plus the two logical cores. Plan to pair the i3 with 8GB RAM & a GTX960.

Played Arma2 & DayZ mod on a Core2 Duo E7500, GTS250 & 4GB RAM on a 1080 monitor. Had to play at 720 (upscale to 1080) with constant "black outs" - the screen would go black & had to do a GPU flush to get everything working again. Kept happening every minute or two. Was a real pain but the games are so awesome, I had to put myself through all that.

[war_lord 934]

My rig is an i5-4670k with 8 gigs of RAM and a Geforce 750ti. I haven't even bothered worrying about overclocking and I still get playable frames (40-50 even in MP) on medium to high settings. Granted I haven't tried running anything on a massive scale, but anything better then what I have should be more then sufficient unless you're trying to run ultra. i5's aren't much more expensive then i3's and i3's are fast becoming outdated as far as gaming goes.

[lukehall 10]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to ARMA3 and have been blown away by the depth of the game and the quality of the environment. On the whole, my PC seems to run it pretty well but I do suffer from some pretty severe stuttering - particularly when flying helicopters. I'm happy to update my system (as it's a little old now...) but I want to make sure I do the right thing.

I currently have i73770K (1155) on an Asus P8z77lvx MB with 8Gb of 1333 RAM - a Nvidia GTX680 2Gb (Super Over Clock) running Windows 7 64bit.

I was going to upgrade the GPU first to something like a GTX970 but on paper it doesn't seem to be much better than the GTX680 I already have (other than the 2 extra GB of RAM).

What's the consensus here? Would doing this give me a smoother ride, or should I concentrate on upgrading the CPU/MB/RAM first?

Thanks and best wishes,

Luke

[Greenfist 1863]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to ARMA3 and have been blown away by the depth of the game and the quality of the environment. On the whole, my PC seems to run it pretty well but I do suffer from some pretty severe stuttering - particularly when flying helicopters. I'm happy to update my system (as it's a little old now...) but I want to make sure I do the right thing.

I currently have i73770K (1155) on an Asus P8z77lvx MB with 8Gb of 1333 RAM - a Nvidia GTX680 2Gb (Super Over Clock) running Windows 7 64bit.

I was going to upgrade the GPU first to something like a GTX970 but on paper it doesn't seem to be much better than the GTX680 I already have (other than the 2 extra GB of RAM).

What's the consensus here? Would doing this give me a smoother ride, or should I concentrate on upgrading the CPU/MB/RAM first?

Thanks and best wishes,

Luke

I'd say your GPU is just fine for Arma. (Unless you want a little more eye candy; like higher AA, supersampling, particle effects etc.) I'm guessing the 680 isn't anywhere near 100% usage while playing, so a faster one won't increase the fps.

You could get an SSD drive, if you're experiencing loading stutters when flying.

Overclock the CPU and get faster RAM. I'm guessing these won't have a huge impact though.

[lukehall 10]

I'd say your GPU is just fine for Arma. (Unless you want a little more eye candy; like higher AA, supersampling, particle effects etc.) I'm guessing the 680 isn't anywhere near 100% usage while playing, so a faster one won't increase the fps.

You could get an SSD drive, if you're experiencing loading stutters when flying.

Overclock the CPU and get faster RAM. I'm guessing these won't have a huge impact though.

Hi Greenfist,

Thanks for your reply. I should have said that I already run on SSDs for my system and Steam installations. I was assuming that the stuttering was a graphics card bottleneck (possibly because it only has 2Gb RAM onboard?) It's al rather subjective though I guess. I'm surprised that you think my GPU is not maxed out. I do like to run on high settings though. With such beautiful scenery and effects, it seems like a crime not to! To be honest, I have been playing for a week and in that time I've just enjoyed flying around and exploring. I've not even seen any combat yet!

Stuttering in my experience is usually a result of a bottleneck somewhere. I guess the problem is to find where. My CPU/RAM/Board are not the fastest but my CPU is running at 3.4, which ought to keep up? The GTX680 is a fairly high spec card and I'm running most things at Ultra with a viz level of about 2k.

Luke

[Greenfist 1863]

Hi Greenfist,

Thanks for your reply. I should have said that I already run on SSDs for my system and Steam installations. I was assuming that the stuttering was a graphics card bottleneck (possibly because it only has 2Gb RAM onboard?) It's al rather subjective though I guess. I'm surprised that you think my GPU is not maxed out. I do like to run on high settings though. With such beautiful scenery and effects, it seems like a crime not to! To be honest, I have been playing for a week and in that time I've just enjoyed flying around and exploring. I've not even seen any combat yet!

Stuttering in my experience is usually a result of a bottleneck somewhere. I guess the problem is to find where. My CPU/RAM/Board are not the fastest but my CPU is running at 3.4, which ought to keep up? The GTX680 is a fairly high spec card and I'm running most things at Ultra with a viz level of about 2k.

Luke

Have you monitored your GPU usage? I'm sure it's high when just flying on an empty map. But when you get to combat, the CPU will be the bottleneck and the fps will plummet.

I can't say for sure but I believe that 2GB of GPU memory is usually enough for Arma, if you're playing with reasonable settings and resolution.

[shx 11]

I'm surprised that you think my GPU is not maxed out.

Arma 3 is really CPU heavy. Your rig is way to weak to max out a GTX680 while playing Arma 3.

As for my first action here - rise the memory clock (either by OC'ing, or by buying new modules).

I can't say for sure but I believe that 2GB of GPU memory is usually enough for Arma, [...]

Unless we're talking about games who rely heavily on prerendered assets and/or UHD, 2GB VRAM are enough.

Have you monitored your GPU usage?

That's a guessed number without any significance if it's below 100%.

[Greenfist 1863]

That's a guessed number without any significance if it's below 100%.

What do you mean? :confused:

Something like; even though it's always way below 100%, the GPU can still be the bottleneck?

[forteh 11]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to ARMA3 and have been blown away by the depth of the game and the quality of the environment. On the whole, my PC seems to run it pretty well but I do suffer from some pretty severe stuttering - particularly when flying helicopters. I'm happy to update my system (as it's a little old now...) but I want to make sure I do the right thing.

I currently have i73770K (1155) on an Asus P8z77lvx MB with 8Gb of 1333 RAM - a Nvidia GTX680 2Gb (Super Over Clock) running Windows 7 64bit.

I was going to upgrade the GPU first to something like a GTX970 but on paper it doesn't seem to be much better than the GTX680 I already have (other than the 2 extra GB of RAM).

What's the consensus here? Would doing this give me a smoother ride, or should I concentrate on upgrading the CPU/MB/RAM first?

Thanks and best wishes,

Luke

Upgrade the ram to as fast as you can support and overclock the cpu, arma3 loves 4+ghz and really the higher you can go the better. You're not going to achieve any significant increases in performance by upgrading over what you have now. The game runs slowly (compared to a.n.other generic shooter) but in my experience as long as you can pull a solid 25-30 fps you shouldn't have any issues; I can do that with my i5 750 and gtx 660 :)

[linuxmaster9 101]

So my apartment complex emailed me and told me that my apartment is pulling alot of power. My PC is on 24/7 since I run a media server and webserver. I need to improve my power efficiency. I have a strong feeling that my i7 4770k combined with my 7970GHz card are eating power like crazy.

I am interested in Mini-ITX builds unfortunately, my Mobo is ATX.

Any suggestions? I love AMD and their GPUs but unless the 300 series is super power efficient, I may have to switch sides.

If I can do a mini-ITX board, I would most likely get the Gigabyte Z97 wifi board since it would include Wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0 and below. I am definitely dropping my H100i since it is loud a crap and does not do a very good job. I think the pump is shoddy. Plus I keep getting memory leaks from Corsair's BS software.

I play the hell out of ArmA 3 so I would want a GPU that wont break the bank and still give me great frames. I bought my 7970 in 2012 for $350. It has served me well these past years but I must admit, it is a power hungry monster.

I have VERY limited funds ATM so no 970s. I would also love to downsize my case to something like the CM Elite 130. I currently have a CM HAF XB and it is VERY loud.

[knister 10]

Can't you just put your media/webserver on a Rasperry Pi or similiar?