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

[Tankbuster 1747]

I was wondering if anyone had first-hand experience of replacing a GTX 1080 with an RTX 2070 or RTX 2080?

 

I'm starting the data gathering of prices and specs to replace my 4790k / GTX 1080 system and am sure about the benefits of a 9700k, or even a 9900k, but the GPU is not so clear.  Given that the only really demanding game I do is ArmA 3, albeit in a pretty demanding resolution ( 2560 x 1440) with a second monitor at 1920 x 1200 (third monitor is driven by the GPU onboard the CPU), I'm wondering if the RTX really brings anything to my party?

 

In terms of hardware, as far as I can see, the RTX GPUs don't really have better specs than my GTX 1080. The RTX do ray tracing better - but does ArmA 3 use that? Will ArmA 4?

 

Eurogamer article seems to show 5% to 15% gains in other games and we know that Arma 3 isn't the same in the way it uses hardware. ArmA 4? Who knows. 🙂

 

tldr: Is it worth me replacing my GTX 1080 with a GTX 2070 / 2080 if I mostly play A3 in ~ 4k?

[oldbear 390]

No experience in this area.

I am still waiting for news about a future "Game2", but not expecting it Soon™.

Since Visual Upgrade, I am happy with my i7-7700K/GTX 1060GB/16GB@3200MHz combo ingame.

 

From my point of view, if you have some cash to spend, look for CPU/MoBo/RAM upgrade, your GTX 1080 is still quite good for the job.

You are right the i9-9900k is the best performer due to its 5.00 GHz Turbo max speed ... at a cost!

source : http://www.comptoir-hardware.com/articles/cpu-mobo-ram/37408-test-intel-z390-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k.html?start=11

 

Better spent money on an  i7-9700K + Z390 + 16GB@3200/3600MHz upgrade

Edited March 28, 2019 by oldbear
English is not my maternal language, but you had already get it

[Tankbuster 1747]

Yes, the thing is, if I stick with the GTX 1080, I've got quite a bit more in the budget for the CPU. 🙂

[oldbear 390]

Fine 😎

Do not forget to upgrade your PSU.

 

[Tankbuster 1747]

2 minutes ago, oldbear said:

Fine 😎

Do not forget to upgrade your PSU.

 

Oh yes, the PSU is 8 years old, I'm going to get a new one

[Groove_C 267]

@Tankbuster

i7-4790K frequency?

RAM frequency, amount and latencies?

Do you record your gameplay?

Which software for recording?

CPU or GPU recording?

Do you edit videos?

Do you know how to overclock CPUs?

Do you plan to overclock your upcoming CPU?

[Tankbuster 1747]

33 minutes ago, Groove_C said:

@Tankbuster

i7-4790K frequency? 4.7

RAM frequency, amount and latencies? 16gig, no idea about the latencies

Do you record your gameplay? sometimes

Which software for recording? shadowplay

CPU or GPU recording?

Do you edit videos?sometimes

Do you know how to overclock CPUs?yes

Do you plan to overclock your upcoming CPU?yes

 

 

 

[Groove_C 267]

 

@Tankbuster

@ 1440p (3.7 Mpix) vs. 2160p (8.3 Mpix) ultra preset

GTX 1080 delivers ~2x more FPS in certain areas/scenarios.

So 150% 3D resolution is not a good idea.

 

@ 1440p ultra preset

RTX 2070/2080 vs. GTX 1080 delivers only 3-4 FPS avg. more, in singleplayer.

If I were you, I wouldn't replace the GTX 1080.

 

@ 1080p standard preset 12k view distance DDR4 2666 MHz

i9-9900K (4.7 GHz 8C/16T) vs. i7-9700K (4.6 GHz 8C) delivers 5 FPS avg. more, in singleplayer.

 

@ 1080p standard preset 12k view distance

i7-4790K (4.7 GHz @ DDR3 1600 MHz) is equal to i7-7700K (4.4 GHz @ DDR4 2666 MHz)

 

@ 1080p standard preset 12k view distance DDR4 2666

i7-9700K (4.6 GHz 8C) vs. i7-7700K (4.4 GHz 4C/8T) delivers only 5 FPS avg. more, in singleplayer.

 

@ 1080p standard preset 12k view distance

i7-9700K (4.6 GHz @ DDR4 2666 MHz) vs. i7-4790K (4.7 GHz @ DDR3 1600 MHz) could add only 5 FPS avg. more, in singleplayer.

 

@ 1080p standard preset 12k view distance

i7-9700K (5.0 GHz @ DDR4 3600 MHz) vs. i7-4790K (4.7 GHz @ DDR3 1600 MHz) could add whopping 17 FPS avg. more, in singleplayer.

 

But if you play @ 1440p very high/ultra preset with <12k view distance, avg. singleplayer FPS gain would be < or = 10.

In multiplayer the difference would be even smaller.

 

My suggestion would be to lean towards the i9-9900K.

Look now at people that were thinking back then, that a 4 cores i5 is more than enough (@ very high frequency).

The most of them have already (had to) switched to newer platforms (vs. i7 owners) or have kept them and are dealing with less FPS and/or more micro stuttering in games.

 

The i9-9900K, because of its 16 threads is more future proof. More and more games are starting to use 8 threads and more and I think the years to come, their number will only increase.

Regarding ArmA only, I have seen some "finally correct" CPUs' comparisons on german forums @ lower frequencies but with more cores, where not only the min./max./avg. FPS was compared, but the frame time as well!

The thing is, that if a game can't properly use/load a CPU with 12/16 threads, it doesn't mean that there is no benefit of having more threads.

The most of well known sites continue to use only FPS as comparison, but it's outdated and doesn't tell the whole story!

Frame time is the key!

FPS is the speed of the game, but frame time stability and how low it is, is the smoothness of the game.

So one can have 80 FPS with 4 cores i3-8350K @ 4.8-5.0 GHz and despite the FPS, there will be micro stuttering.

And one can have 50 FPS with 12/16 threads Ryzen @ 4.0-4.2 GHz and despite the FPS, everything will feel butter-smooth.

And this is because of a lot of background tasks being executed, that interfere with the game by accessing/loading the same CPU threads that the game does.

The more threads your CPU has, across more of them can the background tasks be split and this way there is less probability, that certain background tasks will access particular threads, being used by the game or if, then there will be less load by these background tasks.

 

In short, you won't get that much more FPS at your resolution/quality preset, in multiplayer (certainly not for $$$ + considering your curent setup), but it will be much more stable and the most important a lot smoother!

 

But I wouldn't buy the i9-9900K now.

A "newer" i9-9900K version is already available - the i9-9900KF (disabled iGPU), result of the same, but "apparently" slightly improved 14 nm production, with "apparently" slightly better IMC (integrated memory controller) and "apparently" overclocks ~100 MHz better or same frequency as the i9-9900K, but requires slightly less voltage.

Ryzen 2 unveiling in May.

Maybe the regular i9-9900K will be discounted after Ryzen 2 release.

Coffee Lake re-refresh CPUs in Q2.

 

A 650 Watt gold modular Corsair RM650X PSU is more than enough for a heavily overclocked i9-9900K and RTX 2080 Ti .

 

A motherboard with enough/cool VRMs to feed an overclocked i9-9900K is required, like Gigabyte Aorus Master.

 

3600 MHz CL15 G.Skill Trident Z would be a very good choice.

3600 MHz CL17 G.Skill Trident Z is even "better" (if you know well how to overclock by lowering/upping latencies/frequencies and increasing VDIMM, SA and IO voltages).

[Valken 623]

I thought we were all waiting for the 9900KFC with EDRAM? :D

[chrisb 196]

I've got the same system as @Tankbuster, but I'm not thinking of upgrading until later this year or maybe even next year. The performance on current systems isn't a great difference for me @1080p, so not worth changing yet.

For players playing at higher res, maybe it would be worth changing, not sure.

[Tankbuster 1747]

The 9900K is my favourite right now. I won't be choosing the KF because I need the iGPU - it runs my third monitor.

I quite fancy the Cosair HXi range and the smallest they do is the 750, so that will give me plenty of spare power.

If I'm honest, it's likely I won't get permission from Mrs Tank to buy this this year, by which time, we might have ArmA4. If that does use ray tracing, an RTX might be a better proposition but as it is now, for A3, the 1080 (or specifically, the Ti version) is still best bang for buck.

My main monitor is quite big, 2560 x 1440, so pretty close to 4K but I'm not changing any of the monitors any time soon. But still. the 1080 still seems to be good enough. I've never overclocked it, if I get a more OC focused motherboard than I have now, that might become a possibility.

Much of my ArmA3 time is speng running a listen server on the same machine as the client for MP mission development, so I'm hoping for gains there too.

Regards memory -  this is where I have no expertise at all. I was looking at 3200 because my chosen motherboard supports it and anything above that got quite expensive, but then I had plans to splash out on 2 16 and dual channeling them. The memory bandwidth on the z390 boards is impressive, it would be a shame to not use it.

I also have an Intel 750 PCI-e SSD. If I kept that - again, there's nothing out there that really spanks it for performance, I wouldn't need to buy another storage device. A little more budget saved. ON that front, the only thing that worries me for the future is that ArmA 4 would probably fill it up, so I wouldn't be able to have both games installed at the same time.

[HaseDesTodes 62]

1 hour ago, Tankbuster said:

I quite fancy the Cosair HXi range and the smallest they do is the 750, so that will give me plenty of spare power.

For a PSU i can recommend the Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 750W ATX 2.4 (SSR-750TR).

It should be a bit more efficient (less heat loss and, over time less electricity costs), so it would probably not matter much. And it should be quieter.

The main advantage (apart from the price) of the Corsair would be, that it has a few more connectors (1x 20/24-Pin, 2x 4/8-Pin ATX12V, 6x 6/8-Pin PCIe (+2), 12x SATA (+2), 8x IDE (+3), 2x Floppy (+1))

Spoiler

Difference at 600W load is about 10-15W (lest say 10W). With 3h of load every day for a lifetime of 10 years, you would save 10.95kWh, and for an average price of 0.13pence/kWh this would make a saving of 14.24 pounds.

The PSU has a warranty of 12 years in Germany (not sure about the UK), so a lifetime of 10 years should be quite realistic.

 

The price difference (71 pounds at amazon), as well as the price level seems to be significantly higher than in Germany (UK seems to be like 25-35% more expensive for those PSUs, (again amazon)), so it should probably make to less of a difference to justify that upgrade.

Nevertheless, i have the smaller brother of the Seasonic PSU (650W version), and i'm pretty happy with it, so i recommend it, and i'd buy it again.

 

2 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

If I'm honest, it's likely I won't get permission from Mrs Tank to buy this this year, by which time, we might have ArmA4. If that does use ray tracing, an RTX might be a better proposition but as it is now, for A3, the 1080 (or specifically, the Ti version) is still best bang for buck.

 

if you are not going to buy it right away, you might want to wait for the next generation of the AMD Ryzen CPUs and see how they perform in A3, and if Intel will lower their prices.

I'm pretty confident, that the performance gap between the I9-9900K (8x3.6/5GHz base/boost clock) and the coming Ryzen 9 3850X (rumored 16x4.3/5.1GHz base/boost clock) will be less than 5% for Intel, if not even favorable for AMD (if AMD gets their memory clock improved).

So i guess Intel will have to lower their prices at least a bit.

 

Oh and don't expect A4 anytime soon, you will probably disappointed. It's not even announced, so I don't expect early access before 2022.

[Groove_C 267]

7 hours ago, Valken said:

I thought we were all waiting for the 9900KFC with EDRAM? 😄

I don't think we will witness it coming.

7 hours ago, chrisb said:

For players playing at higher res, maybe it would be worth changing, not sure.

Actually It's the opposite - the higher the resolution the less RAM/CPU speed matters.

6 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

If I'm honest, it's likely I won't get permission from Mrs Tank to buy this this year

Good for you, really! As I wouldn't buy anything soon, considering your current rig.

6 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

we might have ArmA4. If that does use ray tracing, an RTX might be a better proposition

I'm very confident that A4 won't support ray tracing.

6 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

the 1080 still seems to be good enough. I've never overclocked it, if I get a more OC focused motherboard than I have now, that might become a possibility.

In order to overclock a GPU the only thing you would need is MSI Afterburner - that's it. There was never the need for a specific motherboard to overclock a GPU. Because a GPU draws only 75 Watt from motherboard PCI-E slot and the rest from its own 6/8 pin (75/150 Watt) power connectors.

6 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

Regards memory -  this is where I have no expertise at all. I was looking at 3200 because my chosen motherboard supports it and anything above that got quite expensive

You can as well buy G.Skill Trident Z 3200 Mhz and overclock it to 3600 Mhz and even more, with very tight timings.

3 hours ago, HaseDesTodes said:

For a PSU i can recommend the Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 750W ATX 2.4 (SSR-750TR).

High end Corsair PSU are also manufactured by Seasonic.

[Tankbuster 1747]

I'm afraid I'm an out-of-the-closet Intel fanboi. I won't be going AMD any time soon. We've done this to death, but in my view, to get performance out of Ryzen, there's a lot of intricate and expert level tweaking to be done. That's fine for some, but it aint for me. Don't get me wrong, I desperately want someone - anyone - to give Intel a good run for their (and our) money. If for no other reason than to drive down the price of the Intel CPUs I'm so gay for.

 

I'm familiar with Seasonic, they make good stuff. I've got some of their gear here. You're right, the build I am considering would not use half of the available connectors the Corsair provides. That's a good reason for going for a fuly modular unit.

 

 

[Groove_C 267]

On 3/29/2019 at 5:30 PM, HaseDesTodes said:

Oh and don't expect A4 anytime soon, you will probably disappointed. It's not even announced, so I don't expect early access before 2022.

Actually A4 development was already indirectly "confirmed", in the SITREP #00231 (Jan. 2019)

"a large part of the original Arma 3 development team is now working on Bohemia's new Enfusion engine, which means we'll not be introducing any major new gameplay features".

 

And the fact, that they have indirectly "confirmed" its development recently, doesn't tell you for how long the development is already in progress.

 

Enfusion engine is already being used in DayZ Stadalone.

And a large part of the original ArmA 3 development team can only be working on the next version of ArmA as ArmA is their only main/major title and it's quit normal that they indicate that they're working on a new Enfusion engine.

Because by the time ArmA 4 will be released, it's natural, that by this time, the version of the Enfusion engine will be updated (vs. now), like it was the case with ArmA 3 Real Virtuality version vs. the version that was used in Take on Helicopters.

[Tankbuster 1747]

13 minutes ago, Groove_C said:

Good for you, really! As I wouldn't buy anything soon, considering your current rig.

I'm beginning to struggle. At my res, I rarely see over 25 FPS. There's reasons for that - I drive the system harder because I need to see what's going on with the AI in my mission, perhaps I'm asking more of the system than of a normal player. Also, as I mentioned earlier, te same machine is often running a server too. I really am beginning to feel the need for more speed.

 

My 4790k was great in it's day, but now - less so. I did take the entire box out this morning and blew a LOT of dust out of the system - I'm hoping that'll liberate a bit more overclock but I'm under no illusions, the 1150 chipset and the DDR3 are at the end of their usefull life for me.

[HaseDesTodes 62]

1 minute ago, Groove_C said:

Actually A4 development was already "confirmed", indirectly in the SITREP #00231 (Jan. 2019)

"a large part of the original Arma 3 development team is now working on Bohemia's new Enfusion engine, which means we'll not be introducing any major new gameplay features".

 

i have no doubt they are working on A4, but they just didn't officially announce it.

and i think this will probably mean that it will still take a while until we can test it (if they make it EA again) or even longer until it hits version 1.0.

17 minutes ago, Groove_C said:

High end Corsair PSU are also manufactured by Seasonic.

i had a look on 80+ Titanium certified PSUs, and the only ones from Corsair i found had 850W+, and those were all more expensive. So i came to recommend the one of that's pretty much the one i have.

I have no doubt that Corsair PSUs are of high quality, they just didn't match the profile in that matter.

24 minutes ago, Tankbuster said:

I'm afraid I'm an out-of-the-closet Intel fanboi. I won't be going AMD any time soon. We've done this to death, but in my view, to get performance out of Ryzen, there's a lot of intricate and expert level tweaking to be done. That's fine for some, but it aint for me. Don't get me wrong, I desperately want someone - anyone - to give Intel a good run for their (and our) money. If for no other reason than to drive down the price of the Intel CPUs I'm so gay for.

 

I'm familiar with Seasonic, they make good stuff. I've got some of their gear here. You're right, the build I am considering would not use half of the available connectors the Corsair provides. That's a good reason for going for a fuly modular unit.

I hope that the Ryzen 3000 will deliver their performance (in A3) without much tinkering from the use side. Especially the relatively weak performance of the DDR4 memory from the Ryen 1000/2000 series keep me worrying, but if they improve that even more, i think it should pose no obstacles for good performance in A3.

as mentioned  I9-9900K (8x3.6/5GHz base/boost clock) and the coming Ryzen 9 3850X (rumored 16x4.3/5.1GHz base/boost clock) are almost the same boost clock wise. and the performance gap between the i7 8700k and the R7 2700X in the diagram oldbear posted are almost the same as the turbo clock difference

 

22 hours ago, oldbear said:

 

I7 8700K: 4.7GHz

R7 2700X: 4.3Ghz

ratio: 4.7/4.3=1,093 (~9%)

fps ratio: 63.9/57.6=1,109  (~10%)

i9 9900K: 5GHz

ratio: 5/4.3=1,163 (~16%)

fps ratio: 70/57.6=1,215 (~22%)

 

so the latest Intel generation seems to have a bit more performance per clock again.

but even if the Ryen 3000 don't make any more progress in that matter they still have those extra 2% boots clock.

so i guess from the current point of view, the Ryzen 3000 series looks very promising.

 

when i bought my current CPU (i5 4670K) i didn't really want an Intel (because they were acting like *ickheads), but i decided by the performance (AMD FX series was abysmal) and didn't regret it.

So if you want the best now, get the i9 9900K, but if you can wait, wait for Ryzen 3000 tests and make a rational decision then.

I honestly have some doubts if the specs that are rumored for the R9 3850X can be true (5.1GHz with 16!!! cores (with SMT (AMD version of hyperthreading))), but if it is true, it should be a beast.

[Groove_C 267]

@Tankbuster

And this is what I was talking about, when mentioning the importance of the stability of frame time for butter-smooth gameplay at lower FPS vs. higher FPS, but with micro-stuttering, which can be achieved by having more cores/threads than a given game can potentially use, to spread background tasks and their load across more threads.

Compare the stability/smoothness of the graph (right) vs. (left) marked by arrows (in A3 Infantry showcase).

i5-8600K (6C/6T) @ 5.2 GHz (left) vs. (right) R7 2700X (8C/16T) @ 4.3 GHz.

P.S. - it's not about Ryzen, but about having more cores/threads.

 

Imagine an i9-9900K @ 5.2 GHz with also 8C/16T instead of a R7 2700X.

It wouldn't have been any smoother, but the FPS would have been at the same level as with the i5-8600K @ 5.2 GHz + the smoothness of having 8C/16T.

[Groove_C 267]

39 minutes ago, HaseDesTodes said:

the performance gap between the i7-8700K and the R7 2700X in the diagram oldbear posted are almost the same as the turbo clock difference

 

i7-8700K: 4.7GHz

R7 2700X: 4.3GHz

ratio: 4.7/4.3=1,093 (~9%)

FPS ratio: 63.9/57.6=1,109  (~10%)

i9-9900K: 5.0GHz

ratio: 5/4.3=1,163 (~16%)

FPS ratio: 70/57.6=1,215 (~22%)

 

so the latest Intel generation seems to have a bit more performance per clock again.

but even if the Ryen 3000 don't make any more progress in that matter they still have those extra 2% boots clock.

so i guess from the current point of view, the Ryzen 3000 series looks very promising.

Everything wrong here.

Max boost ist not the same as all cores boost.

i7-8700K: 4.3 GHz

R7 2700X: 4.0 GHz

i9-9900K: 4.7 GHz

[chrisb 196]

If I were to play A4 (I'm not sure I will), and the engine is new, would it be better to think AMD and the multi-threading. One thing I have found with Intels is, they don't like doing a few things at the same time..

😕

[HaseDesTodes 62]

1 hour ago, Groove_C said:

Everything wrong here.

Max boost ist not the same as all cores boost.

and we all know how much A3 needs high performance on many cores and not maximum single core performance. right, not much.

 

so i guess max boost is the dominating factor here.

[Groove_C 267]

For YAAB results comparison, click here.

[HaseDesTodes 62]

48 minutes ago, Groove_C said:

Actually frequencies I have indicated are max boost frequencies for all cores for all of these CPUs, tested in the article oldbear has linked. Not what you have indicated.

 

and i'm saying, that A3 doesn't require all cores to run at their limits. otherwise it would benefit more from a surplus of cores.

A3 does like higher singlecore performance, so the CPU will rather run with 1 core at a higher clock (=max clock) than all cores at a relatively high clock (=all core boost).

 

maybe an owner of a i7 8700k can enlighten us about CPU 1/2/3/4/5/6 load and clock in A3.

i actually don't know know how the CPUs are using their boost (especially those with more than 4 (physical) cores), so if it doesn't behave like i think it does, i'm always willing to learn.

but simply saying max boost doesn't matter in a singlecore loving game like A3 doesn't sound plausible to me.

[Tankbuster 1747]

3 hours ago, HaseDesTodes said:

blah

 

The one thing we can take to the bank right now is that I won't be buying an AMD chip. Perhaps we could move on?

[Groove_C 267]

@Tankbuster

Consider that 57 FPS @ ultra preset achieved by the 5.0 GHz i7-8700K are mostly due to its RAM being overclocked to 4200 MHz with ultra tight CL16 timings + 1080p (instead of 1440p).

Which resulted in +11 FPS avg, in singleplayer (vs. my i7-4790K).

 

Every i9-9900K is capable of 5.0 GHz (at least), provided a good mainboard is used.

FPS and smoothness will be same as with the i7-8700K (at least in ArmA).

But!

Chances you spot such a CPU, capable of not just 4200 MHz RAM, but rather it being at CL16 at this frequency are very low.

Not all boards can handle 4200 MHz RAM + CL16.

Even less people who know how to overclock/stabilize it at this frequency and timings (several dozen of timings and more than 3 different voltages involved).

Need to read hundreds of pages, filter out the right advices/experiences and understand in which order, with which software and for how long to test.

 

So if you want a little more FPS than now, right out of the box, my advice would be to directly buy G.Skill Trident Z 3600 MHz CL15, which you can simply plug in your motherboard, choose XMP profil in the BIOS and forget about RAM for a long time.

 

Otherwise, if you want to deal with RAM overclocking and spend may be a month tweaking it + save some money, you can buy Trident Z 3200 MHz CL15 or 16 and overclock it to lets say 3600/3866 MHz with tight timings. Or buy Trident Z 3600 MHz CL17 and overclock it to lets say 4000/4133/4200 MHz with tight timings.