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

[oldbear 390]

R5 3600X / ASUS TUF B450M-Pro Gaming / G.Skill Neo 16 GB (2x8GB) 3600 MHz C16 [16-19-19-39] / Gainward GTX 1060 6GB

YAAB results (Standard+Standard settings)
no XMP (2132 c15) 45.8 FPS
XMP #1 (3600 c16) 59.4 FPS

[Groove_C 267]

I would say than 3600 MHz CL16 is good value for good out of the box performance (no OC).

And can be overclocked for further improvements.

 

3200 MHz can be overclocked as well to >4000 MHz, but there is less guarantee that it will work, compared to 3600 MHz.

[SystemChips 0]

Hey not sure if anyone here has answered this already but for me the i7-9700k and the ryzen 3700x are within a $10 difference and was wondering which one would benefit more on arma and provide a higher framerate. Currently running
i7- 4790k
GTX 1070
Hyper Evo 212 fan no watercooling
Also if anyone has any recommendations of when to buy or upgrade because I am looking to upgrade this december but might wait as the cpu's I want are the latest generation right now.

[oldbear 390]

Welcome home 😎

 

Strictly speaking, from Arma3 gaming point of view, the i7-9700K is the best performer due to the highest 4.90 GHz boost speed. Previously we had seen that this CPU was performing than the R7 2700X. Even though the gap has narrowed, it's still here.

The Ryzen 7 3700X will climb fast up to 4.4 GHz if needed but will quickly slow down to a more stable 4.2 GHz while in game, nevertheless due to the 16 threads the frame rate will be probably more stable.

The Wraith PRISM cooler coming with the CPU is good, no more. Knowing that the Ryzen 7 3700X is an already over clocked by build, you understand that there is no much room for more OC.

 

Speaking about the GPU, from the Arma3 gaming point of view, the GTX 1070 is more than enough.

For a new build, you will need a good 500 GB SSD M.2 for Windows10 64 and Arma3 ...  what else😉

 

 

[Tankbuster 1746]

Yeah, the 3700X is already pretty much flat out, not too much more to be got out of it, though that is true of most top-end CPUs these days.

 

The 9700K is a good part and not that much more expensive than the 3700X. At this point, my advice would be to go with the manufacturer you currently prefer.

 

[SystemChips 0]

I appreciate it guys. So I am considering upgrading this Christmas but not sure if I should wait for the newest generation of intel or  how much of a performance increase id get with a 9700k over a 4790k. Thanks guys I will also be putting the game on a m.2 nvme ssd instead of my normal ssd aswell with ddr4 instead of ddr3. I saw the previ

[oldbear 390]

I am currently testing a Ryzen R5 3600X build.

R5 3600X / ASUS TUF B450M-Pro Gaming/16 GB (2x8 GB) G.Skill NEO 3600 MHz C16/ GTX 1060 6 GB/500 GB Samsung SSD

You can get a look at YAAB mission test results here and the full story on French CanardPC Forums in this thread : Jouer à Arma3 avec un AMD R5 2000/3000 : Armaverse Battleship.

 

From last year Test • Intel Z390 / Core i9-9900K / i7-9700K / i5-9600K on Le Comptoir du Hardware site.

Sorry, of course, no Ryzen 3000 involved, let's just say that according to my own test the R5 3600X performs a bit better than a slightly overclocked  i7 7700K. You can complete this overview of the CPU of the in game hierarchy, here in a previous test.

[gekRaider 0]

I flashed bios to agesa 1.0.0.4b (from 1.0.0.3) at MSI B450 tomahawk max and I have decrease performance about 5-6 fps (1440p - standard).

And AIDA cache test displays worse performance in L1-L3 section.

My gear: AMD 3600x (no overclock), 32 Gb RAM 2 rank XMP 3333 MHz 16-18-18-18-36-1, 1080Ti, SSD samsung 860EVO, agesa  1.0.0.3 = 55 FPS (1440p - standard)

Someone checked the results with a new AGESA?

[gekRaider 0]

I fixed low CPU clock and cache by 1usmus Custom Power Plan for Ryzen 3000 Zen 2 Processors, it really helped (see benchmark screenshot)
But it did not help to return a good (initial) FPS value in ARMA 😥

 

[Horus 83]

Did you clear CMOS after BIOS update?

[gekRaider 0]

22 hours ago, Horus said:

Did you clear CMOS after BIOS update?

Yes, twice. First of one, it was automatic restore after flash. Second one I did restore manually after your question)  no changes

 

After downgrade to agesa 1.0.0.3 abba I did return my 5 FPS back

I would like to see feedback from other  Ryzen users, who test agesa 1.0.0.4b

[commando180 15]

I need a quick answer as i want to buy a new pc (just for arma mainly lol) probably too complex but anyway.....

 

I need to know what type of RAM to get, what frequency to run and timings......... It needs to be good bang for buck........ i am going with Ryzen 3600/3600x as a CPU choice

 

What will perform better fps wise in ARMA 3 right now? 3600 CL17 or 3200 CL16 or 3200 CL14?

 

Anyone have links to kind of RAM they recommend? 

 

What will 32GB Ram do compared to 16GB? Is there a need for 32GB ram in ARMA3?

 

I have a feeling, regardless of CPU, GPU that ARMA 3 still needs good ram speeds to work efficiently......... and this is where i struggle as there arent many ARMA 3 ram benchmarks for Ryzen 3000 🙂 Thanks.

 

 

[oldbear 390]

Hi commando180, welcome in our Armaverse 😎

 

As I had previouly posted, I am currently testing 2 Ryzen builds, one based upon a R5 2600, the other on a R5 3600X.

R5 2600 / ASRock AB 350 ITX /  16 GB (2x8 GB) Corsair LPX 3200 MHz C16/ RX 570 4 GB/ 500 GB Samsung SSD

R5 3600X / ASUS TUF B450M-Pro Gaming/16 GB (2x8 GB) G.Skill NEO 3600 MHz C16/ GTX 1060 6 GB/ 500 GB Samsung SSD

You can get a look my own tests and benchs and the full story on French CanardPC Forums in this thread : Jouer à Arma3 avec un AMD R5 2000/3000 : Armaverse Battleship.

 

From my own experience, you don't need 32 GB and the 16 GB (2x8 GB) Corsair LPX 3200 MHz C16 [CMK 16GX4M2B3200C16] is the best choice, not far from "AMD sweet spot" and not too expensive. The G.Skill NEO 3600 MHz C16 is giving a 3/4 FPS gain  ingame, "ça ne vaut pas le coup ... et le cout", it's not worth it ... at a cost!

 

The highlight of the R5 3600X is to be factory overclocked and running up to 4.4 GHz directly out of the box, just don't forget to switch the RAM to the XMP profile.

[commando180 15]

Oldbear,

 

Interesting reply.

 

Something that is annoying me is that my 10 year old pc is giving maybe 10/20% less fps than what you found in YAAB, so my question is what the hell is going on with ARMA 3!!

 

Why arent we seeing 100+ fps by now?

 

What is the limit here? Engine? 

 

So i need to know is ARMA 3 a lost cause for performance, any PC will just not get past 100fps mark ?

 

 

[oldbear 390]

The point is not the 100 or 60 FPS marks because I can show a screen with such figures, there is no way to get that FPS level in game.

Arma RV Engine ancestor has been engineered in 1997 code name Poseidon.

So it was built for single core processor with as a guideline an extreme precision of the simulation in an open world.

RV Engine goes multi cores with Arma2 : Operation Arrowhead but always with absolute priority to the simulation computations.

As designed, the engine does not allow parallelization and / or use of the potential of modern graphics cards.

Arma3 Devs have done incredible enhancement/optimization jobs in order to allow us to play Arma3 : Apex.

But even tricks, skills and magic have limits, that's why 2/3 years ago BI has announced the end of development based on this game engine.

That's why Enfusion project has been revealed.

 

So, ATM, you will need

- a fast AND efficient CPU,  that in game  why a R5 2600[6 Cores, 12 Threads @3.4GHz] will allow more FPS than a FX 8350 [8 Cores, 8 Threads @4.0GHz]  and is a good pick!

- 8 GB or 16 GB of fast RAM

- a SSD hosting Windows and Arma , no FPS gain but efficient allow the flow of textures streamed in game, reducing stuttering.

- a mid-high level GPU, for since April 2016 Visual Update introducing new light management and effects, a RX 570 4GB or a GTX 1060 3GB are  a minimum requirement in order not to burden the CPU.

 

With good Arma3 gaming rigs such as my Gaming#1 ... i7-7700K/RTX 2060 6Go/16 Go DDR4 3200/SSD M.2 500Go + SSD M.2 500Go
or current configuration on bench table ... R5 3600X/GTX 1060 6Go/16 Go DDR4 3600/SSD 500 Go ... you can expect to get an average 45 FPS [25/110] playing in Ultra quality  with  3500 m Overall Visibility. Arma 3 beeing a rather slow tactical game it's OK.

[Groove_C 267]

9 hours ago, commando180 said:

what would be useful is if i can see a 1080p, 2k and 4k comparison......... i need to see how much GPU plays a part at high resolution and if theres an impact on FPS.

@ 1080p a 2080 Ti or RX 5700 XT will deliver maybe 1-2 FPS more than GTX 1060 (6 GB).

So a GTX 1060 (6 GB) or GTX 1660 Ti is more than enough, if Arma is the only game you play, or the main game.

RX 590 or GTX 1070 or RTX 2060 Super is only better because of 8 GB vRAM, so less micro-stutter when vRAM is full and data starts to be offloaded from vRAM to RAM.

But FPS is same.

 

@ 1440p, the difference is significant.

I had to replace my GTX 1060 (6 GB) with a GTX 1070 Ti and overclock it to have almost same FPS I had with 1060 (6 GB) @ 1080p.

GTX 1080 was too expensive for me.

 

RTX 2060 is a facepalm for Arma, since RTX is not used in Arma, @ 1080p FPS is not higher than with a GTX 1660 Ti and it still has only 6 GB vRAM.

Too expensive for 1080p and just enough for 1440p, FPS-wise, but micro-stutter when vRAM is full.

For 1440p there are better GPUs, at a price.

 

I still wouldn't buy a Radeon, since nVidia has an overall better package, desipte the price.

Record and stream with their codec, better drivers and less heat/consumption, despite 12 nm vs. 7 nm.

 

For 1440p, for Arma, I would buy a RTX 2060 Super.

It's on par with GTX 1070 Ti OC or GTX 1080.

 

For 1080p, for Arma, I would buy a GTX 1660 Ti for max perf on budget or a RTX 2060 Super if money is not a problem, because of 8 GB vRAM.

 

One shouldn't look at minimum FPS at all, since it can drop for maybe 1 sec/ms from like 50 to 25 and the rest of the time it will be much higher.

[Groove_C 267]

4 minutes ago, Tankbuster said:

My experience is, and I have 3 machines running Arma here, is that at 1080 GPU doesn't make a great deal of difference. Once you get past 1080, then the GPU becomes more important. I now have a GTX 1080 purely because my main monitor is 2560 by 1440. The old GTX 970 wasn't even close to making this work.

GTX 970 has same performance as GTX 1060 (6 GB), but has only 3.5 GB vRAM.

 

For 1440p it's not enough for enjoyable gameplay experience @ ultra.

[Groove_C 267]

Now, after all the Windows and BIOS updates, because of security fixes for Intel, Intel CPUs have lost up to 10% performance, whereas AMD CPUs have now higher boost frequencies, Windows now understands much better which specific AMD CPU cores are of better quality, to give them the highest load at max possible frequency and Windows also better dispatches different processes to different cores/threads, based on quality of cores and the load of applications/processes.

 

The problem with All the Ryzen/Threadripper CPUs, starting from 2017 and until recently, was not that much the frequency and acceptance of lower RAM frequencies than Intel, but it was mainly the problem of Windows, which was not working efficiently enough on AMD CPUs architecture. And not like a lot of people claimed that AMDs architecture itself is/was not efficient.

 

Have seen some vids on YouTube, where overclocked recent Intel CPUs, in Arma, were on par FPS-wise, but FPS and frametime fluctuated more than on current AMD CPUs. And this is despite much lower frequency for AMD CPUs.

 

Ryzen 4xxx will be even better than Intel, since Intel won't have any performance increases. Just 2/4 more cores/threads next year on same architecture and lithography as Skylake 2015. That's it.

 

Microsoft continues to work hard on improving Windows efficiency for Ryzen/Threadripper CPUs, since they are now bought by more and more people and it will only continue with next gen AMD CPUs.

Next gen Ryzen/Threadripper will support even higher RAM frequencies and will have even higher CPU frequnecies.

 

I might switch from Intel to AMD this summer. For the first time since more than 10 years.

[Groove_C 267]

Also a lot of games, where Intel compiler is used or hardware verification such as whether a GenuineIntel CPU is present or not, upon the detection of a non Intel CPU (AMD), switch from much more efficient AVX/AVX2 or SSE2-4 instructions to just SSE, in case the game supports these instructions.

And this is despite AMD supporting SSE2-4 and AVX/AVX2 instructions as well.

 

Intel is the company that has initially invented/introduced most of these instructions.

There is a verification, which is normally supposed to only make sure, that instructions xy are supported by game/program xy, and if so, it will choose the most effective of them.

But Intel has also introduced a verification not only if instructions xy are supported, but also if the CPU is Intel or not.

And this affects not only games, but also a large number of programs/libraries.

No wonder people with AMD CPUs then have terrible performance issues.

 

It's going on for years.

 

Arma is one of such games.

Other games, like Warthunder, IL-2, Red Orchestra 2, Dawn of War 2, Hearts of Iron 3, F1 2016, Unreal Tournament 3, Borderlands2, Homeworld, Rebel Galaxy etc, are also affected.

 

And despite this artificial handicap, intentionally imposed by Intel, AMD CPUs with same cores/threads count as Intel, but with lower frequency, were recently less than 10% behind Intel and by now are on par with them.

[Groove_C 267]

Here is one example of Intel sabotaging AMDs performance and how a user could solve this for his R5 2600X, which resulted in 20-300% performance increase (depending on the situation), by telling the program to use AVX2 instruction (via script), which AMD CPUs support, but were using only SSE, because of Intel sabotage.

https://www.legitreviews.com/codepath-change-gives-amd-ryzen-cpus-boost-in-mathworks-matlab_215641

[Groove_C 267]

While Microsoft was forced by the EU to include competitors browsers as a choice into its OS, Intel is allowed to purposefully code compilers, that are widely used due to their great optimization, to slowdown competitors products.

Intel compilers stuff is done on purpose and is unnecessary. They do not have to explicitly optimize for non-Intel CPUs to allow non Intel CPUs to take the best possible code path.

The only thing they need to do, is not kill a CPU code path, based on the CPUs brand name.

 

On the Intel website, the notice, that they only optimize for Intel processors is still there.

So they are still crippling their compilers, 15 years after complaints against them started.

It's surprising, that no anti-trust authorities have slammed Intel for this, as it's clearly anti competitiveness coding.

 

There is no reason at all to attempt to detect CPU's brand, other then to hurt the competition, even if this needs to be done to exclude bugged CPU models.

Any branching done that automatically eliminates non-Intel CPU's from a faster code path before checking if you are dealing with a bugged CPU or it's feature set, clearly is done on purpose.

[Boomerang Trotter 1]

Time to upgrade from my i5 2500K and from everything I've read I think an i7 9700K would suit me the best but I'm not sure what to do with motherboard and RAM. I was thinking about Corsair LPX 3200MHz CL16 but is it enough? Faster RAM looks to be significantly more expensive over here, I'm not sure if it's worth it. Same with MOBO. It looks like the Gigabyte Z390 UD has decent VRMs and could run the 9700K without problems if I'm not overclocking but if I do want to overclock I have to spend 50% more for the Aorus Elite and probably need a better cooler too to take advantage of it. 

 

9700K
Gigabyte Z390 UD
Corsair LPX 3200 C16

 

vs

 

9700K
Gigabtyte Z390 Auros Elite
Corsair LPX 3600 C18

 

Is the latter worth $115 more? That's even without considering the cooling. I'm not really interested in extreme overclocks. Is it even worth to OC the 9700K at all in this scenario? Any opinions are welcome.

[Groove_C 267]

@Boomerang Trotter, your current CPU is not that bad.

I would wait until summer to either buy i7-10700K, that will have 12 threads instead of only 8 and will cost same as i7-9700K or even less and easier to cool, since bigger chip.

Or upgrade to Ryzen 4xxx.

 

Really not a good time to upgrade right now.

Especially if your FPS is acceptable and you've been playing like this for a long time.

 

Trust me, this time it's worth the wait.

 

One can't say in this particular case, that there will always be something better and one can wait an eternity, if following such a logic.

[Boomerang Trotter 1]

36 minutes ago, Groove_C said:

@Boomerang Trotter, your current CPU is not that bad.

I would wait until summer to either buy i7-10700K, that will have 12 threads instead of only 8 and will cost same as i7-9700K or even less and easier to cool, since bigger chip.

Or upgrade to Ryzen 4xxx.

 

Really not a good time to upgrade right now.

Especially if your FPS is acceptable and you've been playing like this for a long time.

 

Trust me, this time it's worth the wait.

 

One can't say in this particular case, that there will always be something better and one can wait an eternity, if following such a logic.

The issue is that my chip or my mobo seem to be dying. Probably not a surprise considering it's been running overclocked for all these years but I'm getting too many freezes and blue screens lately, it has become unacceptable. I've changed everything aside from these two components. The timing does look unfortunate but sadly waiting for another 6 months or so is not an option 😐

[Groove_C 267]

@Boomerang Trotter, then I would recommend you to buy Ryzen 3800X.

It has the highest frequency off all AMDs, is on par with 9700K in Arma, is not so difficult to cool, has double the threads, has more cache, so you can keep it longer than 9700K.

Because only 8 threads is ok today, but it's no as futureproof as 16 threads, for same or lower price (depending on where you live).

3600 MHz CL16 would be a better choice, if you can afford it.