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

[GrillsBears 1]

Mkay.

Starting off 2 years isn't old at all. 5 years is quite old. Your CPU shouldn't be significantly different to the best new ones. 680s = 770s. There’s nothing at all in your box I would upgrade.

Well - it's probably only old in my eyes - between 1996 and 2010, I used to upgrade on a yearly basis (Mobo, CPU Ram in one year, GPU(s) every other, but you'ew right - atm, I wouldn't upgrade as the increase in performance over my current rig probably isn't worth the investment.

The only wrong thing about any of your specs other than details (2x8>4x4GB memories, marginally) is that you’re apparently not overclocking your CPU?

Your CPU is 3.2 GHz with a 3.8 GHz turbo. Mine’s 3.5 GHz with a 3.9 GHz turbo and based on one test some time ago that I’m not too certain a constant 4.0 GHz clock made a big difference compared to having 3.9 GHz turbo. It’s worth trying out and since you have water cooling you should even be good to overclock to maybe 4.4 GHz using perfectly safe automatic software such as Command Centre. So definitely overclock some.

Yeah - I will - I used to overclock my rigs for ages, with this one, I didn't deem it necessary so far and I enjoyed the extreme stability.

So about your issues 6040x1080 is massive and I would expect all sorts of issues on screens that big in any non-supermassive game such as Battlefield or Skyrim. Anyways everyone has stuttering in cities and if it’s not caused by the massive amounts of geometry causing a graphics strain then it’s caused by a CPU strain because of bad game optimization. Picture-in-picture is also slow as syrup for mostly everyone, not only you or SLI-users. Again, a lot more geometry.

If you’re testing in a small singleplayer mission such as “Showcase: Infantryâ€, watching over Girna or whatever and changing any and all settings doesn’t make any fps difference then there’s obviously nothing you can really do. There are no effective tweaks. There ARE tweaks, tons of them though few to none have been shown to do anything.

Note that all in-game settings mostly affect your graphics cards and not your CPU, except for object draw distance I would assume. So if you change everything and the fps stays the same then it’s your CPU bottlenecking which is the case for the most of us due to bad optimisation.

So not much you can do it seems.

You haven’t said ANYTHING about how you’re doing absolutely though. What’s your fps?

Measure in small singleplayer missions, or some big ones if you want, however fps depends a lot of mission. Missions with ineffective scripts can make a big difference and in multiplayer there’s a whole host of things that matter other than your specs.

Thanks for the info - good to know it's not only me having these problems. As for my performance - I haven't run any benchmarks but it varies a lot - if I'm just around in the landscape on Altis, I'd say it's in the mid 40's, but if I'm in a firefight in a town, it can drop to ~15 (usually with all TPW modules enabled).

Well - I'm off to overclock my PC now - thanks for the elaborate reply.

[Sneakson 1]

Well - it's probably only old in my eyes - between 1996 and 2010, I used to upgrade on a yearly basis (Mobo, CPU Ram in one year, GPU(s) every other, but you'ew right - atm, I wouldn't upgrade as the increase in performance over my current rig probably isn't worth the investment.

Yeah - I will - I used to overclock my rigs for ages, with this one, I didn't deem it necessary so far and I enjoyed the extreme stability.

Thanks for the info - good to know it's not only me having these problems. As for my performance - I haven't run any benchmarks but it varies a lot - if I'm just around in the landscape on Altis, I'd say it's in the mid 40's, but if I'm in a firefight in a town, it can drop to ~15 (usually with all TPW modules enabled).

Well - I'm off to overclock my PC now - thanks for the elaborate reply.

Upgrading annually may have been a bit more worth it in the 90s but today we're really not talking especially significant CPU/GPU differences from year to year.

Currently I believe upgrading CPU every 5-7 years or so and graphics card every 2-5 years is what you have to do to stay on medium-high settings... there really aren't many good heavy-duty PC games on the market nowadays. At least Watch Dogs should make my computer sweat.

[tonygrunt 10]

.....

The only wrong thing about any of your specs other than details (2x8>4x4GB memories, marginally) is that you’re apparently not overclocking your CPU?

.....

I have an objection here regarding your advice about his RAM, his CPU uses quad channel for RAM so for his case it has better performance.

@GrillsBears, you could try lowering your graphics details a bit as your 2GB of VRAM could be a limit. I have an almost similar setup with yours but with GTX680 4GB and with a resolution of 2560*1440 (which is about half of yours) my VRAM usage goes up to 3GB.

One more vote from me for Sneakson's suggestion to overclock as that is what had the most impact to Arma, you could disable HT to make it a bit easier to achieve a low temperature/Vcore overclock. Running my 3930k at 4.7GHz, HT off and Vcore at 1.4v.

[Agalpaf 1]

Hey guys, I'm going to start a mini-itx build, what do you think about this part list ?

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard: ASUS Z87I-PRO C2

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

Storage: Crucial M500 960GB 2.5"

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB TWIN FROZR

Case: Fractal Design Node 304

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified

I'll probably be running at 1080p aiming for Medium-High/High settings, and OC'ing both the CPU and GPU a bit.

[GrillsBears 1]

Thank you both Sneakson and Tony - looks like I'm slowly getting there - ran into overheating issues when raising the voltage quite soon, which I deemed rather odd, given I have a rather decent Aquacomputer cooling - checked the case and it looked like a cat had crawled in between the case fans and the radiator and died there (my cigar smoking habit does such things to cooling systems), so I disassembled the whole thing and cleaned it up, flashed my bios and did a fresh install whilst I was at it.

My CPU temp is now 12°C cooler and the case fans run 30% slower than before when idling and I'm running rather stable 4.4 Ghz, HT on at 1.35 V (needs some more stress-testing), but I'm hopeful I can reach stable 4.6 Ghz.

Anyway - you both were on spot - my CPU was bottlenecking and the interesting bit is that now that bottleneck is less of an issue, changing graphics settings actually does have meaningful impact on performance so the resulting FPS increase goes well beyond the increase just from the OCd CPU.

Thank you both :).

Oh - and on a side note: Yeah - you're right Tony - at least my idea was that getting a 4*4 Quad channel kit would harmonise best with a quad channel CPU (didn't really check any benchmarks though, but it seemed logical to me).

[becario 1]

I'm planning on buying a new rig next month for about 750-800 euros (in Spain). I have a couple of configs and I would want to know how well would this one do with AIII:

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866 PC3-14900 8GB 2x4GB CL9

Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4Ghz Box

MSI Z87-G43 Gaming

Samsung 840 Evo SSD Series 120GB SATA3

Sapphire R9 270X Dual-X 2GB GDDR5

Tacens Radix VI 750W

Zalman Z11 Plus Azul

This is about 755€ (plus 15 for an optic unit, 770 all together). I'm buying on a shop called "pccomponentes", just in case anyone would want to try to improve this rig without going over 800. I have a HDD that I will use, so not buying one.

Also I thought about a AMD 8350, 8 cores and 4.0 Ghz, but I don't know how it will perform with Arma. With that config I could be a bit more generous with RAM or GPU, as AMD configs are a bit cheaper.

Also anyone knows this case? Zalman Z11? I's want something cool (both looks and temps) and not very noisy

[Sneakson 1]

Hey guys, I'm going to start a mini-itx build, what do you think about this part list ?

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard: ASUS Z87I-PRO C2

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory

Storage: Crucial M500 960GB 2.5"

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB TWIN FROZR

Case: Fractal Design Node 304

Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified

I'll probably be running at 1080p aiming for Medium-High/High settings, and OC'ing both the CPU and GPU a bit.

Apparently nothing wrong there. Not sure how well stock 4670K overclocks even with small overclocks or how much noise it makes and I'm not sure how strong the 750 Ti is compared to say a 760 in gaming but I guess you know what you're doing.

I'm planning on buying a new rig next month for about 750-800 euros (in Spain). I have a couple of configs and I would want to know how well would this one do with AIII:

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866 PC3-14900 8GB 2x4GB CL9

Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4Ghz Box

MSI Z87-G43 Gaming

Samsung 840 Evo SSD Series 120GB SATA3

Sapphire R9 270X Dual-X 2GB GDDR5

Tacens Radix VI 750W

Zalman Z11 Plus Azul

This is about 755€ (plus 15 for an optic unit, 770 all together). I'm buying on a shop called "pccomponentes", just in case anyone would want to try to improve this rig without going over 800. I have a HDD that I will use, so not buying one.

Also I thought about a AMD 8350, 8 cores and 4.0 Ghz, but I don't know how it will perform with Arma. With that config I could be a bit more generous with RAM or GPU, as AMD configs are a bit cheaper.

Also anyone knows this case? Zalman Z11? I's want something cool (both looks and temps) and not very noisy

Everything good except:

I'm not into AMD so can't comment on the R9 270X.

You may want to try 2133/2400 MHz memories as there's been some evidence it actually matters.

750W is very abundant... you'll only use about 300W and should ideally have about double that which is about 600W however as low as 400W may work.

Can't comment on the case. I've a Corsair 540 and also considered a quiet though very anonymous 330R... googling on cases shouldn't be hard at all.

[EHXP 10]

can someone help me? when I try to join to any server, I always got kicked?

thx

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

I'm planning on buying a new rig next month for about 750-800 euros (in Spain). I have a couple of configs and I would want to know how well would this one do with AIII:

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

G.Skill Sniper DDR3 1866 PC3-14900 8GB 2x4GB CL9

Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4Ghz Box

MSI Z87-G43 Gaming

Samsung 840 Evo SSD Series 120GB SATA3

Sapphire R9 270X Dual-X 2GB GDDR5

Tacens Radix VI 750W

Zalman Z11 Plus Azul

This is about 755€ (plus 15 for an optic unit, 770 all together). I'm buying on a shop called "pccomponentes", just in case anyone would want to try to improve this rig without going over 800. I have a HDD that I will use, so not buying one.

Also I thought about a AMD 8350, 8 cores and 4.0 Ghz, but I don't know how it will perform with Arma. With that config I could be a bit more generous with RAM or GPU, as AMD configs are a bit cheaper.

Also anyone knows this case? Zalman Z11? I's want something cool (both looks and temps) and not very noisy

that system looks good, stay away from amd for arma as the fps difference is quite big to the advantage of intel, 270x is a decent gpu specially for 1080p gaming.

i've never seen that psu brand though and not sure how good it actually is, you might be better off grabbing a lower watt corsair psu or any other well known brands :)

if you want a slightly more powerful gpu you can change out for a gtx760, but that will put you over 800€ by 10-20 euro or so

[becario 1]

Thanks for your help! then I think I'll go for this. I might include better memories, as suggested.

PSU is similar to what I have now, and it's not bad (I think it'sa Spanish brand, and someone recommended it to me). I'll change it for a 650w then, since GPU's minimum is said to be 500, and I prefer not to fall short on this.

Thank you very much, to both of you. I hope this will improve my experience in the Republic of Altis and Stratis.

[Sneakson 1]

Thanks for your help! then I think I'll go for this. I might include better memories, as suggested.

PSU is similar to what I have now, and it's not bad (I think it'sa Spanish brand, and someone recommended it to me). I'll change it for a 650w then, since GPU's minimum is said to be 500, and I prefer not to fall short on this.

Thank you very much, to both of you. I hope this will improve my experience in the Republic of Altis and Stratis.

Don't be afraid of the smaller sizes... based on a quick check it seems 500-550W is almost exactly double what your computer will actually use so that's safe.

The number one thing to compare after checking that it’s has enough wattage and that it is 80+ certified, which it isn’t, is noise levels because supply units can be quite noisy.

The unit not being 80+ certified is bad but since it’s a Spanish brand it may simply not be certified because of some technicality.

[becario 1]

noise levels are good. and, according to some reviews, quality is good. my present one is a tacens radix VI 550w, and I have no complains about it.

you can see some reviews here (in spanish, but I'm sure google will offer you a translation): http://www.hard-h2o.com/reviews/fuentes/fuente-de-alimentacion-tacens-radix-vi-650 and http://blog.mercadoactual.es/tecnologia/review-tacens-radix-vi-650w/

though, if you can give some economical alternatives, they're more than welcomed.

[janbak 10]

Will ARMA 3 run on my iMac with the following config?

Intel Core i5 quad-core 3,2GHz, Turbo Boost fino 3,6GHz

8GB SDRAM DDR3 1600MHz - 2 x 4GB

Fusion Drive 1TB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1GB GDDR5

Many thanks

[Sneakson 1]

Will ARMA 3 run on my iMac with the following config?

Intel Core i5 quad-core 3,2GHz, Turbo Boost fino 3,6GHz

8GB SDRAM DDR3 1600MHz - 2 x 4GB

Fusion Drive 1TB

NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1GB GDDR5

Many thanks

I believe so. Will probably be medium settings but should work.

[arthur666 10]

Hi all. It's been a while.

Finally picked up Arma3 this weekend with the Steam sale. I have been thinking about a new build for a while, but haven't really been following the hardware advances. I built my current rig specifically for Arma2 the month it was released, so it's five years old (I did upgrade the GPU 2 years ago). Runs ok for some small skirmishes, but I really like setting up large battles to observe, command, or just jump into the boots of a random soldier and fight.

My question: I noticed that an i7 is about $100 more than an i5. Worth it for Arma3? I was thinking of a new build, adding more and faster RAM, and keeping my 560GTX. But, if I go with a i5, I will bank that $100 towards a new video card later. Thoughts?

[jumpinghubert 48]

Hi all. It's been a while.

Finally picked up Arma3 this weekend with the Steam sale. I have been thinking about a new build for a while, but haven't really been following the hardware advances. I built my current rig specifically for Arma2 the month it was released, so it's five years old (I did upgrade the GPU 2 years ago). Runs ok for some small skirmishes, but I really like setting up large battles to observe, command, or just jump into the boots of a random soldier and fight.

My question: I noticed that an i7 is about $100 more than an i5. Worth it for Arma3? I was thinking of a new build, adding more and faster RAM, and keeping my 560GTX. But, if I go with a i5, I will bank that $100 towards a new video card later. Thoughts?

till now you have the same performance with a i7. But there is a news about supporting hyperthreading in the future, but especially for servers. My tip is buying a i5 and fast ram (2400er upwards). Or waiting half a year for the new intel 14nm generation (broadwell).

[Sneakson 1]

Hi all. It's been a while.

Finally picked up Arma3 this weekend with the Steam sale. I have been thinking about a new build for a while, but haven't really been following the hardware advances. I built my current rig specifically for Arma2 the month it was released, so it's five years old (I did upgrade the GPU 2 years ago). Runs ok for some small skirmishes, but I really like setting up large battles to observe, command, or just jump into the boots of a random soldier and fight.

My question: I noticed that an i7 is about $100 more than an i5. Worth it for Arma3? I was thinking of a new build, adding more and faster RAM, and keeping my 560GTX. But, if I go with a i5, I will bank that $100 towards a new video card later. Thoughts?

5 years old CPU and 2 years old graphics card sounds like a good time to make a small upgrade generally however I upgraded back in August and to be honest it hasn't really been worth it at all yet.

I had a Q9550 and 560 Ti and now I have a 4770K/770. My old computer could handle basically all games I had tried back then on high settings well and I upgraded for ARMA3/BF4/CoD: Ghosts and then they all came out buggy messes and I didn’t even buy BF4/CoD: Ghosts at all… since then I actually have only played 100% old-school games that my old computer could handle and some console games. Honestly there is not a lot of heavy games on PC currently. Valve are quiet… id are quiet… and some of the most talked about games are quite lightweight or indie. If I were you I would wait to around August 2015/2016 and hope that the new console generation will spark a wave of games similar to that of 2007 (Orange Box, Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, CoD4, Crysis, Mass Effect, Stalker, World in Conflict, Supreme Commander, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Crackdown, GRAW2, Lost Planet, Uncharted, Skate, Resident Evil 4 Wii, Guitar Hero III, Rock Band and many, many more). I mean how many games do you play and how much time do you spend playing games that your computer really can’t handle on nice settings, even if not maxed? Think about it.

I’m going to dig into the Crysis series this summer, Watch Dogs is out soon and at least my computer should last a good while so my money haven’t been completely wasted besides older games such as TW: Shogun 2 run absolutely amazingly maxed now but it’s something to consider. Ideally you’ll want to buy a new computer when Half-Life 3 is announced or something such.

Anyways, my computer also wasn’t very cost efficient because I had a lot of money when I bought it and now I’m wishing I had saved a bit of it.

Don’t buy an i7 instead of i5. I’ve done it to test it and so far I haven’t really seen any signs that it would be worth it. It’s marginally quicker in a few games but we’re talking few games and usually marginal differences.

Anyways if you do want to upgrade definitely wait until around August, at least. New CPUs and graphics cards always come out in summer and then drop massively in price in winter so it’s a want-to-be-first versus cost balance.

There's nothing much coming out this summer and you should be out in the sun having fun and sand so waiting until August, at least for the 4670K to go on sale, will be the safest.

[TruePancake 10]

System Specs - AMD A8 6500 APU @3.5 GHz (OC = 3.8 GHz) with AMD Dual Graphics ( 8570D & 8470 ) (Crossfire) - 6GB DDR3 RAM @1066 MHz - 1TB WDC SATA 7200 RPM Mobo - MSI "JasmineR" MS-7778

By the way, the graphics card i know is terrible, but i want to know if it'll run with these gfx = Sapphire HD 7750 2GB DDR3.

Thanks,

~ Alex ~

[Sillywabbit 10]

I bought this game in alpha, it was unplayable due to low FPS.

I re downloaded it now since its out of alpha/beta and nothing has changed....

My pc is not the best out their, but it should chew up this game with no problem. I have over 100+ FPS in single player, but soon as i join one of these 40+ man servers my FPS is hitting 40's and 25's in town.....

770 GTX 4gb

i7 4ghz

16 GB ram

Soild state drive with windows and page-file another solid state drive for games -.-.... 25 fps, this game should have the alpha label slapped back onto it and you should add a warning on stream stating the game has very poor performance.

And yes i tried all the tweaks from all over the net.

[Sneakson 1]

I bought this game in alpha, it was unplayable due to low FPS.

I re downloaded it now since its out of alpha/beta and nothing has changed....

My pc is not the best out their, but it should chew up this game with no problem. I have over 100+ FPS in single player, but soon as i join one of these 40+ man servers my FPS is hitting 40's and 25's in town.....

770 GTX 4gb

i7 4ghz

16 GB ram

Soild state drive with windows and page-file another solid state drive for games -.-.... 25 fps, this game should have the alpha label slapped back onto it and you should add a warning on stream stating the game has very poor performance.

And yes i tried all the tweaks from all over the net.

Try different server, different mission. Seems you missed that one.

[DjMcTurtle 10]

What should I upgrade in my computer, and what would you recommend in the 100-200$ range for an upgrade?

The only times I have problems with FPS, is mainly in some Wastelands servers, on certain ones with around 40-50 players I can get around 20-25 FPS But other ones I get around 9... (Even if I switch to low and have a good connection to the server)

I can play on High setting in single players, and sometimes on medium in multiplayer.

AMD Phenom II X4 940 4.01 GHz

Motherboard is a Asus M3A79-T Deluxe

6 GB ram

ATI Radeon HD 4870 1gb Video ram.

64 bit OS, Windows 8.

I was thinking about getting a GTX 660 or a AMD Radeon HD 7870 just not sure if they were compatible with my Motherboard.

Edited May 22, 2014 by DjMcTurtle

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

What should I upgrade in my computer, and what would you recommend in the 100-200$ range for an upgrade?

The only times I have problems with FPS, is mainly in some Wastelands servers, on certain ones with around 40-50 players I can get around 20-25 FPS But other ones I get around 9... (Even if I switch to low and have a good connection to the server)

I can play on High setting in single players, and sometimes on medium in multiplayer.

AMD Phenom II X4 940 4.01 GHz

Motherboard is a Asus M3A79-T Deluxe

6 GB ram

ATI Radeon HD 4870 1gb Video ram.

64 bit OS, Windows 8.

I was thinking about getting a GTX 660 or a AMD Radeon HD 7870 just not sure if they were compatible with my Motherboard.

arma quite heavy on the cpu and intel will run the game better, specially in multiplayer, that being said your graphics card is quite outdated as well so im not sure what i would upgrade in your position :S maybe save up for a while and grab a new intel cpu, motherboard and a gpu?

[mndrgs 10]

I have this specs but I still get around 14-45 FPS.

Intel Core i3-2100 @3.1GHz

ASUS GTX 650-E

4GB RAM

What will I need to replace or Buy. Thanks Forums!

[Sneakson 1]

I have this specs but I still get around 14-45 FPS.

Intel Core i3-2100 @3.1GHz

ASUS GTX 650-E

4GB RAM

What will I need to replace or Buy. Thanks Forums!

Well it's a quite weak computer overall. Upgrading to a 4670K, 760 and 8GB memory would allow you to max all settings except for visibility settings however you would still have about 20-60+ fps in other words there's no way to have stable fps in this game yet.

[wiggum2 31]

Phenom II X4 955 @4x3,6Ghz

4GB DDR2 RAM

Radeon R7 265 2GB

Win7 64Bit

What do you think ?