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

[Groove_C 267]

@Smart Games with what you have as CPU and RAM, you can easily skip Alder Lake and buy a badass Raptor Lake later, with more cache, higher frequency, with higher frequency and lower timings DDR5 and that the CPU memory controller will have no problems to support, price/performance ratio will be better and Windows scheduler will have improved a lot by then as well.

[Smart Games 76]

3 hours ago, Groove_C said:

@Smart Games with what you have as CPU and RAM, you can easily skip Alder Lake and buy a badass Raptor Lake later, with more cache, higher frequency, with higher frequency and lower timings DDR5 and that the CPU memory controller will have no problems to support, price/performance ratio will be better and Windows scheduler will have improved a lot by then as well.

My plan was to upgrade to a custom loop and a stronger graphics card like a 6800xt or a 3080. 

Well, the loop is easy to upgrade later on, that's not the probem.

But I am not sure about the bottleneck in 4k.

It's a high end gpu paired with an old I3 9350kf. 

[Smart Games 76]

Your advice is to not upgrade to next gen Intel or AMD CPUs. 

That's right?

[Groove_C 267]

2 hours ago, Smart Games said:

Your advice is to not upgrade to next gen Intel or AMD CPUs. 

That's right?

Yes. Zen 3 with V-Cache will have similar to Alder Lake performance, most probably for less money + you can keep your RAM.

Should be available by winter-spring 2022.

 

So you save $$$ on the CPU, with most probably same performance.

And your DDR4 is top, compared to first DDR5, that you will have to buy, unlike your top DDR4 you already have.

 

This expense or rather investment can at least be justified very very well.

Much much better price/performance ratio.

 

And on this you will have no problems to stay for years, until DDR5 frequency vs. timings vs. price mature and also big/little architecture and Windows scheduler.

[nikiforos 450]

11 hours ago, Groove_C said:

Bought 11900K today... 

Do you see any big difference in FPS and performance running Arma 3?

[Groove_C 267]

3 minutes ago, nikiforos said:

Do you see any big difference in FPS and performance running Arma 3?

Not received yet.

[Groove_C 267]

@Smart Games my build is from 2014 and with DDR3, so I don't want to wait anymore until Zen 3 with V-Cache in winter-spring 2022 or even Raptor Lake. I'm playing now.

 

Your build is much newer and you have a very good DDR4. So waiting with it at least until Zen 3 with V-Cache isn't a problem at all.

[Smart Games 76]

I am very impressed. looks like you  made the right decision back in the day. 

Do you want to upgrade your GPU as well?

[Groove_C 267]

1 hour ago, Smart Games said:

I am very impressed. looks like you  made the right decision back in the day. 

Do you want to upgrade you GPU as well?

GTX 1070 Ti Strix Advanced Binned OC with modded vBIOS, so GTX 1080 level.

 

RTX 4000 is what I'll wait for.

[ZeratulSC 0]

When Arma 3 came out, I comfortably played on the next configuration: i7 3770k , Nvidia GTX 1080, 16GB RAM. Now I have an i7 7700k, 32GB RAM, nVidia RTX 3080 ti. The game gives an average of 30 FPS on any settings: low, standard, ultra. What's wrong? I tried use autochoice settings in game, and in nvidia panel. I have last version of drivers.

 

[Groove_C 267]

4 hours ago, ZeratulSC said:

When Arma 3 came out, I comfortably played on the next configuration: i7 3770k , Nvidia GTX 1080, 16GB RAM. Now I have an i7 7700k, 32GB RAM, nVidia RTX 3080 ti. The game gives an average of 30 FPS on any settings: low, standard, ultra. What's wrong? I tried use autochoice settings in game, and in nvidia panel. I have last version of drivers.

 

Well, Arma 3 from then and now is not the same as well - it's more demanding than before, as well for CPU as for the GPU.

And 7700K is not a bad CPU, at 4.8-5.0 GHz, but without OC, it's frequency is not particularly high, which is what Arma needs.

+ 32 GB RAM is only the amount, not its speed/pefromance.

 

It's like saying that you have whopping 2 TB harddrive, but without mentioning that it's not a SSD and that it works only at 5400 rpm and has only 8 MB of cache.

 

Tell us what are the specs of your RAM.

Probably something like 3200 MHz or maybe even lower, with high timings, which bottlenecks your CPU and GPU.

[oldbear 390]

@ZeratulSC Welcome !

 

The thing to know is that Arma3 is a CPU dependent game, the performance in game is dependent on the efficiency and frequency of the processor.

So, whatever the graphics card, it is the settings related to the processor that determine the level of FPS.

Here, it is the "Visibility" parameter, a 100% CPU parameter which will determine the area of terrain that the processor must compute,  which is decisive for the FPS level.

The game engine imposes a total dependence of the rendering on the simulation and therefore on the processor calculations. The power of the graphics card does not intervene at this level. It intervenes at the display level, for which Arma3 has become much more demanding since 2016 and the release of Visual Upgrade.

More hints with The Old Bear method ™  😎

 

30 FPS, is the playable level for Arma3.

Nevertheless, as I am myself playing Arma3 every day on an i7 7700K / RX 5700 based rig, I can tell you that you can play on custom settings at a higher average FPS level.

I played almost at the same level previously with a GTX 1060 6 GB.

 

 

 

Here custom "Visibility" setting was set at 3200 m, the distance used at that time on our Clan dedicated server.

Note : I still use the excellent G.SKILL TridZ K2  3200 MHz C16 16 GB kit bought at a very high price in 2017.

 

A SSD is now almost mandatory to comfortably play Arma3. This SSD will not increase FPS but will deal with stuttering issues and make the game much smoother.

[Valken 621]

@ZeratulSC +1 what GrooveC and Oldbear said.

 

RAM SPEED and latency is probably 1:1 crucial to ARMA as CPU speed and IPC is.

 

The FASTER the better. It has been proven time and time again.

 

Other games are mostly GPU dependent, but some real time thinking strategy games like Civilization or X-Com will be affected just like ARMA.

 

Try to OC and stabilize your CPU. Then see if you can increase the ram speed while lowering the latency. That can give you a HUGE, like 10 FPS minimum boost across the board.

 

I have a system similar to GrooveC's old system (old 4790K + 32 GB DDR32400CL10. RAM). I was waiting to purchase Ryzen but the scalping put me off so I will just wait for next gen, or unless a work bonus comes through earlier to justify it. I will not buy at scalping prices since I have tuned ARMA to work good enough for now.

 

 

[logan357 0]

Hi guys,

I only recently purchased Arma 3, but I'm having trouble running it because it seems to max out only one core (and doesn't really use the rest). From what I found on the internet and forums the game should take advantage of multiple cores and even hyper-threading. It's not the case for me unfortunately:

 

https://imgur.com/a/gzAp0QI

 

I've even tried to manually specify CPU count in Parameters - Advanced ..but no change 😕 

I have 16GB RAM@3Ghz (GPU is 1080Ti). This behavior is only with this game.

Any advice on where to look? Or is this normal state? (hope not)

 

 

[sarogahtyp 1105]

1 hour ago, logan357 said:

Or is this normal state? (hope not)

Sadly it is since release a nearly single core application and will probably never change until arma 4.

 

Edit:

Under specific circumstances and not easy to do there are ways to use multiple cores but this is limited to multiplayer servers which run specific missions which are designed to get advantage of Headless Clients. But this is not a story for Arma beginners.

[Groove_C 267]

@logan357 as you said it yourself - it's not well multithreaded and relies mainly on few cores, thus you need as high frequency per core as possible. It helps a lot, believe me.

Also only 3000 MHz RAM and most probably with relatively high timings adds to your problem, since slow RAM slows down the CPU and GPU.

 

8700K is a very good CPU, when it runs it 4.8-5.0 GHz.

 

Arma is how it is, but with appropriate hardware (not necessarily expensive) and tuning of it, Arma runs very well.

[Groove_C 267]

Arma, baby, here I come...

[oldbear 390]

@logan357 Welcome in our Armaverse 😎

 

Reading your post, I had the idea to check for myself the use of the 4 cores / 8 threads of the i7 7700K of  Arma 3 gaming rig ...

 

... as you can see, even if a core has a heavy load, all cores are used.

However, like all older simulation games and because of the peculiarities of its now obsolete game engine, Arma3 is definitely CPU dependent. In-game performance depends on the efficiency and operating frequency of the processor.

 

[Groove_C 267]

As one can see, on 8700K and 7700K screens, there is one main thread that chokes and other threads are loaded only partially.

That's why core frequency is key and as fast RAM as one can afford, to unleash the CPU and GPU power.

[Valken 621]

What Groove C said. That ONE THREAD fully loaded needs to run AS FAST AS POSSIBLE as that is the scripting and it can slow down the rest of the game.

 

Congrats Comrade Groove C! Looking forward to your testing!

[logan357 0]

Thanks for the replies. At least now I know its not bugged for me, but it's "normal". The 8700k is overclocked to 4.9, so overall the framerate isn't that bad..just not what I expected (and the GPU usage was low). 

 

I playead with the in-game settings bit more and its quite ok now (although one core is still at 100% all the time). Just hope this behaviour will change in the next game 😉 

[Groove_C 267]

49 minutes ago, logan357 said:

8700k is overclocked to 4.9 and the GPU usage low.

 

What is the exact model of the motherboard you have and RAM model as well?

[oldbear 390]

On the GPU topic, the Real Virtuality 4 engine makes the render totally dependent on the simulation computation, schematically the card must therefore wait for all the calculations to be executed before displaying.

Since the release of Visual Upgrade in 2016, the CPU is more stressed, but at the moment what I see is that the level of FPS remains unchanged whether I use either a GTX 970 4GB or a GTX 1060 6 GB or an RX 5700 8 GB. The only difference is that the GTX 970 is used at 80/90 ° and heats up enormously while the other cards are used at 60%, their temperature remaining in the standard around 70 °.

You can get a look at my results and settings on a previous post. I will also suggest you to look for The Old Bear method ™  ...

 

[Groove_C 267]

Received a very very bad CPU sample.

Never seen such bad CPU before and that for almost 600€ + almost 500€ motherboard.

 

I won't keep such a crap for so much money. I will get rid of it and wait on my good old i7-5775C for Ryzen with V-Cache.

[Smart Games 76]

Oh... ok? 

What happened?