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

[Ezcoo 47]

Infact I could get it a lot cheaper than the i5 with the same specs. Also I am not a huge fan of overclocking.

In that case it sounds the best option for me. The overclocking is made very intuitive and easy with the k-series CPUs nowadays though, there are complete guides for even overclocking newbies. But if you really don't want to OC, then I'd get the Xeon if I were you.

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

In that case it sounds the best option for me. The overclocking is made very intuitive and easy with the k-series CPUs nowadays though, there are complete guides for even overclocking newbies. But if you really don't want to OC, then I'd get the Xeon if I were you.

there's also the ez-button oc most motherboard have nowdays

[Leon86 13]

xeons are more expensive than regular i5's here.

[neodammerung 8]

Hi there

I'd like to know if Nvidia users have the same problem that I have with my ATI 7970Ghz : distant flickering textures, it's particularly visible when using a scope (I tried with the last 10 beta updates, still the same sh*t)

I'm more and more tired of ATI drivers and I hesitate to sell my card and buy a 780Ti or a 690...

[masonddg87 16]

Will my HP Zbook run ArmA 3

Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)

Display: 17.3" Full HD (1920 x 1080) LED

Processor:Intel Core i7 4700MQ (2400MHz/3200MHz Turbo Boost) 6MB L3 Cache

Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro K610M (1GB) Dedicated Card

Memory: 32GB DDR3L 1600

Storage: 750GB (7200 RPM ) SATA

Edited February 4, 2014 by MasonDDG87

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

Hi there

I'd like to know if Nvidia users have the same problem that I have with my ATI 7970Ghz : distant flickering textures, it's particularly visible when using a scope (I tried with the last 10 beta updates, still the same sh*t)

I'm more and more tired of ATI drivers and I hesitate to sell my card and buy a 780Ti or a 690...

i can confirm that i have the same flickering with 780ti + 332.21

[neodammerung 8]

i can confirm that i have the same flickering with 780ti + 332.21

Thank you sir

I guess it's another game's bug then :(

[SERE 10]

I would like to know how well gpu's with more than 4gb of VRAM handle extreme draw distances in arma 3.

Do we have any Titan users here? What sort of performance do you get at 12k/12k draw?

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

I would like to know how well gpu's with more than 4gb of VRAM handle extreme draw distances in arma 3.

Do we have any Titan users here? What sort of performance do you get at 12k/12k draw?

they don't, draw distance is cpu

[mattldempsey 10]

Okay guys, here it goes.

Would you consider this build

- ROG V Formula

- EVGA GTX670 2GB

- i5 3570k

Decent enough for a stable 60 at 1920x1080 with 5000View/2500Draw distance with most quality settings set to max?

Was hoping it would be but I believe ZSync is capping me at 30, meaning I must be dropping below 60.

When I fly low I get noticable stuttering, enough to have to drop whatever target im following and circle round.

Ideally I would have liked to have an object draw distance of 4000 too.

What would you consider to be the hardware pulling me down here?

[griffz 1]

Hi there

I'd like to know if Nvidia users have the same problem that I have with my ATI 7970Ghz : distant flickering textures, it's particularly visible when using a scope (I tried with the last 10 beta updates, still the same sh*t)

z-fighting. it's no way related to amd GPU AFAIK

---------- Post added at 05:47 ---------- Previous post was at 05:44 ----------

Okay guys, here it goes.

Would you consider this build

- ROG V Formula

- EVGA GTX670 2GB

- i5 3570k

Decent enough for a stable 60 at 1920x1080 with 5000View/2500Draw distance with most quality settings set to max?

Was hoping it would be but I believe ZSync is capping me at 30, meaning I must be dropping below 60.

When I fly low I get noticable stuttering, enough to have to drop whatever target im following and circle round.

Ideally I would have liked to have an object draw distance of 4000 too.

What would you consider to be the hardware pulling me down here?

let me look inside my crystal ball ...

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

Okay guys, here it goes.

Would you consider this build

- ROG V Formula

- EVGA GTX670 2GB

- i5 3570k

Decent enough for a stable 60 at 1920x1080 with 5000View/2500Draw distance with most quality settings set to max?

Was hoping it would be but I believe ZSync is capping me at 30, meaning I must be dropping below 60.

When I fly low I get noticable stuttering, enough to have to drop whatever target im following and circle round.

Ideally I would have liked to have an object draw distance of 4000 too.

What would you consider to be the hardware pulling me down here?

that system is not enough for stable 60 fps in multiplayer, not with those settings, singelplayer maybe, but probably not, look into overclocking the cpu

also try adaptive v-sync instead

[tonschuh 3]

Hey guys. I used to be here a lot during the Alpha/Beta. I’m a techy guy so I’ll drop back in with some buyer’s/set-up tips:

1. Case:

Very personal! Towers, cubes or blocks in various sizes. Decide what size and appearance you want. The smallest cases may not hold standard size motherboards and some graphics cards. Different cases also have different cooling capabilities and noise blocking capabilities.

If you don’t know where to start check out Corsair.

I use an excellent Corsair Carbide Air 540.

Costs $60 to $160.

2. Motherboard:

“Motherboardâ€. The name says it all doesn’t it? This is where you attach all your components.

Asus and MSI are the best brands. Motherboards are complex however the most important aspects are that it has a Z87 chipset and supports as many graphics cards as you want. Easy.

Asus Z87-A

MSI Z87-G45 Gaming

Both of these support Haswell CPUs and at least two graphics cards of any sort (AMD/NVidia). You won’t need anything “stronger.â€

Both cost about $150.

3. CPU:

CPUs are the magic crackers that do all your calculations. They are made my AMD or Intel and I believe there is a consensus that Intel CPUs work better with ARMA and I’m no AMD expert so I’m only going to mention the one and obvious choice here:

Intel Core i5-4670K

This Haswell boy will do all your calculations in a hurry. It’s the one every should buy and one of the best CPUs available to anyone while at the same time it is very cheap compared to any graphics card.

It costs $220.

4. Memories:

If you want to be able to do more than one thing at a time you’ll need some solid memories! Corsair are the best though many other brands are in the competition and the difference between brands is actually small. In other words you can use basically any big name brand and won’t see any difference whatsoever however if you want the best there can only be:

Corsair Vengeance

Next is how much and what speed? You’ll want 1600 MHz which I believe is the highest you can use without memory overclocking. A 32-bit OS can only use 4GB however a 64-bit OS can use a lot more. 4GB on a 64-bit OS can be a bit difficult and memories are not expensive at all so buy 8GB. 16GB is a waste of money unless you know exactly how you’re going to use it. Finally you may want to divide your memories onto smaller sticks so 8GB should be divided onto two separate 4GB sticks. Note that the colour of the memories makes absolutely NO difference: it’s only for appearance actually.

In the end you’ll have:

2x4GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz

Costs about $90.

5. Graphics card:

Here you can spend $70 to $7000 and needless to say this is what will decide how well you can finally play your games. Graphics cards are made by AMD or NVidia where AMD are usually cheaper and NVidia are usually stronger however you will want a graphic card made by a third party including Asus and MSI as two of the best brands.

Again I’m not AMD expert so I will only cover NVidias selection. NVidias cards are named 560, 660, 760 where a higher hundred is newer and 760 or 770 where a higher ten is stronger and sometimes there are Ti models that are stronger than the non-Ti model.

A typical choice is the GTX 760. Now if you want a 770 you will have to pay 50% more and your games will run 33% quicker. If you want a 780 you will have to pay 40% more and your games will run 25% quicker, compared to the 770 now. Finally a Titan will cost several times more with only a 10% boost.

As you can see the more expensive cards are less cost efficient. You can also use several graphics cards at once however doing so is also not very cost efficient at all compared to waiting two years for graphics cards that are as strong as two were two years ago and costs only what one does.

What you should do is buy a 760 or 770 depending on your situation and again Asus and MSI are excellent choices though it has been said that you can’t go wrong with most of the 700-series.By the way you may see cards that have 2GB or 4GB VRAM. This is important to take into consideration if you are using a screen significantly bigger than 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 including XHD, 2K and 4K screens and whatever else they may call themselves. 2GB is enough for an HD screen however if your screen is bigger you’ll want 4GB.

I use an MSI 770 Gaming 2GB.

6. Storage:

Currently HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) are being succeeded by SSDs (Solid State Drives) and buying an SSD often said to be one of the best investments you can do to speed up your computer and especially shorten boot time significantly!

What you should do today is buy one 64-256GB SSD by Samsung that are the very best in SSDs that you install your OS on and a cheap and massive 1-2TB HDD that I would say should be by Western Digital that you can store basically anything and everything on.

Samsung 840 Evo

Western Digital Blue

Only you can decide how much space you need. Your SSD should be at least 64GB so you can store your OS and documents however 128GB is even better and will also let you install games though this doesn’t make much difference. 256GB is also quite cheap however buying more than that is not cost efficient considering that SSD costs are dropping quickly and in a year or two it will only cost a small bit of what it does today actually. A 1TB HDD is cheap today and 2TB doesn’t cost much more however how much do you really need?

I use a Samsung 840 250GB and Western Digital Blue 1TB and the SSD holds my Windows 8.1 64-bit (20GB), 50GB documents, 80GB games and 20GB extras for a total of 180GB which is only 80% of the total 250GB. I have 180GB of downloads on the HDD and that’s only about 20%.

Samsung 840 Evo 120GB costs $90 and Western Digital Blue 1TB $60.

7. Optical drive:

Not much to say here. Any CD/DVD or Blu-ray will do.

8. Supply unit:

Now all we need are some watts! How much does a 4670 and 770 use? 800W? Closer to exactly 300W. Unless you use several graphics cards (you don’t) then you will actually only need about 500W. Again Corsair is one of the best brands however Seasonic are the, the, best. Some of Corsairs best units are made by Seasonic and all of XFXs units are actually only modified Seasonic units. Seasonic also sell their own units under their own name.

It’s difficult to name one unit for everyone to buy because availability differs quite a lot in different countries, unfortunately. Search by yourself and only consider units with 80+ Bronze or higher! 80+ is a certification system and indication of quality.

Costs $60 to $160.

9. OS:

Windows 7 or 8, 32-bit or 64-bit. Unless you already have decided on anything else. Easy.

Windows 8 is the exact same as Windows 7 99% of the time. The big difference is Start which can be modded and so can most if not all other arguably negative news. However Windows 8 is actually quicker than Windows 7 both overall and in boot time.

Naturally if you buy a new OS today it should absolutely be 64-bit, $100.

10. Monitor:

Monitors is a big discussion and I’m not going to go into detail but I will mention two important matters:

60 Hz vs 120/144 Hz. How many Hz can the human eye see? You’re lucky because I’m an expert on this subject and the answer is that the eye can see infinite Hz! Eyes don’t send one image to the brain every time unit; they send an image to the brain every time they are hit by light. They are analogue. Anyone that says that our eyes only can see 24, 60, 120 or 240 Hz or any value is wrong. A 120 Hz monitor is a lot smoother than a 60 Hz monitor however also bear in mind that you will need twice the computer to view 120 Hz and if you only can play a game in 30 fps than that would be about 90 Hz wasted. Console games usually run in 30 fps. Movies are shot in 24 fps actually. How come movies don’t stutter? Because of motion blur actually! Motion blur decreases temporal aliasing just as anti-aliasing decreases spatial aliasing. Motion blur does apparently (!) increase your fps even when ironically sometimes motion blur decreases your fps. I think you should always have motion blur activated unless it causes slowdowns. A 120 Hz monitor can definitely be worth it and only you can decide if you want one or not. Your choice.

Another big issue is TN vs non-TN screens. All (few exceptions) 120/144 Hz monitors are TN screens which have a lot worse image quality than many non-TN alternatives. So you will have to choose between a 120 Hz TN monitor that’s smooth with lower image quality and bad viewing angles and a 60 Hz non-TN monitor with superior image quality.

In my opinion the best choice is a 60 Hz non-TN monitor with the best image quality available because that makes literally everything look better while 120 Hz will only be noticeable when playing games that are old enough for your computer to be able to run them in 120 Hz. However if you are into Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, StarCraft or Quake a 120 Hz monitor may definitely be the better monitor for you!

The cost of your monitor doesn’t have to match your other components at all though I would say $150 to $500 is comfortable.11. Audio:

This involves speakers and headsets. I’m not expert on audio however a good set of speakers cost about $250-$500 and a great set can cost many, many times more. Speakers that were good 20 years ago are still good today though. They’re not something you upgrade often at all. Headsets can save a marriage.

12. Controls:

A mouse and a keyboard, or keypad and maybe even a console controller!

Again this is very personal. When it comes to mouse the important things are appearance, ergonomics and sensitivity. Having at least 5 buttons (scroll wheel counts as one) is also swell. When it comes to keyboards there are very, very many aspects to consider. There are also many keypads that are ergonomic mini-keyboards and you can buy both wired and wireless Xbox 360 controllers that work with your PC and that are great for playing games such as Assassin’s Creed, Dark Souls or emulation.

Starting with mice there’s a big elephant issue. CPI/DPI (counts/dots per inch, synonymous) is a major marketing word and many mice boast 6400 DPI. However DPI is not any indication whatsoever of the quality of a mouse sensor. At all. DPI is a measure of how closely a mouse scans the surface it is being used on and not how well it scans it. A mouse can scan closely but poorly leading to a lot of noise being scanned and shaky mouse movements. If you make it scan even more closely it will only scan the noise more closely instead of scanning less noise. Close to all professional players use 400 DPI.

So how much DPI do you need? Go to the Control Panel, then Mouse, then Pointer Settings and set Pointer Speed to 6/10 and disable acceleration first. Now when out in Windows nothing affects your mouse movements, so the DPI that your mouse is set to will be your final DPI. Adjust the DPI on your mouse to something that you think is comfortable and so you can easily click on small objects while also being able to move your mouse across the screen. On a 1920x1080 monitor you will probably want about 1600 DPI. On a small monitor less and on a bigger monitor more since it takes more counts and more hand movement to move across the screen.

In games you should do the same thing and experiment. A good suggestion in first-person shooters is to adjust your sensitivity so you can easily shoot targets and do a 180 degree turn comfortably. However while in-game you should adjust the in-game sensitivity and not the DPI on your mouse because then your sensitivity outside of the game will change too! Some old games don’t have sensitivity adjustments in which case you should adjust your DPI on the mouse instead. Note that in StarCraft and other strategy games it is a bad idea to adjust in-game sensitivity and you should always adjust your DPI. In StarCraft II as I remember your in-game sensitivity should always be at 51-54% because that will make your mouse move exactly the same in the game as outside of the game. First-person games work completely different due to them being set in inverted world transform matrixes and if you have no idea what that means don’t question it.

Do this and you will always have maximum accuracy. I use 1200 dpi without any adjustments in ARMA (in-game sensitivity at default value) and outside of the game that lets me move diagonally across my 1920x1200 screen with a flick of my wrist and in-game it lets me do a 180 spin with the flick of my wrist. I hold my mouse in a swipe grip and only move my mouse a few centimetres which the high sensitivity (1200 high, that’s right) compensates for which is what I personally enjoy. I’m also deadly accurate which is important because I like being accurate in games. Someone else may enjoy a much lower DPI or in-game sensitivity settings and move their hand around on the mouse mat a lot more. Someone else still may have a much higher DPI or in-game settings and move their hand a lot less than I do. Someone else still may have a much bigger monitor than I do and need a higher DPI because of that.

Anyways there are many different mouse brands.

I’m going to mention one excellent mouse: the SteelSeries Sensei. This is a cheap, excellent starting and advanced mouse for everyone. It has a classy appearance, ambidextrous ergonomics, 7 buttons plus a DPI-switch, three-zone customizable backlighting and thanks to a built in CPU (!) you can adjust DPI between 1 and 5700 (and boost it up to over 11000) acceleration, deacceleration and smoothing all directly on the mouse without any need for hardware so you can plug it in anywhere you want and it works. The intricate customisation will let you discover which DPI is good for you and if you enjoy acceleration or not. It is considered one of the best mice ever. Still it’s only $60. Buy a $10 SteelSeries QcK (also available in bigger or smaller sizes) mouse pad while you’re at it too. It really does make a noticeable difference over your average office mouse pad. Did I mention the Sensei has a screen on its underside? It is out of control.

Anyways, this is turning into a long text so I’m only briefly going to mention keyboards: the Corsair K70 is amazing. Mechanical Blue/Brown/Red switches, three different colour styles, backlighting, USB… it has everything. At $130 it is definitely worth it because you will love it a long time.

13. Extras:

An external HDD like the Western Digital My Passport is excellent for back-ups!

Also: cooling. CPU cooling and graphics card extra cooling exists. This is mainly for overclocking, cost inefficient and will not be covered by me.

Total about $2000-3000 will get you a really nice computer set-up.

The computer only (without monitor, audio, controls) usually costs $1400 to $2400. Used computers or older components and cheaper components can save you a lot of money sometimes.

All prices calculated from Amazon.com. International prices are usually a bit more.

I have a Corsair Carbide Air 540 with an MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, Intel i7-4770K, 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz, MSI 770 Gaming 2GB, Samsung 840 Evo 250GB, Western Digital Blue 1TB, Seasonic P-520FL 520W, Corsair Hydro H110, Windows 8.1 64-bit, HP ZR24W, 20 year old 4.1 speakers, Corsair K70, SteelSeries Sensei, Xbox 360 wireless controller and Western Digital My Passport 1TB. It starts to the desktop in about 16 seconds and plays ARMA3 on all max settings except for view distance 3000/3000/200 in 50 fps.

Quick tips:

Motherboards are full of crappy, useless features you’ll never use.

Overclocking is not cost efficient, since you need better cooling.

Hyperthreading (3770K, 4770K et cetera) does nothing useful.

More than 1600 Hz or 8GB memories is basically useless.

One graphics card only. Accept that you won’t play the newest games on the highest settings and wait two years.

OS should be on an SSD. Everything else on HDD.

Blu-ray blows.

Unless you break all my other advice 500W is enough.

Windows 8 isn’t that bad.

Monitors cost a lot but last a long time.

Audio costs a lot but last forever.

The best of the best near exclusively use 400 DPI.

Don’t forget a mouse mat. They do matter.

Your keyboard is your friend.

Back-up every now and then.

Does it seem I'm breaking my own rules with a 4770K, 16GB memories, water cooling and Windows 8.1? Well I'm the master and I can do whatever I want!

Final note: my sig is slightly out of date.

to 4:

Have you ever heard something about XMP-Profiles ?

What's about latencies ?

Why didn't you mention, that you should have a look about the compatibility of the RAM and the MoBo ?

to 6:

There is no difference in transfer-speeds, seriously ?

WD over Seagate ?

Have you ever realized that you can buy 2 different Seagate Barracuda for an example, which will have the same size and will cost exactly the same, but one will have transfer-speeds of ~80MB/s and the other one has ~130MB/s ?

to 7:

Ever heard of "fossy" Brands, which are very selective when it comes down to Disc-Brands ?

Have you ever experienced, that a LG-Drive will "eat" pretty much every Brand, but a Pioneer-Drive not ?

to 8:

Your advice is seriously dangerous and you should really stop to give any advice at all !

to 9:

What's about the differences in DirectX for an example ?

to 12:

http://i.imgur.com/5KQGP5l.jpg (416 kB) (416 kB)

Also your comment about the "Pro"-DPI is rubbish ...

to Quick-Tip's:

To say that fast RAM would be useless and there is proof that especially ARMA-3 benefits from faster RAM, tells me that you absolutely missed the plot.

PS:

Water-Cooled @4GHz only ? Yeah, you're an absolute Pro ...

:j:

Edited February 4, 2014 by TONSCHUH

[Leon86 13]

z-fighting. it's no way related to amd GPU AFAIK

Yeah, all games have it.

[griffz 1]

to 4:

to Quick-Tip's:

To say that fast RAM would be useless and there is proof that especially ARMA-3 benefits from faster RAM, tells me that you absolutely missed the plot.

:j:

proof please ?

[neodammerung 8]

Yeah, all games have it.

Beside Arma series I don't have this problem... But now that I know what z-fighting I know why it happens a lot in Arma. Guess it's another aspect of the RV Engine will never be fixed

proof please ?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?166512-Arma-3-CPU-vs-RAM-performance-comparison-1600-2133-up-to-15-FPS-gain Edited February 4, 2014 by Neodammerung

[SERE 10]

So am I correct in understanding that draw distance is primarily limited by RAM and CPU, and the fact that arma3 is a 32-bit exe?

[Leon86 13]

Beside Arma series I don't have this problem... But now that I know what z-fighting I know why it happens a lot in Arma. Guess it's another aspect of the RV Engine will never be fixed

It has little to do with the engine, more with geometry of the gameworld.

[Ophelian 10]

Looked around this thread for some suggestions about upgrading a graphics card, i plan on changing my 5850HD to something a little more powerful, 2GB ideally, between 200/300$, but don't know if i should stick to ATI or switch to Nvidia. The 5850 is still quite powerful even if its old, i have a i5-3750K, Win 7 x64, with 12Gb RAM (DDR3). Any suggestions?

[griffz 1]

i have a 5870 1GB. trust me , it still does the job ! okay, 7850 is more comfortable with the 2GB and little bit of overclocking...

i think a R280X or HD7970 1Ghz would be a good step higher. or nvidia 770

[pr0ph3tswe 1]

Looked around this thread for some suggestions about upgrading a graphics card, i plan on changing my 5850HD to something a little more powerful, 2GB ideally, between 200/300$, but don't know if i should stick to ATI or switch to Nvidia. The 5850 is still quite powerful even if its old, i have a i5-3750K, Win 7 x64, with 12Gb RAM (DDR3). Any suggestions?

radeon 280x

alsop note that radeon 7970 and 280x is the same card, so grab whatever is cheaper

[Leon86 13]

Looked around this thread for some suggestions about upgrading a graphics card, i plan on changing my 5850HD to something a little more powerful, 2GB ideally, between 200/300$, but don't know if i should stick to ATI or switch to Nvidia. The 5850 is still quite powerful even if its old, i have a i5-3750K, Win 7 x64, with 12Gb RAM (DDR3). Any suggestions?

In that pricerange you can probably get better performance with nvidia, amd cards of that performance level have become more expensive due to cryptocurrency mining.

[neodammerung 8]

Do Crossfire/SLI have other problem beside heavy flickering PIP ?

[Leon86 13]

Crossfire and sli almost always use alternate frame rendering, which means extra mouse-screen latency, it's usually called "input lag".

Also, crossfire has issues with extreme resolutions except on the 290 and 290x cards.

Anyway, I'd recommend single gpu unless you're looking to combine top end cards like 290's or 780's. Never go multigpu for bang/buck.

[neodammerung 8]

I was looking for a 2nd 7970Ghz to play comfortably in 1440p, I'll wait to get money for a 780 Ti then

Thanks !