thinking of upgrading GPU for arma 3...

[teabagginpeople 398]

Firstly you need to have the psu capacity and connections . The older cards suck alot of juice.

Make sure your motherboard has proper pci express x16 sli capabilities.

Make sure your case is suitable. well ventilated. Research others with that case using sli. Can build up alot of heat which is not good for any parts nevermind the noise.

Now to my own opinion. Sell the 780ti and get a 1070.

Less power consumption , less noise, less heat, less issues, twice the graphical power.

[Gera_CCT 12]

Just aim for 30 FPS and you will be fine in ArmA.

 

I have a 4790k and a 970 G1 and play MP and SP with 3D Res of 133% and setttings on Ultra/2AA. View Distance,objetcts and Shadow set to 2500/1500/100. With this i "force" my gpu a little more and get crispy images. Even in games like KOTH (Except Kavala and loads of explosions LOL).

[Beagle 684]

After putting a simple 220€ GTX 1060 into my i7 4770K setup i never cared to look at fps or settings again... just put it on ultra and it runs all maps.

I would not care anymore for outdated GPUs, they won't last long in 2017 anyway.

[scotg 204]

What are the specs for the rest of your system?

I almost missed your question.

Intel Core i5-4670 3.40GHz

16 GB RAM

Win 10 64

Read my reply to teabagginpeople below to find out more.

In mid-late 2012, it was a beast, LOL! Now, it's still holding in there but admittedly needs updating.

NOTE: turns out my GPU is a GTX 780, *not* the ti version.

 

Firstly you need to have the psu capacity and connections . The older cards suck alot of juice.

Make sure your motherboard has proper pci express x16 sli capabilities.

Make sure your case is suitable. well ventilated. Research others with that case using sli. Can build up alot of heat which is not good for any parts nevermind the noise.

Now to my own opinion. Sell the 780ti and get a 1070.

Less power consumption , less noise, less heat, less issues, twice the graphical power.

I built this computer myself in 2012 with "future upgrades" in mind. I did my research and came to an affordable conclusion, but I've forgotten a lot of what I did since and have yet to upgrade its hardware. Geez, I can't believe it has been so long. Anyway, I thought I remembered getting a motherboard with PCIe x16 capabilities, but the device manager just says "PCI bus." I'm not sure if that's a descriptive shortcoming or not. PSU is a JX-600. I'm not well versed in psu models, so I have no idea how well it can handle another gpu. On the other hand, I can trust that I had expansion on the brain when I picked out my psu, whatever that's worth.

I've got a lot of air volume in a rather plain black, well ventilated, large "Corsair" tower. In addition to the fans included with the tower, psu, and gpu, I installed a chip fan and three additional tower fans to help with the flow direction. It's only noisy when it first starts up, but then it goes into a low hum... or I'm a little deaf.

Re. your opinion: That sounds closer to what my first current idea was, until I remembered my "future upgrades" idea from four years ago. If I go with a new gpu, and the 1070 is still out of my $$ range, what about a 1050ti? Whaddiya think the 780 will fetch?

[scotg 204]

What I had read elsewhere was that having two cards, SLI or not, can have one card dedicated to physx while the remainder of its "power" and the other card are dedicated to graphics...could there be a legit benefit there?

This was the main point of my question, though, yall.

[St. Jimmy 272]

This was the main point of my question, though, yall.

There's a benchmark somewhere in these forums that shows that would be waste of money. PhysX are mostly run in CPU.

Also 1050Ti is slower than 780.

[teabagginpeople 398]

I almost missed your question.

Intel Core i5-4670 3.40GHz

16 GB RAM

Win 10 64

Read my reply to teabagginpeople below to find out more.

In mid-late 2012, it was a beast, LOL! Now, it's still holding in there but admittedly needs updating.

NOTE: turns out my GPU is a GTX 780, *not* the ti version.

 

I built this computer myself in 2012 with "future upgrades" in mind. I did my research and came to an affordable conclusion, but I've forgotten a lot of what I did since and have yet to upgrade its hardware. Geez, I can't believe it has been so long. Anyway, I thought I remembered getting a motherboard with PCIe x16 capabilities, but the device manager just says "PCI bus." I'm not sure if that's a descriptive shortcoming or not. PSU is a JX-600. I'm not well versed in psu models, so I have no idea how well it can handle another gpu. On the other hand, I can trust that I had expansion on the brain when I picked out my psu, whatever that's worth.

I've got a lot of air volume in a rather plain black, well ventilated, large "Corsair" tower. In addition to the fans included with the tower, psu, and gpu, I installed a chip fan and three additional tower fans to help with the flow direction. It's only noisy when it first starts up, but then it goes into a low hum... or I'm a little deaf.

Re. your opinion: That sounds closer to what my first current idea was, until I remembered my "future upgrades" idea from four years ago. If I go with a new gpu, and the 1070 is still out of my $$ range, what about a 1050ti? Whaddiya think the 780 will fetch?

Cpu is not an issue. If your motherboard is a "z" type it should have the necessary sli capability. The exact be better to know.

Ok regards power. With two 780s and your system running on full load(obviously it won't always) is nearly be hitting that 600w. It will run it but longterm not ideal. Thats were the quality of the psu factors in.

In Europe a new 970 comes in around 260 depending on brand and deal site etc. So second hand 970 goes for 180-200, considering 780 ti... you're talking about 130 for 780. Thats just a price I'd put on it. You'd probably fetch more depending on buyer really.

How many dollars you have for upgrade? 1060 be the move forward. 1050ti be going nowhere.

[teabagginpeople 398]

Just aim for 30 FPS and you will be fine in ArmA.

 

I have a 4790k and a 970 G1 and play MP and SP with 3D Res of 133% and setttings on Ultra/2AA. View Distance,objetcts and Shadow set to 2500/1500/100. With this i "force" my gpu a little more and get crispy images. Even in games like KOTH (Except Kavala and loads of explosions LOL).

my near identical settings /set up I'm on 1440p and happy with the outcome . I'm moving to a 1070 for other games willsee if any real change in ArmA probably not much but like I said I'm happy enough with my trade off.

Apologies for double posting didn't want information being diluted for other poster.

[domokun 515]

Cpu is not an issue. If your motherboard is a "z" type it should have the necessary sli capability. The exact be better to know.

Ok regards power. With two 780s and your system running on full load(obviously it won't always) is nearly be hitting that 600w. It will run it but longterm not ideal. Thats were the quality of the psu factors in.

In Europe a new 970 comes in around 260 depending on brand and deal site etc. So second hand 970 goes for 180-200, considering 780 ti... you're talking about 130 for 780. Thats just a price I'd put on it. You'd probably fetch more depending on buyer really.

How many dollars you have for upgrade? 1060 be the move forward. 1050ti be going nowhere.

Do NOT replace your GTX 780 by a GTX 1050ti, as you'll see little or no gain in performance. In fact you may even loose performance. So if you want to upgrade your graphics card, I suggest selling your 780 and buying a 1060 6GB which retails at $235-250. Do not bother with SLI as it's hot, noisy and performance gains are rarely double. To determine the possible gains I searched for benchmarks comparing GTX 780 & 1060 in A3. Although I found no direct comparisons, I found several related benchmarks from which performance gains could be inferred:

 

Old but respected benchmark with GTX 780:

http://www.techspot.com/review/712-arma-3-benchmarks/page4.html

Recent but synthetic comparison (check-out Game Benchmarks at the bottom):

http://hwbench.com/vgas/geforce-gtx-1060-vs-geforce-gtx-780

Recent comparison of GTX 780 & 1060 but no Arma 3:

http://www.gamestar.de/hardware/grafikkarten/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1060/test/geforce_gtx_1060,1005,3275984,2.html

Recent benchmark of 1060 in A3 but no GTX 780:

https://i.imgur.com/R94DDHh.png

 

Conclusion: replacing your 780 with a 1060 should improve your framerates in A3 @ 1080p by 30-40%.

 

Also, check-out your motherboard's chipset, it will prolly be either a H97 or Z97 but could be H81, B85, Q85, Q87, H87 or Z87

If you have a Z97 mobo and some cash left-over, I'd suggest selling your i5-4670 and replacing it with an i5-4670K or 4690K.

Because for only $30 more a K series CPU can be overclocked to 4.2 defo, 4.3 easy, 4.4 prolly, 4.5 maybe & 4.6 if you're lucky.

Those figures are accurate, even on air, provided you get a decent HSF, e.g. CM Hyper 212 Evo @ $30.

 

Finally, what speed is your RAM and/or do you have an SSD?

[scotg 204]

Intel Z87 LPC Controller, acoording to Device Manager.

While looking at the system devices, I can now confirm that I have PCIe x16 controller and two PCIe ports. One is in use by the 780, and the other is free.

 

I'm too lazy to download CPU-Z right now. Maybe I'll get back to the download and speed test later today, or maybe tomorrow.
I have a 100 GB SSD as my main drive, but also a  1TB HDD for storage. I had to turn off system backup on Windows a while back to save the SSD from filling up.

From what I'm gathering, everyone is saying go for a 1060, 1070, or 1080. BUT, I'm also gathering that the 780 is still quite good, and I might be better off waiting for the next gen GPU. ArmA3 runs great on ultimate for me, but then again I haven't yet bought Apex/Tanoa. Performance is a key factor, but I'm also considering price, power efficiency, noise, and usage (i.e.: will I be buying any other games? Pro'lly not). I think the determining factor of moving forward will be once I do play on Tanoa and see how this setup can handle it. Most of my play is actually play testing my mods; I haven't even been online to play in over two years - but I will get back into it! Also, if I finally get a 4k display then I imagine that's the time to upgrade the GPU for sure.

There's a lot of helpful information here, and I sincerely thank you guys, domokun, teabagginpeople, St. Jimmy, Beagle, Gera_CCT, and clawhammer. Incidentally, I never thought I'd see "thank you" and "teabaggin" in the same sentence. Now I've lived.
 

[randomhunterdude 0]

Some of those benchmarks are inaccurate for me, I have a gtx 980ti with a intel i7 6700k and still get horrible frame drops in singleplayer and multiplayer is just unplayable due to the amount of lag (like 5-15 fps)

[domokun 515]

1 hour ago, randomhunterdude said:

Some of those benchmarks are inaccurate for me, I have a gtx 980ti with a intel i7 6700k and still get horrible frame drops in singleplayer and multiplayer is just unplayable due to the amount of lag (like 5-15 fps)

Maybe your configurations aren't comparable, e.g.

1) is your 6700k overclocked?

2) what speed is your DDR4?

3) are Windows & A3 installed on an SSD?

[randomhunterdude 0]

41 minutes ago, domokun said:

Maybe your configurations aren't comparable, e.g.

1) is your 6700k overclocked?

2) what speed is your DDR4?

3) are Windows & A3 installed on an SSD?

Yea my 6700 isn't overclocked, the ddr4 ram is 2133Mhz, windows is installed on an ssd but arma is on an separate drive

[domokun 515]

7 hours ago, randomhunterdude said:

Yea my 6700 isn't overclocked, the ddr4 ram is 2133Mhz, windows is installed on an ssd but arma is on an separate drive

There's your problem then. Those benchmarks were run on a 6700k @ 4.5 (13% faster than your stock 6700k), on DDR4-3000 (40% faster than your DDR4-2133) and with Arma on an SSD.

So you might want to consider pushing your 6700k as she'll do 4.3 defo, 4.4 easy, 4.5 prolly, 4.6 maybe and 4.7 if you're lucky. No need for watercooling, just a decent HSF like a CM Hyper 212 Evo @ $30/30€.

You might also want to push your RAM too. I'm sure she'll 2400, maybe even 2666.

Also, if you have space on your SSD, consider moving A3 onto it.

Finally, consider moving to the Dev branch where you can test the new 64 bit exe. It won't necessarily increase your framerates but it should keep the more steady as well as shorter load times.

[randomhunterdude 0]

10 hours ago, domokun said:

There's your problem then. Those benchmarks were run on a 6700k @ 4.5 (13% faster than your stock 6700k), on DDR4-3000 (40% faster than your DDR4-2133) and with Arma on an SSD.

So you might want to consider pushing your 6700k as she'll do 4.3 defo, 4.4 easy, 4.5 prolly, 4.6 maybe and 4.7 if you're lucky. No need for watercooling, just a decent HSF like a CM Hyper 212 Evo @ $30/30€.

You might also want to push your RAM too. I'm sure she'll 2400, maybe even 2666.

Also, if you have space on your SSD, consider moving A3 onto it.

Finally, consider moving to the Dev branch where you can test the new 64 bit exe. It won't necessarily increase your framerates but it should keep the more steady as well as shorter load times.

I understand that, actually invested in a corsair watercooler (can't remember the exact model name) just in case I decided to overclock in the near future. But still, does that at all warrant me to be getting like I said 5-15fps in multiplayer?? I understand that some of it may be server bound because in the campaign missions and stuff I easily get 50-60 frames, but when it comes to multiplayer, its just unplayable on literally ANY server I try to play. Really frustrating, you go any tips/tricks or anything to not get absolute garbage performance on multiplayer (I get poor performance on multiplayer even on low settings)

[warlord554 2065]

just ordered my gtx 1080 hybrid. be interesting to see how it does. my gtx 960 2gb oc'd has don't a decent job though. biggest performance gain I've still seen was oc'ing my cpu