Ok so i wanna upgrade

[dragonfire43560 27]

Athon 64 3000+ Venice

1 Gig Ram

Geforce 6800 128mb

i wanna upgrad the video card to a Geforce 7950 GT 512mb and another gig of ram. Now first of all, will this run Arma at 1280x1024 at high settings with a steady playable fps?

now my biggest concern is that people tell me that the 7950 GT will be bottlenecked by my Athlon 64 3000. Is this true? Will it be a big bottleneck if it is?

[-=MaVerick=- 0]

You cant go wrong with a Geforce 7950 GT 512mb. I own one of those babys and ArmA runs pretty good with high settings, except that memory surface crash bug thingy from time to time.

But I've got twice as much RAM and a C2D 6300 so I cant say how big the impact on your performance will be.

One last thing...those 7950GTs get pretty hot with the stock cooler and the sound is annoying so you better get a Zalman or something when ordering a 7950.

[dragonfire43560 27]

about how much fps is ""pretty good'"?

btw im gonna have 2 gigs of ram...not just 1.

thanks

[-=MaVerick=- 0]

Well, "pretty good" means a steady playable FPS

I didnt run a test with Fraps in the last months but I can fly around in the editor a bit if you want be to. Gotta go buy some beer first though before the shop is closed

[dragonfire43560 27]

lol ok.

you dont have to go through too much trouble. I just want a rough average. Thanks a lot!

[-=MaVerick=- 0]

Ok here we go.

I was fireing up the editor and started my little testing tour at the south sahrani airport in a cobra

-> 30-35 FPS

While flying over Paraiso it was stuttering a little bit but nothing to worry about

-> 22-25 FPS after some texture loading

I continued to the south

-> 30-40 FPS between Paraiso and the Cayo Desert

-> 40-50 FPS over the Cayo Desert

Enough for the south, lets take a look at the north side starting with Corazol

-> 22 FPS most of the time

-> around 30 between Cora and Bagango

-> 22-25 over Bagango

-> around 20 over dense forrests...i dont like forrest fights anyway

VD 3000, flying with an Alt of 30-40m most of the time.

I'm pretty fine with those numbers, everything keeps playable. I hope i could help you a bit with your decision.

[dragonfire43560 27]

Yes thank you very much, you really helped me a lot! THanks for using some of your time and getting this information for me! I think il o with the 7950 because i wasnt even planning on going all max but i guess now i will

[-Puma- 2]

at high u want the settings to be, so that ur amd dosent bottleneck the GPU too much. My advice is to overclock that sucker, and a bit of luck u have 3800+ speeds.

allso buy mathing stick to have the ram in dual channel if u didnt know that allready..

[stingfish74 0]

hey Dragonfire43560, i built this pc just for arm, and bought the 7950gt 512. i have it a little overclocked using zalman.

i am very stoked on this card, my arma is running very very nice.

amd3800

2 gigs ram

evga 7950 gt 512.

note, you want to buy a cool for the vid card as mine ran a little warm before overclocking. i also read other had the same problem. since i installed the zalman, im running cool....

[dragonfire43560 27]

nice glad to know that the 7950 works good for arma

And I actually used to have my 3000 overclocked to 3800 speeds, but for some reason now it wont boot to windows if i raise it 1 mhz! Its wierd...