Estimated Min. Computer Requirements

[Phantom Mark 0]

Quote[/b] ]

- You already need a GF8800 + very fast or newer processor to play arma smooth in "high" details

And: the maximum Details in Arma is still unplayable on a OC'ed E6600 , GF8800GTS and 2GB DDR2-800 Ram! With that machine you can even play Crysis at full details pretty smooth!

Im sorry, but you are wrong here. I can play Arma on maximum details just fine on my  PC. It depends what "crap" you buy.

I have all components from Intel. Only GF8800gts 640mb wich is instaled is not.

PC speed depends on slowest part in it. It has to be really balanced to work correctly... You dont need 800mhz ram if your pipes dont allow him to work.

Bear in mind however just because you have the best of everything, which incidently I "had", doesnt mean Arma will actually run smooth........was best machine virtually possible when Arma was released and its never run that smooth sadly.

QX6700

EVGA 680i

2gb Corsair 8500 C5 SLi

BFG OC 8800GTX

SB X-Fi Fatal!ty

etc etc etc...........

[martinovic 0]

Guys, look at the Steam hardware survey, most people own GF7600 series video cards, single core pentium 4s and 1 gig of RAM.

So if ArmA 2 can't run on those BIS are just shooting themselves in the foot.

Look at the sales of Crysis.

[shinRaiden 0]

And you say "Ah, surely you jest". But then you run the numbers on the data requirements needed to uniquely model the sands of the sea, and lo and behold, you discover that you demand the impossible. Meanwhile, a quantum temporal anomaly pops a black hole in your backpack, and out pops a miniature planet populated entirely by time-continuum duplicates of yourself. At least in theory anyway. And it will still only have support for one game controller.

- edity -

Perhaps I should clarify myself a bit. The picture is not in reference to the blade server chassis or storage systems in the background, rather it was to emphasize the interconnect requirements, as illustrated by this over the top image of a mesh interconnect switch.

I've already posted several times in the past how attempting to scale some theoretical detail levels from OFP to ArmA and beyond would result in hundreds of gigabytes or even dozens of terabytes of data, you can search for those anecdotes if you wish. That is an example of stored input data, and I'm skipping over the processing stage as well.

On the backend, you have the requirement to create a rendered frame in HDTV, which requires 2.5 to 4.25 times the amount of data as you typically used in OFP. Additionally, you have force multipliers such as normal and specular maps which multiply the processing requirements by more orders of magnitude.

PCI-Express, included the forthcoming 2.0 standard, has cleaned up the bottleneck between getting data off the motherboard and into the GPU. However, what about getting the data on to the motherboard?

This is largely the reason why we have terrain-streaming in ArmA. For Xbox development, even the classic OFP content was too big, it had to be stream-loaded in. Microsoft ties the hands of the developers, because there are specific requirements for minimal user impact (ie avoid "loading..." waits wherever possible) yet also doesn't provide enough memory for adequate caching. So the trick is to cache the data faster than or just-in-time for the CPU demands.

Which brings us back to storage. This is where SSD really shines, because it can do arbitrary reads immediately from any pseudo-sector, as opposed to the latencies in mechanical storage media. However, you still have to move the data through the controller and storage adapter to the motherboard.

Sometimes poor performance isn't BIS's fault, and it isn't your top-of-the-line PC's parts' fault either. Sometimes the user is at fault for demanding what is for all practicality, currently impossible demands.

BTW, Nvidia lists a Quadro FX 5600 (Shares chipset family with the 8800 series) with 1.5GB of memory, on a single-board dual-slot leafblower. A sign of things to come perhaps?

[mr.g-c 6]

Good post shinRaiden...

BTT:

I hope Arma will run smooth at one of my brothers new Laptop - i promised him that it will

Its a... ahh well forget it heres the link:

http://www.notebooksbilliger.de/product...._penryn

If not, i hope i can plug-in a mobile quadcore (when released until end of year)onto the board... Laptop i always a special case with replacing of parts...

Regards, Christian

[stakex 0]

Quote[/b] ]

- You already need a GF8800 + very fast or newer processor to play arma smooth in "high" details

And: the maximum Details in Arma is still unplayable on a OC'ed E6600 , GF8800GTS and 2GB DDR2-800 Ram! With that machine you can even play Crysis at full details pretty smooth!

Im sorry, but you are wrong here. I can play Arma on maximum details just fine on my  PC. It depends what "crap" you buy.

I have all components from Intel. Only GF8800gts 640mb wich is instaled is not.

PC speed depends on slowest part in it. It has to be really balanced to work correctly... You dont need 800mhz ram if your pipes dont allow him to work.

Bear in mind however just because you have the best of everything, which incidently I "had", doesnt mean Arma will actually run smooth........was best machine virtually possible when Arma was released and its never run that smooth sadly.

QX6700

EVGA 680i

2gb Corsair 8500 C5 SLi

BFG OC 8800GTX

SB X-Fi Fatal!ty

etc etc etc...........

Funny enough, I had a friend whos system was at least 2 years old when ArmA came out, if not older.... and ArmA ran just fine on high settings for him. It didn't quite look AS good as it did on my PC (Comparable to yours), but it was pretty damn close, and it ran really smooth. Its really odd...

I still think the system requirements will be just a little higher then ArmA's... a current mid-range gaming system should play ArmA2 just fine if the graphics stay fairly close to what the most recent screenshots show. Theres not a huge graphics change over Arma, and with no DD, or improved physics engine... there is no reason to assume the requierments are going to take a huge leap.

And maxqubit, you forgot a piece of hardware... 360 guy needs an HDTV for the games to look right, or at least look how they are intended to.

[sickboy 13]

ArmA2 Projected Requirements incl Recommended:

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA_2

[Raptor 10]

Intresting they are also using quadcores.

Also intresting no Shader Model 4.

[mr.g-c 6]

Quad-core recommend.... not bad......

I hope it will run fine with a dual-core(penryn 2x2.4ghz) of the mentioned Laptop aswell

[alext223 0]

Bummer! Upgrade time!

Ahhhh, things to look forward to.

[Inkompetent 0]

Wow. Only 1GB of memory needed for an optimal rig? That was under my expectations.

Looks like they are finally making use of multiple CPU cores too. Hopefully not only to spread out the load of the core game engine and extra scripts, but also that the FSM is included in that spread-out. Probably needed with the improved AI and stuff.

Glad to see we don't need astronomically good computer though!

But then again... the specs that ArmA came with was odd... "Minimum" meant "10-20FPS" on lowest everything, assuming you don't go into forests or cities where it'll be near unplayable, and "Recommended" was for running the game at medium settings with moderate view distance...

[paragraphic l 2]

Inkompetent, that is not really true

Yes there where some who had the minimum and could barely play the game, I had a notebook that was around the minimum and could play with 30FPS with settings around normal (some higher some lower)

But I do hope that will happen less with ArmA2 making it easier to enjoy the game, without having to tweak every little bit for the engine to take advantage

[Strother 0]

How do these requirements compare to ARMA?

[AWDrift 0]

I'm more worried about how each part of the island will perform. Especially for multiplayer, as it's not like I can say "Hey get out of that forest\city my computer can't take it!".

[Toje 0]

ITs to be expected, im sure this allot of back end changed like the ai

[tomcat_ 0]

it would be really nice for Suma to explain to us how much the quad core will benefit over a dual core..

i know only about 1-2 games so far that quad core is more beneficial of dual cores...provided both are running at the same Ghz...

[kavoven 4]

If I made a wild guess, I would say the second core is for AI?

[tomcat_ 0]

maybe...but u have to have very vivid imagination...to guess what the other 2 cores will be for...:)

[funnyguy1 0]

I've heard the third one is for bees' and dragonflies' flight physics calculations...a really acurate simulation, I'm telling ya. The next one is for immersive rabitts' rag-doll effects, again, pretty close to real-life rabitts.

on topic:

Thx for the info bis. It's worth waiting for a decent-priced quad then...

[mrj-fin 0]

Its great that finally they will support game to use multi cores. What surprise me is that they doesnt give anything more than 512mt RAM minimum I hope the game could support unlimited amount of memory without any leak.

[7 0]

i dont get it... how could arma2s optimal specs be quad core? itd really have to be loaded with features and super advanced simulation and ai... or those are simply the optimal specs for running a mission with 700 vs 700 and 4 scripts calculating pi simultaneously.

[OL 0]

Optimal is exactly what it means; the best. Obviously, with the way they are building the engine, it will take advantage of all the horsepower available to it, which is great.

That is one thing that has frustrated me about ArmA; it hasn't used the second core on my CPU and it ignores 2Gb of free RAM over the 1Gb it uses currently.

[smellyjelly 0]

Optimal is exactly what it means; the best.  Obviously, with the way they are building the engine, it will take advantage of all the horsepower available to it, which is great.

Well, that's what Crysis did, but everyone was afraid to buy it because it might not have ran on their computer. Hopefully Arma II will be better scaled for people with low end systems.

[Kristian 47]

As I not a pro in comp business, and I have no idea of those things ( onlu know arma mission editing guns, airsoft, anything else but computers )

so, if I can run arma, in low graphs mode, PERFECTLY.

I think I can use the largest resolution also.

I was just thinking, will it work in my comp?

I can run CoD4

lol, but that wasnt the point. I can run ArmA CoD's... bla bla bla, so, will arma 2 work on my comp? and will OFP2 and ArmA2 be the same game?

I really want to run this on my comp! and as I understand, arma 2 has not much new on graphics and the island is smaller, right?