Will my PC Run this? What CPU/GPU to get? What settings? System Specifications.

[bangtail 0]

Had some interesting things happen during the install. The display resolution changed a few times, the screen went vlack twice and windows 7 told me the device driver stopped responding then successfully recovered. lol. All seems well though. As my first test I trimmed this video down from 5 minutes to 1:14 and uploaded it(may still be processing).

Nothing really exciting happens in the video but I am totally stoked to have made it because previously I could make 0 progress edititng anything without a lock up. This works perfectly now. I'll test a game out later tonight and report. Thanks again BangTail. That's two times you've improved my computer experience now.

It's my pleasure, always happy to help :)

PS : You should always completely remove the previous driver before installing a new one (best to use driver sweeper as well).

Edited March 27, 2010 by BangTail

[Whoatherefatty 10]

It's my pleasure, always happy to help :)

PS : You should always completely remove the previous driver before installing a new one (best to use driver sweeper as well).

Will do. Currently uploading another video but after I will get driver sweeper.

[Leon86 13]

Will do. Currently uploading another video but after I will get driver sweeper.

Hey, if it works dont fix it.

[bangtail 0]

Will do. Currently uploading another video but after I will get driver sweeper.

Yeah, if it's working, it's all good but for future reference etc :)

[guttersnipe 1]

Quick poser of a question :

In terms of performance in Arma 2 which of the following upgrades would you reccomend :

(currently on XP 32bit, q9750 o/c (board limited to 775) @3.8, 4 G mem, 9800 gtx+, dx 9)

1. Upgrade to windows 7 64bit, move up to 8 G's mem & a Sapphire 5870

2. Keep XP 32, with Nvidia GTX 480

3. Keep XP 32, with Sapphire 5970

Open to suggestions but budget won't stretch beyond £ 550 (lol, the price of the 5970 which was what I was saving for)

Not a 'fan boy' so happy to go Ati or Nvidia (though I have enjoyed PhysX on my preivious Nvidia)

Any help appreciated

1.

[Leon86 13]

Quick poser of a question :

In terms of performance in Arma 2 which of the following upgrades would you reccomend :

(currently on XP 32bit, q9750 o/c (board limited to 775) @3.8, 4 G mem, 9800 gtx+, dx 9)

1. Upgrade to windows 7 64bit, move up to 8 G's mem & a Sapphire 5870

2. Keep XP 32, with Nvidia GTX 480

3. Keep XP 32, with Sapphire 5970

Open to suggestions but budget won't stretch beyond £ 550 (lol, the price of the 5970 which was what I was saving for)

Not a 'fan boy' so happy to go Ati or Nvidia (though I have enjoyed PhysX on my preivious Nvidia)

Any help appreciated

1.

If you buy a 5870/5970 you can still enjoy PhysX, provided you upgrade to win7x64. You can stick in your new GPU and keep your old card as dedicated physX card. Older versions of windows dont support 2 graphics drivers running at the same time.

8GB or ram is only interesting if you want to use a small software ramdisk. Arma2 is a 32-bit application and that means windows wont allow it to use more then 2GB of memory. If you want to use the ramdisk option you dont even have to upgrade your windows because some ramdisk programs allow you to acces the memory 32bit windows wont use.

I dont know how well crossfire scales with arma2, personally I think it's a waste of money to buy anything above 5870, since videocards lose their value faster then any other computer component. Still a 5970 is essentially 2 5870's and not twice as expensive, you get a lot of transistors for the money, plus it has an even lower idle power use then a 5850/5870.

[bangtail 0]

Quick poser of a question :

In terms of performance in Arma 2 which of the following upgrades would you reccomend :

(currently on XP 32bit, q9750 o/c (board limited to 775) @3.8, 4 G mem, 9800 gtx+, dx 9)

1. Upgrade to windows 7 64bit, move up to 8 G's mem & a Sapphire 5870

2. Keep XP 32, with Nvidia GTX 480

3. Keep XP 32, with Sapphire 5970

Open to suggestions but budget won't stretch beyond £ 550 (lol, the price of the 5970 which was what I was saving for)

Not a 'fan boy' so happy to go Ati or Nvidia (though I have enjoyed PhysX on my preivious Nvidia)

Any help appreciated

1.

I would not buy a 4xx card at the moment. The temperatures are a serious concern. If you prefer Nvidia (and don't want to bother with PhysX hacks), I'd wait for the refresh.

I think the 480s will sell out very quickly on or about the 12th of April and my guess is that preorder has already exceeded allocation at this point.

I have just fully switched to ATI (as of Saturday) as I am unhappy with Nvidia's new cards. Their performance is ok but the heat is really unacceptable. It runs far too close tjmax and we've only seen them in testing scenarios so far (AKA open cases in controlled environments). When they start to ship to actual consumers, I think we are going to see big problems.

Dual (or more) video cards are a major advantage and you will see as much as 100% scaling in some titles on both sides (ATI/Nvidia). The average scaling is 60-70%. It really depends how much horsepower you need.

Take a look at 2 x 5850 in CF for example :)

Edited March 28, 2010 by BangTail

[Leon86 13]

I would not buy a 4xx card at the moment. The temperatures are a serious concern. If you prefer Nvidia (and don't want to bother with PhysX hacks), I'd wait for the refresh.

I think the 480s will sell out very quickly on or about the 12th of April and my guess is that preorder has already exceeded allocation at this point.

I have just fully switched to ATI (as of Saturday) as I am unhappy with Nvidia's new cards. Their performance is ok but the heat is really unacceptable. It runs far too close tjmax and we've only seen them in testing scenarios so far (AKA open cases in controlled environments). When they start to ship to actual consumers, I think we are going to see big problems.

Dual (or more) video cards are a major advantage and you will see as much as 100% scaling in some titles on both sides (ATI/Nvidia). The average scaling is 60-70%. It really depends how much horsepower you need.

Take a look at 2 x 5850 in CF for example :)

Games that use tesselation and other dirty tricks actually scale up to 115% in a few benchmarks since you dont have to calculate everything twice.

2 5850's costs as much as a 5970, the 5970 has the same clocks as the 5850's only more processors, so it's faster. There's no real point in 2 5850's.

[bangtail 0]

Games that use tesselation and other dirty tricks actually scale up to 115% in a few benchmarks since you dont have to calculate everything twice.

2 5850's costs as much as a 5970, the 5970 has the same clocks as the 5850's only more processors, so it's faster. There's no real point in 2 5850's.

Actually, no, you can get them cheaper than a 5970 but maybe not in the UK (as they gouge like crazy over there).

I prefer two single cards over a dual GPU card, another reason for my suggestion (redundancy, temperature etc).

Actually, as high as 125% if you want to argue but that is restricted to very unique circumstances and is in no way illustrative of what you should expect from SLI/CF performance in general.

Edited March 28, 2010 by BangTail

[echo1 0]

Well, given some of the issues associate with multi-GPU setups, I'd just stick with a single fast card. Unless you are powering multiple high-res monitors, SLI/Crossfire is unnecessary.

[bangtail 0]

Well, given some of the issues associate with multi-GPU setups, I'd just stick with a single fast card. Unless you are powering multiple high-res monitors, SLI/Crossfire is unnecessary.

I'd prefer it if I could get away with one card (1 GPU) but there are situations where 1 just isn't enough :(

And as far as 'issues' go, I rarely (if ever) have any these days. The worst case is that you wait a few days for a profile.

And JFYI, multiple high res monitors are not the only reason for SLI/CF. If it's not your preference, I resepct that, but it certainly isn't 'unnecessary'. It's entirely dependant on the level of 'eye candy' you like to run with :)

Edited March 28, 2010 by BangTail

[guttersnipe 1]

Useful feedback - many thanks.

I'm at my absolute limit for £550, so maybe it's a 5980/480 on XP. (never knew about the ability to run Physx on a seperate card - well worth invesitaging when i can afford to upgrade my OS)

Point taken on memory, esp if Arma limited to 2 G's. (hopefully this will be the case with Arrowhead too (hate to get burnt by too early a descision, but ultimately have to make the plunge at some time)

One question though - what's the average mem consumption of Windows 7 with no load? (I HATED vista, and went back to xp)

Right enough, I've read some terrible early reviews of the 480's temp under load (my CPU is only air cooled at the moment & the idea of an extra grill/oven in my tower is worrying me). That said most reviewers hinted that the early drivers for the 480 were pretty poor & preformance boosts of 20/30% might come with later revisions.

Bugger, I would have had this dilemna 2 months ago, nor likely 2 months from now, but I've not the patience to wait much longer...

[bangtail 0]

Useful feedback - many thanks.

I'm at my absolute limit for £550, so maybe it's a 5980/480 on XP. (never knew about the ability to run Physx on a seperate card - well worth invesitaging when i can afford to upgrade my OS)

Point taken on memory, esp if Arma limited to 2 G's. (hopefully this will be the case with Arrowhead too (hate to get burnt by too early a descision, but ultimately have to make the plunge at some time)

One question though - what's the average mem consumption of Windows 7 with no load? (I HATED vista, and went back to xp)

Right enough, I've read some terrible early reviews of the 480's temp under load (my CPU is only air cooled at the moment & the idea of an extra grill/oven in my tower is worrying me). That said most reviewers hinted that the early drivers for the 480 were pretty poor & preformance boosts of 20/30% might come with later revisions.

Bugger, I would have had this dilemna 2 months ago, nor likely 2 months from now, but I've not the patience to wait much longer...

7 handles memory alot better than Vista ever did.

Drivers are not going to address the heat and I don't see Nvidia getting much more performance out of those cards tbh. They are already running dangerously close to 'tjmax' and that's in 'open case' situations.

Don't think for a second that the drivers haven't gone through several revisions internally at this point.

I don't like to rain on NV as I prefer them but the 480 is really ruined by the insane heat levels.

The 5970 is a good card and it uses the highest binned 5870 GPUs which means it overclocks exceptionally well.

Up until the excellent GTX 285, Nvidia really was the only choice AFAIAC, the tables have definitely turned at this point with ATI clearly in the driver's seat and Nvidia scrambling to catch up.

Edited March 29, 2010 by BangTail

[Leon86 13]

7 handles memory alot better than Vista ever did.

Drivers are not going to address the heat and I don't see Nvidia getting much more performance out of those cards tbh. They are already running dangerously close to 'tjmax' and that's in 'open case' situations.

Don't think for a second that the drivers haven't gone thorugh several revisions internally at this point.

I don't like to rain on NV as I prefer them but the 480 is really ruined by the insane heat levels.

The 5970 is a good card and it uses the highest binned 5870 GPUs which means it overclocks exceptionally well.

Up until the excellent GTX 285, Nvidia really was the only choice AFAIAC, the tables have definitely turned at this point with ATI clearly in the drivers seat and Nvidia scrambling to catch up.

Drivers might address the heat at the expense of noise levels, but indeed, probably not.

I've heard the drivers should already be pretty good, but then again, ati is still improving as well, not expecting miracles though.

I wouldn't say nvidia was the only choice up until the 285, Ati's price/performance has been great(er than nvidia's) since 48xx series cards.

I'm still not convinced the heat is a problem, the problem is the price and the fact that some psu's (including mine) aren't up to the job. If you want your card to stay cool you can always buy a prolimatech mk-13 or something and fit some big-ass fans to it.

@Guttersnipe, you might want to move to windows 7x64 anyway, if I was going to buy a dx11 card I'd want to see the fancy dx11 techdemo thingy's. The best thing about windows 7 compared to xp is probably the startup time, it's faster and once you see the desktop you can actually do something other than waiting for the harddisk.

[bangtail 0]

Drivers might address the heat at the expense of noise levels, but indeed, probably not.

I've heard the drivers should already be pretty good, but then again, ati is still improving as well, not expecting miracles though.

I wouldn't say nvidia was the only choice up until the 285, Ati's price/performance has been great(er than nvidia's) since 48xx series cards.

I'm still not convinced the heat is a problem, the problem is the price and the fact that some psu's (including mine) aren't up to the job. If you want your card to stay cool you can always buy a prolimatech mk-13 or something and fit some big-ass fans to it.

I've run every enthusiast setup going and you can think what you like, but 95c+ is a problem (especially when the card shuts down at 106c and is spewing hot air into a closed space in real world use) and even more so when 1 card is hitting that temp in an open air environment (real world temps are going to be higher than 95c) with the insane stock cooler that Nvidia employed. The extreme temperature variance is also a problem - repeatedly going from 45c to 95c+ and back again is not good.

Of course you can go out and spend money on fans and heatsinks and the like but we are talking about stock cards here so your continued insistence that heat isn't a problem is just plain wrong. I agree that if you spend all kinds of extra money you can probably keep the cards cool but why not just grab a 5870 or 2 and not have to worry about heat in the first place. I don't put volatile hardware in my systems and equally, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the most seasoned enthusiast who is aware of the risks and is willing to spend the extra money to get the hardware in question running at safe levels.

For those who choose to use aftermarket cooling solutions such as LCS, there will be no problem but these cards are going to wreak havoc on all but the most elaborate air based cooling solutions.

You will be convinced that heat is an issue in short order when these cards hit consumers in a few weeks.

I said Nvidia was the only choice as far as I was concerned.

Drivers won't address the heat issues (possibly idle temps but that's not what we are discussing here) except in a case where performance is lowered and since that is highly unlikely, I'll stick to my original contention.

I'm going to wait until I get some reports back from friends and colleagues about real world temps regarding the 480. If they can get it cool enough (SLI @ 80-85c under full load) using air based cooling, I'll order several the next day, but as it stands and with the information I have, I'm not optimistic.

Finally, you seem to be looking for reasons to argue at this point so I'm just going to move along because this thread is supposed to help people, not mislead them.

Edited March 29, 2010 by BangTail

[Leon86 13]

Finally, you seem to be looking for reasons to argue at this point so I'm just going to move along because this thread is supposed to help people, not mislead them.

Well, at least we agree it's better to get an ati 5xxx card. Just for different reasons.

[Litos 10]

I've got a question. I'm still getting bad FPS after upgrading to a new processor.

Generally my FPS is around 25 in an open area and around 20 in a tense forest - at 1000 view distance (in Chernarus).

But obviously that's really bad. Putting any amount of units in to create let's say a battle scene will bring the FPS down. Same thing with getting up high in the sky to film a plane fly by, where the view distance is needed at large.

Now my goal is to make videos at good fps. Obviously filming brings them down even more. This is my current rig:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.83 GHz - I am planning to get a new fan and overclock this to 3.6-4.0 ghz.

GTX 260

4GB DDR2 RAM

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

My friends speculated that the GTX 260 was bottlenecking my computer. Which was weird, because although they both seemed confident that I should buy a 4890 or something, that was not until we realized my game is installed to an old-ish 300 GB IDE hard drive. Yep, IDE, not SATA. All my games are installed there. I record to another 150 GB IDE hard drive.

So I'm looking for advice. Is it the GTX, the IDE, or both? I have no problem going out and buying a faster hard drive. I just want to know that I should before I waste my money.

Thanks to anyone in advance.

[bangtail 0]

I've got a question. I'm still getting bad FPS after upgrading to a new processor.

Generally my FPS is around 25 in an open area and around 20 in a tense forest - at 1000 view distance (in Chernarus).

But obviously that's really bad. Putting any amount of units in to create let's say a battle scene will bring the FPS down. Same thing with getting up high in the sky to film a plane fly by, where the view distance is needed at large.

Now my goal is to make videos at good fps. Obviously filming brings them down even more. This is my current rig:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.83 GHz - I am planning to get a new fan and overclock this to 3.6-4.0 ghz.

GTX 260

4GB DDR2 RAM

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

My friends speculated that the GTX 260 was bottlenecking my computer. Which was weird, because although they both seemed confident that I should buy a 4890 or something, that was not until we realized my game is installed to an old-ish 300 GB IDE hard drive. Yep, IDE, not SATA. All my games are installed there. I record to another 150 GB IDE hard drive.

So I'm looking for advice. Is it the GTX, the IDE, or both? I have no problem going out and buying a faster hard drive. I just want to know that I should before I waste my money.

Thanks to anyone in advance.

Card and processor are fine for medium settings depending on resolution.

Your HDD is definitely going to be a problem. While your FPS may not rise dramatically if you change it, you should get a smoother experience overall. Check out a WD 'Black' series drive for example.

If you can, post your in game settings/resolution as well.

Edited March 29, 2010 by BangTail

[SeaVee 10]

I've got a question. I'm still getting bad FPS after upgrading to a new processor.

Generally my FPS is around 25 in an open area and around 20 in a tense forest - at 1000 view distance (in Chernarus).

But obviously that's really bad. Putting any amount of units in to create let's say a battle scene will bring the FPS down. Same thing with getting up high in the sky to film a plane fly by, where the view distance is needed at large.

Now my goal is to make videos at good fps. Obviously filming brings them down even more. This is my current rig:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.83 GHz - I am planning to get a new fan and overclock this to 3.6-4.0 ghz.

GTX 260

4GB DDR2 RAM

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

My friends speculated that the GTX 260 was bottlenecking my computer. Which was weird, because although they both seemed confident that I should buy a 4890 or something, that was not until we realized my game is installed to an old-ish 300 GB IDE hard drive. Yep, IDE, not SATA. All my games are installed there. I record to another 150 GB IDE hard drive.

So I'm looking for advice. Is it the GTX, the IDE, or both? I have no problem going out and buying a faster hard drive. I just want to know that I should before I waste my money.

Thanks to anyone in advance.

I bet the card is not your bottleneck. The cheapest thing you can do is get a GOOD aftermarket CPU cooler and additional case fan(s) as applicable and OC the CPU. Two caveats - I am not sure how inherently overclockable you Q9550 is from its stock settings so if they are not OC-friendly disregard this. If it can be done modestly and safely, make SURE you learn HOW to OC that properly and don't go overboard.

I think ARMA2 is more CPU-intensive than GPU-intensive if you have already a pretty good card (which the 260 is). The older HDD is also part of the issue here for you I think.

I have an i-7 920 overclocked to 3.8GHz and a pair of GTX260 in SLI. Tonight when I get home from work I'll do comparative benchmarks of the game disabling and enabling SLI and post results here.

Edited March 29, 2010 by SeaVee

[Leon86 13]

I've got a question. I'm still getting bad FPS after upgrading to a new processor.

Generally my FPS is around 25 in an open area and around 20 in a tense forest - at 1000 view distance (in Chernarus).

But obviously that's really bad. Putting any amount of units in to create let's say a battle scene will bring the FPS down. Same thing with getting up high in the sky to film a plane fly by, where the view distance is needed at large.

Now my goal is to make videos at good fps. Obviously filming brings them down even more. This is my current rig:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @2.83 GHz - I am planning to get a new fan and overclock this to 3.6-4.0 ghz.

GTX 260

4GB DDR2 RAM

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

My friends speculated that the GTX 260 was bottlenecking my computer. Which was weird, because although they both seemed confident that I should buy a 4890 or something, that was not until we realized my game is installed to an old-ish 300 GB IDE hard drive. Yep, IDE, not SATA. All my games are installed there. I record to another 150 GB IDE hard drive.

So I'm looking for advice. Is it the GTX, the IDE, or both? I have no problem going out and buying a faster hard drive. I just want to know that I should before I waste my money.

Thanks to anyone in advance.

An IDE harddisk will indeed be a bottleneck for your system in situations like startup/loading. It might cause stuttering. It still doesn't explain the low fps though. Could you maybe post all your settings? You should be able to get decent fps in nearly all situations provided you dont put your settings too high.

[Azza FHI 50]

also defragging ur hard drive on a regualr basis helps, especially after u install a new patch. i would get new hard drive> fresh install windows> overclock cpu> install n update arma> drefrag> play arma with a smile

bangtail, very interested in a benchmark with the the new 980x. might be getting a bit off topic here, but whats the future for 1366 after the 980? u reckon will we be able to absolutly max out arma in a year with new gpus and cpus on 1366? im talkin like 10k view in a chopper with 60fps. for comparison, i achieved this when i had a q8200 and 4870 at stock with arma 1.

[bangtail 0]

also defragging ur hard drive on a regualr basis helps, especially after u install a new patch. i would get new hard drive> fresh install windows> overclock cpu> install n update arma> drefrag> play arma with a smile

bangtail, very interested in a benchmark with the the new 980x. might be getting a bit off topic here, but whats the future for 1366 after the 980? u reckon will we be able to absolutly max out arma in a year with new gpus and cpus on 1366? im talkin like 10k view in a chopper with 60fps. for comparison, i achieved this when i had a q8200 and 4870 at stock with arma 1.

I've benched it before - this my second 980x. I've had an engineering sample for ages. It does bupkiss for ArmA 2 (and any other game tbh vs a similarly clocked i7 975).

I bought them for rendering/photoshop/editing (threaded apps). They are an absolute waste of money for gamers.

Most games can't use 2 cores efficiently let alone 6.

Edited March 29, 2010 by BangTail

[Leon86 13]

I've benched it before - this my second 980x. I've had an engineering sample for ages. It does bupkiss for ArmA 2 (and any other game).

I bought them for rendering/photoshop/editing (threaded apps). They are an absolute waste of money for gamers.

Most games can't use 2 cores efficiently let alone 6.

Most of them seem to clock nicely though, most of them 4.7 on air or something? But I guess you want to keep yours intact.

The new core i3's seem to be good overclockers as well (also 32nm) I've seen a screenshot of someone clocking one easily to 4.4 on air. Still, I think an i5-750 on 4 Ghz should be just a bit better for arma2.

[bangtail 0]

Most of them seem to clock nicely though, most of them 4.7 on air or something? But I guess you want to keep yours intact.

The new core i3's seem to be good overclockers as well (also 32nm) I've seen a screenshot of someone clocking one easily to 4.4 on air. Still, I think an i5-750 on 4 Ghz should be just a bit better for arma2.

Yah, I've had the ES as high as 4ghz but I just don't need to run them at that speed so I don't. Nice to know it's there though :)

I think I read something about someone getting a 980x as high as 6ghz (not on air obviously) but I'm not sure. I'll try to dig up the thread when I have a sec :)

[SeaVee 10]

See my prior post (6th above).

Just ran a bunch of benchmarks (vanilla Arma2 patched to 1.05 no mods) on my rig with SLI on/off, Physix On/OFF, vsunc forced ON/OFF. No material differences in FPS (22-23 in Benchmark 1 and 24-25 in Benchmark 2) on the following settings so at least with these visual settings the game appears to be CPU-limited on my rig versus GPU-limited.

In "regular" single player gaming I get consistently lows in the low-mid 40 FPS and about 85% of the time between 55-60 (with Vsync on which I prefer).

My rig:

i7 920 overclocked to 3.8GHZ

2GB Corsair Dominator DDR3

WinXP32

GTX260 SLI (driver 197.13)

ASROCK X58 motherboard

Corsair HX850W PSU

Creative Audigy 2ZS (mobo sound disabled)

42" LCD 1920X1080 @60Hz

TIR5

Voice Activated Commands (VAC)

Had TIR5 and VAC running while benchmarking too.

Edited March 29, 2010 by SeaVee
corrected NVIDIA driver version