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

[bangtail 0]

^ I want to go play Arma at your house.... badly.

LoL

/10 chars

[Alex72 1]

Good to know about the cpucount thanks buddy. I guess there will be tons of tweaking once the new system is built. :)

About 64bit OS - will i need it initially thinking of ARMA2 being 2GB RAM only? Im moving to Win7 Ultimate 64, but initially it would be good if i could catch some action without reinstalling it all.

...And yeah, BangTail's rigs are pretty juicy. Tell me your adress, and what hours your home is empty please. :D

Seriously though. Who knows where this upgrade of mine will stop. Ordered some better stuff already even though i just baught some gear... So well see where it all ends. Probably when i got a big echo in my wallet. Oh well, as long as ARMA runs fine im happy with noodles and water. :D

Edited April 9, 2010 by Alex72

[Azza FHI 50]

nice find bangtail, so let me get this straight... if u run the 980 without ht and with all cores active in bios and arma u get this good result? i wonder/hope if there will be a non-extreme version 6 core coming soon, or a price drop, or if u wanna sell urs in the distant future let us know

[bangtail 0]

nice find bangtail, so let me get this straight... if u run the 980 without ht and with all cores active in bios and arma u get this good result? i wonder/hope if there will be a non-extreme version 6 core coming soon, or a price drop, or if u wanna sell urs in the distant future let us know

I never had it disabled in the BIOS, only via the command line (You might as well stick to 9xxx quads if you are going to disable HT via the BIOS).

I just took the command line out, thus enabling all 12 cores and there was no stuttering to speak of.

There should be cheaper Hex cores towards the end of the summer :)

[Leon86 13]

I see you clocked your gulftown to 4.6 Ghz, did that make a big difference compared to 3.3?

[bangtail 0]

I see you clocked your gulftown to 4.6 Ghz, did that make a big difference compared to 3.3?

In A2, not really, a few FPS in open areas.

I took the 3rd 5870 out as it really wasn't doing much. They don't scale well past 2 GPUs in my experience (with the exception of some benchmarks).

I've been playing Conan all morning and it smokes, but then again, it was fast on my Tri SLI setup as well so that's not saying much hehe :)

I'm still tempted to grab a pair of 480s but I was reading some guy's posts over on the EVGA forums and he was getting 100c temps and that's really putting me off.

Edited April 11, 2010 by BangTail

[Leon86 13]

In A2, not really, a few FPS in open areas.

I took the 3rd 5870 out as it really wasn't doing much. They don't scale well past 2 GPUs in my experience (with the exception of some benchmarks).

I've been playing Conan all morning and it smokes, but then again, it was fast on my Tri SLI setup as well so that's not saying much hehe :)

I'm still tempted to grab a pair of 480s but I was reading some guy's posts over on the EVGA forums and he was getting 100c temps and that's really putting me off.

If you run 3 monitors on 3 cards cant you have every card render 1 monitor and run without crossfire? Might scale better if it's possible.

I was also wondering, where do you think the performance bottleneck on your system is now, is it still the cpu, the videocards, the ssd's? Or is arma coded to drop to a certain framerate when there's a lot of AI/explosions/whatever, and it really doesn't matter what kind of system you have beyond a certain point?

[bangtail 0]

If you run 3 monitors on 3 cards cant you have every card render 1 monitor and run without crossfire? Might scale better if it's possible.

I was also wondering, where do you think the performance bottleneck on your system is now, is it still the cpu, the videocards, the ssd's? Or is arma coded to drop to a certain framerate when there's a lot of AI/explosions/whatever, and it really doesn't matter what kind of system you have beyond a certain point?

The latter, I can't really add much more at this point (except a 2nd proccessor). I do have an EVGA SR-2 on order but it hasn't shipped yet (and it will do nothing for games). I only find A2 a little stuttery in heavily built up areas and that is an issue with the engine rather than hardware.

I only run one monitor for gaming, I never liked the bevel in between the monitors.

Edited April 11, 2010 by BangTail

[Whoatherefatty 10]

I look at a game like just cause 2 running solid on my system and I dream of BIS someday smoothing this game out proper. I know JC2 has virtually no AI but I have a feeling the arma engine has dozens if not hundreds of inadequacies.

[spidey79 10]

I'm console player (i have ps3, x360 and wii), and decide to buy pc only for one game - Arma2 :)

I bought today used mobo, CPU and gpu (i pay for this stuff only 147 euro)

Please tell me how will Arma 2 work on this spec.

mobo: gigabyte ga-p35-ds3

cpu: intel core 2 quad q8200 2,33mhz

gpu: asus HD 4770 formula, 512 MB ddr5

i must to buy ram 4 Gb ddr2 (800mhz), power supply about 400w.

Thanks for any advice.

[pAuthority 10]

I never had it disabled in the BIOS, only via the command line (You might as well stick to 9xxx quads if you are going to disable HT via the BIOS).

I just took the command line out, thus enabling all 12 cores and there was no stuttering to speak of.

There should be cheaper Hex cores towards the end of the summer :)

Also AMD's Thuban processors are coming very soon with reasonable price, might be a good choice too for more tighter budget.

Flashpoint was a resource-hog at the time, I'm just hoping we can get ARMA 2 (and OA) running smoothly in a couple of years with brand new 6-8 core CPU and GF 680GTX/Radeon HD7870 ;) All options at highest setting (100% 3d resolution) and 10km view distance :eek:

If only we'd get past that 2GB ram limit now.

---------- Post added at 11:41 ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 ----------

I'm console player (i have ps3, x360 and wii), and decide to buy pc only for one game - Arma2 :)

I bought today used mobo, CPU and gpu (i pay for this stuff only 147 euro)

Please tell me how will Arma 2 work on this spec.

mobo: gigabyte ga-p35-ds3

cpu: intel core 2 quad q8200 2,33mhz

gpu: asus HD 4770 formula, 512 MB ddr5

i must to buy ram 4 Gb ddr2 (800mhz), power supply about 400w.

Thanks for any advice.

You could've gotten a slightly faster graphics card, maybe a used GTX 260 sp216 or HD4850/4870. Processor is reasonable, but could be way faster. ARMA 2 likes fast chips. Also, what resolution is your screen and what resolution are you planning on running the game? Just comparing to my rig and 1680x1050 resolution, I'd say you can expect it to run with medium graphics at the most. Experiment with settings, I'm sure you can make it run fine.

[Leon86 13]

I'm console player (i have ps3, x360 and wii), and decide to buy pc only for one game - Arma2 :)

I bought today used mobo, CPU and gpu (i pay for this stuff only 147 euro)

Please tell me how will Arma 2 work on this spec.

mobo: gigabyte ga-p35-ds3

cpu: intel core 2 quad q8200 2,33mhz

gpu: asus HD 4770 formula, 512 MB ddr5

i must to buy ram 4 Gb ddr2 (800mhz), power supply about 400w.

Thanks for any advice.

It'll run fine on medium settings. It's not the fastest machine imaginable of course, but the price is good.

[spidey79 10]

You could've gotten a slightly faster graphics card, maybe a used GTX 260 sp216 or HD4850/4870. Processor is reasonable, but could be way faster. ARMA 2 likes fast chips. Also, what resolution is your screen and what resolution are you planning on running the game? Just comparing to my rig and 1680x1050 resolution, I'd say you can expect it to run with medium graphics at the most. Experiment with settings, I'm sure you can make it run fine.

Ok thank's.

My old lcd monitor resolution is only 1280 x 1024 max.

I have small budget to build this pc, so I don't have money for GTX 260 and 4870 ;)

Like you guys say, I plan to play some medium settings, 1280 x 1024 , no aa and postprocess.

Please tell me, can I play arma 2 from old ide 7200rpm hard drive or I must buy sata?

Im talking about campaign of course.

Thanks ---> Leon86

Edited April 12, 2010 by spidey79

[Leon86 13]

Please tell me, can I play arma 2 from old ide 7200rpm hard drive or I must buy sata?

Im talking about campaign of course.

Haven't played the campain with patch 1.05 or an ide drive. I think what matters most for the harddisk is acces time, so an ide drive shouldn't be a problem. Some people even run the game from an usb stick (that means fast acces times but slow-ish transfer speed) and say it improves performance a bit. A fast (big, as high data density means high speed) harddisk will improve performance when loading the game.

Most people still run their sata disks in IDE interface, so the only performance advantage of sata is more bandwith. Last version of IDE gets up to 133 MB/s. That should be plenty of bandwith even with overhead.

[mon_diesle 10]

Look, are there any processors out there that never let the fps dip below 30? I don't think I'll ever upgrade until the day this happens. I have a setup that can kinda sorta handle ArmA 2, so I consider it unthinkable to spend money upgrading a PC (that was purpose-built for ArmA 2) when no matter how much I spend, I will still run into stuttering.

p.s. has anyone tried one of those dual xeon setups?

[Whoatherefatty 10]

Look, are there any processors out there that never let the fps dip below 30? I don't think I'll ever upgrade until the day this happens. I have a setup that can kinda sorta handle ArmA 2, so I consider it unthinkable to spend money upgrading a PC (that was purpose-built for ArmA 2) when no matter how much I spend, I will still run into stuttering.

p.s. has anyone tried one of those dual xeon setups?

If I runs the game at all low settings with a view distance under 2000 The game would probably never dip too low outside of campaign. Heck, my settings now get like 40-45fps on benchmark 1 but only 20 on benchmark 2. So it really depends on what arma is throwing at your system. See my post of Just Cause. I really think if BIS had the money they could make this game run sooooo much better on current systems. And if they had IW's/EA's budget this would be the case.

[bangtail 0]

Look, are there any processors out there that never let the fps dip below 30? I don't think I'll ever upgrade until the day this happens. I have a setup that can kinda sorta handle ArmA 2, so I consider it unthinkable to spend money upgrading a PC (that was purpose-built for ArmA 2) when no matter how much I spend, I will still run into stuttering.

p.s. has anyone tried one of those dual xeon setups?

Dual processors are useless for games at this time.

[Leon86 13]

I just bought a seagate 7200.12 1TB drive and acces times are terrible: 18 ms. Apparantly every drive with the CC44 firmware has this. My old hitachi does 14 ms. Most 5400 rpm drives do better then the 7200.12

So if anybody was planning on getting a a new harddrive, avoid seagate!

[Whoatherefatty 10]

You actually notice the 4 ms difference?

[Leon86 13]

Well, a 5400 rpm samsung ecogreen does better in random acces then the 7200rpm barracuda, that's just absurd.

If I put AAM on low-noise the acces time goes up to 19 ms but at least then the disk is virtually silent in random acces. The seagate can be clearly heard and have acces times only 2ms lower then my old disk when it's silent. They managed to give the seagate the worst of both worlds, high noise and high acces times.

[Callsign 128]

Hey guys, im thinking of upgrading from my 9400GT to something better, but still using DDR2 to keep the rest of my system, any suggestions?

System Specs:

Windows 7 64 bit

Intel E8600 @ 3.3ghz

4GB DDR2

150GB Hard disk

[Whoatherefatty 10]

Hey guys, im thinking of upgrading from my 9400GT to something better, but still using DDR2 to keep the rest of my system, any suggestions?

System Specs:

Windows 7 64 bit

Intel E8600 @ 3.3ghz

4GB DDR2

150GB Hard disk

The 5770 is selling like hot cakes and is pretty much it for middle of the road performance. The drivers are good, the price is good $170-210 depending on the make. I have the cheapest msi R5770 overclocked at 900MHz stable. Very good card. Should be relevent for a while(I hope).

[Dwrz 0]

I'm a grunt, currently Reservist while I pursue graduate studies. I'm looking at ArmA and ArmA 2 as possible ways to keep up mentally on some skills-- like range cards, call for fire, 5 paragraph orders, patrolling, etcetera.

What kind of settings should I be looking at for that kind of use? How does this game handle longer viewing distances, for example in excess of 10km? What kind a machine would I need to have, for example, high settings and a 10km view distance?

[jackass888 0]

@Dwrz

For 10km+ and high visuals you will need a decent machine. The viewdistance hits harder on the cpu and hdd than on the graphics. So something like 3,5ghz quadcore(overclock);hd5850 or 5870; 3gb+ ram; seperate hdd; 700w psu. If you are going for realistic scenarios, like i understand, then you could do probably with a dualcore. Ai is the thing that eats most of the cpu(1 core) and also scripts from mods. As the cpu i would currently advise a i5 750. Maybe a Velociraptor/SSD/ramdisk as seperate hdd. Since you didnt mention any costs limit i went for highend stuff that pretty much guarantees a enjoyable Arma2.

[bangtail 0]

I'm a grunt, currently Reservist while I pursue graduate studies. I'm looking at ArmA and ArmA 2 as possible ways to keep up mentally on some skills-- like range cards, call for fire, 5 paragraph orders, patrolling, etcetera.

What kind of settings should I be looking at for that kind of use? How does this game handle longer viewing distances, for example in excess of 10km? What kind a machine would I need to have, for example, high settings and a 10km view distance?

There is no machine that will run A2 on high detail settings with that kind of VD tbh. You'll need to wait a few years :(