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

[jsa2001 10]

At the moment ARMA2 has a 2Gb limit on RAM use but BIS are working on a new patch to make that higher. We don't know what will be the upper limit but I'd say 6Gb would be good.

With new CPU & GPU power a well ventilated case is ESSENTIAL

I would look for a case with top vents as that seems to be the best for airflow.

Technology will always improve and its fastest in the computer market so its impossible to have a system that can be constantly upgraded. You have to look for something that will keep you happy for a couple of years perhaps with a GPU or even CPU upgrade along the way. I'd suggest an i7 x58 motherboard so you can put in a 720 now and upgrade that later.

GPU's are the easiest to upgrade and give a good boost.

Ram can also be upgraded easily.

Make sure you get a good power supply. System stability depends on it and should be powerful enough to cope with the next power hungry CPU & GPU.

---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:28 PM ----------

Latest Betas are HERE. You only need the top one in the green bar.

(You must be up to version 1.05 using normal patches)

Yeah, I overclocked my CPU from 2.67GHz to 3.36GHz (not alot as I don't have proper cooler yet) ...and I only got a few fps more.

Ok i applied the patch and got an extra 2fps, Ill stick the 4mb back in and see how it runs

[Leon86 13]

At the moment ARMA2 has a 2Gb limit on RAM use but BIS are working on a new patch to make that higher. We don't know what will be the upper limit but I'd say 6Gb would be good.

With new CPU & GPU power a well ventilated case is ESSENTIAL

I would look for a case with top vents as that seems to be the best for airflow.

Technology will always improve and its fastest in the computer market so its impossible to have a system that can be constantly upgraded. You have to look for something that will keep you happy for a couple of years perhaps with a GPU or even CPU upgrade along the way. I'd suggest an i7 x58 motherboard so you can put in a 720 now and upgrade that later.

GPU's are the easiest to upgrade and give a good boost.

Ram can also be upgraded easily.

Make sure you get a good power supply. System stability depends on it and should be powerful enough to cope with the next power hungry CPU & GPU.

A well ventilated case is always a good thing, but it's not essential for an i5-750 with a 5770. That's 250 Watt full load If you're getting an X58 the main advantage is the dual x16 crossfire/sli setup, which might be handy with a dual 5870/480 setup, and the ability to mount more ram. The 720 is a mobile processor, I guess you meant the 920. The possibility to upgrade isn't worth paying 70 euro's more on the motherboard and 20 more on the processor. If you want to save now and upgrade later it's best to get an AMD AM3 system.

The powersupply is a good point. Make sure your psu is by a decent brand and has high amperage on the +12V lines (30 Amps should do, 25 if it's a good brand). If you dont mind spending on a good PSU, look at the new Seasonic X-650 and X-750 PSU's, very efficient even at low loads and silent until it gets warm (up to 20% the fan wil remain off, unless it's really hot in the room). 5 Year warranty, will probably last over 10-15. No way of knowing for sure of course.

[nephros 23]

Thanks. It sounds like if I want to build for ARMA2 as it is now, the i5-750 is adequate, but the benefit of getting a LGA 1366 socket motherboard and i7 might be to delay a total overhaul in the future (perhaps from 2 to 4 years or so). I know it's hard to predict the future, but I read in this forum that DDR4 memory is in the works, and I'm afraid of spending extra now on the LGA 1366 platform if my board will be made obsolete by that. Any opinions?

[bangtail 0]

Thanks. It sounds like if I want to build for ARMA2 as it is now, the i5-750 is adequate, but the benefit of getting a LGA 1366 socket motherboard and i7 might be to delay a total overhaul in the future (perhaps from 2 to 4 years or so). I know it's hard to predict the future, but I read in this forum that DDR4 memory is in the works, and I'm afraid of spending extra now on the LGA 1366 platform if my board will be made obsolete by that. Any opinions?

Faster RAM (beyond DDR3 1600 for example) brings nothing to the gaming table (occasionally a frame here or there) but nothing significant and definitely not enough to justify the difference in price.

They definitely provide higher scores in synthetic benchmarks and if you want to spend a fortune just to say that your Everest RAM score beats someone else's, it's a great investment /sarcasm off

Buy some decent 1333 or 1600 DDR3 and you're all set. Whenever I see people spending $250.00 on a 2 gig module of DD3 2400 and then bragging about the speed, I reflect on the truth of that old cliche, there's a sucker born every minute.

Edited June 22, 2010 by BangTail

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

The i7/i5 cpus are amazing, even the mobile version of i5 (the i5-430 that I have in my laptop) is a beast compared to some Phenom x2/x4s.

I Fraps full-size and render HD vids on the same machine listed in the sig; 18min for a 10min video @ CBR/1-pass VBR @ 20 mbps bitrate. If you have a similar rig/laptop as mine, go check out the performance vids on the channel.

P.S. Mid-range i5-750 is the best choise, mid-higher range i7-860 is king. 2 Cores with proper Hyperthreading and a large cache is more than enough.

[Leon86 13]

The i7/i5 cpus are amazing, even the mobile version of i5 (the i5-430 that I have in my laptop) is a beast compared to some Phenom x2/x4s.

I Fraps full-size and render HD vids on the same machine listed in the sig; 18min for a 10min video @ CBR/1-pass VBR @ 20 mbps bitrate. If you have a similar rig/laptop as mine, go check out the performance vids on the channel.

P.S. Mid-range i5-750 is the best choise, mid-higher range i7-860 is king. 2 Cores with proper Hyperthreading and a large cache is more than enough.

It depends what you want to do with your pc. If you do a lot of photoshop or video editing you're probably best off with an AMD Phenom II x6. You can actually get one for less than a core i5.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

It depends what you want to do with your pc. If you do a lot of photoshop or video editing you're probably best off with an AMD Phenom II x6. You can actually get one for less than a core i5.

A good i5/i7 Dual core will devastate a x6 in games, as for photoshop: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/5

The x6 is same old, same old - 45nm manufacturing process vs industry's leading 32nm. There comes a time when you need to design a new architecture to ever evolving tasks, not just add 2-4 cores at 3.2 GHz and call it a night. Intel has done that, Nvidia have done that, althought their 480 is flop, not in terms of architecture, but, rather hardware.

The Phenoms will always find their buyers, have no doubt about it, but you have to keep in mind the Tick-Tock.

P.S. It's a nice touch that my Desktop MB supports Phenom's X6 with the latest bios, but I'm not looking to upgrade, even if they drop to $100, since the NOTEBOOK :D has better performance than my Phenom II x2 @ 3.9GHz (Unlockable to x4 @ 3.6GHz).

Edited June 22, 2010 by Iroquois Pliskin

[SeaVee 10]

On the subject of power supplies, I have a Corsair HX850W PSU that is a beast. Runs my i7 920 overclocked to 3.8Ghz and twin GTX260s in SLI with zero issues.

[nephros 23]

one last question: I have a 300GB seagate barracuda SATA HDD with 3GBit per sec transfer speed. I have been reading about HDD transfer speed affecting ARMA 2 performance. How important is this, and what should I look for specifically in a HDD for speed? My local store doesn't have the Samsung F3 1TB and the salesman was pushing a $200 "velociraptor". I don't want to spend that kind of money on a HDD unless I need to.

[doorkn0b95 10]

how would my pc run arma 2 and OA.

CPU: Amd phenom ii x4 quad core 955 BE

4gb ddr3 memory

Graphics card: nvidia gts 250 1gb

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

one last question: I have a 300GB seagate barracuda SATA HDD with 3GBit per sec transfer speed. I have been reading about HDD transfer speed affecting ARMA 2 performance. How important is this, and what should I look for specifically in a HDD for speed? My local store doesn't have the Samsung F3 1TB and the salesman was pushing a $200 "velociraptor". I don't want to spend that kind of money on a HDD unless I need to.

Access speeds, read/write mb/sec and cache. Velociraptor is not worth it, might as well get an SSD for Arma exclusively (maybe also Windows).

---------- Post added at 03:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:16 AM ----------

how would my pc run arma 2 and OA.

CPU: Amd phenom ii x4 quad core 955 BE

4gb ddr3 memory

Graphics card: nvidia gts 250 1gb

What resolution do you intent to play in/usually play. Shouldn't be no problem at 1366x768 (1440×900, maybe even 1680×1050). At those res you can expect everything on Very high with AA off.

[doorkn0b95 10]

i dont have arma 2 or OA yet. but im buy a pc to play it. i just wanna play it where the grapichs are good enough that it doesnt look cheapish and not lag at all. or should i go with the gts 250 1gb graphics card? and i might go cheaper and get a phenom ii x4 935 quad core.

Edited June 23, 2010 by doorkn0b95

[Leon86 13]

A good i5/i7 Dual core will devastate a x6 in games, as for photoshop: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/5

The x6 is same old, same old - 45nm manufacturing process vs industry's leading 32nm. There comes a time when you need to design a new architecture to ever evolving tasks, not just add 2-4 cores at 3.2 GHz and call it a night. Intel has done that, Nvidia have done that, althought their 480 is flop, not in terms of architecture, but, rather hardware.

And here I always thought photoshop was multithreaded well, guess not. Fact is the x6's are faster than i5's if something scales well with multiple cores.

It's not 32 vs 45 nm, it's 45 vs. 45. The only interesting i5 (the 750) is 45 nm, as ar all the affordable i7's. You say the Phenom IIx6 is "the same old" but the i7 has been out for longer and hasn't changed either, it'd be nice if they would "tock" it but they won't. Yeah, the X980 is pretty sweet but has the price of a whole system.

And if you run your desktop on 4x 3.6Ghz you'll beat your notebook no sweat and you know it.

---------- Post added at 11:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:37 AM ----------

i dont have arma 2 or OA yet. but im buy a pc to play it. i just wanna play it where the grapichs are good enough that it doesnt look cheapish and not lag at all. or should i go with the gts 250 1gb graphics card? and i might go cheaper and get a phenom ii x4 935 quad core.

Do you want to buy a whole system, upgrade an existing system or build it yourself?

[krazikilla 5]

Going to buy a new PC. for now i thougt about following:

How will my PC run arma2, and OAH?

CPU: Intel I7-860, 4x2,8 ghz

Mainboard: Asus P7P55D Sockel 1156

HDD: Samsung F2 HD103SI 1TB

GPU: radeon 5850 Rev2 1024MB GDDR5

Power:

be quite Straight Power 600W ATX 2.3

Tower: Lian Li PC-60FN

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws DIMM Kit 4GB PC3-10667U CL-7-7-7-21 DDR-1333

CPU Fan: Sycthe Mugen 2 Rev. B

tell me what you think about my soon new system.

What would you change? (but staying in about the same price segment)

Thanks :)

Edited June 23, 2010 by KrAziKilla

[bangtail 0]

And here I always thought photoshop was multithreaded well, guess not?

Photoshop is multithreaded. It's not as efficient as it could be but it is there.

Edited June 23, 2010 by BangTail

[cannonouscrash 12]

How will my PC run arma2, and OAH?

CPU: Intel I7-860, 4x2,8 ghz

Mainboard: Asus P7P55D Sockel 1156

HDD: Samsung F2 HD103SI 1TB

GPU: radeon 5850 Rev2 1024MB GDDR5

Power:

be quite Straight Power 600W ATX 2.3

Tower: Lian Li PC-60FN

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws DIMM Kit 4GB PC3-10667U CL-7-7-7-21 DDR-1333

CPU Fan: Sycthe Mugen 2 Rev. B

tell me what you think about my system.

Thanks :)

Im sure you will be fine with both games with that system, I run A2 just fine on a q9650 and a gtx260, Mostly everything turned up high. Server side settings are usually 2k viewdistance, So that always helps, Especially on the Island maps

[krazikilla 5]

thx for reply.

Would you change anything?

Going to order it today, so i wanna do a last check if i should change something

*EDIT*

I also just thougt about getting the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 6x 3,20GhZ.

what you think it better? 4x2,8ghz intel ir 6x3,2ghz amd?

Someone said that arma benefits from higher GHZ more then from more cores.

Also OAH? or they made the coremanagement better?

Damn, Intel VS AMD

Nvidie VS Radeon

help^^

Edited June 23, 2010 by KrAziKilla

[bangtail 0]

thx for reply.

Would you change anything?

Going to order it today, so i wanna do a last check if i should change something

*EDIT*

I also just thougt about getting the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 6x 3,20GhZ.

what you think it better? 4x2,8ghz intel ir 6x3,2ghz amd?

Someone said that arma benefits from higher GHZ more then from more cores.

Also OAH? or they made the coremanagement better?

Damn, Intel VS AMD

Nvidie VS Radeon

help^^

6 cores won't help you in A2. A 4Ghz 920 will give you the same performance as a 4Ghz 980x.

Nvidia is the better choice IMHO but you will pay more. The 465 is good choice because it can be converted into a 470.

[krazikilla 5]

not in Arma2 but in operation arrowhead?

As they said over OA:

We constantly optimize the engine, the results can already be seen in ARMA 2 1.05 and Operation Arrowhead will benefit from all of these optimizations made to date. We continue improving and optimizing the engine, especially with further multicore optimizations to fully utilize 4+ core CPUs. Vegetation rendering is more optimized in Arrowhead already and we also design the entire environment to be less resource hungry. For comparison, the Chernarus map in ARMA 2 contains over 1 million objects (mostly due to realistically modeled dense forests), Sahrani in ARMA 1 has around 300 thousands, we aim to be somewhere in between on the Takistan map due to the different type of environment so it is pretty safe to say already that Operation Arrowhead will treat gamers with a smoother ride than ARMA 2 itself.

Edited June 23, 2010 by KrAziKilla

[bangtail 0]

not in Arma2 but in operation arrowhead?

Same thing AFAIK. It was mentioned that OA performs better but as the reviewer in that case said, it is likely because there is less to render in OA (no forests etc). I wouldn't be able to tell you if 6 cores make a difference from 4, I'm fairly sceptical tbh, but I'll reserve judgement until I've actually played it.

Edited June 23, 2010 by BangTail

[krazikilla 5]

in this case, maybe its just better for me to wait 14 days longer, until i buy my new system

Then ill see, if OA supports 6 cores :)

Edited June 23, 2010 by KrAziKilla

[gossamersolid 155]

Hi guys, i need some help! i have bought this awsome game but when i started the game so did i see that i could shoot almost. The sound of my gun came 7 sec after i was shooting. i changed all my settings to low and i have also disabled everything you can disable. But still it lagg as hell. What should i do?

here's some information about my computer:

Processor: AMD Sempron M120 2.1GHz

Memory: 3GB DDR2, max. 4GB

Harddriv: 320GB S-ATA (5400rpm)

Grafic:ATI Radeon HD4200 with 1534 MB grafic memory

please send me the answers in a PM.

I'm pretty sure you don't even pass the minimum requirements.

Your processor is a slow single core processor and your video card can't really do any gaming.

I'm guessing this is an older laptop.

Word of Advice: Never buy a game unless you are ABOVE the minimum requirements.

[Iroquois Pliskin 0]

thx for reply.

Would you change anything?

Going to order it today, so i wanna do a last check if i should change something

*EDIT*

I also just thougt about getting the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 6x 3,20GhZ.

what you think it better? 4x2,8ghz intel ir 6x3,2ghz amd?

Someone said that arma benefits from higher GHZ more then from more cores.

Also OAH? or they made the coremanagement better?

Damn, Intel VS AMD

Nvidie VS Radeon

help^^

i7-860 all the way. It beats i7 930 in games and every other CPU you can think of.

Phenom x6, six cores is a gimmick just to stay afloat against Intel CPUs.

P.S. I'd buy 2 HDD and do a raid0 instead of that 1TB monster. You will see performance drop over time once you stuff it up files and defragmenting is a pain.

Edited June 23, 2010 by Iroquois Pliskin

[Mack. 59]

Hello

I posted about 2 months ago looking for a system, I put it off after the Volcano in Iceland stopped me working.

I am now looking to buy a system but im unsure as to what to get. My budget is around £2500 - £3000 including a monitor.

The plan is to buy a pre assembled, overclocked and probably watercooled system for games, mainly Arma 2.

Any help with the following is appreciated.

CPU: What is the difference between a heavily overclocked i7 930 and an overclocked i7 975 in real terms? In cost terms 930 --> 975 is about £300.

At an extra £400 ive all but ruled out 980x unless theres a very good reason otherwise.

GPU: 480GTX or a HD5870, maybe a HD5970. Ive read up on the merits and faults of both and im basically stuck.

Which will run Arma 2 is the best? The Nvidia fan boi in me says the 480gtx but availability seams to be a snag.

Best regards

Bambi

[bangtail 0]

Hello

I posted about 2 months ago looking for a system, I put it off after the Volcano in Iceland stopped me working.

I am now looking to buy a system but im unsure as to what to get. My budget is around £2500 - £3000 including a monitor.

The plan is to buy a pre assembled, overclocked and probably watercooled system for games, mainly Arma 2.

Any help with the following is appreciated.

CPU: What is the difference between a heavily overclocked i7 930 and an overclocked i7 975 in real terms? In cost terms 930 --> 975 is about £300.

At an extra £400 ive all but ruled out 980x unless theres a very good reason otherwise.

GPU: 480GTX or a HD5870, maybe a HD5970. Ive read up on the merits and faults of both and im basically stuck.

Which will run Arma 2 is the best? The Nvidia fan boi in me says the 480gtx but availability seams to be a snag.

Best regards

Bambi

If all you do is game the 980x is a total waste of money. There will also be cheaper Intel hex cores in the near future.

I own 480s and 5870s and I have owned the 5970. It's the 480 all the way IMHO, it just feels more responsive, is better at DX11, has better minimum FPS in general and more features. It is more expensive and it does use more power but that isn't an issue AFAIAC. If you are spending $4500.00 on a PC, you can afford the extra few dollars on the electricity bill :D

Edited June 23, 2010 by BangTail