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

[roberthammer 582]

GTX 260 is better for ArmA2 ,but in your side - spare the money for GTX 465 or GTX 470

[volkov956 0]

I have tested it on the following

8800 GT 512

9800 GT 512/1024

GTS 250 1024

4870 512

5870 1024

GTX 280 1024

9800M GTX 1024

They all seem to run it well

[MavericK96 0]

You'll need to get 2x GTX480 to run this with everything on high. ;)

Not true. I play with just about everything on Very High on my rig (as in my sig), and only PP on Low because I don't like the way it looks otherwise.

However, you are correct that one of the listed cards is definitely not going to be enough to run the game full-out.

[ebevan91 10]

So my Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, Geforce GTS 250, 4 GB RAM, 640 GB HDD, 650 watt PSU should be able to run this game just fine, right?

[breeze 0]

Lot of confusing info here first I run the 880 gtx and its not running it well possibly because im on windows 7 64 bit o/s now.

Maybe that should have been included I have no idea of what maverick means what is PP and what card is he talking about?

And the 260 is a lesser card then the other two you listed hammer you like the 260 best for the money? do you think its a BIG step up from my 8800 GTX???

[bangtail 0]

If you upgrade to one of those cards you will see an improvement but don't expect to run everything "full out".

You'll need to get 2x GTX480 to run this with everything on high. ;)

Not true at all, A2 rarely uses more than 60-70% of either GPU using SLI'd 480s. A2 is not a GPU intensive game compared to something like Metro 2033 or Crysis that are almost always pushing 90%+ usage on both GPUs

Edited July 4, 2010 by BangTail

[SushiJaguar 10]

What I don't get is the reason behind all this conflicting information. If you can hit the recommended specs, I'd assume that means running the game on medium, right? And the parts to run Arma at recc. specs only cost you less than £300. So, what's with a not-recent-at-all game requiring stuff costing over £200 apiece to run at high?

[jsa2001 10]

Isn't the game more governed by the cpu rather than the gpu? I'm thinking of going for an intel Q9650 to replace my Q6600 which is running at 3ghz but not sure if its worth the price/upgrade.

Would it be better to get a new mainboard/cpu combo rather than replacing the Q6600 with another Socket 775/771 cpu if so what should i be looking at to make a worthwhile upgrade, been out the loop regarding hardware for the last 1.5 years.

[R3MF 0]

Hi all,

This is an Eyefinity question, i have a 2GB AMD 5870 card and two 24" monitors, and i understand that Arma2/OA code is better performing these days, would the performance be good enough for me to consider getting a third monitor for Eyefinity gaming?

Regards

REMF

Phenom X6 at 3.6GHz

8GB of DDR3 1600

128GB Crucial C300 SSD

2GB 5870

JFYI:

i tried running at 150% and 200% as suggested, and turned the settings down to High from Very-High, the game was quite smooth at 150% (subjective) at 150% and only slightly choppy at 200% (subjective). I might be able to get away with it.............

[echo1 0]

Isn't the game more governed by the cpu rather than the gpu? I'm thinking of going for an intel Q9650 to replace my Q6600 which is running at 3ghz but not sure if its worth the price/upgrade.

Would it be better to get a new mainboard/cpu combo rather than replacing the Q6600 with another Socket 775/771 cpu if so what should i be looking at to make a worthwhile upgrade, been out the loop regarding hardware for the last 1.5 years.

You run a Q6600 at stock speeds? :rolleyes:

Overclock sonny!

[liquidpinky 11]

Cool, looks like you're good to go. CPU-wise, if you want to save money and are prepared to overclock, I'd recommend a Q6600. If you just want good performance out of the box, I'd spend the bit extra and grab a Q9650, whose performance is almost comparable with the Core i7 920 (running at standard speed)

Running a QX9650 here with pretty decent performance in OA. Overclocked of course. ;)

Rig:

Mobo: ASUS Striker II Extreme, water cooled NB.

CPU: QX9650 @4.2GHz, water cooled.

GPU: 2x GTX285 in Sli, water cooled.

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600 Corsair.

HDD: 2x 300GB 10k rpm WD Raptors, 1x 1TB WD Green.

OS: Vista 64 Ultimate.

Settings:

Draw distance: I vary between 3k and 4k depending on map or map area I am spending my time in, need to to keep them FPS up.

Textures: Very High

Anisotropic: Very High

Memory: Very High

AA: Low, not really needed much higher on 1920x1200 and with rendering at 125%.

Terrain detail: Normal

Model Detail: Normal

Shadows: very High

Resolution: 1920x1200

Rendering: 2400x1500(125%)

Post process: Low, I hate bloom, I hate bloom, I hate bloom, I hate bloom. Did I ever tell you I hate bloom?

In NVIDIA manager I have renderahead set to 6 and Vsynch forced off.

With the rig and settings my FPS varies between over 120 in the sparse desert to usually low 40s/high 30s in towns.

Zargabad is still a killer and can end up in the mid to high 20s when things are getting wild.

[jsa2001 10]

You run a Q6600 at stock speeds? :rolleyes:

Overclock sonny!

Try reading again i said its run at 3ghz, stock is 2.4ghz for a Q6600

[RGS 10]

Hi guys,

New here, finally decided to take the plunge and buy A2CO. I'd been put off in the past (after owning ArmA 1) due to bad engine performance, bugs, mouse lag etc, but in so many ways this game/sim is totally my thing so thought I'd go for it and hope that things had improved. Generally it seems that they have but I'm having a hard time of it performance-wise (I can overlook some bugs due to the immense scope of the title).

Here are my specs (nothing's OC'd and I don't want to either):

QX6700 Quad Extreme @2.7Ghz

GTX 480

4GB Dominator RAM

EVGA 680i Motherboard

Apple Cinema Display 30 inch @ 2560x1600

Windows 7 Ultimate x64

My A2CO settings are mostly normal, no AA, no PP, 1600 view distance but with very high texture res and very high shadow quality. Resolutions both set to 2560x1600 (native).

For the training elements and some benchmarks (not benchmark_02) it's good @ 40-50FPS, *very* rarely under 30. Some of the missions seem ok too, the first Red Harvest insertion one for e.g. @30-35FPS but as soon as there's a lot going on (or for e.g. the town near the start of the RH campaign where you're briefed on the rooftop) it goes badly wrong, often around 20FPS, sometimes as low as 17. Setting everything (including resolution) to low makes a bit of a difference but not a lot, maybe 5FPS for a huge diff. in visual quality.

Any suggestions? I know that the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU but I don't want to OC. I will try defragging the HDD later, though not sure how much this will help. Often in games there is one or two settings that hit performance really hard (SSAO often, sometimes AA) and by turning those off I can get good frames with still very high visual quality, but I haven't found any real frame savers for Arma2 yet. Maybe the game just requires a faster CPU in which case I guess I'm stuffed. I'd really like to run at native (2560x1600) if at all possible.

I badly want to get into this game, on paper it sounds perfect + I really like the way it looks etc. Any suggestions much appreciated.

Cheers,

Robert

(if it makes any difference I'm running the Steam edition)

[echo1 0]

Try reading again i said its run at 3ghz, stock is 2.4ghz for a Q6600

I assumed you hadn't given that you were thinking about buying a Q9650, which has pretty much the same performance as an overclocked Q6600. If you're going to upgrade the CPU, you'd be better off going for an i7 to get a worthwhile increase. In that case however, you obviously will have to ditch the motherboard and possibly RAM too.

[jsa2001 10]

I assumed you hadn't given that you were thinking about buying a Q9650, which has pretty much the same performance as an overclocked Q6600. If you're going to upgrade the CPU, you'd be better off going for an i7 to get a worthwhile increase. In that case however, you obviously will have to ditch the motherboard and possibly RAM too.

Yeah cost will go up, my ddr2 wont run in a ddr3 mainboard. Board, cpu and memory would have to be purchased. Need to work out some costing and any updrade would have to be significant in terms of speed over what i have now.

Any suggestions welcome!!

[Leon86 13]

By the way, I put my motherboard into the RAM finder on newegg.com and it gave me a page with these included. I guess these are correct for my board.

Try to find a list on the website of the manufacturer, I'm pretty sure both will work but it doesn't hurt to check and sometimes it saves a lot of trouble.

---------- Post added at 03:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 PM ----------

Hi guys,

New here, finally decided to take the plunge and buy A2CO. I'd been put off in the past (after owning ArmA 1) due to bad engine performance, bugs, mouse lag etc, but in so many ways this game/sim is totally my thing so thought I'd go for it and hope that things had improved. Generally it seems that they have but I'm having a hard time of it performance-wise (I can overlook some bugs due to the immense scope of the title).

Here are my specs (nothing's OC'd and I don't want to either):

QX6700 Quad Extreme @2.7Ghz

GTX 480

4GB Dominator RAM

EVGA 680i Motherboard

Apple Cinema Display 30 inch @ 2560x1600

Windows 7 Ultimate x64

My A2CO settings are mostly normal, no AA, no PP, 1600 view distance but with very high texture res and very high shadow quality. Resolutions both set to 2560x1600 (native).

For the training elements and some benchmarks (not benchmark_02) it's good @ 40-50FPS, *very* rarely under 30. Some of the missions seem ok too, the first Red Harvest insertion one for e.g. @30-35FPS but as soon as there's a lot going on (or for e.g. the town near the start of the RH campaign where you're briefed on the rooftop) it goes badly wrong, often around 20FPS, sometimes as low as 17. Setting everything (including resolution) to low makes a bit of a difference but not a lot, maybe 5FPS for a huge diff. in visual quality.

Any suggestions? I know that the CPU is bottlenecking the GPU but I don't want to OC. I will try defragging the HDD later, though not sure how much this will help. Often in games there is one or two settings that hit performance really hard (SSAO often, sometimes AA) and by turning those off I can get good frames with still very high visual quality, but I haven't found any real frame savers for Arma2 yet. Maybe the game just requires a faster CPU in which case I guess I'm stuffed. I'd really like to run at native (2560x1600) if at all possible.

I badly want to get into this game, on paper it sounds perfect + I really like the way it looks etc. Any suggestions much appreciated.

Cheers,

Robert

(if it makes any difference I'm running the Steam edition)

Strange you have an "extreme edition" quad but dont overclock. If the cpu is bottlenecking try limiting the viewdistance and model details. Also, make sure to put shadows on high (that way the gpu calculates shadows instead of the cpu). I'm sure you can run at native resolution with a 480. I run the game at 1920x1200with an 8800gtx.

---------- Post added at 03:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:05 PM ----------

I found places to buy all the parts, and I gotta say, it's amazing how cheap they are. Thanks a lot Leon, you've really helped me out.

Small EDIT: What settigns can I run ARMA 2 CO on, with this lot?

No problem, I was surprised at the price of some parts as well. Should run the game at mostly medium. I prefer a mix of medium, some high and some low or off completely on my system (which is performance-wise very close to yours)

[Azamato 0]

C2Q Q8200 2.33

4GB RAM

XFX GT240 512MB DDR5

not that high resolution, how will i play OA ?

[wolfbite 8]

Any tweaks to make my GPU take some of the load from the CPU?

[rok 0]

Any tweaks to make my GPU take some of the load from the CPU?

Using High or Very High shadows makes GPU process shadows instead of CPU.

[RGS 10]

@Leon86

Reason I don't overclock is:

1: I really need a stable system (it's my work PC also).

2: I don't know enough about OCing to feel comfortable doing it.

3: I like to extend the longevity of my parts as much as possible.

I have my shadows set to very high already, will try playing around with the other settings again this eve.

Thanks for help, I'd really like to get it setup so that 25FPS is the minimum (and rare), but ideally 30 with an average of around 35-40. I get 45 for the Arma Bench 01 and the AO Bench, but only around 22 (or below!) for the Arma Bench 02 which sadly seems to be a more realistic representation of the game from my short experience so far.

The first mission in AO seems to run at about 23-30FPS, so I'm beginning to think that the whole game's not going to work well for me, possibly with most missions playing at around 20-30FPS and frequently in the low twenties and occasional teens ;(.

Hopefully with patience and testing though I'll find a decent combination of settings.

I've been browsing the forums for tips etc but would still really appreciate any further advice as not had much luck so far.

Cheers.

[jtmedina 10]

Well, today I bought an ATI 3D Club HD 5770 1GB and the improvement in performance is simply amazing.

Quad Core 2 2.66, 4 GB, HD 5770 1GB.

Settings high excepting antialiasing low and postprocess effects off. 1920x1080 almost 40-50 fps average and 30+ in cities. Simply amazing given I had a GT220 to run arma 2.

[RGS 10]

@jtmedina

Damn, wish I was getting those FPS with my GTX 480!

What sort of FPS to you get in the mission 'Harvest Red,' (about the 4th I think)? I'm getting 17-30, but mostly around 20 or less when heading into the industrial area - Just useless :(. My specs and settings are above. Just tried altering my screen res but it makes no difference at all even when reducing it right down to 1280x800 (not that I'd play like that).

Any suggestions?

[jtmedina 10]

@jtmedina

Damn, wish I was getting those FPS with my GTX 480!

What sort of FPS to you get in the mission 'Harvest Red,' (about the 4th I think)? I'm getting 17-30, but mostly around 20 or less when heading into the industrial area - Just useless :(. My specs and settings are above. Just tried altering my screen res but it makes no difference at all even when reducing it right down to 1280x800 (not that I'd play like that).

Any suggestions?

I never played campaign but I just tried it to see the framerate and I got during the battle at the ruins 25fps during explosions and 30-35 rest of time. During the speech at the carrier deck I got 30 and during a few moments 35, briefing room 35 with peak of 40 and after that outside while talking to the soldier 35-40.

Try to close all unnecessary applications it may help.

I have latest drivers and I end up with those graphical settings.

[iM]http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/3127/arma22010070600374746.jpg[/img]

Edited July 6, 2010 by Placebo

[McGregor_CiA 19]

Hello everybody. I was just wondering if this computer would be able to run ArmA 2 ok. And if yes at what settings(very low or very high etc) http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=uk〈=en&docname=c01993823&product=4119564

Thankful for all answers

[RGS 10]

@jtmedina

Thanks for the info.

I get very good FPS on the carrier too, can't remember off hand but prob around 40-50.

*Some* missions are fine (the one included in the demo for e.g. is almost always at 35-50FPS). But it seems like once I'm near a built up area or there's lots going on it all goes to hell (and obviously this is a fair bit) often around 17-23 which is useless.

Another thing I've noticed is in comparison to other games ArmA doesn't seem very smooth even when I'm hitting a solid 50FPS. Some of this is due the the jumpiness of the animations - the gun just jerks off the screen when you go to run in first person for e.g. but even when walking it doesn't feel properly smooth.

Not sure what level 'the ruins' you mention is, would you mind telling me what you get for Benchmark 02? I just ran it with your settings (barring res of 2560x1600 and view dist @ 1600) and achieved a blistering 13FPS :(. I'm sure this has been higher before, but still bad (17-22).

On another note, ArmA 1 always had a big problem with mouse lag for me and with ArmA 2 it's better but still there. Basically things just feel a touch sluggish even when FPS are very high (no deadzone btw) and there's a feeling of inertia that means it takes me twice as long to draw a bead on a target in comparison to any other FPS. I know ArmA is a hardcore sim, which is what I love about it, but this doesn't seem to be by design, a slight lag in an FPS is very noticeable in the feel of the game.

Anyway this is another issue and one that maybe I can learn to adapt to. The performance is killing right now though.

Thanks again for your thoughts.