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

[AJScott 10]

this system will comfortably run arma 2 and all other games. If your hdtv has hdmi (and it will unless it's not really a hdtv) you can use it on any pc that has either a dvi or hdmi out.

---------- Post added at 11:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 AM ----------

gpu hierarchy chart

It depends on resolution, I run on an 8800gtx on 1920x1200 but I have to put postprocessing, anti-aliasing off and use low anisotropic filtering to get decent fps. If I run on 1680x1050 (that's about half the pixels) I get a way higher framerate. The 8800gtx is quite a bit faster then the 240 as you can see. I suggest getting a gtx460 if you're buying a gpu, best price/performance.

Well i'm buying off the Dell website, and the only other graphics card option is a HD5770

[Leon86 13]

HP 15.6" screen

Processor: AMD Phenom II Quad-Core N930

Speed: 2.0 Ghz

Cores: 4

RAM: 4GB DDR3

HDD: 640GB

Hard Drive Speed: 5400 rpm

Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650

Native Res: 1366 x 768

Video Memory: 1024MB DDR3

Any idea what sort of FPS/tweaks/Graphics Settings/View Distance I'll be having to use with this setup? I've been told I'll be working with low-medium? What about medium-high? Any chance at all?

This is basically the laptop I'm getting, don't think there are any changes I can make to it but upgrading the RAM.

Thanks in advance

with that (really low) resolution it'll surely run at medium, don't forget to put shadows on high, that way the cpu doesn't have to calculate them.

[banenwn 10]

Will this rig work well with Arma2?

Intel Core i7 - 860 2.8Ghz

6GB Ram

1GB Nvidia GeForce GTS 240

This is pretty much all I need to know, I originally posted that I wanted to buy an i3 or maybe an i5, but learning of Dells payment options where you can do it per month, i've decided to go for this machine which wouldn't normally be affordable to me.

Edit: The title should be Dell Studio XPS 8100 (not 100)

weird that you would spend 300$ on a proccessor and then only spend 80$ on a graphics card.spend an extra 100$ and get a gtx 460 or 465

[polar bear 10]

Well i'm buying off the Dell website, and the only other graphics card option is a HD5770

Dell offers the 5870 on their Alienware line. Get's pricey though because that's at Dell's top end and they charge an extra extra premium for their top end machine, which unfortunately isn't even the top end these days--5970 would be that.

Edited August 30, 2010 by Polar Bear

[Leon86 13]

Well i'm buying off the Dell website, and the only other graphics card option is a HD5770

Go for that one then, it's a LOT faster than the 240.

[banenwn 10]

Well i'm buying off the Dell website, and the only other graphics card option is a HD5770

5770 is not a bad card better then the gts 240 for sure

---------- Post added at 11:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:42 AM ----------

this system will comfortably run arma 2 and all other games. If your hdtv has hdmi (and it will unless it's not really a hdtv) you can use it on any pc that has either a dvi or hdmi out.

---------- Post added at 11:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:20 AM ----------

gpu hierarchy chart

It depends on resolution, I run on an 8800gtx on 1920x1200 but I have to put postprocessing, anti-aliasing off and use low anisotropic filtering to get decent fps. If I run on 1680x1050 (that's about half the pixels) I get a way higher framerate. The 8800gtx is quite a bit faster then the 240 as you can see. I suggest getting a gtx460 if you're buying a gpu, best price/performance.

depends i said in another post that if he is someone who overclocks the 465 gtx is the better card clock for clock the 465 beats the 460 hands down.i got my gtx 465 beating my 470 in severals gaames and benchmarks cant overlook the power of a 465 with alittle overclocking and what makes it better is theres a chance he could unlock one to a gtx 470 and for 220$ thats a steal

[Leon86 13]

depends i said in another post that if he is someone who overclocks the 465 gtx is the better card clock for clock the 465 beats the 460 hands down.i got my gtx 465 beating my 470 in severals gaames and benchmarks cant overlook the power of a 465 with alittle overclocking and what makes it better is theres a chance he could unlock one to a gtx 470 and for 220$ thats a steal

Well, you can overclock the 460 as well. On stock they perform about the same and cost about the same, but the 460 uses less power. If you really really want to try to unlock some things and dont care about power obviously you're gonna get the 465. If you just want a the card to play games the 460 is better.

[Daniels01 10]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?p=1735990#post1735990

This is taken from my thread, but please answer here.

Thanks too the help of TechnoTerrorist303 I'm soon too buy a new desktop with the following specs. And as i havent played the game yet (ArmA 2: CO) or havent got it on my current system, how well will it play? what settings would i be able too play it on?

Also, if anyone could list all/some game settings for me that's a bonus!

- Specs -

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955

Memory: 4GB DDR3 1333Mhz

Harddrive: 1TB 3.5" 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive

Case: Antec Three Hundred Case

Graphics: ATI Radeon 5750 1024MB GDDR5

Power Supply: OCZ StealthXStream2 700W Power Supply

Motherboard: AMD 880G + SB710 Motherboard

Thanks, Daniels01.

[SmokeyTheLung 10]

For all the fancy answers you will get, if you go to your vendor and you sort their cards from most expensive to least expensive, and then buy the most expensive card(s) you can afford--that's your answer. Up to around the $1000 range it'll make a difference. Yes I'd expect the game to play better with a pair of ATI 5970's or a pair of Nvidia GTX 480's--but do you really have that much cash to spend on GPU? What do you mean by premium?

The real question is if you have a more limited budget how do you trade more CPU against more GPU and that's trickier. It's probably better to state your budget, the answer will be different at the $1000 level than the $2000 level than the $5000 level.

To me a "premium" rig to play ArmA would be a pair of ATI 5970 with a Core i7 980 Extreme but right there we're talking $2500 at least already and you haven't even bought a case or RAM or MB yet. You can spend a third of that on your entire rig and still get a playable game.

Processor speed. The game is a 32bit application so RAM beyond about 4g isn't going to make any difference unless you start doing some of those fancy RAM drive tricks, which won't make as much of a difference as a faster CPU.

Thanks for the informative reply. My budget is flexible, however considering that I'm buying this just to play arma, $1500 is all I'd like to spend. (That's quite the investment for one game:D)

In your reply you mention graphics card(s). Will getting a rig with 2 graphics cards make the graphics twice as good? I realize thats probably a silly question but I've never owned a gaming PC and as such have no idea.

When I play this game on a buddies computer I get quite a few graphical bugs (the most annoying of which is flickering of distant objects) I'd really like to get a rig/GPU that won't have those issues(?).

I'm leaning towards Alienware as a brand (I can't afford to spend the time learning how to put a computer together myself), bestbuy has got one at $1599 with an i7 quad core, 6gb ram, and an ATI radeon 5870 graphics card.

What do you think?

[Leon86 13]

Thanks for the informative reply. My budget is flexible, however considering that I'm buying this just to play arma, $1500 is all I'd like to spend. (That's quite the investment for one game:D)

In your reply you mention graphics card(s). Will getting a rig with 2 graphics cards make the graphics twice as good? I realize thats probably a silly question but I've never owned a gaming PC and as such have no idea.

When I play this game on a buddies computer I get quite a few graphical bugs (the most annoying of which is flickering of distant objects) I'd really like to get a rig/GPU that won't have those issues(?).

I'm leaning towards Alienware as a brand (I can't afford to spend the time learning how to put a computer together myself), bestbuy has got one at $1599 with an i7 quad core, 6gb ram, and an ATI radeon 5870 graphics card.

What do you think?

To get a general idea how fast a gpu is I always use this list. You can see the 5870 is quite fast, in fact it's the second fastest single-gpu card there is, only the 480 is faster. The rest of the top-cards are dual gpu, essentially 2 graphics cards in one. Sometimes this is nearly twice as good, sometimes it isn't, how good the scaling in arma is I don't know.

Personally I don't think a top graphics card is a must-have for arma 2, I still manage with my 8800gtx. A fast cpu is more important. Fast intel quadcores are the i5-750, i5-760 and all the i7's.

Alienware is a bit overpriced,this pc is quite cheap compared to the alienware, performance-wise only the gpu is a bit less powerfull. If you're not happy with the performance you can always get a faster gpu and sell the 460, it'll still be cheaper.

[jackass888 0]

Just bought a gtx460 to replace my 2 year old hd4870. Jep thats 2x the price.

VERY dissapointed.

Numbers are as follows... Armabench1,2,OAbench

gtx460-35/12/39

gtx460OC-35/11/42

hd4870-38/12/44

Latest drivers and OA beta.

Lesson learned... stick to AMD, atleast for Arma series.

[Leon86 13]

Just bought a gtx460 to replace my 2 year old hd4870. Jep thats 2x the price.

VERY dissapointed.

Numbers are as follows... Armabench1,2,OAbench

gtx460-35/12/39

gtx460OC-35/11/42

hd4870-38/12/44

Latest drivers and OA beta.

Lesson learned... stick to AMD, atleast for Arma series.

What resolution/settings are you playing at? The 460 should at least be a bit faster than a 4890.

[jackass888 0]

1280*720 and 1440*900 3d reso.

Tex - vhigh; postp-high;shadows-h;terrain-h,objdetail-normal

I know it should be generally at least 20% faster, but somehow... it isnt.

After running some graphics test where i got a 2x higher score/fps i can tell the card is ok.

edit: forgot the most important... cpu is a quadcore 3,2ghz + 6gb ram

Edited September 1, 2010 by jackass888

[Leon86 13]

Do you lose fps when you up the 3D res to 100% and run some aa with that? Maybe you're limited somewhere else.

[skep155 10]

Probably asked a hundred times, but how would a GeForce 9800 GTX run the game?

[Leon86 13]

Probably asked a hundred times, but how would a GeForce 9800 GTX run the game?

On medium, preferably on 1680x1050 or lower. Will just manage 1920x1200 I think.

[bascule42 10]

1280*720 and 1440*900 3d reso.

Tex - vhigh; postp-high;shadows-h;terrain-h,objdetail-normal

I know it should be generally at least 20% faster, but somehow... it isnt.

After running some graphics test where i got a 2x higher score/fps i can tell the card is ok.

edit: forgot the most important... cpu is a quadcore 3,2ghz + 6gb ram

Mmm...drop your texture setting to high, and PP to normal. Is your monitors native resolution 1440x900? If so, put your res upto that - (as far as I know a lot software runs better if the res is set to the native setting), you should be able to put 3D res to 133%. Im using a 4870 with a hex core @ 2.80Ghz & 4GB ram, and cant really get away with PP set to high, (well I can, but I like my framerate). Also, keep lowering your view distance untill you get a frame rate worth playing with. And work up from that. My settngs are as follows

Vid mem: high

Textures: High

res 1440x900

3D res 1920x1200 (133%)

Anistropic Filtering: High

AA: Normal

Terrain, Objects & Shadow:high

PP: Low

View Distance: 2700

FPS: 75 outside of towns, drops to 45-60fps in built up areas.

You should get almost similar results with your quad @3.20Ghz and a GTX 460 + 6GB ram, very similar.

Edited September 2, 2010 by Bascule42

[jackass888 0]

Ill try native fullhd but i doubt that will increase performance:D

After some serious OC and fiddling with graphiccard and arma settings i managed to get ~3 fps more in Armabench1 and OAbench. 3 frames for 200$ :(

Right now what is bothering me is the "Harvest red" mission or just Chernogorsk. "Red harvest" averages somewhere at 13 fps and empty Chernogorsk at 20fps. Guess its just game/cpu limited. Will do some tests.

Viewdistance is 2500, being minimal for acceptable gameplay.

edit: the only things affecting fps are VD,terraindetail and objdetail and they affect it dramatically. Only with these on verylow i can play with a 20+ framerate.

Edited September 3, 2010 by jackass888

[Leon86 13]

Ill try native fullhd but i doubt that will increase performance:D

After some serious OC and fiddling with graphiccard and arma settings i managed to get ~3 fps more in Armabench1 and OAbench. 3 frames for 200$ :(

Right now what is bothering me is the "Harvest red" mission or just Chernogorsk. "Red harvest" averages somewhere at 13 fps and empty Chernogorsk at 20fps. Guess its just game/cpu limited. Will do some tests.

Viewdistance is 2500, being minimal for acceptable gameplay.

edit: the only things affecting fps are VD,terraindetail and objdetail and they affect it dramatically. Only with these on verylow i can play with a 20+ framerate.

Well, that pretty much means your processor is bottlenecking. Viewdistance terrain detail and object detail all tax the cpu. You might as well turn up the eyecandy with aa, 100% fillrate and postprocessing. Dont forget to put the shadows on high, that only taxes the gpu. At the res you play at it's very difficult to make the gpu bottleneck.

Edited September 3, 2010 by Leon86

[zaira 10]

Ill try native fullhd but i doubt that will increase performance:D

After some serious OC and fiddling with graphiccard and arma settings i managed to get ~3 fps more in Armabench1 and OAbench. 3 frames for 200$ :(

Right now what is bothering me is the "Harvest red" mission or just Chernogorsk. "Red harvest" averages somewhere at 13 fps and empty Chernogorsk at 20fps. Guess its just game/cpu limited. Will do some tests.

Viewdistance is 2500, being minimal for acceptable gameplay.

edit: the only things affecting fps are VD,terraindetail and objdetail and they affect it dramatically. Only with these on verylow i can play with a 20+ framerate.

Harvest red mission is cpu killer, becouse of huge amount of ai, and cities have alot of tectures so it is hard on gpu 2, and combined harvest red in big cities kills fps to 2x on anything stock.

And to be honest, hig end last gen (4870), isnt much slower than mid gpu, like 460 anyway.

[jackass888 0]

Yea i guessed it wasnt the GPUs fault.

Would a 4ghz quadcore then do better... making Harvest Red playable?

[zaira 10]

Yea i guessed it wasnt the GPUs fault.

Would a 4ghz quadcore then do better... making Harvest Red playable?

Yes, with decent 200+$/€ videocard, and reasnoble vd and 3d res.

I have q6600 @3.6GHz, and i didnt finish campaign in arma2 and AO.

Personaly im waitng for sandy bridge ex, and maybe zambezi (both will come out probably in the end of next summer). I just dont want to spend alot of money today, to get 50% increse in fps (like from 2x in harvest red to 3x).

But multy outside of big towns is playable.

You can check hordocp review of gtx 460 on OA, done with i7 @3.6 http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/07/12/nvidia_geforce_gtx_460_review/3

Edited September 5, 2010 by zaira

[bascule42 10]

Yea i guessed it wasnt the GPUs fault.

Would a 4ghz quadcore then do better... making Harvest Red playable?

You could have a look at the 6 core phenoms. Very very cheap. 1055t

Compare the prices to the Intel 6 core, (Intel Quad i7 cores are way way pricer too), Linkage

And if you look here, compare the cost of Phenom 4 core CPU's. (1055t is on offer this week, but is only £30 extra than the Phenom x4 3.40Ghz normally).

I can assure you, that it will run Arma 2 + arrowhead very well. Ive played arma and encoded large avi files with no reduction in performance. With Arma running on its own, it uses about this much:

Green is total CPU in use, blue line the frequency it's running at. As you can see by the blue line it's not even using all of its 2.80Ghz, as for the total use, green bit, not much else to say but...lol?. That is fairly typical when playing Arma. The 1055t has a turbo boost, that will push it upto 3.40 if need. I only got it to kick in once, I had to spam run a whole lot of programs to do this.

For it's cost/performance ratio, there is simply nothing better on the face of the planet...yet.

All IMO of course. :)

Edited September 5, 2010 by Bascule42
Because I can...added "i7"

[zaira 10]

You could have a look at the 6 core phenoms. Very very cheap. 1055t

Compare the prices to the Intel 6 core, (Intel Quad i7 cores are way way pricer too), Linkage

And if you look here, compare the cost of Phenom 4 core CPU's. (1055t is on offer this week, but is only £30 extra than the Phenom x4 3.40Ghz normally).

I can assure you, that it will run Arma 2 + arrowhead very well. Ive played arma and encoded large avi files with no reduction in performance. With Arma running on its own, it uses about this much:

Green is total CPU in use, blue line the frequency it's running at. As you can see by the blue line it's not even using all of its 2.80Ghz, as for the total use, green bit, not much else to say but...lol?. That is fairly typical when playing Arma. The 1055t has a turbo boost, that will push it upto 3.40 if need. I only got it to kick in once, I had to spam run a whole lot of programs to do this.

For it's cost/performance ratio, there is simply nothing better on the face of the planet...yet.

All IMO of course. :)

IMHO this isnt a good advice. Your cpu isnt best option for gaming, maybe for video/audio editing and rendering. But for gaming any demanding (cpu intensive) game such as arma2, intel is better.

There is only one game i know that can use 6 cores and gain few percents of fps, and that is FSX. In arma you wont get anything noticable, even amds phenom 2 965 is better.

Arma 2 uses up to 20 threads (maximum i seen), but some of the threads in the process are cousing bottleneck (i think ai thread/s).

Performance difference in my system when running arma on 2 cores (and with fixed affinity) are just 15% whorse then when i run it on 4 cores.

I will give you a one nice refference of your cpu test, and read the bold conclusion yourself

(and those games realy aint cpu intensive like arma2 is)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-cpu-build-a-pc,2700-16.html

[banenwn 10]

You could have a look at the 6 core phenoms. Very very cheap. 1055t

Compare the prices to the Intel 6 core, (Intel Quad i7 cores are way way pricer too), Linkage

And if you look here, compare the cost of Phenom 4 core CPU's. (1055t is on offer this week, but is only £30 extra than the Phenom x4 3.40Ghz normally).

I can assure you, that it will run Arma 2 + arrowhead very well. Ive played arma and encoded large avi files with no reduction in performance. With Arma running on its own, it uses about this much:

Green is total CPU in use, blue line the frequency it's running at. As you can see by the blue line it's not even using all of its 2.80Ghz, as for the total use, green bit, not much else to say but...lol?. That is fairly typical when playing Arma. The 1055t has a turbo boost, that will push it upto 3.40 if need. I only got it to kick in once, I had to spam run a whole lot of programs to do this.

For it's cost/performance ratio, there is simply nothing better on the face of the planet...yet.

All IMO of course. :)

actually the 955 and 965 be 4 core are better for gaming then any of the 6 core amd.