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

[Enigma85 2]

It's Definitely a Bang for the buck.

1500 is the max im playing with and with an i7 quad core it takes a large hit to the budget and 6 core and your looking a half of my budget gone.

Good thing about the cooler as well,

Forget my OS lol :D

Also although arma is high on the list it really has to be a jack of all trades.

It can't just be great and games,But suffer at decoding/encoding/compiling/archiving/rendering and so on.

Hence forth why I'm wondering if it will play arma 2 at a decent rate without being damn ugly or stuttering at 10FPS

baring in mind it will probably be played on a 1200 x 1024 17" LCD for a good few months whilst i gather money for a new screen

Edited January 16, 2011 by XxEnigmAxX

[avibird 1 154]

It's Definitely a Bang for the buck.

1500 is the max im playing with and with an i7 quad core it takes a large hit to the budget and 6 core and your looking a half of my budget gone.

Good thing about the cooler as well,

Forget my OS lol :D

Also although arma is high on the list it really has to be a jack of all trades.

It can't just be great and games,But suffer at decoding/encoding/compiling/archiving/rendering and so on.

Hence forth why I'm wondering if it will play arma 2 at a decent rate without being damn ugly or stuttering at 10FPS

baring in mind it will probably be played on a 1200 x 1024 17" LCD for a good few months whilst i gather money for a new screen

If 1500.00 is your budget then you will have no problem. Just look at my rig above. Just under 1000.00 with an i7-2500k CPU. With 500.00 more you can get the i7 2600k + GTX 480 (for some reason ARMA2/OA just runs better with intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU that is from the developers) + two drives standard HDD and SSD. If I had a few hundred more that's what I would have done. My rig will run ARMA2 very well with a good FPS rate and give my some future-proof for the next few years.

[flattermann 12]

You should be fine with that system. You can save a few bucks with an 6950 - it can easily be flashed to a 6970:

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/12/27/simple-bios-flash-turns-amd-radeon-hd-6950-into-a-6970/

Edit: A lot of people on the forums here prefer Nvidia over AMD/ATI mainly because of its constant driver issues. With a 69xx you would pay nearly half the price of an 580 though plus save on power draw :D

Edit2: If you really need a 6 core an AMD Phenom II X6 is of course the only choice within your budget. If four cores would do the job as well, a 2500k would be a better option here, about 40 € higher in price though. The catch ist that a decent mainboard will be costly too, but probably just at the same price as your Crosshair III Formula. I like AMD, they have a factory over here in Germany, just 100km from the place i live, i gotta support them, but the new Sandy Bridge Intels are indeed sexy :D

Yet another Edit, 3 (sorry lol)

If you want to go with Nvidia you might need another board - if you want to have the SLI option. The AMD FX chip does not support SLI, only crossfire, so do Nforce Chips - only SLI, not Crossfire

Edited January 16, 2011 by Flattermann

[JohnnyDust 10]

I'm looking to order a new rig within the next month, and just wanted to run it by you mastertechwizzes inhere, so please give some feedback if I got something completely wrong.

Roughly I'm thinking;

i7 870 (socket 1156 4x2,93mhz)

XFX Ati HD5870 1gb

Gigabyte motherboard P55 USB3

8gb 1600mhz HyperX ram (Kingston prolly)

2 x Kingston 64gb SSD (250MBps read /145MBps write)

Windows 7 premium 64bit

NZXT Hades case

Thx in advance. For ease of tracking response, I'd appreciate PMs in return.

[jonneymendoza 10]

get a sandy bridge

[Signalman 11]

Using "VFFPS" and a view distance set at 500, I get 26-28 FPS with the first in game benchmark. Is that good enough to play online?

[gambla 10]

Hi,

i've seen some game benchmarks showing clearly that one card is only faster in some games and vice versa. But which one is better for Arma2 ?

7

[Abdul-Fattah Abu Mahir 10]

Hi all,

I am about to buy a new laptop so I can finally run Arma 2. Now my question is, will this laptop be able to run arma 2 just fine?

Specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom X4 X920 2,3Ghz (quad-core)

RAM: 6 GB

Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 2GB

I am pretty sure this should run it very well, but I am still asking just to make sure..

[Leon86 13]

Hi all,

I am about to buy a new laptop so I can finally run Arma 2. Now my question is, will this laptop be able to run arma 2 just fine?

Specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom X4 X920 2,3Ghz (quad-core)

RAM: 6 GB

Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 2GB

I am pretty sure this should run it very well, but I am still asking just to make sure..

It should run, but not very well, at least compared to a midrange desktop.

---------- Post added at 02:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:23 PM ----------

I'm looking to order a new rig within the next month, and just wanted to run it by you mastertechwizzes inhere, so please give some feedback if I got something completely wrong.

Roughly I'm thinking;

i7 870 (socket 1156 4x2,93mhz)

XFX Ati HD5870 1gb

Gigabyte motherboard P55 USB3

8gb 1600mhz HyperX ram (Kingston prolly)

2 x Kingston 64gb SSD (250MBps read /145MBps write)

Windows 7 premium 64bit

NZXT Hades case

Thx in advance. For ease of tracking response, I'd appreciate PMs in return.

like johnnymendoza said, get a sandy bridge cpu. An i5-2500K will beat the 870 in almost every scenario and gaming in particular.

---------- Post added at 02:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 PM ----------

Hi,

i've seen some game benchmarks showing clearly that one card is only faster in some games and vice versa. But which one is better for Arma2 ?

7

with cards like that you're unlikely to have any performance differences in arma anyway because you're almost always cpu limited if you run at sensible settings. If you have a motherboard that supports sli get the nvidia card, you can upgrade to sli if you want to run at huge resolutions or something. Crossfire has issues in arma 2.

If you're 100% sure you'll never want to use sli I suggest you flip a coin.

[thedudeabides 40]

I have an

AMD 955BE @3.7

4GB DDR3 Ram

Asus 5850 Direct CU

I was thinking of switching over to a

Intel I7 2600 Sandy Bridge

adding 4 GB DDR3 ram to what I have already

EVGA Superclocked GTX570.

I already run Arma2 with an SSD so I really only need to know, is that a good upgrade? Is that a smart upgrade? I only play Arma2 for the most part with photoshop and video editing.

I am learning more and more about Computers as the time goes on but would like to know if this is blowing extra cash or a good upgrade

[Shadow NX 1]

Anyone here uses a HD6950 with ArmA2?

If so whats your experience with it?

Was bit baffled to learn that the HD5870 actually outperforms even the HD6970 by a few frames du to the 5D shader instead of the 4D on new cards, yet the 5870 lacks the good tesselation ability of the new cards which might be problematic in other new games soon.

Im pretty undecided... Or do i wait for the GTX560?

Btw, is the power supply on the Nvidias like the GTX460 the same as on the newer AMDs so i can simply plug a Nvida in where my old AMD was without havign to change any cables?

Always bit clueless when it comes to the cables issue...

[Abdul-Fattah Abu Mahir 10]

Now I am wondering..

What is a better choice: a quad-core AMD cpu like the AMD Phenom X4 X920, or an Intel i5 cpu with for example 2,4 or 2,53 GHz? Will this make a significant difference?

[flattermann 12]

forget the intel 1156 socket, if intel then get 1155 (Sandy Bridge) - and yes, that would make a difference to a Phenom II X4

[avibird 1 154]

Now I am wondering..

What is a better choice: a quad-core AMD cpu like the AMD Phenom X4 X920, or an Intel i5 cpu with for example 2,4 or 2,53 GHz? Will this make a significant difference?

For some reason the ARMA2 game engine likes intel CPU's better. Get the fastest QUAD core in your budget. You can't beat the new I5-2500K for 225.00 at 3.3 (3.7) not OC. I know it is 100.00 more but well worth it.

[Abdul-Fattah Abu Mahir 10]

For some reason the ARMA2 game engine likes intel CPU's better. Get the fastest QUAD core in your budget. You can't beat the new I5-2500K for 225.00 at 3.3 (3.7) not OC. I know it is 100.00 more but well worth it.

Thanks. I will have to find a laptop with that kind of cpu, although fortunately a lot of them have the i5.

By the way, did I understand correctly from a previous post in this topic that the i5 is better for gaming than the i7?

[Leon86 13]

By the way, did I understand correctly from a previous post in this topic that the i5 is better for gaming than the i7?

Nope, I only said the new i5 2500K is faster than the old i7 870. Both are quadcore desktop processors. i7 2600K has a slight edge over the 2500K even in gaming.

Laptop i5's and some desktop i5's are dualcores while arma scales well to 3 cores and sometimes to 4. I dont know what method intel uses to name it's processors, but it's best to look up processor specs for every laptop you consider.

[avibird 1 154]

Thanks. I will have to find a laptop with that kind of cpu, although fortunately a lot of them have the i5.

By the way, did I understand correctly from a previous post in this topic that the i5 is better for gaming than the i7?

I don't think it is better but has a better bang for the buck almost the same speed ghz. i5 has no Hyper-threading I think!

Hyper-threading is an Intel-proprietary technology used to improve parallelization of computations (doing multiple tasks at once) performed on PC microprocessors. For each processor core that is physically present, the operating system addresses two virtual processors, and shares the workload between them when possible. Hyper-threading requires not only that the operating system support multiple processors, but also that it be specifically optimized for HTT, and Intel recommends disabling HTT when using operating systems that have not been optimized for this chip feature.

[Leon86 13]

I don't think it is better but has a better bang for the buck almost the same speed ghz. i5 has no Hyper-threading I think!

not true, there's lots of i5's with hyperthreading, only they're dualcores.

[Abdul-Fattah Abu Mahir 10]

Thanks! I'll go for a laptop with an i7 cpu I think (or: I am sure), since yeah, the i5 CPUs in laptops are dual core, while for example the i7 740QM is quad core. I actually assumed all the time that i5 and higher were all quad cores, but fortunately your posts showed me otherwise. In one way, this makes the search for a good laptop way easier since now I automatically get to choose from high-end laptops only, lol.

[Leon86 13]

there are a couple of sandy bridge laptops out as well I take it you're already searching here? if you're in the netherlands

[avibird 1 154]

there are a couple of sandy bridge laptops out as well I take it you're already searching here? if you're in the netherlands

This is why he is one of the Teachers on this post lol. We should have a new post GO ASK LEON86 :)

[Xenios 0]

Hi all,

I am about to buy a new laptop so I can finally run Arma 2. Now my question is, will this laptop be able to run arma 2 just fine?

Specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom X4 X920 2,3Ghz (quad-core)

RAM: 6 GB

Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 2GB

I am pretty sure this should run it very well, but I am still asking just to make sure..

I actually have a similar laptop myself--Phenom II N930 (2 Ghz quadcore) and Ati 5650. I was initially worried that the low cpu clock speed would be a problem, but it does just fine and runs cool. It gets about 32 fps in the OA benchmark mission. Not as good as my desktop setup, but I'm quite pleased that Arma 2 is playable on it when I'm away from home. And a 2.3 Ghz cpu would be even better.

Got mine for $630 at Newegg, which was a steal for a budget gaming laptop while they lasted.

Edited January 17, 2011 by Xenios

[flattermann 12]

Thanks for that post, Xenios. All that "Intel is said to run slightly better than AMD in ArmA2" makes people think that a Phenom II would be an utterly wrong decision.

[stingfish74 0]

gang,

i just ordered my new machine and it will be here soon. id like to thank BangTail for the advise on holding out for sandy bridge. my fear was price but BangTail was right, the cost was not much more than the i7 i was planning on.

Here is my rig.

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-2600K 3.40 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1155 (All Venom OC Certified)

HDD: 1TB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Hard Drive)

MEMORY: 8GB (2GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Module (Corsair)

MOTHERBOARD: * [CrossFireX] GigaByte GA-P67A-UD3 Intel P67 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ UEFI, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, USB3.0, 2x SATA-III RAID, 2 Gen2 PCIe, 3 PCIe X1 & 2 PCI

VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB 16X PCIe Video Card

anyone with a similar rig that can give me some feedback? should i expect decent/playable fps on highest settings?

[JohnnyDust 10]

I'll be looking at the sandy bridge... Cheers guys! :D