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

[Leon86 13]

ok, i'm looking at a computer to buy, and i like this one but i'm not a big computer genius so i was wondering if you guys would know if this is a good gaming computer (and if it would run ARMA 2: OA without glitching).

Graphics Controller Model: Radeon HD 5450

nope, you need a real gpu for arma.

[snake22brawl 10]

what's a "real" GPU? I know what a GPU is.

[Leon86 13]

something in the top 8 rows of the gpu hierarchy chart

[blurgh 10]

Solid State HD Request/Question

I'm thinking about getting a solid state drive purely for arma 2 as I hear it fixes a lot of the texture pop in problems and improves performance around areas like zagrabad. My questions are :

1. Do I need to buy anything else for my pc to be able to connect a solid state hd to it ? Or do they use the same connection methods as standard hard drives ?

2. Once it's plugged in is it simply a case of choosing that hd as the location to install the game ? Or do I need to setup anything specifically for it to work ?

3. If I'm only going to be using it for arma can I just save money and get a small size hd ? If so does anyone have a suggestion for a cheap but good Solid state drive which will work well with arma ? How about this one ? http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/47138/OCZ-32GB-OCZ-Onyx-Series-SATA-II-2-5-inch-Flash

Should be big enough for my arma directory but do I need to reinstall windows on the SSD as well or can I just put arma on it and keep OS running on my standard HD.

4. Does anyone have any links to gameplay in zagrabad or anywhere for that matter where the player is using a SSD, I'd like to see how big difference is and if it is indeed worth me getting one.

My current specs are

Intel i5 2400 @3.10ghz

ATI Radeon 6970 2gb

4th Ram

Any help and advice is appreciated, cheers

[EDcase 87]

I use an SSD for ARMA only.

1. It uses same SATA connections as a HDD. All you need is spare data and power connectors.

2. Yes, it will have a new drive letter. Just choose that as the install location.

3. I use a 30GB one and it fits fine with quite a few addons. You should get something a bit bigger if you want lots of different addons and maps etc.

Vertex are good but the Onyx series are quite slow. Do LOTS of research as there are fast and slow SSD's. Compare the transfer speeds.

4. I don't have any comparison vids. There will not be a huge difference. ARMA boots faster and loads maps faster than with normal HDD but gameplay is probably not really that different. You would probably see a bigger gameplay difference by getting more than 4GB ram.

CPU COMPARISON CHART

GPU COMPARISON CHART

Edited May 20, 2011 by EDcase

[KorpeN 0]

Hi there. I hope to help me in my problem.

I have a system with Athlon x2 4800, 4gb ram and I just want to replace my burned old 8800GTS grapchics card.Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.

[Leon86 13]

Hi there. I hope to help me in my problem.

I have a system with Athlon x2 4800, 4gb ram and I just want to replace my burned old 8800GTS grapchics card.Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.

I saw some 5770's for 65 euro's, faster than what you had and quite cheap.

[snake22brawl 10]

do you know a good <$550 gaming computer?

[bangtail 0]

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox360 :p

[snake22brawl 10]

not an xbox, but a gaming PC.

---------- Post added at 12:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 PM ----------

does any video card work with any desktop PC?

[bangtail 0]

I know I was j/k bud :D

TBH, that's going to be tight in terms of getting anything that will play ArmA 2 well.

You might want to look on Craigslist or Kijiji. You can sometimes snag good deals on there.

And as for cards, that is dependant on the slot, PSU and available space especially if it is a higher end card.

[KorpeN 0]

I saw some 5770's for 65 euro's, faster than what you had and quite cheap.

I was just thinking the same. I just needed permission. Go 5770.

[snake22brawl 10]

is an AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB GDDR3 16X PCIe Video Card going to work with Arma 2: OA?

[Leon86 13]

do you know a good <$550 gaming computer?

you'll have to build it yourself if you want to get something half decent for that kind of money. Someone you know probably has a dvd drive and a windows xp retail you can have for a couple of beers, that way you'll only have to buy:

cpu: athlonIIx3 ~ $80

mobo: basic gigabyte am3 thingy ~ $60

ram: 4GB kingston 1333 ~ $40

gpu: sapphire 5830 ~$100

harddisk: 1TB 7200 rpm ~$60

psu: corsair 430W ~ $50

case: simple atx case ~$30

--------------------------------

$420

crap, I saved too much, well maybe you can afford a sata dvd drive and windows 7 oem (here in holland microsoft allows sale of oem windows versions) as well.

I took the prices from newegg, I dunno where you want to order but comparable hardware should be available almost anywhere for under 550,-

[hellfire257 3]

Hey all,

How much of a performance increase can I expect from a 3870 (512MB) to a 5770 (1GB) at 1920x1080 res?

Also, for a difference of £8, is it worth looking at the 6770?

Thanks! :)

[Leon86 13]

the 6770 should be much faster than the 5770.

[KorpeN 0]

the 6770 should be much faster than the 5770.

Are you sure? Are there any benchmarks?

The 5770 is 850MHz and 6770 is 800MHz.

Edited May 21, 2011 by KorpeN

[Leon86 13]

some sites say the 6770 is a faster newer card, others say it's a rebadged 5770, wait for benchmarks if you want to be sure

anandtech says it's a rebadge, meaning it's the exact same card.

Edited May 21, 2011 by Leon86

[sw1 10]

Brief A2OA Hardware Guide

Sorry if there's already something like this in this thread, yet I didn't want to read all 700 pages lol.

Seeing so many people ask about hardware's performance in A2OA I thought I'd make some general hardware points (with some graphs). If you're not interested please do not read :)

CPU

A2OA is a very CPU intensive game. A fast dual core will manage (just), yet a good quad core is definitely preferable.

At the moment Sandy Bridge offers by far the best value for money.

The i7 2600k offers the very best A2OA performance, whilst the i5 2500k offers similarly great performance at a more competitive price. Beastly overclockers.

AMD simply cannot compete with Intel at the moment, yet the phenom 2 X4s and X6s can manage decent (but not great :() perfomance. Don't expect to break 60FPS on very high settings with AMD, except maybe with a nice overclock.

As they are slowly being phased out, you can get some great deals on the 1336 socket i7s at the moment, which are very respectable quad cores (and hexacores) which munch up A20A. Anything from the i7 920 up to the i7 990x will offer very decent FPS, better than all AMD has to offer, yet slightly below Sandy Bridges quad core CPUs.

Chart:

This is only for comparison and the settings are set crazily high. Most people will never actually play on these settings, so you can expect MUCH higher performance, even when A20A is set on "very high" on your PC.

I couldn't find one with Sandy Bridge included, so imagine the i7 2600k is at the very top, with the i5 2500k one below :)

(It's NOT in order of performance)

GPU

Like any demanding PC game a dedicated graphics card is a must have. For good performance I would say an HD 5770 or gts 450 should be viewed as the minimum you should consider, yet worse GPUs can still play the game on lower settings.

My choice of GPU from each price range would be:

-very low end (~£80, pretty much the cheapest card that will play A2OA decently) --- HD 5770 --- XFX HD 5770 AMD

-low budget (~95) --- GTX 550ti --- MSI 1GB GeForce GTX 550

-low-mid budget (~£125) --- HD 6850 --- MSI HD6850 Cyclone Power Edition OC

-mid budget (~£150) --- HD 6870 --- MSI HD 6870 HAWK ATI with TWIN FROZR III

-mid-high range (~£185) --- GTX 560Ti --- MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti TWIN FROZR II

-high end (~£270) --- GTX 570 --- Gainward GeForce GTX 570 Phantom 1280MB

Hierarchy Chart

The crucial thing about this chart is not actual performance but comparative performance. Many people will find their FPS is higher than the figures below, but it works as a comparison of different GPUs.

All credit for these benchmarks goes to BitTech.com

RAM

4GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHZ is the sweet spot for performance/price atm, yet A20A can only use 2GB, so 2GB at a good frequency (1333Mhz or above) is fine.

Many people claim 8Gb RAM can mess up A2OA performance sometimes, yet in my experience it doesn't. None the less you may want to avoid 8GB kits for Arma 2.

Hard (or solid state) Drive

Although a standard 7200 RPM HDD will play A2OA perfectly acceptably, you will probably see textures fail to load quickly enough, meaning they sort of flash initially. To avoid this I would strongly recommend you pruchase a 64GB SSD and copy and paste your entire ARMA 2 system folder into it. This will ensure quick load times and smooth texture loading.

Alternatively if you have 8GB RAM going spare a RAM disk can help avoid the texture loading problem

Limiting Factors

If you have an epic CPU capable of 60fps and a terrible GPU only capable of 20fps, you will only get 20fps (maybe a few FPS more but roughly 20 :)). The converse is also true- if you get a great GPU and an awful CPU, the CPU will limit your FPS. It is therefore important to strike a good balance between CPU power and GPU power, to get the most capable gaming system for your money.

On Arma 2 OA CPU power is the most common factor limiting performance. A good overclock can make a big difference to this, unlocking a further 10-20% performance. Although you shouldn't be afraid of overclocking, it is important you only overclock if you have a decent aftermarket cooler and know what you are doing. There are many good guides out there if you are interested, just google it.

Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead is a demanding game and you will have to spend a fair amount to play it on high FPS.

I hope this helps :D

SW1

Edited May 31, 2011 by SW1

[snake22brawl 10]

are on-board video cards bad?

[PuFu 4599]

are on-board video cards bad?

bad is an understatement...they are nonexistent from a gaming performance POV

[NeMeSiS 11]

are on-board video cards bad?

Yes, you cannot play ArmA2 with them, or any other game for that matter. They barely run unmodded OFP.

[sw1 10]

+1

Integrated GPUs are just made to display your desktop, menus, documents etc.

They can probably manage HD video at a push, yet even in the most basic games at lowest settings they will fail :D.

If you're interested in choosing a GPU for A2OA see my post above.

[furiousgeorge 10]

have a question and hopefully someone here is running this config so I can get an idea of whether or not it's worth it.

I've just added a second card to my rig in crossfire (I know, I could have upgraded to a single but I already had the first one and wanted to save a bit of money, hopefully for eyefinity)

I'm currently running arma 2 at 1920 x 1200 with almost everything set to very high and about 2km view distance. I average about 45 fps in the benchmarks. Trying to figure out how well my rig would run in eyefinity and what settings I'd likely be able to get, but I have not been able to find a benchmark anywhere online showing this. Here's the rig, if anyone can give me an idea I'd greatly appreciate it so I know whether to buy two more monitors.

amd phenom II x4 955 (3.2)

8gb ram

2 x 5850 (crossfire)

thanks in advance!

[sw1 10]

amd phenom II x4 955 (3.2)

8gb ram

2 x 5850 (crossfire)

On high settings @ 5,760 x 1,080 expect between 30-35 fps. Your graphics cards are nice, but I think your CPU will limit performance. An overclock to around 3.8Ghz would really boost your performance. Do you have a good HSF atm?

How I got that figure:

With three screens (total resolution of 5,760 x 1,080), and two GTX 460s (quite similar in performance to 2xHD H850s) and an Intel i7 940 CPU (better than the x4 955 :() Custom PC Magazine averaged 37FPS on A2OA at "high" settings in their tests. I would expect you to get a few FPS less because of your CPU.

Edited May 24, 2011 by SW1