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

[froggyluv 2136]

Well mostly guilt I suppose - buying 2 580's at once is also harder to hide from the Mrs. :D

Any idea of whats coming down the pike? Perhaps I'd be better off waiting for a 580 or even 590 price drop.

[PuFu 4600]

You better spend less money on a SSD (unless you already have one). Otherwise, i would wait for new gen GPUs..

[bangtail 0]

Well mostly guilt I suppose - buying 2 580's at once is also harder to hide from the Mrs. :D

Any idea of whats coming down the pike? Perhaps I'd be better off waiting for a 580 or even 590 price drop.

New cards in Q1 2012 from Nvidia and late Q4 2011 from AMD.

I'll be waiting on Nvidia mind you, AMD isn't really an option for me.

[Leon86 13]

New cards in Q1 2012 from Nvidia and late Q4 2011 from AMD.

I hope you're right.

[bangtail 0]

I'm right as per current info, obviously, that is subject to change :D

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

Intending to upgrade from...

Q9450

Radeon 4890 OOC

to...

2500k

GTX 560ti OC

Would it be worth the effort and result in a tangible difference for ArmA2?

[froggyluv 2136]

Intending to upgrade from...

Q9450

Radeon 4890 OOC

to...

2500k

GTX 560ti OC

Would it be worth the effort and result in a tangible difference for ArmA2?

What does that 9450 run at and do you intend to overclock the 2500k? The single biggest performance upgrade I've ever had for Arma was going from e8500 @3.6 to the 2500k OC'ed @4.4. Maybe it was the whole new getup of newer ddr3 ram/mobo etc... but twas huge.

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

What does that 9450 run at and do you intend to overclock the 2500k? The single biggest performance upgrade I've ever had for Arma was going from e8500 @3.6 to the 2500k OC'ed @4.4. Maybe it was the whole new getup of newer ddr3 ram/mobo etc... but twas huge.

I never took the time to overclock the Q9450 (Family&Job). So it runs nomral at 2.66 GHz.

Me too I hope for a great result due to the DDR upgrade and maybe even because of using a SSD.

[Leon86 13]

The new setup should get you almost twice the performance, and a lower power bill if your current pc is on a lot.

[PuFu 4600]

Hi

Here is the situation...

I have a:

Intel® Core 2 Quad CPU

Q6600 @2,40Ghz

2Gb Ram DDR2

Windows XP SP3

Nvidia Gforce 9600 GT 1GB

now i now this game is blood thirsty for CPU and GPU, so i wont to upgrade something!

Since intel stopped selling Q6600 CPU's (i wonted to get a Q6600 3.20Ghz but now il hold on to this 2,40ghz) i wont to by another 2GB Ram and new Graphic card like Gforce GTX570 GT DDR5 (i now its not cheap)

but will i get enough FPS with this graphic card and this Quad CPU 2,40Ghz and 4GB RAM DDR 2?

I dont wona by a whole pc thats to much money, i already have to buy at least new 860W Power source for the GPU...so any tips???

1. there isn't such thing as a Q6600 @ 3.2Ghz. Surely, you can OC it up to at least 3Ghz without much problem. An aftermarket cooler is recommended (the stock one is poor to say the least)

2. You won't need 850W for the video card. 650W (real wattage on a proper PSU) should do the trick.

What i would do if i were you:

i would get the extra ram and video card + a proper PSU and an aftermarket cooler, put some voltage in the Mb and an push the CPU down to 3Ghz lane.

You should expect around 30-40 FPS on medium high settings with a normal amount of AI present.

[daraofp 10]

What i would do if i were you:

i would get the extra ram and video card + a proper PSU and an aftermarket cooler, put some voltage in the Mb and an push the CPU down to 3Ghz lane.

You should expect around 30-40 FPS on medium high settings with a normal amount of AI present.

Thanx for a quick reply...I think that's the best solution, i'l do that!

[fireone 10]

recent upgrade from:

AMD 955 BE cpu

Gigabyte 770 TA Mboard

MSI 5770 GPU (1G VRAM)

Win 7 32 Os

to

Intel I5 2500K

Asus z68

Sapphire 6850 (2G VRAM)

win 7 64 OS

All on triple monitor Dell 23" setup running Eyeinfinity

My impression is: the i5 /Mboard combo made the biggest improvement to FPS. Adding the videocard allowed me to turn up

the details. I can run antialiasing on high to vhigh for some slowing of FPS. First time I've been able to turn on AA .

In the single player missions benchmarks:

Benchmark 1 runs at 35 to 40 fps with details on high to v.high

Benchmark 2 25 fps.

Before 15 to 16 FPS maximum on settings turned off or lowfor both bmarks

Visually now, the game is stunning, only occasionally do I see tearing in midscreen when turning quickly side to side.

Before I was looking for ways to improve FPS . Now this problem is more settled.

Thanks to all who have posted their experiences.

Edited November 3, 2011 by fireone

[Azza FHI 50]

just keeping an eye on the market/products lately, am going to upgrade cpu and mobo when arma 3 is released.

wondering if adding a 3rd 580 will make much difference or is it barely noticeable.

going from 1 580 to sli was a huge difference.

in know its hard to speculate of the requirements of A3 so whats tri sli scaling like on arma 2 atm.

[bangtail 0]

Really depends on res tbh.

I've tried 3 cards before and it made very little (if any) difference in ArmA 2 @ 2560 x 1600.

I should point out as well that Crysis and Metro 2033 did benefit slightly from the 3rd card but the gain is much lower than the jump from a single card to SLI.

Obviously, if you are playing at over 2560 x 1600 (Multi Monitor) there may be more benefits to be had but I can only speak from my own experience.

Edited November 6, 2011 by BangTail

[domokun 515]

I think that for any game you can safely say that any card past the 1st will follow a law of diminishing returns. I strongly suspect that any spare cash could be put to better use else where in your rig.

[bangtail 0]

Nope, simply not true as has been proven over and over again in this thread.

The jump from 1 card to 2 cards effectively doubles the FPS in certain situations.

Unfortunately, when it comes to 3 or more GPUs, there are other limiting factors that make them a much less attractive proposition (price vs performance etc).

That's not to say they that 3 GPUs are completely useless, it really comes down to what resolution you play at and how much money you have to spend.

Edited November 7, 2011 by BangTail

[domokun 515]

I beg to differ.

While possible, I believe that +1GPU = +100% FPS to be an exception rather than the rule.

[bangtail 0]

Yah, well luckily I have the benefit of first hand experience with basically every iteration of SLI so you can beg to differ all you like.

The simple fact is that SLI (I am talking 2 cards here) can, and frequently does, double the FPS. That's not to say that it is always 100% but 80% is a good average and more than justifies the cost IMHO.

Edited November 7, 2011 by BangTail

[HR4 Elite 10]

The simple fact is that SLI (I am talking 2 cards here) can, and frequently does, double the FPS. That's not to say that it is always 100% but 80% is a good average and more than justifies the cost IMHO.

Do you make missions ?

Say 150-ish ai mission with 1 card, what would be the average fps rate with say 40% combat happening at anyone time (mixture open area and town/forest, no ambient civies) ?

Same scenario with two card set-up SLI , fps?

A friend wants to double up his gtx260 (I think thats what it is), but its all about the fps..

.

[bangtail 0]

Yep, I do but I've never made one with that many AI as that is when you are going to run headlong into the CPU bottleneck.

The last mission I made on Namalsk (probably ~70 AI and spanning most of the Island) ran at an average of ~40-50 FPS on one card and ~80-90 FPS with both cards.

I run at 2560 x 1600 (all Vhigh except Video Memory which is 'default' and no post as I find it annoying).

[HR4 Elite 10]

Yep, I do but I've never made one with that many AI as that is when you are going to run headlong into the CPU bottleneck.

The last mission I made on Namalsk (probably ~70 AI and spanning most of the Island) ran at an average of ~40-50 FPS on one card and ~80-90 FPS with both cards.

I run at 2560 x 1600 (all Vhigh except Video Memory which is 'default' and no post as I find it annoying).

He runs the same res as me on 1920x1080, but I can see why you would lose fps running at the res you do, its quite low fps for under 100ai with the one card, especially spanning a whole island, sporadic combat i.e. smaller type skirmishes usually produce higher average fps.. Not too bad with the two cards tho. We have a small group of us who pass missions around, usually play 80-120ai but can do 150ai without too much problem, but only on some cards, keeping fps at very good rate is quite important to us, so provided its no more than around 30-40% combat at anyone time, its pretty easy to manage fps..

I think he may be best to get a different card, he wants to be getting around 70ish fps with average 150ai sporadic combat..

no post as I find it annoying).

Agree with that 100%

.

[bangtail 0]

Im very picky about maintaining a constant 'clean' experience and I rarely push the AI to over 100 when I am designing missions.

If you are out of the built up areas, you can get away with more AI but it's that combination of cities and alot of AI that seem to cause that CPU bottleneck.

I'm looking forward to A3 where I am hoping BIS really start to take full advantage of threading.

[PuFu 4600]

my brother asked for help about a new PC. Max price range is about 1300EUs maybe 100EUs more.

This is what i got so far:

CPU: i7 2600K (should OC up to 4Ghz)

FAN: Corsair H60

MBO: ASUS Maximus IV GeneZ (Z68 chipset)

RAM: Mushkin Frostbyte 16Gb DDR3 1600Mhz

GFX: Gainward Phantom GTX560 TI 2GB

HDD: WD Caviar Black 7200 1TB Sata3

OPT: Optiarc DVDWR Lightscribe

PSU: OCZ ModXtreme 750W

CSA: Nexus Proeminent R

TOTAL: 1340EUs.

Questions:

1. what would you do choose differently (minus the case etc which is a matter of tast - i have 2 very simple cases atm, and i love the Zalman, but that is out of the price range).

2. Would a 1gb 560(non ti version) SLI setup worth another 100Eus? ArmA included.

3. Is a SSD 60/80Gb worth its money? Would be ok to buy it laters? Is it a necessity for anything else that A2?

4. Would worth waiting for the SBE cpus?

Edited November 7, 2011 by PuFu

[Leon86 13]

my brother asked for help about a new PC. Max price range is about 1300EUs maybe 100EUs more.

This is what i got so far:

CPU: i7 2600K (should OC up to 4Ghz)

FAN: Corsair H60

MBO: ASUS Maximus IV GeneZ (Z68 chipset)

RAM: Mushkin Frostbyte 16Gb DDR3 1600Mhz

GFX: Gainward Phantom GTX560 TI 2GB

HDD: WD Caviar Black 7200 1TB Sata3

OPT: Optiarc DVDWR Lightscribe

PSU: OCZ ModXtreme 750W

CSA: Nexus Proeminent R

TOTAL: 1340EUs.

Questions:

1. what would you do choose differently (minus the case etc which is a matter of tast - i have 2 very simple cases atm, and i love the Zalman, but that is out of the price range).

2. Would a 1gb 560(non ti version) SLI setup worth another 100Eus? ArmA included.

3. Is a SSD 60/80Gb worth its money? Would be ok to buy it laters? Is it a necessity for anything else that A2?

4. Would worth waiting for the SBE cpus?

Z68 has the hdd cacheing tech. You could look into that,

2 HDD's in RAID1 (no, not 0) + a 64GB ssd for cacheing gives you very low load times. If you go over budget you can always get a 2500K, or "just" 8GB of kingston valueram.

I'd probably get an 80+ gold psu with long warranty, but that's just personal preference, psu is more than powerfull enough.

wouldnt go for 1GB cards in sli as new games (especially BF3) are very heavy on vram.

Sandy bridge E will be nice but if you choose that platform you're probably going to go over budget.

[bangtail 0]

4. Would worth waiting for the SBE cpus?

The 3930/60 that are releasing next week are disappointing tbh. There is nothing to recommend them unless you do a lot of video work/compression etc.

I was excited about them, but having seen their actual performance, I might not even bother as I can't be arsed with reinstalling Windows etc when the performance gains just aren't there.

They cut the best features from the X79 chipset, proper PCIe 3.0 and enhanced SAS support, and since we already have 6 core H/T processors, there really isnt much to cheer about other than the quad channel memory and that isn't really relevant for most applications related to desktop computing.

I'm hoping for better things from Ivy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Extreme in 2012 and there will also be new video cards around by then which will make more sense as far as a full upgrade goes.

Edited November 14, 2011 by BangTail