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

[alfa7172 1]

The pc I'm looking at has an intel i7-3770 3.4ghz, 16gb RAM, 1 TB Harddrive, and a Nvidia GTX 560Ti

[gunso 10]

SSD really helps too and maybe those hybrid hdd

[q-sens 10]

Hello,

New to the forum but not to Arma i am still feeling frustrated regarding the optimization of the game..

First, just to make it clear, i love Arma and own the whole series. This is not a complaining post.

My current config is as below:

http://img1.imagilive.com/1211/specs.png

However, i still have a hard time playing above Medium settings without having a huge fps drop.

On single or small coop and with everything on Medium i can keep a constant 60fps (vsync) with some rare drops.

However as soon as the number of players increases a bit or if i step in a place with a few more houses then i run around 30fps.

I do use VFFPSS as much as i can but still...

This is probably an eternal discussion and here are my 2 questions to BIS.

1) Above the "recommended config", what kind of config would run the game in multiplayer with a constant 60fps anywhere on the map with settings on Very High, disregarding the number of houses and bots around? (just my personal opinion but after 1 year from the release, people with new rigs should be able to run it maxed out. That's the case for 95% of games/simulators). That wonderful config must exist since BIS' Quality Assurance team has to test the game maxed out, am i wrong? What are those testing/developing machine that you use?

2) Is there any plan regarding optimization on Arma 3?

Again, i'm not whining or anything. Just looking for answers/information.

Thank you!

Q-SeNs

Edited June 7, 2012 by Q-SeNs

[domokun 515]

The pc I'm looking at has an intel i7-3770 3.4ghz, 16gb RAM, 1 TB Harddrive, and a Nvidia GTX 560Ti

Leon86 is right: I'd swap the intel i7-3770 for i5-3570K as it's only slightly slower yet it's almost €100 cheaper (€240 instead of €320) and overclocks nicely (+20%). 16GB of RAM is fine just make sure it's a DDR3. 1 TB hard drive is fine just make sure that its 7200 rpm (not 5400). But your graphics card is rather weak compared to your CPU. I'd opt for a 7850 as it's only €50 extra (€250 vs €200) but offers 30% more performance, 40% if you overclock it to 7870 speeds (which is very easy with Overdrive, ATi's built-in OC utility).

---------- Post added at 08:45 ---------- Previous post was at 08:38 ----------

Hello,

New to the forum but not to Arma i am still feeling frustrated regarding the optimization of the game..

First, just to make it clear, i love Arma and own the whole series. This is not a complaining post.

My current config is as below:

http://img1.imagilive.com/1211/specs.png

...

Nice rig there.

Give these tried and tested tweaks a run:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-%28low%29-performance-issues&p=2081466#post2081466

And let us know how you get on.

As for your statement "That's the case for 95% of games/simulators", I guess that OA is in that 5%.

Look at OFP, 10 years on no-one can run the game with everything maxed.

It is just too ambitious a game.

It was pretty much the same story with IL-2 Sturmovik, i.e. it was several years before anyone could play that game with all the settings maxed out AND in a busy AND MP environment.

Don't believe me, look at it's successor (CoD). Same story.

The trick is to be smart, i.e. push hard where you'll get the best return

Not push hard everywhere.

[q-sens 10]

Give these tried and tested tweaks a run:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?85124-ArmA2-OA-%28low%29-performance-issues&p=2081466#post2081466

And let us know how you get on.

Thanks Domokun, i'll give it a try and let you know.

[Leon86 13]

Hello,

New to the forum but not to Arma i am still feeling frustrated regarding the optimization of the game..

First, just to make it clear, i love Arma and own the whole series. This is not a complaining post.

My current config is as below:

http://img1.imagilive.com/1211/specs.png

However, i still have a hard time playing above Medium settings without having a huge fps drop.

On single or small coop and with everything on Medium i can keep a constant 60fps (vsync) with some rare drops.

However as soon as the number of players increases a bit or if i step in a place with a few more houses then i run around 30fps.

I do use VFFPSS as much as i can but still...

This is probably an eternal discussion and here are my 2 questions to BIS.

1) Above the "recommended config", what kind of config would run the game in multiplayer with a constant 60fps anywhere on the map with settings on Very High, disregarding the number of houses and bots around? (just my personal opinion but after 1 year from the release, people with new rigs should be able to run it maxed out. That's the case for 95% of games/simulators). That wonderful config must exist since BIS' Quality Assurance team has to test the game maxed out, am i wrong? What are those testing/developing machine that you use?

2) Is there any plan regarding optimization on Arma 3?

Again, i'm not whining or anything. Just looking for answers/information.

Thank you!

Q-SeNs

Optimisation is magic, performance for freeeeeeeeeee!!!! /sorry, back on topic

well, arma 3 will run better on your rig, the dx11 api allows for better multithreading and there's probably a bunch of other multithreading improvements. Arma 2 will only scale to 3 cores effectively, since you have a sixcore there's a lot of potential.

If you want more performance in A2, an easy way is overclocking. 980's overclock very easily and you can get decent speeds with very safe voltages. Also, if you run at ridiculously heavy gpu settings you might want to keep an eye on vram, 1.5GB is filled quite easily on settings that are otherwise no problem for 2 590's.

When tweaking the settings try to be modest on model detail and viewdistance, they're real cpu killers. keep shadows on high or highest, on normal they're done by the cpu. The rest of the settings are mostly heavy on the gpu's but keep an eye on vram use (monitor it onscreen with msi afterburner maybe, quite easy)

[q-sens 10]

Optimisation is magic, performance for freeeeeeeeeee!!!! /sorry, back on topic

Well i don't get why you have to make irony of it. Optimization is just a common step of any application/game development.

Anyways, thanks for all your advices. I am usually modest with most settings since my objective is to keep a descent and constant frame rate.

I will follow Domokun and your advices and will report back in this thread.

Additionally, it may or not help for Arma performances (at least should help for loading times) but i am receiving a SSD tomorrow.

I will also confirm if any improvement seen thanks to the SSD.

Cheers,

Q-SeNs

[Leon86 13]

Well i don't get why you have to make irony of it. Optimization is just a common step of any application/game development.

Yes, I dont get why people think the arma devs never do this.

an ssd will help with loadtimes, they'll also help if you fly a jet at ground level from town to town, as the data streams in during play.

[gambla 10]

To verify my hardware's utilization running ArmA 2 / OA, i did some measurements. You may like it for comparison, so i just decided

to share it. And it may help you deciding which hardware to buy for A2 / A3.

Hardware: as shown in signature below (CPU idle = 1600 mhz / @turbo mode = 4000 mhz)

Tools: "Core Temp" and "MSI Afterburner".

Benchmark Scenarios: ArmA2 Bench B02 - many AI units, heavy action, explosions, one scene (avg score: 25 FPS) , A2OA Bench E08 - few AI units, less action, different scenes (avg score: 73 FPS)

(note: The benchmarks were run twice in a row, so measurements include some seconds before, after and between, affecting the results)

Video Settings:

Visibilty 1600 (def.)

Brightness 1,0

Gamma 1,0

Quality Preference Very High

Interface Res. 11920x1200

3D Res. 1920x1200

Texture details very high

Video Memory default

Anisitropic Filter normal

Anti Aliasing normal

Terrain details very high

Object details very high

Shadow details very high

HDR Quality normal

Postprocess disabled

Blood low

Results:

My conclusions:

-Underlines known fact that A2 demands powerfull CPU and GPU.

-All four CPU cores are pretty good equally utilized.

-Both benchmarks are primarily very CPU heavy.

-E08 with different scenes, is very CPU and GPU demanding.

-B02 is limited by CPU due many AI units and action, GPU core / GPU mem load is surprisingly low.

Edited June 9, 2013 by gambla

[froggyluv 2136]

-B02 is limited by CPU due many AI units and action, GPU core / GPU mem load is surprisingly low.

Nice testing! So this would explain why I got no increase in B02 when upping my 460 1mb to 680 gtx 2mb -always around 20-23 fps. My cpu is 2500k @4.5 -I wonder what type of cpu speed/cores it takes to actually get that thing to 30 fps+ ? Maybe a 5.0ghz+?

[gambla 10]

Thanks, i couldn't believe this result at first, too. A shame that my GTX570 is not smoking... :) I reckon you need 6 ghz or maybe 8 cores at 4 ghz.

[PuFu 4600]

Thanks, i couldn't believe this result at first, too. A shame that my GTX570 is not smoking... :) I reckon you need 6 ghz or maybe 8 cores at 4 ghz.

I got i7 970 12 threads (6 core) @4ghz, and that B2 doesn't go much higher for me either...my other i7 (see spoiler) doesn't do much better either.

[Leon86 13]

Maybe a 5.0ghz+?

try it! :P

as for the testing, is the main thread jumping from core to core or something? otherwise you'd expect one core permanently near 100%.

[gambla 10]

@Pufu: A measurement with your 6 core would be interesting. I don't know if i've read it before, but isn't A2 only optimized for using 4 cores max ?

I think we would only see an improvement if the A2/A3 engine is more "CPU paralleled" (expression?).

[Leon86 13]

arma 2 doenst really benefit from more than 4 cores.

[bestrangerdx 10]

AMD Bulldozer FX-4170 4.2GHz Quad Core CPU, 8GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM, 2TB Hard Drive Storage Space, ATI Radeon HD 6670 2GB Graphics , high performants gigabyte motherboard.

thanks :)

[Leon86 13]

AMD Bulldozer FX-4170 4.2GHz Quad Core CPU, 8GB of 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM, 2TB Hard Drive Storage Space, ATI Radeon HD 6670 2GB Graphics , high performants gigabyte motherboard.

thanks :)

It will run, but it wont run well. the cpu is not a good choice for arma and the gpu is slow as well.

It's also below predicted system requirements for arma 3. might want to get something faster so you can run that as well in the future.

[gambla 10]

Isn't the bulldozer generation quite new ? And why is it a bad choice ?

[Leon86 13]

bulldozer is slower "per core" than the phenom II, arma doesnt scale much beyond 3 cores.

The FX-4170 is actually 2 modules with 2 "cores", but those cores have to share quite a bit of other essential hardware, making it worse. It's sortof like a dualcore with hyperthreading.

If a 2500K / 3570K setup is too expensive the best AMD alternative is the AMD Phenom II X6 1045T. The "real" cores have decent "per core" performance, and arma 3 will probably use the 6 real cores better than the 8 half cores of bulldozer.

Edited June 14, 2012 by Leon86

[alfa7172 1]

I've noticed with some of the arma 2 videos people post on YouTube they are running dual GPUs in SLI configuration. What is the advantage in that if you can afford it?

[Leon86 13]

advantage of multigpu is you can get up to twice the gpu performance. usefull if you run at very high resolutions, or like high levels of antialiasing.

but you can play arma 2 at reasonable settings with a very modest gpu, arma 2 will be cpu limited often (towns, ai) and there the multigpu doesnt help at all.

[alfa7172 1]

So basically if you want it to look better but not necessarily perform better or faster

[Leon86 13]

pretty much

[ChosenOne1 1]

Hey guys.

I was wondering if my computer could run this. I am running Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro Early 2011 (15 inch). I have a few concerns and I am not too knowledgeable with computers.

My specs:

Intel Core i7-2635QM CPU @ 2.00GHz (quad-core)

4 GB of RAM

DirectX 11.0

AMD Radeon 6490M (on my macbook pro side it says I have 256 MB vram. When I run dxdiag or whatever it is, it says the approx total memory is 1993 MB or 1.9 GB. Like when I go on Can you run it, and I choose BF3 it says I fail since the dedicated video ram is only 256 MB and you need 512 MB vram to run it). I am really confused and don't want to spend $30 if it can't run.

Can I run Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead? I want to try the DayZ mod.

Edited June 16, 2012 by ChosenOne1

[bestrangerdx 10]

Ok guys of the bulldozer won't work, I went back to eBay, looked around, and found this! Will it work??? http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?itemId=221005225723&cmd=VIDESC. Thx guys :)