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

[bangtail 0]

You know right now I actually bumped my playing FPS to a pretty good amount. I recently realized that my FPS now lowers dramatically mostly when recording, and it doesn't go much about 22-25. So it's like something is limiting fraps specifically.

A friend told me it's my CPU speed, which is 2.83 GHz. Is that true? If I overclock to 3.6-4.0 GHz, would it increase my FPS?

I'm also getting similar problems in Crysis. Playing FPS is good, sometimes great, but the recording is just about as low.

I think this has been answered for you before but at any rate, it will help but I wouldn't expect anything earth shattering.

Definitely a few extra FPS :)

The latest version of FRAPS has cached recording IIRC (v3.1.0) which will lower the CPU/HDD usage whilst recording (which should help performance).

It essentially records up to 30 seconds without writing to the disk.

Edited April 6, 2010 by BangTail

[Litos 10]

Yeah I know it's been answered but I wanted to re-ask again for confirmation, it's the last thing I can really upgrade that will be of any significance I think, as right now my main problem is the recording FPS, while playing FPS is generally fixed.

SeaVee - I have to take out the motherboard to put in that case? Ah, so that's what that Artic Freezer review was about, some guy was saying how glad he was that fan didn't need him to take it out. Thankfully however my case has a back panel that I can open, so if there's anything I need to put behind the motherboard I can do it easily...

Do you think the Zalman is better than this? It seems good too, don't know if it's as good, but definitely cheaper, and also someone mentioned having it earlier in this thread. This is the one I said that doesn't require you to take out your motherboard, according to that review.

EDIT: Hmm, according to this article overclocking doesn't actually do anything, and one way I could actually increase my FPS is to buy a Q9650... which is 3.0 GHz. Now you think you can bump your speed dramatically over that even with my CPU, using overclocking, but apparently that doesn't actually increase your speed. In fact I'm not even quite sure what it does... Was talking to an expert friend about this earlier, he showed me the article.

So basically, I've wasted 310 dollars on a CPU and a hard drive while all I had to do was spent 20 extra dollars to get a $330 Q9650 and be off with it.

Of course I couldn't have seen that coming back then, but still pretty stupid. I guess I'm stuck with this now.

Fail

Edited April 6, 2010 by Litos

[Leon86 13]

Yeah I know it's been answered but I wanted to re-ask again for confirmation, it's the last thing I can really upgrade that will be of any significance I think, as right now my main problem is the recording FPS, while playing FPS is generally fixed.

SeaVee - I have to take out the motherboard to put in that case? Ah, so that's what that Artic Freezer review was about, some guy was saying how glad he was that fan didn't need him to take it out. Thankfully however my case has a back panel that I can open, so if there's anything I need to put behind the motherboard I can do it easily...

Do you think the Zalman is better than this? It seems good too, don't know if it's as good, but definitely cheaper, and also someone mentioned having it earlier in this thread. This is the one I said that doesn't require you to take out your motherboard, according to that review.

EDIT: Hmm, according to this article overclocking doesn't actually do anything, and one way I could actually increase my FPS is to buy a Q9650... which is 3.0 GHz. Now you think you can bump your speed dramatically over that even with my CPU, using overclocking, but apparently that doesn't actually increase your speed. In fact I'm not even quite sure what it does... Was talking to an expert friend about this earlier, he showed me the article.

So basically, I've wasted 310 dollars on a CPU and a hard drive while all I had to do was spent 20 extra dollars to get a $330 Q9650 and be off with it.

Of course I couldn't have seen that coming back then, but still pretty stupid. I guess I'm stuck with this now.

Fail

If you actually read the article you see performance does go up with clockspeed, only lifespan becomes shorter, so the total calculations of the cpu over a lifetime becomes shorter. A Q9650 is a waste of money, the Q9550 is 2.83 Ghz already, why pay for a 5% increase in speed if you can achieve a 20% increase in speed by just putting your fsb on 400 mhz and running at 3400.

edit: and spending $300+ on a s775 processor is pretty stupid, an i5-750 is way faster and cheaper than the Q9650. Sure, the motherboard and ram cost money as well but you can always sell the old mobo, cpu and ram.

Edited April 6, 2010 by Leon86

[forteh 11]

EDIT: Hmm, according to this article overclocking doesn't actually do anything, and one way I could actually increase my FPS is to buy a Q9650... which is 3.0 GHz. Now you think you can bump your speed dramatically over that even with my CPU, using overclocking, but apparently that doesn't actually increase your speed. In fact I'm not even quite sure what it does... Was talking to an expert friend about this earlier, he showed me the article.

So basically, I've wasted 310 dollars on a CPU and a hard drive while all I had to do was spent 20 extra dollars to get a $330 Q9650 and be off with it.

Of course I couldn't have seen that coming back then, but still pretty stupid. I guess I'm stuck with this now.

Fail

If overclocking didnt make a difference we would all be using 1ghz k7 athlon thunderbird cores :D

For SETI its a pointless exercise, for gaming the rewards can be huge, especially in a very cpu bound game like arma2 :)

[Leon86 13]

Litos, have you tried recording to a ramdisk? you can also improve framerates by reducing the interface resolution (1280x720 is half the pixels of 1920x1080), that will massively reduce the fraps workload.

You can also try playclaw, should do the same as fraps, some people say it's not as heavy on the system.

If you're looking for a cooler with a good price/performance it's hard to beat the scythe mugen 2, pretty large but relatively cheap and very effective. It's mounted with a backplate so you'll have to lift your motherboard out unless you have a hole in your case where the motherboard is mounted.

If you start overclocking I think 3.6 Ghz would be achieved relatively easily (only a higher fsb and vcore needed) 4 Ghz is possible but can be tricky because of the high fsb.

[Litos 10]

What IS SETI? I wasn't sure what he kept going on about being SETI in that article.

Leon, how do I record to a ramdisk? Oh and yeah, I did try out recording at 1280x720 - it did increase my FPS, actually, to maybe about 27 or so, but again I was standing on the coast of a river overlooking it and on the other side there were some islands and some trees so it wasn't that much to render, I think once I turned around and ran back into the forest it dropped to maybe 16-19 fps (but I can slightly adjust that with some setting changes I guess).

I've been told that unless you increase the voltages and timing of your processor, you wouldn't really get any speed increase, and if you try doing that it will likely render my CPU extremely unstable and will fry it. So he said if I simply put my CPU to 3.6 GHz or so, it really wouldn't do much for me and barely increase my FPS and I'll only waste my money on a heatsink.

So I'm completely confused, I was myself surprised when he said that (then why the hell does anyone overclock?), but I listen to everyone and take everyone's suggestions into account, which is why I'm asking if maybe you guys know what led him to say that.

[jambi 10]

What IS SETI? I wasn't sure what he kept going on about being SETI in that article.

Leon, how do I record to a ramdisk? Oh and yeah, I did try out recording at 1280x720 - it did increase my FPS, actually, to maybe about 27 or so, but again I was standing on the coast of a river overlooking it and on the other side there were some islands and some trees so it wasn't that much to render, I think once I turned around and ran back into the forest it dropped to maybe 16-19 fps (but I can slightly adjust that with some setting changes I guess).

I've been told that unless you increase the voltages and timing of your processor, you wouldn't really get any speed increase, and if you try doing that it will likely render my CPU extremely unstable and will fry it. So he said if I simply put my CPU to 3.6 GHz or so, it really wouldn't do much for me and barely increase my FPS and I'll only waste my money on a heatsink.

So I'm completely confused, I was myself surprised when he said that (then why the hell does anyone overclock?), but I listen to everyone and take everyone's suggestions into account, which is why I'm asking if maybe you guys know what led him to say that.

The amount of performance boost depends on the amount of your overclock obviously. Also the conditions of the rest of your set up. Over-clocking is not dangerous if you know what you are doing. I have overclocked my past 3 systems by at least 30% and never had any issues.

With a game like ARMA2 those "few" fps are quite a big deal.

[Leon86 13]

What IS SETI? I wasn't sure what he kept going on about being SETI in that article.

Leon, how do I record to a ramdisk? Oh and yeah, I did try out recording at 1280x720 - it did increase my FPS, actually, to maybe about 27 or so, but again I was standing on the coast of a river overlooking it and on the other side there were some islands and some trees so it wasn't that much to render, I think once I turned around and ran back into the forest it dropped to maybe 16-19 fps (but I can slightly adjust that with some setting changes I guess).

I've been told that unless you increase the voltages and timing of your processor, you wouldn't really get any speed increase, and if you try doing that it will likely render my CPU extremely unstable and will fry it. So he said if I simply put my CPU to 3.6 GHz or so, it really wouldn't do much for me and barely increase my FPS and I'll only waste my money on a heatsink.

So I'm completely confused, I was myself surprised when he said that (then why the hell does anyone overclock?), but I listen to everyone and take everyone's suggestions into account, which is why I'm asking if maybe you guys know what led him to say that.

You can run a ramdisk program, likedataram to create a ram partition (it looks like a harddisk in "my computer") then you can just put the fraps output on the ramdisk, just make sure your movies dont get too big too fast.

Overclocking your cpu means it runs at a faster speed, so if your cpu is the limiting factor now overclocking will improve your fps. Overclocking isn't going to fry your cpu if you do it sensibly, take small steps in clockspeed, test for stabilty, increase speed again etc.

first step to do when overclocking is updating your bios to the last version (usually they fix bugs etc.) The next step is putting EVERY setting in your bios manually to it's specified default value, dont leave anything on auto! This way you know you're not putting a high voltage on motherboard parts while it's not needed, some motherboards try to be "smart" on auto.

Next comes a dull increasing of fsb, putting it from 333 to 366 or something, you then run at 366x8.5=3.1 Ghz. Then you can use occt or prime95 to see if your system is still stable, occt can also read temps, see if they're not to high, increas speed again, etc, etc. If an error occurs you can see if you can make your system stable again with a slight incraese in vcore and see if that helps.

It will increase performance, it'll just take a lot of time to run the stability programs, change settings, run again etc.

[forteh 11]

I've been told that unless you increase the voltages and timing of your processor, you wouldn't really get any speed increase, and if you try doing that it will likely render my CPU extremely unstable and will fry it. So he said if I simply put my CPU to 3.6 GHz or so, it really wouldn't do much for me and barely increase my FPS and I'll only waste my money on a heatsink.

So I'm completely confused, I was myself surprised when he said that (then why the hell does anyone overclock?), but I listen to everyone and take everyone's suggestions into account, which is why I'm asking if maybe you guys know what led him to say that.

Just run a couple of benchmarks for you: -

Corei3 530 @2.93Ghz (default)

Benchmark1 38 fps

Benchmark2 13 fps

Corei3 530 @4.05Ghz (overclocked)

Benchmark1 47 fps

Benchmark2 19 fps

Both of the above were using vanilla arma2 1.05 with the following settings: -

Resolution 1600x1200 (render and interface size)

Texture size = high

Texture memory = high

AF = normal

FSAA = disabled

Terrain detail = high

Object detail = high

Shadow detail = very high

Post process = disabled

View distance = 2745

I did a couple of tests @4.05ghz with higher view distance set to 4940 to test it a bit harder, benchmark1 was 37 fps and benchmark2 was 16 fps.

Thats a 20% increase on benchmark1 and 32% on banchmark2!

My cpu is rock solid at 4.05ghz (apparantly the i3 will clock over 4.5ghz on air!) and the only increase in core voltage is 0.05v to keep it stable. Youre only going to damage your cpu if you put too much voltage through it and dont keep it cool - in a game like arma2 cpu overclocking is a win win situation :)

[Litos 10]

Thanks a lot Forte. I've been working on my plane video right now - and so far I've gotten pretty far, in fact, all of those view distance scenes are past me now. Now it's the combat scenes - and when I make a battle on the ground, my FPS, both play and record are below 10. I even used a thing called gameboost to turn off unnecessary processes, disabled my 2nd monitor, and play on 1280x720 resolution both interface and 3d.

That's going to be a big problem and I'll try to find ways to film it anyway, so far I've done a good job, but this is a huge challenge. Maybe overclocking will work but that will take a very long time and lots of tries and of course for the fan to actually get here etc, and I want to finish this video by the end of next weekend.

I'll keep trying for now, I guess if there's absolutely no way I can film my scenes (some I film by filming in slow motion and then speeding up in Vegas, etc), then I'll look back to overclocking again, I guess, since that'll be my only option.

But until I finish this video I will never be at rest... Thanks for all the help so far everyone.

Edit: here's some stills from the video :p 1 - 2 - 3

Edited April 7, 2010 by Litos

[Tisman 10]

Hi again everyone, i' m now very close to ordering the parts of my future computer and there are still 2 questions that are bugging me:

About the hard drive, i chose to go with one 1terra WD black caviar but there are 2 versions avalaible: the "normal" version with 32 mo cache a another version using Sata 6 Gbps with 64 mo cache. I understand that if i buy the Sata6gpbs version the motherboard that i chose (Asus p6t deluxe v2) won' t make use of the sata 6gpbs speed but would i still be able to connect it to the motherboard and use it as if it was the "normal" version so that when i will buy another motherboard maybe 2 years later i would be able to use the added speed or would it simply be incompatible?

And my second question, as i mentioned earlier i used this link http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/2000_gaming_pc_buyers_guide_december_2009?page=0%2C1 as a reference point for which case, optical drive, alimention etc to get.

So as i was looking for the samsung SH-S223 on the site from wich i plan to order from, i realised that there were actually several versions: S223L, S223C, S223L (B) and S223 B.

Anybody know which one i should get? Thanks in advance.

[SeaVee 10]

What IS SETI? I wasn't sure what he kept going on about being SETI in that article.

SETI - Search for Extra Terrestial Life - Here ya go:

http://tinyurl.com/y9bq3do

Re overclocking

i-7 920 specific but its an overclocking video I found on youtube from HardOCP and which taught me how to get my rig to 3.8GHZ - in about 10 minutes time and its been rock solid stable for over 3 months now:

On CPU intensive game like Arma2 OC can make a HUGE difference.

Edited April 7, 2010 by SeaVee

[Leon86 13]

Hi again everyone, i' m now very close to ordering the parts of my future computer and there are still 2 questions that are bugging me:

About the hard drive, i chose to go with one 1terra WD black caviar but there are 2 versions avalaible: the "normal" version with 32 mo cache a another version using Sata 6 Gbps with 64 mo cache. I understand that if i buy the Sata6gpbs version the motherboard that i chose (Asus p6t deluxe v2) won' t make use of the sata 6gpbs speed but would i still be able to connect it to the motherboard and use it as if it was the "normal" version so that when i will buy another motherboard maybe 2 years later i would be able to use the added speed or would it simply be incompatible?

And my second question, as i mentioned earlier i used this link http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/2000_gaming_pc_buyers_guide_december_2009?page=0%2C1 as a reference point for which case, optical drive, alimention etc to get.

So as i was looking for the samsung SH-S223 on the site from wich i plan to order from, i realised that there were actually several versions: S223L, S223C, S223L (B) and S223 B.

Anybody know which one i should get? Thanks in advance.

For optical drives it doesn't really matter what you get, games might install faster on a fast optical drive but it's not used in-game.

If you really want the sata-600 harddisk you can choose another motherboard (one that has sata-600) there are plenty, it wil also run well on sata-300 (aka sata2) ports, only with a slightly lower top speed.

$300 is a lot of money for a harddisk, but it's well built and really large. Haven't seen any benchmarks but I think a 1.5TB 7200rpm drive gives more bang/buck

edit: new velociraptor review A bit loud and expensive per GB, but good performance for a non ssd.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Leon86

[Alex72 1]

So ive seen that the 5870 ATI cost about the same as the Nvidia 470 (fermi?). I also seen unofficial benchies showing the 5870 beating it - now they are indeed unofficial so i dont trust them very much.

However as always with pc parts - decisions decisions decisions... And i have the 5870 ordered already. Cancel and change is the question. Since the GTX275 pushes the graphics in ARMA2 pretty nicely @ high im sure the 470 will do it even better. But better than the 5870?

Maybe this choice sounds stupid and trivial, but you (I) always want the one with more bang - even if its just a couple of FPS (at least when they cost the same). :)

[Leon86 13]

Official benches are made by nvidia and ati, you certainly can't trust those. The 5870 will beat the 470 in everything but compute/gpgpu stuff. Haven't seen any real benchmark suggesting otherwise.

[WillaCHilla 10]

Well, after longer testing, a 5870 can run the game very well with the typical tweaks. I have around 30-40 FPS with the settings which you can see in my sig. Anyways, you must have a CPU accordingly, so you wont have a bottleneck with it (I think in the next weeks my CPU will be OCed :cool:).

For the 470 you have to think about, if you are going to OC it in the future. If you want to do it, be sure you have a sufficient cooling for it. I checked some tests- it is not so loud and doesnt have so much power consumption as the 480GTX, but thats the situation under normal conditions.

IMO, it is the best to wait a bit and to look if the 5000-series is going cheaper after the 400-series is available in most shops.

For me, I am not a fanboy of any brand (my first ATI), but in december last year it was a bit easier to decide which VGA you buy ;) .

[Alex72 1]

Thanks guys. Since i have the GTX275 i guess i can hold back a little bit and see if prices go down. Only thing is the longer you wait the older the gear gets... :)

[Tisman 10]

Here is the black caviar 1TB sata 300: http://www.pixmania.com/fr/fr/2600756/art/western-digital/disque-dur-caviar-black-w.html

And here is the black caviar 1TB sata 600: http://www.pixmania.com/fr/fr/5041462/art/western-digital/disque-dur-3-5-caviar-bla.html

My question was even if my motherboard doesn't make use of the added speed of the sata600 hundred version, would i still be able to connect it to a normal sata300 port and use it as if it was the 300 version? Judging by your answer

it wil also run well on sata-300 (aka sata2) ports, only with a slightly lower top speed.

i believe that i can, right?

The reason i'm asking that is because the price difference is very small so i thought that i might as well already go with the sata600 drive.

[Leon86 13]

My question was even if my motherboard doesn't make use of the added speed of the sata600 hundred version, would i still be able to connect it to a normal sata300 port and use it as if it was the 300 version? Judging by your answer

i believe that i can, right?

seagate site says:

The SATA 6Gb/s interface enables the use of the industry‘s newest and fastest hard drive controllers while providing backward compatibility to legacy SATA 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s systems.

edit, wait, wd....

Well, wikipedia says that the sata 600 interface is fully backward compatible with sata 300 and sata 150. Pretty stupid WD doesn't put the backward compatibility on their site, just to reassure people.

Edited April 7, 2010 by Leon86

[Tisman 10]

Ok, so i' ll go for the SATA 600 version.

Thanks again Leon86.

[bangtail 0]

The 5870 will beat the 470 in everything but compute/gpgpu stuff. Haven't seen any real benchmark suggesting otherwise.

The 5xxx series is no slouch with regards to compute/GPGPU applications.

There are no Nvidia 4xx results here but the 5870 is showing very well (even against multi GPU Nvidia cards)

*NB : There are no multi GPU 5xxx results as at the time of publication. Apparently, there was a driver problem concerning multiple 5xxx GPUs and linux.

The only real 'advantages' of an Nvidia GPU at this point are PhysX/3D gaming, neither of which interest me.

Further, if you have a spare Nvidia card lying around, you can have PhysX while using an ATI card (if you can be bothered with the hack).

---------- Post added at 12:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 PM ----------

So ive seen that the 5870 ATI cost about the same as the Nvidia 470 (fermi?). I also seen unofficial benchies showing the 5870 beating it - now they are indeed unofficial so i dont trust them very much.

However as always with pc parts - decisions decisions decisions... And i have the 5870 ordered already. Cancel and change is the question. Since the GTX275 pushes the graphics in ARMA2 pretty nicely @ high im sure the 470 will do it even better. But better than the 5870?

Maybe this choice sounds stupid and trivial, but you (I) always want the one with more bang - even if its just a couple of FPS (at least when they cost the same). :)

I'd stay away from Nvida at this point. Their new cards are distinctly unimpressive (unless your microwave is broken).

There won't be any widespread availability before May 1st anyway.

Edited April 7, 2010 by BangTail

[Litos 10]

SETI - Search for Extra Terrestial Life - Here ya go:

http://tinyurl.com/y9bq3do

Re overclocking

i-7 920 specific but its an overclocking video I found on youtube from HardOCP and which taught me how to get my rig to 3.8GHZ - in about 10 minutes time and its been rock solid stable for over 3 months now:

On CPU intensive game like Arma2 OC can make a HUGE difference.

Yeah I did google it and I found that but I didn't understand what it had to do with computers and overclocking.

And also my friend says that the reason overclocking helps you so much is because you're using i5s/i7s - apparently for my quad core it won't do as much

I'm still not sure why he's saying that though.

[forteh 11]

Yeah I did google it and I found that but I didn't understand what it had to do with computers and overclocking.

And also my friend says that the reason overclocking helps you so much is because you're using i5s/i7s - apparently for my quad core it won't do as much

I'm still not sure why he's saying that though.

Some cpus will overclock better than others, however the intel core2 chips (duals and quads) are generally very good at overclocking, I cant see how a significant increase in clock speed cant help. I would guess that your friend either doesnt know what hes talking about regarding overclocking or doesnt have a clue about pc hardware for gaming.

My cpu is an i3, completely different to the i5 and i7 - still gains healthy increases through overclocking.

[bangtail 0]

I made an interesting discovery this evening. On a whim, I removed the -cpucount switch and with the 6 core 980x, the usual stuttering was non existent.

I tried removing the switch on a 930 machine I have and the stuttering was evident.

Seems the Hexcore processors do not suffer from the same affliction as the quad core i7s.

Just a note for those who might be interested :)

Edited April 8, 2010 by BangTail

[Whoatherefatty 10]

^ I want to go play Arma at your house.... badly.