forteh

Off the top of my head I currently have 2x2GB @ 1600Mhz and 2x2GB @ 1333Mhz. The 1600Mhz is corsair xms3 which I got at the same time as the motherboard/cpu, the 1333Mhz is some spare ram that was left over from a PC upgrade at work and I plugged it in to see if it would work. I have a set of 2x4Gb 1600Mhz sticks at work that I could swap out if I wanted to keep the 8GB ram in my machine at home (or add it to my corsair ram to give 12Gb 1600Mhz). At the moment my BCLK is 192 x 22 multi, I think the ram multiplier is 8 which gives a ram speed of 1536, does this mean that I am effectively overclocking the 1333Mhz sticks? Huge thanks for the info, it has all changed since the days when you used a graphite pencil to link two pins on the chip to unlock the multiplier!

I see what you're saying, clock for clock the i5 is pulling 25-50% more fps than the i3 with the same gpu, assuming that the processors are both clocked to the same speed and the relationship is linear then yes it will add a significant boost. Whether or not the gpu would then become a bottleneck to the cpu I don't know; only one way to find out, I will get A3 installed on my work machine and see how it runs!

@Groove_C Thanks for the advice, particularly on the i5/i7. I'm not really up to speed on the overclocking process these days but I was under the impression that I would need an unlocked K processor to be able to achieve decent increases or do you work around this by playing with ram ratios? (For reference I have a gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H). Because I already have a 4.2ghz cpu I feel that the cost/performance benefit would be less than getting a newer gpu; however I don't know how much difference, if any changing from a HT dual core (the i3) to a true quad core would make in A3. There would be advantages for me to go to the i7 for using solidworks at home but that is another kettle of fish :D There seems to be a fairly substantial range of 660ti cards on ebay around the £80-90 mark which is probably about the upper limit at the moment, I will keep an eye out! Thanks again :) edit: I have an i7 4770k @ 4.2ghz here at work, could always install A3 here, plug in my gtx260 and see how the fps compares.

A question for you guys here regarding hardware upgrades! Having upgraded my machine to play A2 a few years ago I never reckoned that I would be able to run A3 with any playability until a friend recently suggested that I get it and try as he didn't see that much of a speed difference from A2 to A3. So my specs are: - i3-530 @4.2ghz 8Gb DDR3 GTX260 core 216 (overclocked to something close to gtx280 speeds I think) This ran A2 pretty well and I was more than happy enough with the framerates (I'm not chasing the fabled 60fps, I am happy as long as it doesn't dip much below 30-35fps). I bought A3 and installed it and after a bit of research and the standard tweaks I can now run it at 25-50 fps @1680x1050, high textures, the rest as standard and all AA off. I am potentially looking at future hardware upgrade path on an absolute shoe string as I don't have much dispoable income at this present time. I would like to be able to achieve 35-40 fps minimum at 1080p with most settings at high. GPU wise I am hoping to pick up a second hand gtx660 when I can afford it. Currently the 260 is typically running at 90-100% load with most of the vram utilised. The 660 by all accounts performs well in a3, uses less power and is physically smaller than the 260. CPU wise I can only really upgrade to an 1156 quadcore, an i7 would be ideal but if I can't get it running at 4+ ghz would I be starting to lose performance. I'm not sure that A3 really utilises more than the two cores I have now, I understand that the i7 has double the cache which would improve things but would it make up for a deficit in clock cycles? Realistically I can only afford to upgrade one of the two and my thoughts are leaning towards the gpu but would I end up being severly bottlenecked by the i3? Would appreciate any thoughts :) Fairly low fps aside (although I am impressed that is running as well as it is) I am loving the new version, particularly liking the helos, the freetrack setup and warthog hotas make them all the more satisfying to fly!

Turn off the auto minimise function in freetrack settings, I dont know of a fix for the initial crashing of arma2 though, I just restart it as soon as its crashed (with FT running) and its fine :)

Default is T, if youre currentl the team leader you can also select the unit with the appropriate F1,F2,F3 etc key and then selecting 'switch to unit' from the action menu on the left.

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.

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 :)

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 :)

Im not sure as to whether its a good cooler for overclocking, Ive not looked into zalman stuff for ages; always used to be good for passive silent cooling but not so much for overclocking. That said it looks ok, some research with google should give a better idea. Personally Im a fan of thermalright coolers, when I have some spare cash I will be upgrading this cooler I have now (arctic freezer 7 rev.2*) with one and pushing my overclock further, all being well I should be able to reach 4.5ghz without too much hassle :) *The cooler is ok, but the quality just isnt as good as on a thermalright (for example), the base of the cooler was far from flat, Ive spent over an hour lapping it in and its still not perfect - the result is one core is running 6-8*C hotter than the other.

Decent air cooling depends mainly on how much fresh cool air you can get into the case and how much hot air you can exhaust, no good spending £40-50 on a decent cooler and fan if the case is like an oven inside (unless you plan on taking the side of the case off). To get up to 3.6ghz I wouldnt imagine you should need a huge cooler, sensible use of, along the lines of a titan fenrir will stop you getting any heat problems. My core i3 is overclocked from 2.93 to 4ghz using a £15 cooler and doesnt go past 62*C full load under prime95 :)

For me the massive fps boost was a faster processor, switching from an elderly A64x2@2.55ghz to an i3 530@4.00ghz doubled my fps and allowed me to increase all settings. Get your processor overclocked to 3.6ghz or so and you should see a healthy increase, especially at the greater viewdistances.

Using the 197.13 drivers on my GTX260 216 without any problems, running winxp though.

Youre going to be bottlenecked by both the cpu and gpu, unfortunately I dont think youre going to get much more fps without upgrading both. If you get a better gpu you will be able to increase the details (but not the view distance) but you will get similar fps. If you upgrade the cpu to a very fast dual core then your gpu will likely be bottlenecking. My old system was A64x2 4400 @2.55ghz, 9600gt and 3gig ram, I got 24fps and 9fps in benchmarks 1 and 2 respectively on vanilla arma2 1.05. I upgraded to a gtx260 216 and the fps only went up by 2 or 3 (but with an increase in graphical quality) because the cpu was bottlenecking. I replaced the A64x2 with a core i3 530 @4ghz and its now giving 50fps in benchmark 1 and 24 in benchmark 2. To be brutally honest you need to replace all the major components to properly run arma2 :( My old rig was more powerful than yours now and I couldnt squeeze any more fps out of it, the sp campaign was playable but some parts slowed right down to less than 15 fps.

It seems to make use of it on my hyperthreading dual core i3 530, I know some of the i7s had problems with HT.

Not sure if its relevant.... When playing as a sniper in a ghillie suit I found that moving anything at all resulted in me being spotted by a nearby patrol, laying stock still for 10 minutes and they never saw me despite standing less than 10m away and looking in my direction :) I wasnt in heavy grass, laying next to a bush and whilst perfectly visible to the human eye I was invisible to AI.

ACE doesnt contain any proper missions or campaigns, its mainly a game mechanics mod, it does add a load of additional units and weapons. Ive restarted harvest red with ACE and it all seems to be working ok, I have read that its quite liable to have complications though. I think ACE is compatible with most campaigns :)

Ive upgraded to an i3 530 @4ghz and its doubled my fps, its a multithreaded dual core and Im pretty sure arma runs on all 4cores (2 logical, 2 virtual); from reading on here quad cores are largely redundant in A2. Thats 14fps in a benchmark test with alot of AI and lighting affects (its a flyover of a nightime battle), its not really indicative of real gameplay. I get 11-14fps in bench2 (depending on mods installed) and 45-50 in bench1. In my experience, arma2 isnt really dependant on super fast framerates in order to be playable, anything above 25fps feels buttery smooth on my machine. On my old system I would get between 15 and 25fps on the single player campaign - it was just about playable, fortunately the fps dips occured when there was no enemy :D

I dont think you can directly control the UAV in arma2, I think that functionality is being added into the operation arrowhead expansion though. You can move the flightpath around though so you can look at a specific area. Once youve gone into the UAV terminal, open the map and you should be able to click on an area of the map and the blue UAV waypoints should move to that location. IIRC on razor2 its a U shaped flightpath. It is possible to fire hellfires from the UAV, Im not sure how to target with it properly though :o

Thats helped as a work around, installed mandos aswell and thats made things 1000% better with and without ACE :) Just need to properly use the hydras now:o

I can cycle the weapons using CTRL+F but the weapon selection never changes in the top right corner of the HUD, that always reads as hydras. When I change weapons the gunner reports (via the orange text) that he's switched between the cannon and AIM9L but not the hellfire or hydra. The gunner then procedes to only use cannon or AIM9L. Whether I use TAB or the #2 menu he just wont target, even if he can plainly see the target 500m away. The weapon cycling works properly if I select manual fire, cant really concentrate on flying and targetting at the same time though :(

Not sure if this has been covered in this thread, did a search but didnt find any results.... When flying the AH64 with ACE/ACE_X/ACE_SM/ACE_PLA I cant get the AI gunner to target nor select weapons properly. What am I doing wrong? :D Mainly noticed during the EW campaign (works fine without ACE) and playing in the armory. Is there a work around? Beers in advance :cheers:

Get freetrack, cost me £2.50 for a ps2 eyetoy, £4 quid for the IR emmitters, resistor and ptc fuse from farnell and a spare USB lead to power it. Works a treat and cost next to nothing :) Once youre used to it arma2 is so much more immersive, especially when driving/flying. Ive got it setup for freelook, leaning and zooming :)

I had to upgrade my cpu/ram/mobo/graphics card to play this game :D You should be able to play with moderate frame rates with low to mid settings. Have you used the winxp mouse accerlation fix? Mines disabled through the logitech drivers. Could do with an extra gig of ram aswell, IIRC arma uses about 1.5gig max so that isnt leaving you much headroom for OS and background stuff.

I know how to issue move orders like that, I was meaning actually a chain of move orders/waypoints/path that I want him to follow. I dont think arma2 supports realtime waypoints like that, or at least Ive not found it yet. If I give a move order form A -> B the units will travel as the crow flies (depending on combat status) but if I want them to travel from A -> C via B I cant do it without issuing a seperate move order at each destination.