Bravo_Two_Zeroq

To update your knowledge, that is in fact incorrect. Chernarus was largely inspired (read:95%) on a province in the Czech Repulibic while the names are from Yugoslavia I believe, check for example this area and see if you can find Chernagorsk and Elektro. This is the actual area in 3D, forget about anything to the south or east of the river and you have Chernarus including all hills, towns, castles and vegetation: Or a perspective from Chernagorsk facing Elektro in Google Earth: https://www.google.com/maps/place/3D+spol.+s+r.+o./@50.6666121,14.0574934,525a,35y,90h,78.26t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x47099cc2c32da209:0xc616e408d32802de Utes is still unknown, probably this is one of the few imaginary islands in Arma. Takistan is, unsurprisingly, in the middle of Afghanistan, South-West of the Yakawlang district, North of Helmud. An overlay of the Arma map and the region is here: http://s10.postimg.org/j2auixma1/takistan_map_GE.jpg (193 kB) . Zargabad is largely inspired on Samarkand city including terrain, roads and rivers (and of course layout of entire town from mosque to airport) click here for Google maps. Although BIS doesn't like to put the proper names on the actual places for obvious reasons, it is apperantly much easier to reuse existing terrain with satellite data and get the realism of real-world terrain then to try to mimic an actual location.

Although I greatly appreciate the work and the initiative behind Six, I'm afraid this statement is ill-argumentated and one of the common misconceptions in the field of usability engineering. I don't feel like going into this matter now and here since a) it's beautiful weather b) I don't know you would care and c) nobody ever won an argument over the internet, but if you're interested you're always welcome to search for "usability analysis", "usability engineering" or "cognitive modelling". Just ask yourself this question: how do you think that Microsoft, Google or Apple design their UI and how much money do you think they spent on this (read: research and development time)? I'm not expecting a community initiative like Six has the resources (being time and/or knowledge) to develop the UI as a large software company would do, and I'm not saying the design is bad either, but there is room for improvement and there is more to it than just being a subjective matter of individuals.

@metsrule80 Laptop should be sufficient to play, but don't expect high settings or high frame rates. @Billz4money That will not work for Arma, you lack a graphics card so only the internal GPU can be used of the i7-3770.

Why does a laptop makes sense for college?

It's not a problem BIS can solve as it has to do with rules and regulations from the government. Without that screen, no website probably. So I guess Arma has always had the largest fan base of 100+ year old gamers.

GT 650M? No. Don't expect any laptop configuration to run Arma 3 fluently. It's doable to play Arma 3, but I wouldn't hope for more being either high settings or 60 fps.

Wow, how do you run that 5760*1080p resolution with a HD7770? Ultra-low settings and hope for 25 fps? Well, if you find it playable that's good for you of course, but I'm quite surprised as the HD7770 was never ment for gaming on 3 Full-HD screens.

Mmm... I was actually joking a tiny bit as 1980*1080 doesn't exist as resolution, you made a small typo as you meant 1920*1080 pixels (Full HD), hence the smiley :P. Lowering your resolution does work as the job for the graphic card becomes easier and as long as you stick to an aspect ratio of 16:9 which is the native ratio of your monitor, the image quality shouldn't be distorted too much, although you do lose detail of course in the image. I'm flabbergasted however that your GeForce GTX 560 Ti would have a low performance of 20 FPS in multiplayer, with everything on low. I have a Radeon HD 4890 (older and slower than your GTX 560 Ti) and run the game at 30 frames per second in multiplayer with every setting on high, even 4x AA (which wasn't even possible in Arma 2 for me). In singleplayer I get about the same frame rate, so hardly any difference for me between singleplayer and multiplayer. As you have MSI Afterburner, perhaps have a look at GPU load as well while playing the game... it would be shocking if the GTX 560 Ti would deliver 20 FPS with low settings while having a full load of 100%.

@Juutas It's your resolution of 1980*1080 pixels which is not yet properly supported :P. I think you're in the same situation as Sneakson where the processor might limit performance which becomes apparent in multiplayer sessions. If you would open task manager and look for your CPU load during an online session, you might get a more definitive answer there. Other than that, also consider that it's still Alpha and performance optimizations still have to take place. Your GTX 560 Ti should be able to give a higher frame rate, which indicates to me that something is limiting its performance. @Sneakson It's a bit early for me to say how much FPS exactly will A or B give, since nobody has properly benchmarked the game yet. A GTX 560 Ti Hawk is not a terrible gaming card, should offer more than decent performance. I myself consider 30 fps for Arma good enough although it has less to do with frame rates and more to do with frame times, which is recently becoming a hot issue (search for "frame times" and "techreport" if you want to have more background info on this). But anyway, a performance-value wise good investment for a new graphics card would atm be something around a GeForce GTX 650 Ti to a GeForce GTX 660 Ti, but you're coming from the GTX 560 Ti meaning there is not so much difference. In fact, the GTX 650 Ti is about as fast as your GTX 560 Ti, while the GTX 660 Ti does offer a more substantial improvement of roughly 30-60% depending on the game but is also quite more expensive. I suspect however that your processor may already be limiting the game as the architecture and design are already quite old. PCgamershardware did some processor testing of Arma 2, and if the results are anything to go by for Arma 3, it may be worthwhile to invest in a new processor. Unfortunately that also means new main board and new memory. With the graph below keep in mind that the top processor there, is currently being outperformed by mid-range processors such as the Intel Core i5 3570K. To see if it is a good choice for you, open "task manager" and look for "performance" of CPU. If the processor load is constantly high (almost 100%) and peaking while playing Arma 3, a processor upgrade is worth it.

Not worth it Lorenzo, the increase in frame rate would be marginal compared to your costs. Either invest in a substantial improvement, or wait longer. There is not much difference between HD 7770 and GTX 650 Ti and as for a processor upgrade, you would be looking at a new mainboard and processor which will also not yield absolutely shocking results, only marginal at best. If you do want to upgrade your system, a SSD is probably the best investment right now if you don't have one yet, while the other options would cost somewhere between $100-$250 for hardly noticeable differences.

My reply might have been a bit short, but for a comparison you can look here and here to get a rough idea of how it performs. When you compare it with the basic GPU found in modern Intel processors, it looks like this: For a gaming rig specialized for Arma with the goal of achieving higher settings with decent framerates I would think of anything around a GeForce GTX 650 Ti or faster (or AMD Radeon HD 7770). With slower graphic cards playing Arma 3 is still possible, although you will have to settle down on expectations. The Core i5 3330 is a decent quad core processor for a budget, motherboard doesn't matter as long as it has the features you like and 8 GB DDR3 is more than sufficient. The 600 watt power supply is a bit overkill however, for a GT 630 about 400 watt would be enough and for a GTX 650 Ti around 450-500 watt is sufficient, although I reckon the supply comes with the ATX case and having more power will not hurt your system (only lowers efficiency a bit).

Forget high settings with GeForce GT 630, it's bad.

System is unfortunately unbalanced. Processor is chosen 'too fast' (read: too expensive) to impress customers along with 16 GB DDR3 which are often specifications unknowing customers look at, while graphics card shouldn't be called graphics card in the first place (my AMD Radeon HD 4890 released in 2010 is faster which dates multiple generations back). Having said this, assembled systems are hard to beat in price if you also look at the additional software provided and services (fully installed and assembled system), although there are few balanced systems out there as it would mean turning down on processor and memory. If you invest into a GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost you've got a decent graphics card in a decent system, although it probably also requires a new power supply. On a budget I would recommend something more like this, should be available in assembled state for around 750 pounds: [table] [tr] [td]Amount[/td] [td]Product[/td] [td]Price[/td] [td]Subtotal[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Antec Three Hundred Two[/td] [td]£55.49[/td] [td]£55.49[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]ASRock Z77 Extreme4[/td] [td]£98.74[/td] [td]£98.74[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Cooler Master Hyper 412S[/td] [td]£25.81[/td] [td]£25.81[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]EVGA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB[/td] [td]£137.82[/td] [td]£137.82[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Intel Core i5 3570K[/td] [td]£164.00[/td] [td]£164.00[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Kingston ValueRam 8GB DDR3-1600 CL11[/td] [td]£43.84[/td] [td]£43.84[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]LG GH24NS95[/td] [td]£14.00[/td] [td]£14.00[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB[/td] [td]£64.33[/td] [td]£64.33[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]XFX Pro Series 550W Core Edition[/td] [td]£44.59[/td] [td]£44.59[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]9 products[/td] [td]Import as your own wish list[/td] [td]Total[/td] [td]£648.62[/td] [/tr] [/table]

I was trying to highlight the same key point ;-). Atm mods can be perfectly downloaded from one location, so who is talking about stressing game servers? One general server with 1 or 2 mirrors does the job (already) fine. But anyway, I hope something like an integrated Six Updater becomes a reality someday, it will surely help a lot of new players. When I first played Arma, I put it away after 2 days because I couldn't find decent servers. It was only after I learned about Armaholic that I managed to find and install all mods.

@FCK1T A budget of 2000 pounds ain't enough for a complete system to run Arma 3 on Ultra settings and view distance you describe. You would have to double or triple your budget at the very least before you can think of an Intel i7 3930K processor and Nvidia GTX Titan graphics card. However, if you settle for great performance with perhaps sometimes reducing object view distance and/or AA, a configuration with GTX 680 SLI is probably as best as it can get at this moment. Increasing the amount of graphic cards beyond two for triple- or quad-SLI is not only more expensive, but can even become slower than SLI/CrossfireX due to bad support. I would go for something like this, for which I go with an arguable choice for monitors. You can choose anything you prefer and depending on specific needs (if you edit photo's you might prefer monitors with an IPS screen for example), but I've selected a 29-inch monitor IPS at this moment with a resolution of 2560*1080 pixels. That basically means that the height is not increased, but instead of the 16:9 aspect ratio you get with Full HD, this screen has an aspect ratio of 21:9. Cinema screens have the same aspect ratio, as this ratio has been determined to be as close to equal to the natural aspect ratio we humans can perceive with our eyes. For the immersion it should be great and you can watch cinema movies without black borders (you'll have to adjust position of subtitles in movies however), but it's a bit of a controversy because for slightly more money you can also get 2560*1440 pixels which gives more vertical work space. Also, a normal 24" monitor with a Full HD resolution is also a good choice. As for the other peripherals, a mouse, speakers, headset and keyboard is up to your own preference, next to the CPU-cooler (Cooler Master Hyper 412S is a good all-rounder, but you can either go more quiet or for more cooling). [table] [tr] [td]Amount[/td] [td]Product[/td] [td]Price[/td] [td]Subtotal[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]ASRock Z77 Extreme4[/td] [td]£98.74[/td] [td]£98.74[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]ASUS GTX680-DC2T-2GD5[/td] [td]£403.52[/td] [td]£807.04[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Corsair Professional AX650 650W[/td] [td]£110.02[/td] [td]£110.02[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Dell UltraSharp U2913WM[/td] [td]£419.12[/td] [td]£419.12[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Intel Core i7 3770K[/td] [td]£234.73[/td] [td]£234.73[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Kingston HyperX 16GB DDR3-1600 CL9 XMP quad kit[/td] [td]£81.96[/td] [td]£81.96[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Lian Li PC-7HX[/td] [td]£82.99[/td] [td]£82.99[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Samsung 840 Series Pro 256GB[/td] [td]£171.50[/td] [td]£171.50[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]1[/td] [td]Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB[/td] [td]£64.33[/td] [td]£64.33[/td] [/tr][tr] [td]9 products[/td] [td]Import as your own wish list[/td] [td]Total[/td] [td]£1,666.91[/td] [/tr] [/table] @averagejoe620 Some budget cards had a smaller memory bandwidth meaning the performance was limited by going to resolutions higher than 1920*1080 pixels or combining these cards in SLI, while Kepler had somewhat larger memory bandwidth for graphic cards in this segment (which is unnecessary in a budget segment) .