Upgrade advice for ARMA II please

Syphon

Syphon

Syphon

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Joined
24 Mar 2005
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401
Location
South West
Hi all,

Like many on here I've just picked up ARMA II having been a Flashpoint fan for years. Most of my gaming is on the 360, hence my PC has not been upgraded for a while.

I'm running at 1920 x 1200 with the following setup:

Motherboard: ASUS P5KC - not ASUS P5N32-E!
Processor: Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66GHZ
Memory: OCZ 2GB PC2-8500 1066MHZ
Graphics Card: 320MB BFG 8800GTS 580MHZ

ARMA II is running better than I thought it would with a computer that's a couple of years old now. I'm out of touch with the kit that's around at the moment and would appreciate a hand coming up with an upgrade that will let me run ARMA II quite a bit smoother and also up the graphics as well.

If I can keep any of the components I have already then all the better.

Looking to spend between £200 and £300.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Cheers :)
 
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This is what I would do with that setup:

Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £241.99
(£210.43) £241.99
(£210.43)
OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (OCZ2RPR10664GK) OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (OCZ2RPR10664GK) £41.99
(£36.51) £41.99
(£36.51)
Sub Total : £246.94
VAT is being charged at 15.00% VAT : £37.04
Total : £283.98

Sell the 2GB RAM you have now to someone else or use it in another PC etc. You could save a bit by swapping the 4870x2 for a 4890 but it depends how much performance you want out of the PC. I'd also overclock that CPU as that will give you a free performance increase. From what I'm aware of the E6750 is a brilliant chip for overclocking as well so I wouldn't be surprised if you could get get it to 3.5ghz and above.
 
Edit: didn't see your 2GB of ram there. Yeah i'd OC your current CPU and get your memory upto 4GB. That will give you enough money for a 4890 or even a 4870x2 as the previous poster has mentioned.
 
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Thanks, that's useful. I've read that ARMA II likes quad core processors, is there something I could do on that front with the budget instead?

Cheers.
 
Quad core will make a big difference to u so i would say get ur posts up to 250 so u can enter the members market and pick up a second hand Q6600 (~£100) or Q9550 (~£120-140) (even better) and buy urself a shiny new 4890 or 4870 1GB. Finally add another 2GB RAM.

This game is quad core hungry (i'm seeing between 40%-70% usage across all cores on my Q6600 and my bro, who has E2160 at £.1GHz is bottlenecking his GTX 260) so if u got a 4870X2 without a quad, whilst i'm sure u'd see improvement in absolutiely everything else u play, u would not notice the gains u should in ArmA II.
 
Just for perspective, I'm getting around 50-60FPS @ 1920x1200 with all settings on max with my rig. And even that has occasional lows!
 
You are in pretty much exactly the same position as me. Same current spec, same upgrade budget. I would advise getting a quad as ARMA seems to love the extra cores. So my question was i7 or Q9550.

In the end I decided I was going to go for a Q9550, 4GB RAM and a 4890 1Gb.

Just make sure your current motherboard can accept the newer processor.
 
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.83GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - Retail + World In Conflict PC Game £169.98
(£147.81) £169.98
(£147.81)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £109.99
(£95.64) £109.99
(£95.64)
OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (OCZ2RPR10664GK) OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel (OCZ2RPR10664GK) £41.99
(£36.51) £41.99
(£36.51)
Sub Total : £279.96
VAT is being charged at 15.00% VAT : £41.99
Total : £321.95

You could go down this route. If you can stretch to this and then sell on your 2GB RAM it would be worth spending the extra £30 to get the 4890 instead, especially at that resolution. Either that or like has been mentioned previously, go on the hunt for a second hand Q9550.
 
Thanks guys. Really useful info. I can probably stretch the budget a bit if it will help a lot (£340ish). I don't want to under spec and regret it. This will be the only game I play on the PC (everything else is on the 360) so I'm happy to go for the quad core - whatever works best for ARMA. Other uses for the PC are using ADOBE software (photoshop, fireworks etc).

Reading the motherboard spec it appears to support the Q9550 http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=397&model=1459&modelmenu=1 can someone double confirm for me? I'm not up on all the processors at the moment. It will be great if I can keep the motherboard, assuming it won't cause a bottleneck?

So with the spec above I presume I will see a big difference running at 1920 over what I'm getting now? I appreciate I probably won't be able to max every setting in the game out, but nice and smooth frame rates whilst still looking really good would be appreciated.

Ta
 
One thing i would reccommend is that if you go with a 4870 1GB is to buy a aftermarket cooler as when i play ArmA2 my fan speed is around 95% with temp or around 80-85C. It gets really loud :)
 
hmmm, puts u way over budget but as u have an sli mobo seems a shame not to use it, why not get an nvidia card and when u have saved some more money buy a second? GTX 260 currently at £124 will run ArmA II pretty well and once u have saved some more mulaa it will outshine a single ATI offering ;)
 
well there is a thread about quad core cpu's on the arma 2 forum and the general consensus is that you will only get about a 2% increase with a quad core and some people have said that they get better performance with dual cores if the clock speed is higher than the quad cores clock speed. so for example a dual core 3.5ghz would run it better than a quad core 3ghz.

the game also doesn't support crossfire or sli yet, you can get it working but its meant to be a massive hassle and not worth it.

your best bet is too look at the BIH forum, there is a specific thread where people have posted there setups and what kind of performance they are getting.
 
Blurgh said:
well there is a thread about quad core cpu's on the arma 2 forum and the general consensus is that you will only get about a 2% increase with a quad core and some people have said that they get better performance with dual cores if the clock speed is higher than the quad cores clock speed. so for example a dual core 3.5ghz would run it better than a quad core 3ghz.
Click to expand...

My bro is using a dual core at 3.1 and GTX 260 216 and i am using a Q6600 at 3.5 and 8800GTS 512MB and my fps is very similar to his and in some cases steadier and as both his cores are nearly maxxed out and between 40-70% of each of mine is in use i would say a quad def makes a big difference. There is a link to a german test site in the ArmA II thread which shows quads and i7's perform considerably better than duals.

Blurgh said:
the game also doesn't support crossfire or sli yet, you can get it working but its meant to be a massive hassle and not worth it.
Click to expand...

People also reporting in that thread that the simple -xpconfig fix allows xfire (not sure about sli) and almost doubles performance in some cases.

The other dual/quad thing to consider is whether u want to run other programs at the same time (i.e. a movie on a second monitor) as i doubt the dual would have enough left over to deal with both.
 
Guys - thought I would double check the motherboard with ASUS probe. The one I posted in haste was what I had in my spec spreadsheet I dug out. I have in fact been a numpty and had posted the wrong board.

I have the Asus P5KC: http://uk.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=fFZ8oUIGmLpwNMjj

I'm not sure if that makes any difference to the advice you've given so far. Will this still support the kit that's been recommended?

Cheers! (I'll double check next time!) The rest of the details are correct! ;)
 
Just got arma2 as well, currently running the settings below, q9550 @3.6ghz and 280 gtx, @ 1920x1200, definitely a demanding game

arma22009-06-2420-55-19-37.jpg


fraps benchmark of first level on campaign

2009-06-24 21:05:16 - arma2
Frames: 23033 - Time: 958520ms - Avg: 24.029 - Min: 1 - Max: 62
 
Syphon said:
I have the Asus P5KC: http://uk.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=fFZ8oUIGmLpwNMjj

I'm not sure if that makes any difference to the advice you've given so far. Will this still support the kit that's been recommended?
Click to expand...

Affects my advice cos that board doesnt do SLI, so no longer an option :)

setter said:
Just got arma2 as well, currently running the settings below, q9550 @3.6ghz and 280 gtx, @ 1920x1200, definitely a demanding game
Click to expand...

Looks like u need the 1.02 patch ;)
 
Cheers again for the advice guys. Money situation has changed a bit since I posted so I can only really spend £150 this month and the rest next month.

What would make the biggest impact first. Graphics card I presume?

Something like this one?
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-103-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1403

Is it going to be a big jump over my 320MB BFG 8800GTS 580MHZ? (especially at the higher res)?

No price checks outside the MM

Unlelss I'm totally wrong and you'd suggest upgrading the memory or processor first?

Cheers :)
 
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