***ArmA 3 Thread***

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Disclaimer: Not my pic, found it on reddit. Though it summed all the recent dev branch works up quite nicely though.
 
Purchased Arma 3 when it was about £20 a few weeks ago (got it while in holiday so had to wait to come back to play), have to say... Im hooked! Just doing the campaign missions at the moment and it brings back memories of ghost recon and operation flashpoint.

Only just realised you can speed the game up for some slow walks across a field :p

Currently on a mission to ambush a convoy, had to youtube it though as i put my team in buildings near the sea front and put explosives in the middle of the road but the AI saw it and drove around :(
 
A question for the arma3 players on 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 :)

Anyone got a gtx660 could test/buy? :D

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!
 
The VR engine relies heavily on cpu grunt, so I would def upgrade your cpu over the graphics card.. Saying that, I still doubt you would get 60fps everywhere. A lot of it depends on your view distance, I have mine maxxed out at 10,000 overall view and 4000 for objects @ 150% resolution with everything else maxxed out and I get around 40 - 80 depending on the action...

I have an i5 @4.4 with 7950 xfired with 16gig of ram..

The important part is the overclock on the cpu, it did give me an extra 12fps on average..

Good luck, I have a feeling you might need it ...
 
My VD is around 2000 with objects at 1500 or there abouts, I can only dream of having the hardware to push 10k :D

I agree with the cpu OC, but if I were to change it for an i7 wouldn't the 260 still be the bottleneck? My eventual cpu upgrade path would probably be an i7 870 and push it as far as I can, hopefully hitting 4.2ghz but cost is the issue unfortunately (mortgage/family/life etc etc.)
 
The frame rate is governed hugely by two cores only within A3 and all arma builds including dayz etc...

I would def get the highest core you could afford, and try to clock it a bit more, I honestly do believe that you will see the benefits more that way.. As for the 260 being a bottleneck, I don't think it will be as much as you think it might be on the VR engine..

What is your budget for upgrading?
 
I haven't carried out any cpu load testing yet but from what I recall A2 didn't use more than two cores; if A3 is the same then I guess that using the i3 @ 4.2ghz should be almost as quick as an i5/7 @4.2ghz (assuming that the 8meg cache makes a difference in this scenario). I may well be able to push the i3 a little further (full load temps are about 65°c).

With my current settings I immediately see framerate losses as soon as I increase details etc (some have more impact than others obviously), the gpu is also loaded almost to capacity for the majority of the time (according to the OSD on msi afterburner).

Unfortunately budget is low, I reckon I could stretch to 100 quid (supporting a family of 4 + mortgage etc on a single salary!) which would afford me an i5/7 or a gpu along the lines of a gtx660ti.

I have an i7 [email protected] here at work, in theory I could install A3 here, bring my gtx260 in and see how it runs in comparison.

Thanks for the advice so far :)
 
Do you play anything else apart from A3?

If so then the gpu would be favourite and you get a a second hand 7950/7970 quite easily for that money, which would be bottlenecked a bit with your cpu but would certainly benefit you more than the cpu in other games...
 
New choppers just showed up on dev branch:
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There are seperate variants of the taru (opfor one) for each of its modules and the civvie chopper is a reskinned Mh-9 minus its benches (Called M-900, it has that random colour/texture function applied to it)
 
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MarkeR said:
Do you play anything else apart from A3?

If so then the gpu would be favourite and you get a a second hand 7950/7970 quite easily for that money, which would be bottlenecked a bit with your cpu but would certainly benefit you more than the cpu in other games...
Click to expand...

I don't play a huge amount of games really, of late I have played A3, DCS:A10, DCS:Blackshark, Spacehulk and Thief. A3 is the only game I have that my machine currently struggles to handle; I dare say that a few upcoming games may make it struggle more but I don't have time or money to invest in many and I chose A3 as my time waster :D
 
If I was you, and you continue to play DCS sims along with ARMA, I would def invest in a new GPU. The choice for DCS is def Nvidia.. I think nvidia and amd are kinda neck and neck for arma, so there would be no benefit to go to amd apart from the price..

If I was you I would ask what the best bang for your buck would be in the graphics section, either new or second hand..
 
MarkeR said:
If I was you, and you continue to play DCS sims along with ARMA, I would def invest in a new GPU. The choice for DCS is def Nvidia.. I think nvidia and amd are kinda neck and neck for arma, so there would be no benefit to go to amd apart from the price..

If I was you I would ask what the best bang for your buck would be in the graphics section, either new or second hand..
Click to expand...

A wild Marker appears!
 
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