Gaming rigs

[Sparks]

So, with a new job coming up, I've been making a list of things to buy to tack onto my current gaming machine to try to get 60FPS out of Arma3 on full 1920x1080 resolution (while making me a cheese sandwich, obviously). It got me wondering what everyone else in the Party was using at the moment. So... this is me asking the gaming equivalent of "So what are you wearing" I guess

To kick it off, here's my rig (though I've since bumped its RAM to 8Gb):
http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2011/0 ... -decision/
http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2011/0 ... -assembly/

And the current ebay shopping list is a new CPU (going from an Athlon II x3 to a Phenom II x6), an SSD drive just to put Arma 3 onto, the EdTracker if the group buy here goes ahead, a new headset (probably a Razor Blackshark or something similar), and a pair of CH Pro or Saitek rudder pedals. Not necessarily in that order or all at once, mind.

So, how much faster than that is your rig Comrade?

[Eagle_Eye]

My Build currently: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nNkR6h

Put it together March 2014, so its still relatively new. Would highly recommend the samsung SSDs. I know when I was researching they were considered the go to brand, and about the only real contender at the time. I have the 120GB version so I dont actually have ARMA on mine, but the windows and app load time is still worth it.

Same with the BenQ monitor, for the price its a great screen in my opinion. Im not an expert on CPUs, but from what I do know, if you are looking to increase performance in arma, your best bet is to find a good single core performance chip with fast clock speed. As far as I know Intel is generally better than AMD for single core stuff, so it might be worth considering an i5.

[Sparks]

I have the 120GB version so I dont actually have ARMA on mine

I was planning on getting that one, but surely 120Gb is sufficient to get Arma3 onto it?

Same with the BenQ monitor, for the price its a great screen in my opinion

I have the G2220HD myself, love it. One of the nicer monitors in that price range.

. Im not an expert on CPUs, but from what I do know, if you are looking to increase performance in arma, your best bet is to find a good single core performance chip with fast clock speed. As far as I know Intel is generally better than AMD for single core stuff, so it might be worth considering an i5.

True, but there's a method in my madness - the Phenom II is a drop-in replacement for my current Athlon/motherboard combination and it costs around the 100 euro mark on ebay. An i5 or i7 would mean a new motherboard as well, and if I was doing that I'd wind up in a full rebuild pretty sharpish. So the plan is, try spending 200 euro on system upgrades, see if that gets me to where I want to be, and if not, I'll build a new system later on and my current gaming rig will become my new linux workhorse at home and will last in that role for a few years to come (seriously, for actual work that machine is massively overpowered and spec'd to last).

[Aqarius]

ATM am running I5-4670 with 8Gb DDR3 and a refurbished ATI 7970 (I think). Stable 45FPS@1680x1050 with basically everything on max. No SSD.

As for monitors, I've had very good experiences with DELLs of various descriptions. My next upgrade will probably be a P2414H.

[Eagle_Eye]

Sure 120GB would be fine for just arma, I personally dont because I have other games on it, and most applications. If you ration out your space you should have no problem. I should think about moving over to my SSD, but it would involve some tedious file shifting and deletion, and probably a reinstall.

[audiox]

I7 4790K
16 GB RAM
4GB 970
3 x 24"
240 GB SSD System + Arma + DCS ++ disk.
MSI Z97 Gaming 7 Board




And i still end up friendly firing you all trying to call in friendly mortar strikes.

[SuicideKing]

I'm curious about why you're going to a Phenom II x6 instead of just going for an Haswell i5? Is it to save on upgrading the motherboard?

Anyway, my rig's core is on its last legs too, though everthing around it has been updated since 2009 (except the keyboard, which has been operating exceptionally since 1998).

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @ 2.76 GHz
8GB DDR3 @ 1390 MHz, 8-8-8-24
GTX 560 @ stock clocks, 1GB VRAM

I've 3 SSDs and an HDD, Arma 3 runs off a 250GB Samsung 840 Series SSD.

Monitor resolution is 1080p, I have to run Arma 3 at 80% sampling, with PiP off, draw distance set to 2200 and objects and textures set to high and particles set to standard. Some other tweaks too but these were the main ones.

I get anywhere from 20 to 50 fps, usually 30 +/- 5.

[Sparks]

I'm curious about why you're going to a Phenom II x6 instead of just going for an Haswell i5? Is it to save on upgrading the motherboard?

Exactly. New CPU and new SSD costs me about 200 euro. If that doesn't up my FPS enough, well, it's time to refresh the hardware at home anyway, so my current linux workbox (which is an old R61 laptop) will get repurposed for something else, my current gaming rig becomes my new linux workbox (and with the new CPU and SSD it'll be massively overpowered even for the software engineering stuff I bring home), and I'll spend a grand or so on a new build for a gaming rig (probably after salivating over Toms Hardware articles for a month or two while I save up).

Bhudda help me if BI release Oculus support for Arma 3 in the meantime...

Monitor resolution is 1080p, I have to run Arma 3 at 80% sampling, with PiP off, draw distance set to 2200 and objects and textures set to high and particles set to standard. Some other tweaks too but these were the main ones.

Interesting - I played a lot with the subsampling idea but I never got any improvement (mind you, I also hit a knee in the FPS-v-resolution curve at 1600x1200, which isn't supposed to happen, every guide out there said it's faster to use native resolution but I get an extra 100fps in the editor by dropping my resolution to the current 1152x720). I think I'm seriously CPU-limited at the moment, my graphics card isn't very new but it was a serious beast when I first picked it up.

BTW, I also tried sampling at 200% and turning on all the bells and whistles. The framerate sucked, but oh my word, how pretty and shiny it all was...

[Terminal Boy]

Have you considered picking up a used i5 2500K /3570K + Motherboard and overlocking the bejeus out of it?

Haskell prices will be dropping later this year when all the benchmarkers / "must have the latest" crowd move to Sky Lake / Z107.

Alas, as far as all the ArmA engined games go, there is no substitute for a fast Intel CPU.

[SuicideKing]

Exactly. New CPU and new SSD costs me about 200 euro. If that doesn't up my FPS enough, well, it's time to refresh the hardware at home anyway, so my current linux workbox (which is an old R61 laptop) will get repurposed for something else, my current gaming rig becomes my new linux workbox (and with the new CPU and SSD it'll be massively overpowered even for the software engineering stuff I bring home), and I'll spend a grand or so on a new build for a gaming rig (probably after salivating over Toms Hardware articles for a month or two while I save up).

I see. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Though the SSD won't do much for frame rates, just drop the loading times, and maybe reduce stuttering as the game loads textures on the fly...i use the -nologs option, placebo if anything (benchmarks showed slightly better frame times, but only slightly). But like Terminal Boy said, no substitute for a bunch of fast Intel cores.

Tom's Hardware has/had started doing Arma 3 benchmarks, not sure if they ever did any CPU tests. You may also want to check out Tech Report's system guides.

Interesting - I played a lot with the subsampling idea but I never got any improvement (mind you, I also hit a knee in the FPS-v-resolution curve at 1600x1200, which isn't supposed to happen, every guide out there said it's faster to use native resolution but I get an extra 100fps in the editor by dropping my resolution to the current 1152x720). I think I'm seriously CPU-limited at the moment, my graphics card isn't very new but it was a serious beast when I first picked it up.

BTW, I also tried sampling at 200% and turning on all the bells and whistles. The framerate sucked, but oh my word, how pretty and shiny it all was...

I'm CPU limited till 80% of 1080p, then the bottleneck shifts to the GPU...which I found much less tolerable than the CPU bottleneck.

The editor is interesting, when I zoom in the frame rate falls and when I zoom out it shoots into the hundreds, or the other way around.

Arma 3 is, unfortunately, fairly poorly coded. My CPU's averagely 90% occupied on one core and about 50% on the others, while my GPU will vary from 50% to 99% utilization, depending on the CPU. I think it's a combination of PhysX using x87 for floating point calculations and DX11 being largely single threaded.