Help me build a gaming rig for Arma2

Elessar

So I really want to play Arma 2 on high/max settings and I need to build a PC specifically for this (i.e. a dedicated gaming rig). I've been using a mac laptop as my main computer for three years so this will be specifically for games.

I haven't built a rig in years so I'm not as clued-in about current hardware. I am hoping to spend as little as possible, but no more than 1k. I already have:

ATX case (but don't know if it will accomodate a new mobo)
External DVDrw drive
24inch monitor (DVI)
Hard drives
500W PSU
Ginormous Xalman copper heatsink w/fan
Sound card

So, if I am right, I only really need a new mobo, RAM graphics card and CPU..?

For the mainboard I was looking at this Gigabyte X58 http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=392557

For the CPU Corei7 - http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=391447

For the Graphics - http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=368367

And about 3GB of cheap ram from crucial. Works out about 1k.

Any comments on this build? Too excessive? Any better value builds recommended?

Are all ATX cases the same...because my current one holds a mobo with an AGP slot, so I don't know if it will accomodate one with PCI express?

Help greatly appreciated.

E: I would really prefer not to spend that much money, so if anyone could recommend components with similar performance it would be great. Is the x2 worth it? Would I be better off with a GTX280? Is Corei7 that much better than a similar Core2 quad?!

Solitaire

Its almost impossible to build a system for ArmA2 at this point due to criminally bugged drivers and bugged rendering. Its not ATI or nVidia's fault either; we're talking fundamental code issues here. The RVE engine can't use AA, fails to use multiple GPUs, fails to utilize large (over 512MB) framebuffers correctly and, far worse, fails to adjust LoD renders (polygons or textures) efficiently in regard to distance. The result is disturbing and unplayably slow on High details and fast yet godawful ugly on Medium. How bad? Currently the fastest GPU for this game is the HD4890, and on High settings it manages a whopping 21fps at just 1280*1024. And that's with no AA either!

If you really wanted a stab at it right now then you need an i7-920, one HD4890XT (or "true OC") and LN2 so you can run the CPU well over 4GHz and the GPU over 1.2GHz. That bad. Only sane thing to do at this early stage is wait and see if the patches address some of these issues or at least improve the quality of the Medium settings if the High setting really is irrepairably borked :eek:

To summarize, a well (and preferably liquid-) cooled and heavily OCd i7-920 and a similarly endowed HD4890 gives the best performance (yes, the HD4890 beats the GTX285 and all multi-GPU setups in the current benchmarks). If the multi-GPU issues are sorted in future then sling in a second HD4890 and get it cooled and OCd to match its brother.

And to get back on topic, Elessar I'm afraid it's gotta go. Well, just the PSU (and the case if it's not a genuine ATX jobbie and capable of some serious airflow) anyway And that HD4870X2 is also hit by the multi-GPU bug so you'll need to switch to a much cheaper HD4890 and try and stick in a second once the time comes if ArmA2 gets its head sorted If you do intend on a second HD4890 in the fullness of time get a 750W PSU now to avoid needing to upgrade it again in future.

Elessar

Thanks for the reply Solitaire.

I take all your points onboard. Since I posted the thread, I've been doing a bit of research. Perhaps I am better off not spending a fortune on top of the line hardware which will be outdated despite it's expense in a few months. I'm really looking at the cost/benefit ratio overall. I'm looking for the price/performance sweet spot.

I mocked up an order on Komplett. A Core2Duo E8400 3GHz (which overclocks well apparently) on an Asus P5Q PRO mainboard (also easy overclocking). Add in the Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 (900MHz clock edition) and a new ATX case (just in case ) and the bill comes to €512 - half my original estimation!

What do you think? E: just read your edit. Maybe this is not the best card.

With the EVGA Geforce GTX285 instead it came to €616 - still a considerable saving. I have heard Arma2 has problems with the 200 series GPUs - have you heard anything about that? I have been watching some smooth, high FPS gameplay videos on Youtube and the 285 was the card used in question, that's why I chose it. I also read myself that this is one of the best cards for it at the moment.

Any comments?

Solitaire

I haven't heard much about any GT200 issues; I'm guessing its an enigne that just happens to strongly favour ATi's GPU topology. It happens. And nVidia might yet pull a rabbit out of a hat...

HD4890 is a good defensive position regardless as its one of the strongest single-GPU solutions out at the moment, thanks to a high OC ceiling (so long as heat is controlled at higher speeds and voltages). A software-overvolted and sufficiently cooled RV790 can trounce most things most of the time once it exceeds 1GHz; ArmA2 is just particularly susceptible.

I don't recommend the E8400 so much now you can bung in a cheaper X2-550BE and have equivalent power and easier OC on a cheaper setup with the possibility of DDR3 thrown in for good measure. But a more important reason is that ArmA2, like several upcoming games, is threaded and needs at least a X3-720BE to be happy; the last great bastion of fast dual-core CPUs is very much under siege. If you can afford it then get a quad. Bear in mind that HT!=physical cores and I only tentatively recommend the i7-920 as I don't know if ArmA2 gets any benefit (or indeed detriment) from HyperThreading at all. If not then the AMD P2 quads might be a cheaper and savvier choice.



No cooling listed (tell me exactly what case and Zalman thingmabob you have there) but this is a wee bit cheaper than an i7 setup and you still have an easy OC option thanks to ACC and the Black Edition CPU. Again; you can cheap out and get the X3-720BE and OC that instead but don't go any lower (unless you want to risk getting an X2-550BE and trying to unlock the two disabled cores to get a 3.4-3.6GHz quad for cheap...). Oh, and that's a HD4890Pro up there, but the Asus one has an integrated overvolting tool. If you got a pricier Powercolor HD4890"Plus" you might exceed 1GHz on air without overvolting but its not guaranteed.

And I wasn't dissing the HD4890 down there... that's the best result on High :eek:

Elessar

Thanks for that. A little more reading and it seems Arma2 is heavily CPU dependant, with the more cores, the better, so I'll definitely be sticking to quad processors.

According to http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,687620/ArmA-2-tested-Benchmarks-with-18-CPUs/Practice/ the Corei7 walks all over the P2 in the game, yet the P2 beats the Corei7 in all other games. Arma2 needs a lot of work!

My ATX case has no name on it but I'll get a pic up tomorrow. The heatsink is this one - http://over-clocker.net/?p=6

I did a cost comparison between your build above and one with a Corei7 and X58 mobo, and the Corei7 system was €140 dearer. Decisions decisions!

TerrorFirmer

Talk about hardware killer. Q6600 with 4890 at 'Normal' settings = 23fps average at 1280x1024. Budget and lower end Core 2/X2 users able to run most other games at high settings when paired with a decent card are left virtually unable to play the game at practical levels. If this PC is built solely for ARMA2 the requisite parts are going to be skewed for virtually all other games.

Solitaire

Not really - OCd HD4890 is good at most things (except Crysis on Very High maybe :P). I did notice that only a part of the craptacular RVE engine is threaded - it definitely benefits from HT, but doesn't benfit as much from multiple cores (logical or physical) as you'd expect - no 720BE carpet-bombing the E8400, or i7 butchering everything else with the 8 logical cores...

Oh, and more bad news for you Elessar - that Zalman may include the AM2/3 bracket if your'e lucky, but if you do go i7 you'll have to buy a new cooler to boot! :rolleyes:

I also noticed a possible reaction to filtering... maybe RVE is mucking that up to boot? I wonder if the fps improves a bit on higher settings if you pull right back on the AF?

PogMoThoin

Sorry Sol, but have You actually played the game, there are a few things not quite right. This game is very playable and with better drivers and a patch or 2 will get better. I get 50+fps in single player and a steady 30-35 on MP at 1920x1200 with most settings on high/very high. Textures on very high gives the same performance as normal. I've post processing on high as I'm not fond of the blur and AF is set to very high. Setting Visibllity to just ~2000 makes a massive difference, this setting gives the most gains

The game supports multiple cores, it runs much faster on my quad than my other dual core. It uses all 4 cores also, the higher the cpu speed the better. It doesn't support hyperthreading tho, no benefit coming from the i7 with its 8 logical cores (HT confuses Arma 2 engine and is better disabled), optimization guides here and here

You can force crossfire by using the -winxp parameter. For me with my 4870x2 it gives much better performance. This changes the directx version so that it will support multigpu configurations in arma 2. Hopefully catalyst 9.7 will improve this performance further. I tried changing the executable name to arma.exe, Crysis.exe, Crysis64.exe and Fear2.exe but none gave any better performance.

ArmA2 is heavy on the harddrive as its continuously loading as the maps are massive. I've used Dead3yez' method to run it on multiple hard drives with notable improvements. I've it split betwen my 2x f1 sata's as Vista is on my raid raptors.

I've forced V-sync off in the CCC and have set Catalyst AI to advanced with notable improvements

Frederico

A lot of people have Arma running quite smoothly. Why not just get a nice quad core system with good graphics for 500 euros?

q9550, 4 gig ram, graphics card, good board

should be fine for Arma

uberpixie

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I get 50+fps in single player and a steady 30-35 on MP at 1920x1200 with most settings on high/very high. Textures on very high gives the same performance as normal. I've post processing on high as I'm not fond of the blur and AF is set to very high. Setting Visibllity to just ~2000 makes a massive difference, this setting gives the most gains

I have found view distance to be the big killer as well.

I am running a Q6600 B3 oc'ed to 3Ghz, 3.25 gig ram and 4870 @ 1680 x 1050.

I can get 30 frames + (according to fraps) with post processing disabled (wrecks my head), most settings set to high, usually drop the shadows to medium, fill rate set to max my res and the view distance is usually 2.5km - 2.8 km
When I start popping up the view distance up and above 3km it gets very choppy back into the 20s: doesn't really seem to matter what I enable or disable at this stage it all runs crap :pac:.

Do find the fill rate and the post processing to be the important settings in the eye candy stakes. Game really looks crap when you start dropping the fill rate.
Haven't played it much since I bought it: must have a look at the tweaking guides.

to the OP: go Icore7 with at least 6gig ram for future games and atleast a 4890 in gfx. You can easily build a good icore7 system for €1000.

If you are on a very tight budget consider the amd stuff in quadcore or if you can get a nice q6600 or q6700 on the cheap they are a solid choice especially if you can get em 2nd hand.

Solitaire

Those tests were done with the draw distance dropped right back to 1.6km. I'm guessing either a patch has sorted out the gribblies with the new engine or there's some big optimisation in CCC9.6

blackgold>>

Solitaire have you arma2? I'm playing it perfectly fine.

Elessar

Alright I've settled on a configuration from Hardwareversand:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Box, Sockel AM3
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P, ATX, Sockel AM3
4GB-Kit Corsair Twin3X4096-1600C9DHX DDR3, CL9
XFX RADEON HD 4890 1GB DDR5 PCI-E 2.0

Comes out about €522 which I think is a good price for what I'm getting. I cannot justify the €330 for the 4870x2 when the 4890 is €167 Arma 2 seems too CPU dependent to fully utilise the dual GPU, some people reporting no gains with forced crossfire plus many people cannot get the -winxp command to work.

In the next few months I will add an additional 4890 to crossfire if I need to!

Thoughts?

EDIT: Getting the even cheaper XFX 4890 which comes with the molex power adapters I need.

blackgold>>

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 tray, 8192Kb, LGA775, 64bit, Kentsfield

MSI P35 Neo2-FR, Intel P35, ATX

4096MB-KIT G-Skill PC6400/800, CL 4

Club3D HD4890 1024MB

€418,57

Same performance.

Elessar

Well I just ordered my spec above. I wanted to keep with the newer x4 and DDR3, plus my €60 Zalman copper heatsink will fit it, which will be good for overclocking.

Thanks for the help chaps!