Will my PC Run this? What CPU/GPU to get? What settings? System Specifications.

[doveman]

Cool, that makes the decision easier

[ChrisB]

I've got to decide whether to put my Phenom II X3 720 in my brother's PC or wait until I get his faulty Athlon II X4 640 replaced. Which of those would be better for Arma2/3? I know the Athlon II X4 has an extra core but the Phenom II X3 is unlocked so easier to overclock and I think it has a bigger L2 cache as well.

This is only my spare PC which my friends use when we play LAN games and my main PC has a Phenom II X4 955, so no need to tell me that neither of those two processors are ideal for Arma and I should get something better

A friend in our group reckons one of the more reliable is PassMark..

Taken from PassMarks CPU Benchmarks 2012..

Phenom II x 3 720 = score 2553 i.e. mid to high range, rank 399

Athlon II x 4 640 = score 3651 i.e. high end, rank 255

Phenom II x 4 955 = score 3906 i.e. high end, rank 227.

Just cpu based scores, depends on whats with it for gaming of course.

[doveman]

A friend in our group reckons one of the more reliable is PassMark..

Taken from PassMarks CPU Benchmarks 2012..

Phenom II x 3 720 = score 2553 i.e. mid to high range, rank 399

Athlon II x 4 640 = score 3651 i.e. high end, rank 255

Phenom II x 4 955 = score 3906 i.e. high end, rank 227.

Just cpu based scores, depends on whats with it for gaming of course.

Ah thanks, that's interesting. I'll definitely give my brother the Phenom II X3 then as he'll only be using his PC as a HTPC and for Internet, Office, etc.

The Athlon II X4 is much closer to my Phenom II X4 so perhaps that will make the overall experience (loading times, etc) more equal between the two machines. Mind you, I plan to get a SSD for my main machine sometime, so that will blow that idea out the water again Of course, when playing LAN games the main machine has to do the server duties as well, so that's extra load that the Athlon II X4 won't have to deal with but then again the Phenom II X4 is overclocked to 3.8Ghz. The Phenom II X4 machine has a 6950 2GB whilst the other machine only has a 6850 1GB but then the latter only runs on my TV at 720P, whilst the former runs on my 1080P monitor, so that probably balances things out somewhat.

[Leon86]

Passmark is just a multithreaded benchmark like cinebench, with games that are well multithreaded they'll perform about the same, with games that arent the phenom II x3 might be a bit faster.

[Wen]

Passmark weighs multi-threaded performance as much as grunt-per-core. Well, we all know that ArmA does not utillise that many cores efficiently

[doveman]

Well I guess we'll have to wait and see if Arma3 use multithreading better than Arma2. Still, considering the most taxing thing my brother will be doing is playing and compressing video, I think the X3 720 will be sufficient for him and the X4 640 will be more suitable for my spare gaming PC. I've never tried overclocking the X4 640 but I dare say I can get it up a bit by increasing the FSB, as I have a pretty heavy duty heatsink. I haven't had the X3 720 overclocked in some time now so I can't recall what I managed to get that up to before.

[doveman]

Turns out the processor I have is the Athlon II X4 630, not 640. I found this review which shows the Phenom II X3 720 does noticeably better in games than the 630 due to the L3 Cache http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_6.html#sect0 (not to mention being a better/easier overclocker) so maybe I should hang on to that after all.

[BasileyOne]

Turns out the processor I have is the Athlon II X4 630, not 640. I found this review which shows the Phenom II X3 720 does noticeably better in games than the 630 due to the L3 Cache http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_6.html#sect0 (not to mention being a better/easier overclocker) so maybe I should hang on to that after all.

mild OC could do some help.
actually absence of 1600 DDR3 memory support could harm memory-intensive appz even more[than L3 cache absence impact].
well, despite lower peak IPC, recent FX chips wasn't bad too, just worth less money, sadly.
so, keep them in mind 4 upgrade[if you mobo support AM3+], esp after Piledriver derrivatives come[mild 10% improvements expected, unless AMD seriously improve arch-specific optimisation of boards firmware. and/or AVX support by Operating system itself.].

p.s.
some AII X4 CPU's actually contain Deneb chips inside, with [disabled]L3 cache.
there are some chances thats yours - one of them. about 1/5 or so. in that case you had about 40% chances to turn L3 cache back to life[with corresponding impact/boost], probably with mild over-voltage and cooling improvement.
check OC-related Web-resources for references/info about.

[Leon86]

If you manage to overclock the athlon with a higher blck and an a lower multi it goes a long way in compensating for not having L3.

[doveman]

If you manage to overclock the athlon with a higher blck and an a lower multi it goes a long way in compensating for not having L3.

But then I can overclock the Phenom II X3 as well, so it's a choice between that at 3.7-3.8Ghz with L3 cache or the Athlon II X4 at maybe 3.6Ghz (as they don't overclock as well as the PhII) without the L3 Cache.

---------- Post added at 14:22 ---------- Previous post was at 14:07 ----------

some AII X4 CPU's actually contain Deneb chips inside, with [disabled]L3 cache.
there are some chances thats yours - one of them. about 1/5 or so. in that case you had about 40% chances to turn L3 cache back to life[with corresponding impact/boost], probably with mild over-voltage and cooling improvement.
check OC-related Web-resources for references/info about.

I know the very first batch of AII X4's were produced with the Deneb core but I didn't get mine right when they first came out, so I'm pretty sure I haven't got one of those. I doubt it's 1 in 5 anyway as I'm sure more than 4/5 of all AII X4s sold were after this first batch and so are Propus cores with no L3 to unlock.