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

[PuFu 4591]

what's wrong with your 580s you numptie head? :p

Edited January 6, 2012 by PuFu
fucking spelling

[bangtail 0]

Nothing, it's the 'I must try all hardware' (AKA Stupid side of my brain) whispering in my ear :D

[froggyluv 2130]

Hehe, I'm familiar with that numptie side of the brain as well. I'd considered getting a 580 now then another when Kepler approaches and prices drop -but then of course I'd want a Kepler at that point..... :o

I'll wait and get a Kepler or two and hope that tides me over till the next wave which according to that chart (I cant currently find) is a pretty big leap ....Maxwell iirc.

Just like surfing, you don't want to go in cuz that next wave could surely be the Big One.

[wasserkool 1]

Why wait another 6 months for the kepler when you can have better performance TODAY with the 7970 lol

[Leon86 13]

:)

well, arma 2 is probably near the bottom of the ati crossfire priority list. but still, nice cards, seem to overclock well albeit with a dramatic increase in power consumption.

So Bangtail, have you ordered a pair yet, I mean, six months is a long time. Might as wel get a few 7970's now otherwise you will in a month or 2, good at the 2560 x 1600 you use. Or maybe get just one, just to try it... :D ;) :p

Edited January 10, 2012 by Leon86

[bangtail 0]

I will admit, I was close but ...... Nah, their drivers just aren't up to scratch and there are already issues being reported with Xfire.

http://pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/XFX-Radeon-HD-7970-3GB-Black-Edition-and-CrossFire-Results/CrossFire-Batman-A

16% average performance gains (@2560 - and they are only using a 1.5GB 580 for reference) just doesn't justify losing PhysX etc especially with Metro 2034 just around the corner.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/28.html

As well, there is nothing to suggest it will be as long as 6 months and Keplar is rumoured to be up to 90% faster than the 580.

Im pretty sure the EVGA 580 Ultras will compare pretty handily with the 7970 and for a 1 year old architecture to keep up with a brand new one is pretty disappointing where AMD is concerned.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, nice cards and brilliant power saving features, but just not hitting it out of the park performance wise and that's really all I care about.

Edited January 10, 2012 by BangTail

[wasserkool 1]

I will admit, I was close but ...... Nah, their drivers just aren't up to scratch and there are already issues being reported with Xfire.

http://pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/XFX-Radeon-HD-7970-3GB-Black-Edition-and-CrossFire-Results/CrossFire-Batman-A

16% average performance gains (@2560 - and they are only using a 1.5GB 580 for reference) just doesn't justify losing PhysX etc especially with Metro 2034 just around the corner.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/28.html

As well, there is nothing to suggest it will be as long as 6 months and Keplar is rumoured to be up to 90% faster than the 580.

Im pretty sure the EVGA 580 Ultras will compare pretty handily with the 7970 and for a 1 year old architecture to keep up with a brand new one is pretty disappointing where AMD is concerned.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, nice cards and brilliant power saving features, but just not hitting it out of the park performance wise and that's really all I care about.

I wonder where you are getting your rumours from but the latest estimate is only 15% - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218691

I don't recall any 90% jump in performance in the history of GPUs from one generation to the next.

Sure there Crossfire scaling might have an issue here and there with just one game reported by one site but its nothing AMD can't fix with their monthly driver updates. The 580s is terribly beaten by the 7970 across all resolutions and comes even close to the 580 in SLI mode. Your 16% average performance improvement over the 580 is also not accurate because the delta is much higher, especially when you move to 3 monitors gaming.

Talking about drivers I am sure you have heard of Nvidia's drivers killing their GPUs when starcraft II is first launched and their GTX 590 blowing up lol - that is good hardware and software right there!

Edited January 10, 2012 by wasserkool

[froggyluv 2130]

Spent the last few hours reading up on 7970 reviews and honestly I'm starting to lose impulse control :p

This guy broke 1200 on standard volts

http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-owners-club/140#post_16152620

[Leon86 13]

I wonder where you are getting your rumours from but the latest estimate is only 15% - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218691

I don't recall any 90% jump in performance in the history of GPUs from one generation to the next.

Sure there Crossfire scaling might have an issue here and there with just one game reported by one site but its nothing AMD can't fix with their monthly driver updates. The 580s is terribly beaten by the 7970 across all resolutions and comes even close to the 580 in SLI mode. Your 16% average performance improvement over the 580 is also not accurate because the delta is much higher, especially when you move to 3 monitors gaming.

Talking about drivers I am sure you have heard of Nvidia's drivers killing their GPUs when starcraft II is first launched and their GTX 590 blowing up lol - that is good hardware and software right there!

Ati cards had the same problem in starcraft 2, the main menu was a bit like furmark if you had a slow gpu. It has nothing to do with drivers.

Anyway, I'm sure it's not the scaling but more annoying issues that made him hate the ati drivers.

Edit: I just stumbled on this:

That's one more "present" from terrible AMD driver team. Multithreaded OpenGL engines support, which was introduced in this version and which is required to display OSD in Raster 3D mode, is deadly ineffective and SLOOOW inside their OpenGL driver. So either remove Rage.exe.cfg file from OSD server's profiles templates and lose Raster3D/Vector3D OSD modes support in Rage, or spam AMD to make them fix their drivers. I won't punish NV users and remove those things from Afterburner because of the next (and sadly traditional) AMD coding faults, sorry.

------------

Alexey Nicolaychuk aka Unwinder, RivaTuner creator

it's about some issue in rage with msi afterburner, BangTail is not making this shit up because he's a fanboy, he's someone who will spend great amounts of money on hardware as long as the performance is high enough and the issues are small enough.

Spent the last few hours reading up on 7970 reviews and honestly I'm starting to lose impulse control :p

This guy broke 1200 on standard volts

http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-owners-club/140#post_16152620

furmark isnt a good way to test stability anymore. the cards are being held back to make sure they dont burn up. Lots of cards are furmark stable but crash in 3dmark.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Leon86

[bangtail 0]

I wonder where you are getting your rumours from but the latest estimate is only 15% - http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2218691

I don't recall any 90% jump in performance in the history of GPUs from one generation to the next.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/317?vs=305

That's because you don't know what you are talking about, obviously ;)

Sure there Crossfire scaling might have an issue here and there with just one game reported by one site but its nothing AMD can't fix with their monthly driver updates. The 580s is terribly beaten by the 7970 across all resolutions and comes even close to the 580 in SLI mode. Your 16% average performance improvement over the 580 is also not accurate because the delta is much higher, especially when you move to 3 monitors gaming.

Talking about drivers I am sure you have heard of Nvidia's drivers killing their GPUs when starcraft II is first launched and their GTX 590 blowing up lol - that is good hardware and software right there!

Keep your Fanboy shit out of this thread.

Terribly beaten? 16% is not a terrible beating in my book (over a year after the 580's release) and certainly not enough to make me ditch my 580s and lose PhysX and superior driver support.

As usual, we have certain 'objective' sites testing highly overclocked 7970s vs stock 580s etc and claiming massive performance 'victories' but these are not 'apples to apples' tests.

The 7970 is a great overclocker, there is no doubt about that.

If they had been ~40% faster I probably would have pulled the trigger but that just isn't the case.

I've owned many AMD cards and every single time I've had issues with the drivers. Great hardware, I say it all the time, but their drivers are terrible and their dev relations are nowhere near as good as Nvidia's.

I've waited months for CF profiles when Nvidia either had them (SLI profiles) before launch or worst case, launch day. Believe me, I've been very tempted by the 7970s but I can't justify them for such a small performance jump.

As far as Keplar goes, the industry rumours are that it is ~90% faster than the 580. They are just rumours at the moment and considering that people were saying the 7970 was a 6990 killer, I do take them with a grain of salt.

Oh and btw, the GPU in that thread that you linked is the GK-104, that is not the flagship Keplar GPU, the GK-110 is. The GK-104 is one of the mid-range Keplar's and it still supposedly beats the 7970 (AMD's Flagship card).

Thanks for proving my point :D

Edited January 11, 2012 by BangTail

[wasserkool 1]

Right and thanks for editing my quote - you are comparing the GTX285 to GTX 580 - what a nice comparison to make you point of 90% performance improvement from one gen to the next.

We'll see if the following is true in the next few months when nvidia finally releases their next gen 28 nm GPUs:

Oh and btw, the GPU in that thread that you linked is the GK-104, that is not the flagship Keplar GPU, the GK-110 is. The GK-104 is one of the mid-range Keplar's and it still supposedly beats the 7970 (AMD's Flagship card).

Thanks for proving my point :D

[bangtail 0]

Right and thanks for editing my quote - you are comparing the GTX285 to GTX 580 - what a nice comparison to make you point of 90% performance improvement from one gen to the next.

We'll see if the following is true in the next few months when nvidia finally releases their next gen 28 nm GPUs:

Yes, the 285 is the flagship card of the generation before the 4xx/5xx (Fermi).

JFYI, I didn't edit your quote, I simply proved your statement to be false.

What's even funnier is how you can't just admit you were wrong :rolleyes:

Edited January 10, 2012 by BangTail

[domokun 515]

What's even funnier is how you can't just admit you were wrong :rolleyes:

Wind your neck in BangTail, you've been wrong it the past and haven't shown the least bit of contrition.

And as for comparing real-world performance vs rumours... :rolleyes:

[batch 1]

How well would the following PC run Arma 2?

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68P-DS3

CPU: Intel I5 2500k

GPU: HD 6850 1GB

RAM: 2X4 8GB 1600MHz

This is an updated build from a few pages back to fit my budget. I will be reusing the other components not mentioned. It all comes to around £380

I'm still deciding on my PC spec, do you think it would be worth cutting down to a H61 and an i5 2400 if it meant I could get a GTX 560ti or even a 2gb HD 6950?

[Leon86 13]

I'm still deciding on my PC spec, do you think it would be worth cutting down to a H61 and an i5 2400 if it meant I could get a GTX 560ti or even a 2gb HD 6950?

Well a 2GB card is nice since a lot of games are starting to require massive amounts of it.

If you get a P67 board (you can get very affordable ones) and an i5-2400 you can overclock 400 Mhz above stock, well worth it and probably wont even require an aftermarket cooler.

[bangtail 0]

Wind your neck in BangTail, you've been wrong it the past and haven't shown the least bit of contrition.

And as for comparing real-world performance vs rumours... :rolleyes:

Not nearly as many times as you have :D

I've had about enough of your constant baiting.

Enjoy Ignore :rolleyes:

PS: You should work on your literacy, I clearly stated that Keplar's performance was rumoured and that I took those numbers with a grain of salt.

I never compared the 7970 to Keplar, I said that Keplar is rumoured to be ~90% faster than the 580, that could easily turn out to be BS.

Edited January 11, 2012 by BangTail

[wasserkool 1]

Sometimes the troll just likes to lurk around in these non-tech forums because he makes an appearance in other real tech forums they'll be put down like there is no tomorrow.

[bangtail 0]

Sometimes the troll just likes to lurk around in these non-tech forums because he makes an appearance in other real tech forums they'll be put down like there is no tomorrow.

I swore I was not going to get involved in anymore of these silly debates.

Instead of wasting my time, I'm just going to add people who insist on baiting etc to the ignore list.

Bye :rolleyes:

Edited January 12, 2012 by BangTail
Not worth my time

[wasserkool 1]

Oooops somebody's e-stick just got hurt lol!

[Bee8190 10]

I never liked the "gaming" cases, with the bling bling and the pimping leds etc.

Here is Guru3d review of that AI-6 case: REVIEW

Yeah I too never found a dicso lazorr ball inside case too sexy :D :p

Thax for the link tho

[alfa7172 1]

I am looking to get a new computer to play arma 2 on "normal" or high detail settings but

I have a limited budget ($1200) I basically would like to know what would I should get for that amount of money. I don't need a monitor or speakers because I have really good ones now. Just need the basic computer

[Leon86 13]

for $1200 you can get a very fast system. something like:

guess I'll just post prices from newegg

i5-2500K $210

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 $160

Corsair Vengeance CML8GX3M2A1600C9 Low Profile $50

XFX PRO750W XXX Edition Semi-Modular 80Plus Silver 750 Watt Power Supply $130 (psu is complete overkill but it's a good piece of kit for the money and will allow any gpu (twice))

If you have a harddisk you can re-use that'll save you a lot, because of the thailand floodings they're very expensive now.

A sata dvd burner might be convienient. $18

system will fit in any case that says it's ATX, might want to get a nice case as they can last you ages, just like good psu's.

a 6950 2GB of a 560Ti 2GB are still good cards price/performance wise, will still leave plenty room in the budget for a nice case and a harddisk. I prefer the green team so I'd get the 560Ti 2GB. well, both are about $270

If you have a nice case, a harddisk and still have money "left" you really want to spend I suggest you spend it on an ssd (Z68 mobo has a ssd cacheing trick) or an aftermarket cooler. still have money left? why not get a corsair AX750 instead of the XFX? 7yr warranty, more efficient and less noise.

[bangtail 0]

Arghhhhhhhhh.

Caved and bought 2 XFX 7970s, should be here Monday or Tuesday.

I was motivated by Nvidia backing out of showing Keplar at CES which is an extremely bad sign IMHO. I hope we aren't in for another 480 type fiasco. They seem very preoccupied with Tegra 3, which I personally think is a waste of time, as when Windows 8 and the Windows 8 phones/tablets go live, Android's days as the leader in the mobile phone market (and non Apple tablet market) may be seriously numbered.

And before anyone jumps down my throat, the info about Nvidia declining to show Keplar at CES only became available today and it is largely what changed my mind about trying the 7970.

I hope this will be a good experience with the Red team.

I'll let you all know how they perform when they arrive.

[sw1 10]

Arghhhhhhhhh.

Caved and bought 2 XFX 7970s, should be here Monday or Tuesday.

I'm jealous mate :D , it will be interesting to see how well Arma 2 scales with this next generation Crossfire setup, I think it may be time for me to get a new system sometime this year ready for some silky smooth Arma 3 goodness.

Have fun...

[froggyluv 2130]

^^^ Knew you'd be unable to resist ;)

I was soooo close to pulling the trigger on just one of them -but it was a tossup between paying my engineer for a prototype design he built for me (potential to make mad bank) and this card.... scary that I even had to take time to consider this.

Let us know how they perform - they sound fantastic (besides some xfire issues) and seem to OC like a true Boss.

Meh jelly!