Project Reality Forums

'[R-MOD wrote:BloodBane611;1417479']The main difference between Athlon and Phenom is the L3 cache right? How important is that (i.e. how much will I notice the difference)?

If I will notice the difference, I would spring for this:
Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDX945WFGMBOX


As far as GPU goes, its going to be my most expensive single part, which means that if I can put off getting it and still have a running computer to use for various stuff I'd be very happy (and my wallet will be even more so)

Probably 2-5 fps. Depending on if you OC it or not. For $30 I would go for it.

Cool, thanks. I'll probably be back in this section in a year for some help picking a GPU

[R-MOD]BloodBane611 wrote:Cool, thanks. I'll probably be back in this section in a year for some help picking a GPU

I would just buy a computer from, Tigerdirect or Newegg(but not, Newegg sucks for shipping products)

I found a great computer

1TB hardrive
6 gb or something of RAM
3.06 or something Processor speed, dual core.

only like 800 bucks.

Just got a new case for this, the one I bought originally was well constructed but very poorly designed.

Here's the new setup:



I ended up buying a Sapphire Radeon 5770 for my GPU, it runs ArmA 2 pretty swimmingly on my old 21" monitor. I just got a new 23" monitor as well as the case, gonna boot up ArmA 2 and see how it goes.

Looks like the case is NZXT Beta? Its not bad budget case.

Cossack112 wrote:Looks like the case is NZXT Beta? Its not bad budget case.

Yeah, its the Beta. It's far superior to the last $50 case I bought, although the build quality is sub-par in places. For example, the side closest to the camera doesn't actually fit well. However, for $50 this case has way more space and features than my last one (which was objectively a very poor choice, but I was committed to a horizontal case at the time).

Man, I wish I would have seen this post sooner...

You really need to consider airflow, A LOT OF AIR FLOW. Especially when using GPU's capable of ArmA 2. The card you have in the pic looks like it would blow a lot of heat around inside the case, not to mention the CPU fan doesn't blow towards the rear fan. Think about replacing the 120mm fans on top with some $10 Slipstreams and turn them to blow upwards. I don't see the side so I assume it has at least 1 120mm fan (I hope).

Heat will be your worst enemy. Keep and eye on your temps. I run 2 EVGA GTX 480's in SLI with 1 EVGA 8800GT for Dedicated PhysX but my case (CoolerMaster Stacker 832) has 9 x 120mm 104cfm Slipstreams. Yea, it sounds like a small plane at takeoff and the lights dim when I boot it up but it keeps things frosty.

You're nuts if you think a 5770 needs more cooling in that case. I think Blood is running 300-400 cfm of air through that right now, which is more than he needs. I only run 300 or so cfm into my case running an i3-2100 and 6870 and don't have any issues with temps, for that matter.

Also, unless you're in a large room, your cooling setup is probably extremely inefficient. Since you're running a 10 foot cube of air through your machine every minute (which is the size of a bedroom or other smallish room -- 11x11x8 or so), the temperature difference is going to be small enough that air (a bad thermal conductor) will not be effectively transferring heat. So, most likely you're just moving air around. If you're actually having cooling problems, you're probably better off running watercooling. Granted, fans are generally relatively low power (3W or less), so you may not see significant changes in power usage.

This would be an interesting simulation to run once I'm back at school, I may check it out.

Pariel wrote:You're nuts if you think a 5770 needs more cooling in that case. I think Blood is running 300-400 cfm of air through that right now, which is more than he needs. I only run 300 or so cfm into my case running an i3-2100 and 6870 and don't have any issues with temps, for that matter.

Also, unless you're in a large room, your cooling setup is probably extremely inefficient. Since you're running a 10 foot cube of air through your machine every minute (which is the size of a bedroom or other smallish room -- 11x11x8 or so), the temperature difference is going to be small enough that air (a bad thermal conductor) will not be effectively transferring heat. So, most likely you're just moving air around. If you're actually having cooling problems, you're probably better off running watercooling. Granted, fans are generally relatively low power (3W or less), so you may not see significant changes in power usage.

This would be an interesting simulation to run once I'm back at school, I may check it out.

I didn't see his case fan specs, if they're stock, they're not high cfm and I can only see the 2 on top and 1 rear. A 5770 may not put out much heat, I don't know about that, but if he plans to upgrade to a card (which he does mention) that will max out ArmA, they will generate heat and quite a bit of it. If you let that heat build inside the case, it not only affects the GPU and CPU, but the NorthBridge, SouthBridge, ect, ect... I don't need to tell you all this, you seem to know a bit about computers.

Now, I have no problems with heat because air is removed before it can build up or affect other components thermally. I had 9 fans @ 57cfm (513cfm) and GPU temps ran about 78-80c stressed (CPU 48-52c). I replaced with 9 110cfm (990cfm) and temps dropped to 70-71c (CPU 38-40) under same load which is considerable, if you ask me and well worth the investment. I know the temps were not bad before but I call it assurance, and I like overkill, it means a lot to me.

So my "simulation" is done and works great. Sure, it's a $90 purchase, but anyone that knows anything about computers will tell you the lower your temps, the better you will be. And yes, I know GPUs are capable of 85c + but why let it get that far?

The 5770 is my upgrade GPU, this build was originally bought to run PR without a GPU (which it does as well as my laptop with a discrete GPU).

I haven't checked temps on this build yet, and my last build I refused to check because I didn't have money for a new case and I had maxed the fan slots on it. However, this shouldn't be a heavy heat load, I'm not even slightly concerned.

Arma 2 makes my PC feel like a loser, i just upgraded recently (2 months ago) i had a 2 year old processor. So I got a GTX 460 (1gb) and a Phenom II X840 (3.2ghz). But i would be careful deciding on a GTX 460 it seems fine for other games but since playing PR:arma i sometimes find my FPS to be under 10. If im at the main base its around 33 fps but once around the cities where the action is it drops down to 10-15 which makes it hard to fight.

P.S. didnt read the whole thread so good you didnt get the gtx 460.

daones wrote:Arma 2 makes my PC feel like a loser, i just upgraded recently (2 months ago) i had a 2 year old processor. So I got a GTX 460 (1gb) and a Phenom II X840 (3.2ghz). But i would be careful deciding on a GTX 460 it seems fine for other games but since playing PR:arma i sometimes find my FPS to be under 10. If im at the main base its around 33 fps but once around the cities where the action is it drops down to 10-15 which makes it hard to fight.

P.S. didnt read the whole thread so good you didnt get the gtx 460.

You can SLI 2 GTX460's and come out way better than a standard GTX480, this would give significant fps increase (depends on mobo SLI slots 16x/16x or 16x/8x. This would also depend on your PSU, so research 1st.

OR...

You can search ebay or the sort for a 8800GT (be careful who you buy from) and use it as a dedicated physx to release some stress from CPU/GPU. This would give you less fps increase than the 1st option though.

OR...

Do both, depending on your budget...

HARRISON1973 wrote:You can SLI 2 GTX460's and come out way better than a standard GTX480, this would give significant fps increase (depends on mobo SLI slots 16x/16x or 16x/8x. This would also depend on your PSU, so research 1st.

OR...

You can search ebay or the sort for a 8800GT (be careful who you buy from) and use it as a dedicated physx to release some stress from CPU/GPU. This would give you less fps increase than the 1st option though.

OR...

Do both, depending on your budget...

Mate, with his CPU there is no point for SLi The CPU is bottlenecking PC.

Cossack112 wrote:Mate, with his CPU there is no point for SLi The CPU is bottlenecking PC.

Well i agree, better CPU would help quite lot but I believe the point was to get more FPS and by going 460 SLI, he will get those 10/15 FPS when needed and in less GPU intense areas a lot more

Cossack112 wrote:Mate, with his CPU there is no point for SLi ??: The CPU is bottlenecking PC.

This was in response to daones and his 4 core Phenom II X840 (3.2ghz) which is plenty.

Beee8190 wrote:Well i agree, better CPU would help quite lot but I believe the point was to get more FPS and by going 460 SLI, he will get those 10/15 FPS when needed and in less GPU intense areas a lot more

True, and with SLI he can go into nVidia Control Panel and move the PhysX over to his GPU's and take some of the strain off the CPU, because by default, it's set up to use CPU for it.

HARRISON1973 wrote:You can search ebay or the sort for a 8800GT (be careful who you buy from) and use it as a dedicated physx to release some stress from CPU/GPU. This would give you less fps increase than the 1st option though.

Tech N00b. A game needs to use PhysX in order for a PhysX GPU to be of use (See This List for Compatible Games). ArmA 2, unlike ArmA 3, does not have PhysX.

My intentions of this post is to clarify any confusion about PhysX GPUs. They simply are not the "easy FPS increase" tip that many falsely portray them as.

Q2M100 wrote:Tech N00b. A game needs to use PhysX in order for a PhysX GPU to be of use (See This List for Compatible Games). ArmA 2, unlike ArmA 3, does not have PhysX.

My intentions of this post is to clarify any confusion about PhysX GPUs. They simply are not the "easy FPS increase" tip that many falsely portray them as.

Indeed. You will gain those few fps only on heavy physx used game.

Q2M100 wrote:Tech N00b. A game needs to use PhysX in order for a PhysX GPU to be of use (See This List for Compatible Games). ArmA 2, unlike ArmA 3, does not have PhysX.

My intentions of this post is to clarify any confusion about PhysX GPUs. They simply are not the "easy FPS increase" tip that many falsely portray them as.

Nice one! I saw ArmA on the list and assumed it was 2, not 3. There are 305 games that use PhysX and 34 in developement, ArmA3 being one of them, but only 19 that support PPU switching.

So would it hurt to by a PhysX card? Not if you plan on playing ArmA3! Now if he has trouble with 2 now, wait till he plays 3. But like I said, my 1st option would be a better FPS solution dependent on his mobo and PSU.

My personal opinion: ArmA2:ACE2 is way too good looking of a game to play on a mediocre machine. I know everyone has a budget which limits them, but buying upgrades will give you way more wow factor, and trust me, there is A LOT of wow factor in ArmA2. 1920x1080 everything maxed with 2 GTX480's (and a useless for ArmA2 8800GT) it's astonishing at 55-60 FPS. Your squad's pinned, you call for air, and an A-10 strafes within 100 yards of you with rockets and guns blazing, leveling part of the inner city? It's jaw dropping. Sell your kids if you have to... I'm kidding...

HARRISON1973 wrote:There are 305 games that use PhysX and 34 in developement, but only 19 that support PPU switching.

No one uses PPUs anymore so this is irrelevant.

HARRISON1973 wrote:So would it hurt to by a PhysX card? Not if you plan on playing ArmA3! Now if he has trouble with 2 now, wait till he plays 3. But like I said, my 1st option would be a better FPS solution dependent on his mobo and PSU.

It wouldn't hurt anything more than his wallet. Anyways, if he is to dish out cash on a PhysX card, it should be at least a 9800GTX/GTS 550 in order for it not to bottleneck the system.

HARRISON1973 wrote: 1920x1080 everything maxed with 2 GTX480's (and a useless for ArmA2 8800GT).

If you ever play a PhysX enabled game, the 8800GT will severely bottleneck your system. Two 480s will be able to render the graphics and process the PhysX much faster than if the 8800GT did the PhysX. I couldn't find the link, but there is an article where they test different GPUs with and without different dedicated PhysX cards.

Get an CPU that distorts the fabric of space time, or at the very least sterilizes you. 8 Gigs of ram a decent mid-rage graficcard (HD 5850 or better) an SD-Drive if you can afford it and you are dooone.