Processor Confusion.

[Rapid12]

All, I'm a tad confused by all the numbers, hertz, cores, AMD or Intels etc. Please can you help me by stating which processors from both AMD and Intel are required to play both PRBF2 & PRArmA2.

Looking at a build which has a AMD FX 8120, black edition, 8 core, 3.1GHz/4.0GHz, 16MB Cache. Will that handle both the PRs?

ALso, if you can, what's the lowest GPU that'll play the PR's?

Much thanks.

[Cossack]

AMD - waste of money in my opinion. Intel offer is much better and do not wears out quickly. Core i5 35XX something will be good to go for modern system.

If still available, 560 Ti and higher are ok as well.

[LITOralis.nMd]

I agree with Cossack, as of right now, and for the rest of 2012, the AMD CPUs are just not cost competitive to the Intel i5-3xxxK series of CPUs.

You are going to pay more up front for the INtel i5-3570k and LGA1155 Z77 motherboard, but you will also get at least another year's worth of value on the backend of this purchase, so cost averaging over time the INtel wins hands down. I'd actually say with a decent motherboard and a proper CPU cooling systme, you will get at least 2 years extra lifespan on the intel CPU, and the entire system will have higher resale at the end of your ownership.

For thw video cards though, it is a bit more competitively priced in the mid tier market, just keep in mind that the NVidia GeForce cards draw more electrical power (Watts) than the equal performance AMD Radeon cards. This is relevant if you ever decide to buy a second card and do Crossfire or SLI instead of buying a new top tier card. If you think you might go with dual vidoe cards in the future, You need a 600+Watt (higher quality manufacturers') Power supply NOW for a purchase of a Nvidia card, while a 500+Watt PSU for a AMD Radeon card.

Minimum cards to run Arma2 PR at decent framerate and details levels,

Video cards:
GeForce GTX 560 Ti (448 cores)

Radeon 6870

(Note, there is also a model call GeForce GTX 560 , this is NOT good enough to run Arma2 at full details at respectable framerates.

Keep asking questions here, plenty of people will chime in with good info for you.

[Rapid12]

In my own PC I have a MSI N560TX-TI video card, which has 1gb GDDR5.

I can't see any mention of cores on the box. It has Afterburner thing, whatever that is?

BTW, this thread isn't for my own PC, it's for a family member I'm introducing to PR.

[Cossack]

Afterburner helps OC your GPU. Really cool tool. And what cores you mean?

[Rapid12]

I wouldn't know where to start overclocking the GPU. I can up the fan speed with that Afterburner, but that's about as far as I can understand.

Anyways, cores, says mine has 384, is that useful enough for ArmA2 PR?

MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Overclocked NVIDIA Graphics Card - 1GB - N560GTX-TI-M2D1GD5/OC - Scan.co.uk

[Cossack]

Its CUDA cores, Nvidia technology that help achieving faster rendering etc. speeds. Here a bit detailed info - Compute Unified Device Architecture And man, call down. You spent 200-300 bucks for good card not shit one, so it can even run BF 3 nearly everything maxed out. Its bang for bucks not super high end that costs 600 bucks and gives about 30% of boost to your system compared to this one (I'm talking about 500 series GPU's because its wrong comparing with 600 series).

Only thing to worry about is CPU - get Intel, live longer.

P.S. I might be wrong somewhere, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Rapid12]

Thanks Coss, I'm convinced on the Intel.

[Q2M100]

I have a 6870 and can max PR:A2 no problem. Only that weird war mode effect drops frame rates.

Intel is awesome. A year later and my i5 2500k @ 4GHz is still really strong. Overclocking is really easy if you aren't hardcore into it; just set the multiplier to a 40 and you are good to go.