Do I need to upgrade and to what?

T

TheForumTroll

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
105
Hello experts.

I'm in need of advice about my PC. I play ArmA 2 and I'm having problems with very low FPS (>30 avage in benchmark 1). If I ALT + TAB out while gaming my CPU seems to be okay (>40 % most of the time) so I'm guessing it is my graphic card. Could someone tell me if it is indeed my card or tell me how to test it myself?

Here are the relevant specs:
  • Windows 7 (64 bit but ArmA is 32 bit)
  • Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
  • Corsair Dominitor TWIN2X4096-8500C5D
  • Gigabyte EP45-DS4
  • Gainward Geforce GTX 460 1GB ("Golden Sample GLH" edition)
If it is my graphic card should I go for SLI or not? (I really haven't got the money to spare so the cheaper the better). I've been thinking about overclocking but I'm not really sure how much I can gain without extra cooling and/or noise.
 
what settings are you trying to run? also I sure remember the demo being much more cpu demanding than just using 40% of my E8500 but I will go check again. and with your E8500 I would certainly not go sli as you are already limiting even one gtx460 in more cpu intensive games.
 
So you are saying it is actually a CPU problem? I'll try and monitor the CPU while running the benchmark and see what it shows. Never really used Windows' monitor functions but it shouldn't be too hard.

EDIT:
Oh and settings. Normal on most and disabled AA. My monitor is 1920*1080 though so that might be part of the problem.
 
On benchmark 1 I get about 48fps average at 1680x1050 with mostly high settings (i can check if you are interested) with a GTX460 1GB overclocked and my Q9450. When I was using my GTX260 I saw 0 difference (in the benchmark) going from 3.2 to 3.5ghz. Yet i only saw like a 2fps increase going to the GTX460 from GTX260.
 
Arma is one of those rare games that requires a quad core even if it cant tax your cpu at 100%, maybe is an bottleneck at the cpu architecture level that doesnt allow to fully utilize the cpu as Arma 2 is badly optimized. Your Gtx 460 is plenty for that game
 
well I was hitting 90%+ cpu usage at times so the OP certainly would be using even more with his stock clocked E8500. and like evolucion8 said, a game can be much faster and smoother on a quad and/or better architecture cpu even if its not maxing out your current cpu.
 
I'm not sure how to decipher the graph. It is rather high and the 40 % was misleading (seems ArmA is paused when minimized, doh). There are 3 spikes where the cores are on 99 % and a quick look tells me that the average is ~90 %. Shouldn't it be on 100 % if that is the bottleneck?


EDIT: Didn't see the new posts. A new CPU it is. I was hoping I could wait as I would rather upgrade to a new architecture than the Core 2.

Thank you =)
 
TheForumTroll said:
I'm not sure how to decipher the graph. It is rather high and the 40 % was misleading (seems ArmA is paused when minimized, doh). There are 3 spikes where the cores are on 99 % and a quick look tells me that the average is ~90 %. Shouldn't it be on 100 % if that is the bottleneck?
Click to expand...
like we just said, a game can be much better on a quad even if its not maxing out your current cpu. there are plenty of games that never use 100% of my E8500 but would be faster and smoother on an i5/i7 quad.

EDIT: I see you now edited, lol. I would just go Sandy Bridge next month and sell your current cpu/mobo/ram.
 
Arma 2 is ridiculously demanding. If you get a bad frame rate, it's nothing to be ashamed of, just turn down some of the settings (in particular the draw distance). HardOCP have posted several, benches of how Arma II performs with various settings adjusted, you'd do well to take a look at those.
 
I don't know if Arma 2 has any settings for shading, never played it fully, however if it does, turn those down. Shaders or blooming can really put a hit on performance. I'd personally would just turn down some of the settings as even the highest settings, that game on Corei7's and high end video card it still taxes it pretty hard.
 
I'll have a quick look on my GPU usage and read the article and then come back. Thank you for the answers.

Update:
Okay so I had a look at the article. Was a good read except that the visibility ranges was way too low in my opinion. As far as I know most servers force it to 3000 :confused:

With the same settings that maxed out my CPU, my GPU is at ~40-50 % and that is max usage (highest spike is 56 %), not even average. Phew, I was afraid I had to throw more money then planned after it. Nice tool GPU-z btw. That's a keeper.

I think I'll grab an Intel Q9505 to keep me going for a while. That should help a lot in ArmA, yes? :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top