Upgrading system for Arma 3, looking at an upgrade for 7770

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Merkury

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Nov 24, 2013
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Looking at buying a new GPU this holiday season, around the 200-250 dollar price range maybe. It depends. Will be used for gaming purposes, wanting to run Arma 3 (mix of high/medium settings with good view distance, low FSAA/SMAA) at 1440x900 resolution) in medium chaotic environments/many enemies/multiplayer and get a stable 50-60 fps. My current GPU is AMD Radeon 7770 1ghz and I'm using a 650W PSU. Also have 10 gigs of ram and mobo is a Gigabyte 2AC8. No preferred place to get it, online or otherwise, if you have an insight as to someplace I can get it for cheaper, thatd be cool. Able to overclock it.

Additional details: Was looking at 7870 but I dont know if it's the best option. Is it possible to use an nvidia card too? or is it better to use AMD. Also, will my cpu bottleneck the graphics card? When I play arma my CPU usage out of the game is like only 15-20%. When I play the game currently with a mix of max/disabled settings with a low viewdistance I get like 20-40 frames and when its all minimal graphics it isnt much better. Multiplayer any graphics setting is like not more than 20 fps. I really want to be able to hold 50-60 in most environments. Minimal frame drops. If I forgot to say anything or if you want any more info let me know. Thanks in advance.
 
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rolandzhang3

rolandzhang3

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Sep 28, 2013
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What's your CPU? as long as your 650W PSU is a decent brand and model, it should be fine for any of these cards

In that price range you can get a 7950 or a GTX 760 (the ultra cheap 7950 is out of stock)

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/sapphire-video-card-1003523l

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/powercolor-video-card-ax79503gbd52dhpp

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/sapphire-video-card-100352flex2

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-02gp42763kr

There's also this 7970 but it's of questionable build quality

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/powercolor-video-card-ax79703gbd52dhv3
 
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rolandzhang3

rolandzhang3

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Ah, the FX 6100 isn't a great CPU but with an overclock it should pair well with these cards, and if it wasn't performing up to your expectations there are other upgrade options for the AM3+ socket down the line so that shouldn't be too big of an issue
 
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M

Merkury

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Nov 24, 2013
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will the fx6100 bottleneck any of them? is there a threshold of GPUs where it comes useless to get anything better? Also, how would I go about OCing my cpu? One thing that confuses me is that When i play arma even though I am getting only like 20-30 fps my cpu usage from arma is only like 20% tops. is that right or is something off? will getting a new gpu like the 7870 or 7950 fix my fps problem?
 
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rolandzhang3

rolandzhang3

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It seems many people are having the same problem with low CPU and GPU usage (using only 4 cores or less), as a result the FX 6100's rather weak single threaded performance would be what's holding you back (that's why people disliked the bulldozer lineup as it didn't bring much of a performance improvement over the older lineups of CPUs from AMD)

Intel generally does not have this problem since their single threaded performance is significantly more powerful than AMD's, as a result their dual core i3s are comparable in performance to an AMD quad core, and in many games will perform better than your 6100

You're gonna need a decent CPU cooler if you're going to think about overclocking, but here's a guide if you're interested

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/46237-bulldozer-overclocking-guide-performance-scaling-charts-max-ocs-ln2-results-coming.html

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/amd-fx-ocers-club.153443/

As a result in CPU intensive games like most MMOs, Metro or Planetside 2, the bottleneck will be evident, for regular GPU intensive games you'll see a bigger performance improvement
 
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Merkury

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Nov 24, 2013
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I read somewhere that this guy OC'd different individual coores of his cpu moore than others since arma doesnt use many cores well, e.g. he clocked core 1 to 6.5ghz, core 2 to 6.1GHz Core 3 to 4.8GHz and leave Core 4 at 4.6Ghz since 4.6 was the OC he was using for everything before hand. he was using a i7 4770k. I know I wouldnt be able to get those numbers but if I invested in a water cooler could I do something of a similar effect? Im guessing he was more successful because since arma would only use the beginning cores more and they alone werre clocked higher it had a greater impact on his perfoormance.
 
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rolandzhang3

rolandzhang3

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I'm not sure if the FX 6100 would OC too well with good results either..

You're talking about this right? per core turbo ratios

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1592713

In regards to that you can ask here on the overclocking part of this forum, they will help you much better than I would be able to

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum-29.html

I'd recommend getting a decent cooler before overclocking, the stock cooler will definitely not be enough

Overall you'd still see an improvement in games with a 7870, just not as much as it otherwise would be
 
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