Results: Arma III At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
Originally, I planned to skip testing at 1920x1080—it seems like too-mainstream of a resolution for these cards. But I was reminded by someone who sells a lot of high-end hardware that FHD remains massively prolific.
With that said, we’re able to run Arma III at its Ultra quality preset on even an R9 280X and enjoy playable performance. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 690 is actually the fastest card at 1920x1080, followed by its GeForce GTX Titan. However, the Radeon R9 290X still averages more than 60 FPS, alongside the GK110-powered GeForce GTX 780. It’d appear that AMD’s Radeon HD 7990 doesn’t have the CrossFire profile it’d need to properly support Arma.
Stepping up to QHD exacts a more taxing workload. The R9 290X’s increased memory bandwidth and higher pixel fill rate allow it to maintain more of its performance than GeForce GTX Titan or 780…
…the thing is, with minimums under 40 FPS, I’d hesitate before recommending any single-GPU solution in this game.
I’m going to leave frame time variance out of this story at 1920x1080. FCAT is reporting odd frame time behavior at that specific resolution, even though we’re able to verify average frame rates with Fraps. At 2560x1440, however, it’s clear that frame time variance in Arma is very low, even for the dual-GPU cards.
