Upgrade or New Build?

RossNews

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Primary use: Gaming/Movies
Issue: ARMA 3 only gets 10-15 frames per second.

Old Build:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz
MOBO: GA-990XA-UD3 AM2/AM3+ (No support past 8350)
RAM: 12 GB DDR3 (8+2+2)
GPU: GTX 960
SSD: EVO 850 500GB x2
HDD: 10 TB
PSU: Thermaltake 850

Basically wondering what I should do.
Budget is open ended, but I would like to keep it on the lower end if possible.

EDIT: This is is a Frankenstein's PC built over the years with many new and old parts from other pc's. But it's not enough.
 
I run it on ULTRA at 1080.
However no matter how much I change the settings, the low frames persist.
MINIMUM gets 18 frames MAX.
ULTRA gets 15 Frames MAX.

I want a solid 40+ in combat.
 
Yea, got yourself a good bottleneck. Probably one of the only games that require a better CPU. If you don't want to drop on DDR4 and all that you could get yourself a 4960k or even a 4460 while retaining your current RAM.
 
You could try overclocking, It definitely helped back when I had a X4 965 and Arma 2. I upgraded to an 8320 and overclocked that to like 4.4 or something when I had Arma 3 and it helped even more. Now I have an i5 4460 and it works even better! - 315 hours in Arma 3, 600+ Arma 2 (Yikes!)

I believe I had the GA-970 Mobo and was able to achieve a good overclock with the 8320, with just a zip tied 120mm fan and aluminum foil to channel the air. That 990 is even better so I would just get a cheap 8320 and overclock it. The Arma team is implementing DX12 so that should also help the 8320 a bit.

I haven't been on these forums in so long! I even forgot my old specs, I guess ill see once I post this :)

EDIT: last time I was here PP had like 13K posts! Its been awhile haha
Overclock that 955!
 
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Overclocking won't give him much of an advantage in Arma3. IIRC Kman was having issues even with a stock i7 2600. I didn't have much of a problem but I also have more cores. DX12 may or may not help much in the CPU area. It reduces overhead on the graphics side but what kills is all the processing done from AI or other shooters.
 
Overclocking won't give him much of an advantage in Arma3. DX12 may or may not help much in the CPU area. It reduces overhead on the graphics side but what kills is all the processing done from AI or other shooters.

I remember I did some Arma benchmarking when I compared my stock 8320 3.5GHZ to 4.5GHZ and there was like an 8 or so FPS difference. Thats a good amount in my opinion. I don't think it would hurt him to make that X4 955 500Mhz faster, it'll probably give him at least a few more frames.

From my extremely limited knowledge of DX12 I do belive it will help scale and utilize cores better, which would notably help AMD's CPUs, could be wrong though.
 
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What will help AMD CPUs is lower CPU overhead requiring less single threaded performance. The problem with a game like this is it actually utilizes CPU besides graphics and basic AI information. So yes, lowering the overhead for the engine to communicate with the graphics card will reduce CPU usage, it'll just get eaten by the other information that's actually causing the bottleneck here. With DX12 comes more draw calls, more processor utilization for AI, netcode, and many other things. I believe his problem here is simply a bottleneck in his processor not being able to keep up. Overclocking will help, sure, but if the cash is there the issue is resolved by simply getting an i5.

You're forgetting that you have 4 more threads than he does, as well as a serious clock advantage.

For now, the launch parameters from this thread might help a bit. Some games just need to be messed with to run properly, like Blops 3.
 
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