Upgrade advice

[S. Archer]

So, my pc runs ArmA and most anything else I throw at it pretty decent. But, I want better. So, in the next few months I would like to upgrade. What I want to know, basically, is would I be smarter to upgrade my GPU, CPU, get an SSD, upgrade my RAM, some combination of all that, or just build new from scratch?

Current specs:
AMD FX 4350 Quad Core @ 4.20GHz (not OC)
8 gb RAM
AMD GTX 670
Power Supply is just some generic whatever
MOBO is Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB-3

I know most people now say Intel is the way to go, especially for ArmA. It runs on Ultra in S/P for the most part around 45-50fps, but in M/P I have to drop it to Medium. And then I only get like 20-30fps in open terrain.

[Bingham]

What's your price range? I recommend a new gpu and cpu but that require a motherboard as well as a power supply. It'll be costly

[A. Lawman]

When you do decide what you want to buy, keep an eye on https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales and https://pcpartpicker.com/. In case you don't already.

[S. Archer]

What's your price range? I recommend a new gpu and cpu but that require a motherboard as well as a power supply. It'll be costly

Yea I did some pricing on a local website here. I built it up with an i5, also did an i7 later, a mobo and a gtx 9xx series. Came to around $1000CAD I think. I would be comfortable even bumping that to closer to $2000 to do it right when the time comes. If I'm going to rebuild, I want it good. I don't want to be going "Crap if only I'd done this...

When you do decide what you want to buy, keep an eye on https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales and https://pcpartpicker.com/. In case you don't already.

i use pc part picker, didn't know about the sub reddit though. Thank you!

[McGuire]

Also - I would encourage you to go Intel if/when you upgrade if you can. In my experience and in most posts online, it is known Arma loves Intel chipsets over the AMD ones...not required, but something to think about. I know that means a lot of change, but just a heads up.

[T. Miles]

I'd recommend you get an SSD first Archer. Currently it'll give you the best performance boost for your buck. Anything else you'll replace will probably require you to upgrade another part for it, and GPUs are generally expensive enough by their self.

Then you could probably upgrade your mobo, cpu, ram, and psu. You kinda have to do those at the same time, because switching to intel requires you to get a new mobo, and you might as well buy a ddr4 compatible one, which'll require you to dump your current ram. All of those will obviously need a new psu  .

Finally about the GPU, I don't know what kind of games you play (or want to play) so can't really comment on that, but I can say that your 670 should be able to keep you going for a year or so if you do the above upgrades first. If you don't play many games and arma is the most intense one you play, it'll keep you going until it breaks.

[Hopp]

I have an i5-6000 series with ddr4 ram. Gtx 900 series gpu. And a very small Xbox one size form factor case. Absolutely gorgeous, when I bought a monitor to go with it. Then a nice mechanical keyboard. Good mouse. TrackIR 5. Hotas throttle and joystick. Three SSDs, one m.2, 2 standard ssds. No moving parts except for the fans.

Expensive but wow on the gaming factor.

[Gostrydr]

In Intel CPU, Mobo, DDR4, and newer GPU will all use less power than the parts you already have.

You wouldn't technically need to upgrade your current PSU unless you really want to.
However, personally I would want one with good protection circuitry, and not some generic brand.

As for the CPU, if your willing to pay up to $2000 you might want to look into socket 2011v3.
I've been hearing great things about the 6 cores.

[SSG (Ret) Beard]

One of the things to keep in mind with ARMA is it's inefficient CPU utilisation. This is why I-7 CPU's offer such a huge performance boost. When ARMA fails to spread the load to additional cores, the fact that an I-7 has Hyperthreading means that a physical core has very little chance of being maxed out as the CPU load shares between the two threads on each physical core.

I have a I-7 2600 that came out in 2011 and it runs ARMA with no issues, where as many that I have spoken to are running very late non HT I-5's or AMD's and they really struggle to maintain frame rates.

ARMA is incredibly processor hungry due to the insane number of ballistics calculations that it has to process. As well as the ragdoll physics which seem to really badly increase CPU load.

Hope this is helpful.