Prototype771

When the Capitol Hill Infinti incident occurred, the heli taking off reminded me of DayZ.

Still looking for feedback as more people still ask for recommended CPUs!

The thread in my sig is a work in progress, but I recently purchased the i5 3470. Great machine, paired it w/ MSI ZH77A-G43 MOBO (keep in mind, THIS DOES NOT OVERCLOCK MUCH IF AT ALL! (it's really an H77 chipset, which I knew before purchase unlike most), and got some G Skill Sniper 2133 ( 2 x 4GB). That speed is excessive, but I can throttle it back to 1600mhz just fine with no performance hits that are noticeable. I had already owned a GTX 580 SC 1.5 GB card before this buy, so I saved some cash, but it's a good machine for DayZ. I run TeamSpeak, Gamebooster (for FPS and sometimes screen capturing), and use the JSRS 1.5 sound mod on a modified DayZ server. Usually I hit 40-60+ (capped by Vsync) after a restart on my server which lasts for an hour or so. By the two hour mark, Ill usually stretch like 30+ frames in the larger cities, UNLESS there is a vehicle around pulling aggro... That kills my frames... I blame the 1.7.7.# patches as this was never a problem before on my much older ( and weaker) rig pre 1.7.7.# patches. Other than that, I run @ 1080 (both res and 3d) Very High Text, Default mem, Very High Anisotropic filtering, AA off, ATOC (doesnt matter when AA is off), High or very high shadows (i dont see the difference so I set to high), Obj detail high (have run normal and very high, usually doesnt affect fps unless zombies around as noted), HDR High (occasionally normal just cuz im not sure if it really affects performance...) Post Processing Effects @ low or disabled. Depends on my mood. Hope this helps! I was able to get some rebates (though never received lol! ) and $20 off the i5 3470 on Newegg, Run down: i5 3470 MSI ZH77A-G43 (this is H77) 8GB G Skill Sniper 2133 (you just need 1600) Corsair TX 650 (also known as Enthusiast) ~ $430 USD i think when I bought those, but I got some side accessories in that buy so this is a guess. YOU WILL NEED A GFX CARD! The onboard isnt supported by Arma, so add another $150-200 (if on budget) for a good midrange card (At least last time I looked which was like 6 months ago) Hard drives and OS is up to you. I reused old drives and reinstalled windows 7 for my build. Highly recommend a small SSD dedicated for the OS though.

There are some programs that put in the regular desktop in Windows 8... Might as well upgrade to newest OS unless there are programs that aren't supported by the OS. Some dislike the marketplace, and compare 8 to Apple's locked system approach... Linux might be the primary OS on the gaming market if some of the rumors are true around teh Interneht. Thuerr et izz..... dedthteh indernht!

Well, unfortunately, I couldn't gather more data while the forums were down, but I DID upgrade: i5 3470 G Skill Sniper 2133 (Excessive speed, but I'd rather have the extra headroom for the same price for whatever reason that might be, not sure. Lol. Dont want to hear why this is wrong cuz it works 100% fine.) 2x4 GB GTX 580 1.5 Fermi SC edition (Beast!) Win 7 Home Prem SP1 (unlicensed as Microsoft insisted my old Win7 Key was not retail... my ass) MSI ZH77A G43 (NOT Z77, this is H77. I know what it can(t) do. Perfect price for my needs.) Stock Heatsink with an aftermarket lying around.... Need some new TP for it though, so I'm on the stock till then. NZXT Sentry 2 Fan Controller. Awesome gadget. Sleek, useful, but getting a good cable management set up was difficult at first, yet again, my case is from 2007. Running my older 2x 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm drives... 5.9 Win Index.... getting an SSD soon I hope! Corsair TX series (Enthusiast) 650W PSU.... 54A on the +12v rail... Great Power supply... love the on/off fan feature. Keeps some noise down. Extras:

Chernarus is actually DayZ, whilst other maps replicate DayZ, usually with a different map. However, because of this, the coding could be modified for other maps thus making them run better. Takistan runs smoother than Chernarus, whilst Taviana usually is rougher than Chernarus. The map GREATLY affects frame rate. If you perform better on a loaded Taviana server than a moderate Chernarus server... There could be something wrong. Double check to make sure your Arma 2 Beta patch is the latest (or recommended) patch, as some are unstable... 103718? Was the most recent supported patch after the rollback from the 105(?)495 or something patch. Just a thought. Reinstall DayZ again, worst case, Arma 2 itself just in case something is fragged on the harddrive (usually defrags wont fix these). Also, hard drives greatly affect loading times, which could potentially lower frames if the CPU is focused on trying to load rather than render the files Arma uses. Recommended putting this on an SSD, look on ebay, Newegg, Craigslist, etc for a new (or used) SSD, which will help SMOOTHEN the game. In rare cases, some users report higher frame count (because their old HDDs were so bad...). That's pretty much it. Hope this helps!

Well I would, but Im still tight on cash. Maybe I might hit some, but again, even if this thread ends up not applying to my upgrade, I'm sure someone else is in a similar position and would love to see this thread when we expand into several more processors. I am trying to look more for actual player performance, granted they provide enough information formatted to the examples in previous posts, and include some extra information if they record or not, if they run other programs whilst playing, and so forth. I can't just have everyone recommend a 3570k or the newer equivalent, because so many people run it, I know how it runs already. I'm concerned on the steps just below that more people could afford rather than an extra 20 dollars that possibly doesn't need to be spent for 2-3 frames (the gain is a bit more, this is an example). Thanks for the input, always appreciated. On a side note from that, the latest Intel processors focused primarily on power consumption and onboard graphics. Now, There were some other things that were added as well, but the actual performance gain for the 4th gen vs the 3rd gen is hardly anything, and some of the cpus run for $20 more for the name sake! Even from the Sandy Bridge cpus, there really wasn't a large performance gain since then... Which makes me wonder if the cpus are really hitting the end of improvement, as the technology almost hits limitations in size (literally!) We would have to expect an entire new beast to replace the current technology we have! Also, many mainstream games aren't as intensive as the few that are on the market. In addition, the mobile platform is skyrocketing in popularity which will shift the market, that will affect the gaming computer community... But maybe AMD can rise over the Intel power and stay true to the gaming community, the rendering community, etc as Intel makes way for the shrinking chips for mobile devices. Just a little thought that has been dawning to some other gamers/enthusiasts I know. Sorry for this block of text :/ EDIT 1: Mind posting specs/settings? I was looking at the cpu a while ago.

Can you post specs and settings for your setup? Unless you have already done so, then I apologize... I'm not focused well today so I might miss the obvious.

Whilst part of this is true from my experience, the AMD was only better when you updated Windows 7 with the patch from Microsoft. This is a known problem for AMD users and the performance gains are significant for gaming and synthetic benchmarks as well once the patch is applied. This is from my experience, so don't be thinking I'm bagging on Intel, cause I'm not. I love Intel, AMD is still fairly new to me. Also, the cpus may run better with different cards, different versions of an operating system, different ram speeds, overclock.... ALL of these will cause a huge variation in performance, even in identical setups! I've literally seen two EXACT same specification rigs, that both run entirely different ways. I'm talking about everything is the same. Hardware isn't always consistent which tends to skew the benchmarks we all sought for. I'm just gathering user info that way I feel more confident about what to buy, instead of second guessing my decision to get any of the said parts. EDIT: I still encourage more results, and hopefully information from personal experience. Please prove me wrong, but I'm still not convinced, as there was no consistency in the many benchmarks I've seen. Might help to provide several more links that way I can compare the results. EDIT 2: I am aware of how AMD isn't as good as Intel in single threading. I've done some research, but still need more results. EDIT 3: Were those benchmarks using STOCK speeds? For all I know, they could have overclocked the Intels and left the AMDs alone... Just a conspiracy from the lack of data I saw, but I didn't stare at the results too much. :P

Most servers won't allow mods... Thus making that an unlikely culprit to the problem. Zeds are a suspected cause, which I've only see affect my frame rate in the latest patches.

Just happened to post about the latest patches really altering performance. Pre 1.7.7 was smoother... Post 1.7.7 was hell for my computer. Settings that normally boosted performance actually don't work anymore for me, and low/high hardly sees a real dip anymore (unless I really crank past my specs, then it still hits me). Zeds are a suspect in the latest and greatest optimizations they claimed to have made... Oh well, I need a new rig. Would like help finding a good set up! If you have a good rig (anyone), please check my signature, I plan on buying parts very soon, which means I can let you all know if the performance is good!

This set of new patching done within the last few weeks really tore the little performance I had anyways. I've concluded this was predominant when zeds aggro in larger packs (usually by a vehicle, which REALLY dips my fps to the levels of hell.). This wasn't always there... only since the 1.7.7 patch has this been a problem.

I will be buying a new motherboard, as my current rig is an old Kentsfield Intel CPU using the LGA 775 socket >.>

Problem with this benchmark: The low resolution. The ones I've seen ran 1080 resolution. Low resolutions prefer Intel, whilst higher resolutions preferred AMD. Not sure how this applies to all applications, but was shown in Arma 2. Also, many benchmarks are skewed if they are running W7 because of a patch needed from Microsoft that was choking AMD performance. I've noticed TekSyndicate (I think) discussed this in one of his videos more recently, which I thought was neat. The game isn't best at auto detecting btw. Some people run quad cores, but the games detects only 2 cores (even though there are 4 physical cores). Just becuase it worked for some, doesn't mean it works for everyone. Just thought I'd share that. Also, might help if spoilers are used for the list. Otherwise the moderators might not like this thread :/ (PAPIE^) and turn your vid mem to default. Run textures a little higher now. Should help out, but the i3 might choke your performance of the GPU. Thanks for the specs/settings!

I can already tell the difference. Instead of working on visuals, they need to fix the mechanics of the zombies. What I see, is a challenge, for the wrong reasons. Here's why: The latest updates supposedly fix the hit boxes, animations, etc. With this, they up'd the speed they run at as well, thus allowing latency to become a larger problem, actually making the zombies not function the way they were designed, and renders the patches useless in regards to attack movements. The zombies, are unpredictable, and the zig zag in Arma makes the zeds nearly impossible to shoot with any latency or frame drop when they sprint for you. When they attack you, the lag allows dissonance of the zombies and your player, even if they are in the correct zones of attack on the server, you see a zed hitting you from 5m away or some weird distance. Also, the inconsistency when sprinting (due to any lag) makes it even worse to take down the target. Now the game makes me wanna exploit the walking indoors in order to even get a bullet on these things! Note that this phenomenon above happens to me whether 30 ms ping, to 200ms ping, 10 fps, 70 fps.... Vanilla, custom server, etc. Also, the coding really screwed up the frames many people get when they (zeds) aggro in numbers. Even some people with i5s that run very well, get brought down to a crawling 10 or lower fps from say 20-40 fps on a server. This is most notable when vehicles pass by. Hueys and offroad vehicles usually hit harder for some reason. This never used to be a problem for me, even with the lower amounts of frames I tend to run. *Got a good enough rig to run fairly good settings with smooth gameplay? Post on my thread regarding cpus and dayz! Link in the signature below!*