Day one: what a beautiful place!

[Walrussel 4]

Well, first of all, hello all. first post, new user. glad to be here.

anyway, figured i'd might as well start with my first day in chernarus.

well, it's certainly been interesting. As i'm using a 3 year old laptop, getting the game to work was a bit of a struggle. however, making it possible to play was a completely different story.

i'll explain as i go on.

Well, first time i logged into a server, i was greeted with complete darkness. not realising that this was in fact nighttime, i assumed the integrated graphics were having none of it. so i logged out and put the game down for a day.

not being defeated, i tried again in the morning. i modified all the ingame settings to be as minimal as possible, stuck in as many startup scripts i could find and messed with the conf files as everyone else has suggested in other posts.

And then i logged back in. i was pleased to see sunlight. and grass! and a house! This is awesome! it's working!

And it all looks so Spe..ctacular??!



yes, that is the resolution i'm running at. 640x480. Via a 1200p monitor, i might add.

anyway, i lagged my way into this building at about 3-4 Frames per second, and found some much needed food. Some pristine boots, a mask, and a knife! things are looking up!

on my way back outside, i see a figure approaching. maybe it's a bandit, about to take my new items. maybe it's someone trying to steal blood? maybe i'll end up in a youtube video somewhere.

it was infact, a Zombie.



She's a looker, isn't she...

now, despite the low resolution death that stumbled my way, it was still enough to scare me sh*tless, and i tried to lock myself in the house.
but that's where the framerate got the better of me, and as you can see, me and the zombie had a nice little encounter inside the living room.

so i sprinted out of there. well, i say sprinted, it looked more like a crudely made flipbook animation of a man performing the robot. but still, i Ran*

after about 5 minutes of this, i figured maybe my time was up. due to the laptop making an awful groaning noise, and enough heat to cook an egg. i spotted a smudge on my screen up ahead, which turned out to be a warehouse i could hide in, and log off.



And that was Day one!
 

Edited February 9, 2014 by Walrussel

[zhrike 264]

Day two: he buys a new computer.

I bet you're thinking about it, though, eh? Dolina would look much better in higher res :-)

[Walrussel 4]

you know what? i am xD

problem is, i'm a broke student, and it's gonna be a couple months at the very least, before i can upgrade! so i have to make do with this!

i've seen higher res screenshots and it does look lush. the wait's going to kill me, but it's going to be SO worth it in the end.

 

[zhrike 264]

Watch some videos of guys who have high-end rigs tripped out to the nines, and who upload high res vids. It's gorgeous. Though, something enticed you to get the game, so maybe you already have. Also, there are some good threads in the Gallery section here of gorgeous screen shots, etc. But yeah, anticipation ... it's making you wait. And it will be all that much better in the end.

[Walrussel 4]

Whilst i'm here, i might as well ask. What would a rough minimum specification be, for this?
for instance, to get by, would an integrated solution like AMD's A series APU's cut the mustard? or should i be leaning more towards a discrete graphics option?
also, just for reference, what do you have, and how well does it work for you? :)


 

[zhrike 264]

Whilst i'm here, i might as well ask. What would a rough minimum specification be, for this?

for instance, to get by, would an integrated solution like AMD's A series APU's cut the mustard? or should i be leaning more towards a discrete graphics option?

also, just for reference, what do you have, and how well does it work for you? :)

Discrete video card for sure. Right now the game is not optimized, and is based on the arma 2 reality engine, which is CPU intensive, but they'll be moving more off of the CPU and onto the GPU as development continues. My specs are on the lower end of the spectrum, but the game, once I get the settings, runs well.

i7-3720 2.60GHz

8 GB ram

Nvidia GeForce 650M w/ a gig of memory.

I'm running it on a macbook pro with windows 7 under boot camp. Like I said, little stuttering with the settings I have, unless in the big cities, which hits everyone, pretty much. Even people with higher end systems often set the prefs lower because it's beneficial to performance as well as in game (as it allows you to see players).

[Westerburg 41]

Whilst i'm here, i might as well ask. What would a rough minimum specification be, for this?

for instance, to get by, would an integrated solution like AMD's A series APU's cut the mustard? or should i be leaning more towards a discrete graphics option?

also, just for reference, what do you have, and how well does it work for you? :)

 

Good CPU...that is the key to this game.. YOu can get by with a 5770 or higher video card, but your limiting factor is going to be your CPU. Right now DayZ is very cpu intensive. I'd go for at least 4 cores, 8 threads running at 3.8ghz or higher. The higher you can get those three things the better. People with good i7's or a good 6 core AMD seem to be the ones running everything above low or very low settings. Every patch seems to creep me an inch closer to that level, and I've been gradually able to turn on or up things I couldn't before. Also, ignore integrated graphics. It's shit, always has been and will for a good long while. a 7770m isn't going to be close to a 7770 dcu or ghz edition, hell, it's not even going to equal a low end 6000 series. Also, don't buy a laptop unless you plan on shelling out a good chunk of change. A thousand dollar laptop isn't likely going to cut it. You can either spend $1200 to have portability and playability, but it won't be that great, just passable, or you can spend $700, lose the portability and get something that's going to play well...anything at fairly respectable settings.

 

I've said it in a dozen posts now, but I'm running a 4 year old desktop (with the exception of the video cards), and can play most games at very high/ultra settings and not drop below 45 fps. DayZ...well that's another kettle of fish, but I get around 30-55 fps depending on where I am. Here's an idea of what you can do with a 4 year old desktop and a single 7770 (Can rebuild the whole thing for about $600)

 

 

This is with an old gigabyte board, a Phenom II 955 black edition cpue (4 core 3.2ghz, oc'd to 3.7ghz) 8gb of shitty ram and a single XFX 7770 ghz edition 1gb, set to factory OC settings. Recording the whole thing in native resolution of 1680X1050 in avi with mirellis action!

Edited February 9, 2014 by Westerburg

[Walrussel 4]

Not bad at all!

well, thanks for the input. i've been spending some time wondering where i should invest first.

when my money comes through, hopefully the Haswell refresh has happened. look's like it's an i5 for me!

[zhrike 264]

Also, keep your eye out for cheap store brand PCs with good CPUs and expandable motherboards. You can usually pick them up cheaply, then tear out the PSU (out of necessity) and replace with a higher wattage unit, and replace the vid card (if it comes with one) with a decent card and get a decent gaming system on the cheap.