Arma 2 or Flashpoing Dragon rising on PC?

Four of a kind

Have been looking at both on youtube and both seem really good. However, I've been reading reviews here and I'm confused

I thought that flashpoint was going to be serious.

So my question which game is better? I'll be getting one to run on my PC(which has plenty of gaming power) so I would like to know your opinions.

Whats the latest Arma..is it ARMA 2 A.C.E?

kenon

ArmA II is the serious one as its made by the people who made the original OpFlash.

Depends what you are into, ArmA II is quite difficult, quite in depth and when you become good at it, its very rewarding. Looks excellent, plays brilliant, and multiplayer is brilliant fun.

ACE is an addon pack that is coming soon to ArmA II, it looks absolutely stunning. Theres a thread about it on this forum somewhere.

I cant really comment on the new flashpoint, I'm sure someone will share their experiences on it.

BTW, we have an ArmA II server on boards as well with people on every night.

Four of a kind

kenon wrote: »

ArmA II is the serious one as its made by the people who made the original OpFlash.

Depends what you are into, ArmA II is quite difficult, quite in depth and when you become good at it, its very rewarding. Looks excellent, plays brilliant, and multiplayer is brilliant fun.

ACE is an addon pack that is coming soon to ArmA II, it looks absolutely stunning. Theres a thread about it on this forum somewhere.

I cant really comment on the new flashpoint, I'm sure someone will share their experiences on it.

BTW, we have an ArmA II server on boards as well with people on every night.

Thanks for the reply dude. Yeah Arma looks like its the more serious of the two. Have never really played tactical shooters much in the past, so am thinking of giving it a go!

ScumLord

I can't really comment on OPFP yet I just received it the other day and got to play 15 minutes of it before I had to go away for two days.

I thought ARMA2 had slightly better graphics, it annoyed me no end that OPFP was telling me to press the x on the xbox controller "or the relevant keyboard key" although I'm hoping that may just be because the controllers plugged in, but even GTA4 switched tips depending on which control you where using.

Even though it's a brand new game all I want to do this evening is play Arma2 because I've found out a new tactic for passing one of the single player missions that I've spent hours trying to pass. Those where good hours of trying different tactics too not just being frustrated by a poor game (the patches have made the single player playable now). I haven't even tried multiplayer yet which is supposed to be where the game really excels just look at the multiplayer videos on youtube.

If you have to chose just one then it really has to be ARMA2 it's more involved, has way more users, missions and a stronger modding community. Even on paper ARMA2 is better.

I haven't given OPFP a full go yet so maybe I'm wrong and I did think ARMA2 was way to hard at first but once you come round to it's way of doing things it makes OPFP look like war for kids next to ARMA.

Four of a kind

cool. Going to go with Arma 2. Will get it next week. Looks crazy on youtube.

Dcully

FYI Steam are selling it for 19.99 euro this weekend.

Played the demo myself and hated it , turned me off the full game.

cashville

Haven't played OFP2 because of all the bad feedback from people who bough it. I love Arma 2 though, saying that I don't play single player at all. It's worth it alone for the multi-player though, and there's a few of us Boardsies on our own server now.

Four of a kind

just wondering about the Ace mod 2 expansion pack...will that be available to buy as a game or will it be only available to download? Looks savage!!

dreamers75

Four of a kind wrote: »

just wondering about the Ace mod 2 expansion pack...will that be available to buy as a game or will it be only available to download? Looks savage!!

its not made by BIS its fan made so free

Arrowhead is the official Exp pack

Four of a kind

dreamers75 wrote: »

its not made by BIS its fan made so free

Arrowhead is the official Exp pack

Ok, cheers.

Is the original Arma 2 game flawed or something? Am picking it up tomorrow anyways.

Oh and where can I get ACE 1 mod?

cashville

The ACE 1 mod is for the original Arma game, not Arma 2.

Arma 2 is up to version 1.04 if I'm not mistaken, so when you get it go download the patches.

Here's a handy link for you.

http://www.armaholic.com/list.php?c=Arma2_files

Four of a kind

cashville wrote: »

The ACE 1 mod is for the original Arma game, not Arma 2.

Arma 2 is up to version 1.04 if I'm not mistaken, so when you get it go download the patches.

Here's a handy link for you.

http://www.armaholic.com/list.php?c=Arma2_files

Thanks a million dude.

Four of a kind

just to make sure as I'm a bit of noob when it comes the the technical side of things....

Will the specs below allow me to play Arma 2?

here's the specs of my XPS M1710 laptop:

CPU
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz by GenuineIntel
2330Mhz L2 Cache 4096KB 32 bit
Iin Microprocessor Socket @3.3V

Memory Modules
1024MB DIMM
1024MB DIMM
Total physical memory 2145MB

Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
Chipset NVxx
512MB


Thanks again lads.

PogMoThoin

Four of a kind wrote: »

just to make sure as I'm a bit of noob when it comes the the technical side of things....

Will the specs below allow me to play Arma 2?

here's the specs of my XPS M1710 laptop:

CPU
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz by GenuineIntel
2330Mhz L2 Cache 4096KB 32 bit
Iin Microprocessor Socket @3.3V

Memory Modules
1024MB DIMM
1024MB DIMM
Total physical memory 2145MB

Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
Chipset NVxx
512MB


Thanks again lads.

Maybe, You should just about get a slideshow at the very lowest settings and resolution. Its more cpu intensive than gpu and it thrashes the hard drive constantly, I'd certainly not expect much from that laptop (cpu is ok, but gpu is dated). I'd try the demo first

Four of a kind

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Maybe, You should just about get a slideshow at the very lowest settings and resolution. Its more cpu intensive than gpu and it thrashes the hard drive constantly, I'd certainly not expect much from that laptop (cpu is ok, but gpu is dated). I'd try the demo first

Full game is being dropped to me tomorrow so I'll see how it goes. All I can do is install in on an external hard drive with plenty of space.

Ok so if I wanted up update my laptop to make it fully compatable to play Arma 2 and other high end spec games...what hardware would I have to get?

A quad core processor?
2gigs more ram?
Better graphics card?

kenon

Four of a kind wrote: »

Full game is being dropped to me tomorrow so I'll see how it goes. All I can do is install in on an external hard drive with plenty of space.

Ok so if I wanted up update my laptop to make it fully compatable to play Arma 2 and other high end spec games...what hardware would I have to get?

A quad core processor?
2gigs more ram?
Better graphics card?

A quad core processor?

---

> Not essential, im on an intel dual core E8300 and its grand.
2gigs more ram?

---

> That would be grand. Im on 4gb.
Better graphics card?

---

> Yup. I dont know about nVidia, but on Ati, anything after 4700 would do the job.

Four of a kind

kenon wrote: »

A quad core processor?

---

> Not essential, im on an intel dual core E8300 and its grand.
2gigs more ram?

---

> That would be grand. Im on 4gb.
Better graphics card?

---

> Yup. I dont know about nVidia, but on Ati, anything after 4700 would do the job.

Got Arma 2 this morning and installed it. Unfortunately its way to slow even on low settings

No fun at all with it like that.

So if I got a better graphics card and upped my RAM from 2GB to 4GB it will work?


Would I have to get a graphics card that is specific for my laptop or are they just all the same?

And how much would a new graphics card cost, one that will provide good gaming experience?

I read somewhere that you can't change graphic cards on laptops???????

kenon

Its audacious to try play ArmA II of all games on a laptop. People with decent spec PCs moan about low frame rates on it.

I'm not sure how laptop gfx cards compare to PC gfx cards. An increase in RAM would give you a little boost in performance. A change in processor rather than changing your gfx may give you a larger performance increase.

Four of a kind

€3,500 i paid for it three years ago from Dell, and now I can't even upgrade the cnuting thing to play the latest games. Its classified as a "gaming laptop" which is the reason I bought it. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

So it looks like I'll have to resovle to getting Operation Flashpoint DR on the PS3...........

Four of a kind

a mate just sent me the specs off the desktop he just purchased from dell website:

COLOUR CHOICEAlienware Aurora Standard Cosmic Black ChassisPROCESSORIntel? Core? i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec)OPERATING SYSTEMGenuine Windows® 7 Professional 64bit- EnglishOFFICE SOFTWAREMicrosoft® Office 2007 Home and Student - EnglishHARDWARE SUPPORT 1 year of coverage included with your PCSECURITY SOFTWARENo Security/Anti-Virus ProtectionACCIDENTAL DAMAGE SUPPORTNo Accidental Damage SupportMONITORDisplay Not IncludedMEMORY6GB 1066MHz (3x2GB) Tri Channel MemoryHARD DRIVE640 GB Serial ATA non Raid (7200 Rpm)GRAPHICS CARD1.8GB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX295 graphics cardKEYBOARDAlienware Multimedia Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)MOUSEAlienware Optical MouseOPTICAL DRIVE24X DVD+/- RW Optical Drive (DVD & CD read and write)


Cost him 2k and I would say its an animal of a machine by those specs???

Really ripping that I can't upgrade but I should have known that when I went and bought a laptop.

Would a machine like this play everything smoothly?

kenon

It would play everything smoothly, but its quite pricey.

There is a lot of software thrown in as well, hardware support, keyboard/mouse, case which is only bumping up the price.

Alienware make lovely looking machines, but they are always so dear.

quiche

Four of a kind wrote: »

a mate just sent me the specs off the desktop he just purchased from dell website:

COLOUR CHOICEAlienware Aurora Standard Cosmic Black ChassisPROCESSORIntel? Core? i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec)OPERATING SYSTEMGenuine Windows® 7 Professional 64bit- EnglishOFFICE SOFTWAREMicrosoft® Office 2007 Home and Student - EnglishHARDWARE SUPPORT 1 year of coverage included with your PCSECURITY SOFTWARENo Security/Anti-Virus ProtectionACCIDENTAL DAMAGE SUPPORTNo Accidental Damage SupportMONITORDisplay Not IncludedMEMORY6GB 1066MHz (3x2GB) Tri Channel MemoryHARD DRIVE640 GB Serial ATA non Raid (7200 Rpm)GRAPHICS CARD1.8GB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX295 graphics cardKEYBOARDAlienware Multimedia Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)MOUSEAlienware Optical MouseOPTICAL DRIVE24X DVD+/- RW Optical Drive (DVD & CD read and write)


Cost him 2k and I would say its an animal of a machine by those specs???

Really ripping that I can't upgrade but I should have known that when I went and bought a laptop.

Would a machine like this play everything smoothly?

Hi Four-of-a-kind,

yeah it is bummed when that happens - to be honest though the upgrade path on laptops is very limited. There's always talk of being able to use PC card for GPU upgrades but its unlikely to ever happen.

If its any consolation - a desktop from 3 years previous with no upgrades - even if top of the line would be unlikely to play arma 2 in any decent settings (have just got the game, but making judgement guess from specs etc).

If thinking desktop, do NOT go the core i7 line - that's really now going for very high end computing. I just got a i7 920 - very expensive for what it is, especially now that intel has announced the i5 line.

Look up tomshardware for info on the i5 line of processors - for home use, you cannot beat the bang for buck by a long way.

I'm guessing you dont want to build your own rig. If adventeruous could look at komplett.ie to see what you can spec up - but deffo do research first if not familiar, because there are lots of pitfalls (wrong ram, wrong voltage ram, insufficent power supply, etc).

Other things to keep in mind - what display are you running on? Screen size/resolution can have big impact into the kind of gpu you'll need to get.

To be honest - I reckon there will be a forum somewhere here on boards which will get you some primo advice on a setup to suit your needs.

For my home built rig (i7 920, 140 raptor hdd, gx275, 6g ram) came out at around a grand from komplett - but this was before i5 came out (by like 2 months). Seeing performance of i5 now - would have to have very compelling reasons to go with i7 (i5 means cheaper mobo, ram etc than i7).

Anyways slight brain dump - find a hardware forum - they will give you better advice than me! Good luck!

And for ease - if looking for gaming rigs, generally steer clear of laptops - get nowhere near same bang for buck as desktop, and upgrade paths very limited. Good in that there's no hassle - but in that case, a PS3/xbox360 can also be a good option (saying this as a diehard pc gamer - but appreciate lot of people dont want hassle of maintaining a gaming rig).

Yeah, good luck!

Four of a kind

quiche wrote: »

Hi Four-of-a-kind,

yeah it is bummed when that happens - to be honest though the upgrade path on laptops is very limited. There's always talk of being able to use PC card for GPU upgrades but its unlikely to ever happen.

If its any consolation - a desktop from 3 years previous with no upgrades - even if top of the line would be unlikely to play arma 2 in any decent settings (have just got the game, but making judgement guess from specs etc).

If thinking desktop, do NOT go the core i7 line - that's really now going for very high end computing. I just got a i7 920 - very expensive for what it is, especially now that intel has announced the i5 line.

Look up tomshardware for info on the i5 line of processors - for home use, you cannot beat the bang for buck by a long way.

I'm guessing you dont want to build your own rig. If adventeruous could look at komplett.ie to see what you can spec up - but deffo do research first if not familiar, because there are lots of pitfalls (wrong ram, wrong voltage ram, insufficent power supply, etc).

Other things to keep in mind - what display are you running on? Screen size/resolution can have big impact into the kind of gpu you'll need to get.

To be honest - I reckon there will be a forum somewhere here on boards which will get you some primo advice on a setup to suit your needs.

For my home built rig (i7 920, 140 raptor hdd, gx275, 6g ram) came out at around a grand from komplett - but this was before i5 came out (by like 2 months). Seeing performance of i5 now - would have to have very compelling reasons to go with i7 (i5 means cheaper mobo, ram etc than i7).

Anyways slight brain dump - find a hardware forum - they will give you better advice than me! Good luck!

And for ease - if looking for gaming rigs, generally steer clear of laptops - get nowhere near same bang for buck as desktop, and upgrade paths very limited. Good in that there's no hassle - but in that case, a PS3/xbox360 can also be a good option (saying this as a diehard pc gamer - but appreciate lot of people dont want hassle of maintaining a gaming rig).

Yeah, good luck!

I've a 22 inch Hp monitor (model: HP w2216) and the current setting i've it set at are 1680x1050 - 60Hz

so what kind of GPU will I be able to get?

Regarding the i5...will I be able to play all current games at proper settings? The Intel Core™ i7 Quad Processor i7-920 says it has a speed of 2.66Ghz....would that be strong enough to play Arma? my laptop currently has 2.66Ghz and its way too slow?

quiche

Four of a kind wrote: »

I've a 22 inch Hp monitor (model: HP w2216) and the current setting i've it set at are 1680x1050 - 60Hz

so what kind of GPU will I be able to get?

Regarding the i5...will I be able to play all current games at proper settings? The Intel Core™ i7 Quad Processor i7-920 says it has a speed of 2.66Ghz....would that be strong enough to play Arma? my laptop currently has 2.66Ghz and its way too slow?

Heya - so again will preface this by saying should post this q in the hardware forum.

So quick rough summary - like anything else, whilst we like single measure numbers they are not the be-all and end-all. Cast mind back 5 years and a Pentium 4 was clocked at 3.2Ghz. Clock speed by itself dosn't tell you the whole story. Other factors are the bandwidth on the motherboard, disk and memory read times etc.

Havnt got a benchmark to hand, but im playing arma 2 on my setup with a gtx275 at 1920x1080 at high settings (not very high) and it seems fine. Dont have a 3dmark score to hand. But it was plenty fast enough.

For cpu benchmarking take a look at:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i5,2410.html - for a general i5 review, and specifically for gaming:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-gaming,2403.html

with conclusions: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-gaming,2403-11.html - they conclude - which has usually being the case for gaming - to get decent cpu but sink more money into gpu. Usually games are gpu bound (and in some cases I/O bound if they have large levels with lots of disk hits).

In terms of gpu - its really about whatever your budget is. Tomshardware has monthly round ups of graphics cards - a good option they suggest is getting two mid-range cards and running them in a SLI configuration - but this isn't something to tackle if new to the area.

Graphics card round up: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2404.html

Your friends machine is a beast - but has paid over 2 grand. My suggestion of an i5 system I imagine means you'd get around 75% of the performance at 50% of the cost - with a good upgrade path. The thing that has me bummed about i7 is that as it is now specced for very-high performance - there mightn't be 'cheap' upgrades for the line (that is a mid-range processor less than 300 euro).

Anyways system performance will also include ram, hard disk and motherboard - as well as big ticket items of cpu and gpu. The hardware forum's here are really the best place to get some advice to be honest. The answer wont be clear cut - when asking make sure you say its for gaming - as the application type will have an impact. Eg my system as you pointed out dosnt have a high clock - but it does do multi-threading and concurrent processes very well - so makes up for losses in one area with gains in another.

Anyways to be honest - it is a bit of a minefield - you will get some buyers remorse - ask around on the hardware forums here and you will get some good advice, better than mine. If you're spending around a grand for the system (self build), you will get a decent gaming rig. Hope that helps.

Wossack

bit-tech.net do a great monthly article - what hardware should I get

well worth a read

Four of a kind

thanks a million guys. Great info and advice. Will take it all on board.

po0k

My rig is aging gracefully, 4 years old, with the X2 cpu bought off ebay 2 years into it an X800 -> X1900XTX -> 4870.
DFI NF4 SLI-DR
AMD Athlon X2 2.0Ghz skt939
4x512MB PC-3200

1900xtx 512MB GDDR3 (demo)

4870 1GB GDDR5 (retail)

I didn't play it much on the demo, but was about 1280x1024 at medium-ish settings on the 1900xtx, was playable with a bit of jerk.

On the 4870 it flies along at 1600x1200 with high-ish settings, and only chugs the odd time.

Don't buy Dell for gaming unless you treat computers like fancy toasters.
They don't facilitate upgrades.

presotrader

had the same problem with Dell just before Christmas - my 500GB drive went dead and I was still under warranty. they said none was available as next business day (I called on a Monday). gave them another day to fetch it, no joy. had to call a friend of mine in Sales and talk to a shift manager to have it replaced with a 750GB. my friend said they would not do such things normally (just let you hang in there with no computer, regardless of what you paid)