ArmA: Armed Assault
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Publisher: 505 Games Genre(s): Simulation, Shooting Home Page: http://www.armedassault.com/
Tweaker's paradise, player's nightmareThe publisher claims that the game is playable on a very modest minimum system, and even the recommended system is not a particularly powerful machine. However, you will have to make huge compromises in both graphics and gameplay to play Armed Assault with the minimum system, and it's debatable whether even the recommended system lets you enjoy all the game has to offer. Running with 512 megabytes of system memory is out of the question: although not a RAM hog, Armed Assault requires 768 megabytes (preferably 1024) to avoid constant, gameplay-disruptive swapping of data from the hard drive. The other bottleneck of the minimum system is the video card: even with lowest graphics settings, the minimum recommended cards could not manage a sustained frame rate of over 15 frames per second, even at a resolution of 1024x768.
Note that it is hard to give a good estimate of performance for the game, as different missions and subtly different graphics settings can give very dissimilar results. Early missions with fewer units tend to start up reasonably well even on a low-end system, but after a few minutes of gameplay, frame rates drop as the video card's memory is saturated. Even the recommended video cards will be a bottleneck in most situations, limiting performance to around 25 frames per second when playing with normal graphics settings at the common 1280x1024 resolution. The GPU stops being a bottleneck, however, when you take part in major battles with several AI-controlled units. The recommended 3 GHz Pentium 4 can't handle the stress of large-scale battlefield simulation, and frame rates crash to unplayable levels. Apparently the developers chose not to dumb down the AI even when it starts to severely limit performance. Graphics settings make a big difference for the majority of games, but ArmA is something of an exception: its simulation-style graphics design is not designed to wow, and you lose less in the transition to lower visual fidelity than in the average first person shooter. Terrain detail is important, of course, as you'll spend a lot of time with your face in the dirt. Increasing terrain detail adds more undergrowth to fields and forests, and when you're sitting in cover for minutes waiting for an enemy convoy to roll by, it's much more pleasant to look at grass and hay swaying in the wind than a just plain ground texture.
Model detail is less visible in a typical mission, as you'll mostly see enemy soldiers and vehicles from a distance, where much of the detail is wasted. If your system can handle it though, the highest settings will help you sink into the world of ArmA thanks to painstakingly modelled vehicles, much improved foliage and some great light reflection effects. However, you are really better off with a fluid frame rate than good looking trees. The most crucial visual effects that affect ArmA's gameplay, such as blinding flare effects from the sun or sparks that indicate where bullets land, are the same for all graphics settings. Likewise, vehicles look gorgeous from the outside when using the highest visual settings, but you get almost exactly the same crummy-looking inside view as you would with the lowest settings, as the textures are simply not detailed enough to look good up close.
Tweaking the graphics settings for the best compromise of speed and quality for your hardware can be tricky. The best settings depend on your playing style as well as each mission, and the effect that view distance has on graphics performance is completely dependent on your quality settings. Sadly the game gives you no advice here - it only offers the standard 1200 meters view distance by default, and you are forced to experiment between different quality presets and individual settings. You can't buy your way out of the mess of different settings even if you splurge on the fastest hardware available today, as the highest possible graphics settings are just too demanding (read: poorly optimized?) for any current video card. The CPU bottleneck is easier to break, however, since the game takes advantage of dual-core processors. If you're upgrading your system to play ArmA, a powerful video card and a reasonably fast dual-core are a must for your shopping list.
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