What could run ARMA 2?

I have a low end PC: AMD A3870K APU with Cooler Master 212 EVO cooler,

an GYGABYTE A55M-DS2 mobo,

4GB Kingston HyperX blu

Corsair 500W PSU

recycled Seagate Momentus XT 750GB (yes I know I could have got somthing better, but when I gave my daughter my old laptop, it was just more easier to keep all my win vista files and documents and upgrade to win7, rather than go through the proccess of geting a fresh copy of win7 and port them over.)

I know that at the moment I couldn't really run ARMA 2 on my current rig, so what do you think would be my best upgrade path? Currently I'm thinking of upgrading to 8GBs of RAM, if possible 1600Mhz stuff and some kind of radeon discrete graphics card, to take advantage of crossfire.

However I am more than open to other suggestions, including OCing. I've never been to fussy about having an ultra-high graphics setting, or a frame rate above 40, however in my experience of playing ARMA on a freind's computer, a long render-distance helps.

Any assistance would be wonderful. Isaac.

P.S If any suggested parts could be kept under £100, that would be nice, as both of my kids are going on expensive residential trips, after their summer hols.

P.S.S I don't have the faintest clue about crossfire so any suggestions there would be especially apprieciated.

There are a lot of ways to go here I shall list the different approaches:

1. Arma 2 is very reliant on the hard drive so getting something with 7200RPM wouldn't be such a bad idea (Such as a Western Digital Blue drive)

2. I would suggest upgrading your CPU as Arma 2 is very CPU intensive but that would also mean upgrading your board which doesn't fit into your budget all that well.

3. RAM is a big deal for APU's like yours the higher clocked the better,1866mhz memory would be very beneficial.

4. A graphics card like the 7770, 7850 or 7870.

To be honest if you turned the settings low enough and the resolution down to 720p you should be able to run it with your current setup. While you do that you can save your pennys for the upgrades listed above.

I wouldn't recommend crossfiring as the newest card I think you can do that with is the 6570, which doesn't leave to much option for upgrading in the furture.

1. I actually think that my HDD will be OK, It is a hybrid between HDD and an SSD, and loads win7 only 3 secs slower than my mate's OCZ vertex.

2. Yes, I built the computer only a week before Logan come out with the november edition of $350 build, but I'm pretty sure that with a bit of overclocking it wont drag me back, as it scored a 7 on the windows expierience index @ stock clock.

3. Whilst I'm comfortable with the idea of OCing a CPU, I'm feeling a bit nervous about the memory, currently my RAM is still at stock clock, but my mobo says that it only supports 1300, 1333, 1600, 1800,and 1866. So I am unsure if having 1866 RAM would reduce my ability to OC.

4. You're right for sure there, but I've been looking at PC part picker and ebay allmost every day for last month or so, and all the latest cards are so ruddy expensive. I still remember the days when you could go into town and barter with the people at the tech shop for that copy of tomb raider or whatever, ahh well.

Realistically, which one of the options you have given me should I go for.

Should I get some high end CPU cooler and some high speed RAM, and try for some overclocking?

Should I save up the pennies for a year or so and get either a higher end mobo+CPU or a high end graphics card.

Or should I get a discrete crossfire card, and another HyperX blu, AND overclock the CPU with the current CPU cooler.-(I'm kind of liking the idea of this one)

If anybody's intrested, I would appriciate if you would vote below, commenting either 1, 2, or 3. (from the top of the list)