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Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards Tested
New submitter wesbascas writes "Have you ever wanted to play a new PC game, but weren't sure where your PC falls between the minimum and recommended system requirements? I don't have a whole lot of time to game these days and with new hardware perpetually coming out and component vendors often tweaking their model numbering schemes, knowing exactly what kind of experience I'm buying for $60 can be difficult. Luckily, somebody benchmarked Battlefield 3's campaign on a wide range of hardware configurations and detail settings. If you've purchased a system in the past few years you should be in luck. The video cards tested start with the AMD Radeon HD 4670 and Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and go up to the brand new Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590. I hate it that my aging Radeon HD 4870 isn't going to cut it at 1080p, but am glad that I found out before buying the game."
If you're curious about the game itself, here's a detailed review from Eurogamer and a briefer one from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
I've got a Savage 4 and that's not even in the list. How is this "review" supposed to be useful to anyone?
If this is a bigger slashvertisement for Tom's Hardware, or Battlefield 3. Meanwhile, there are much broader testing services such as Can You Run It? that will give you data on one page instead of thirty and on a much wider variety of games than Battlefield $$$.
Better yet, before reading this article, read some user reviews for the game and realize ou don't care if your machine can run it, because the majority of people think itsterrible and EAs origin software is spyware.
the squad system is hidden
I'm not sure what you are talking about, the squad system is right there, it's not hard to get into one or switch to another one.
there is no squad leader, no squad way points, no intrasquad commands
There is a squad leader it has a star next to their name. They can order what to defend and or what to attack, so yes there are intrasquad commands. way points are gone unfortunately, but I don't think anyone was using them.
no squad based VOIP
There is squad based VOIP.
and no commander
The commander abilities are now spread over the several classes. This is better as sometimes the commander wouldn't do anything.
I played on teamplay BF3 servers, made no difference.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean with teamplay servers.. if you are talking about "team deadmatch" then you probably want to stay away from it. Team deadmatch has only one objective, kill the other team. This is usually easier accomplished by doing the run and gun type of play.
Sure BF2 wasn't always a team play game, but it happened if you fell into the right group of folks.
Same with BF3, if you want team play you need the right group of players. This has been a problem with the BF franchise since the BF1942 days and I doubt it's going away ever...
I'm in a clan and it makes gaming so much better. I posted this to the clan site
figured with this thread I could get even more use out of it.
----
"When I first started playing BF3 I started in
campaign mode to set my controllers (didn't work).
Graphics BF3 Vs COD4
Here's the Heli scene (BF3 and COD4) - both at the very
start where you would want to show off your artwork.
BF3 - Not full screen
http://i44.tinypic.com/xf2dz9.jpg
COD4 - Full Screen (1680X1050)
http://i41.tinypic.com/m4n0g.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/24d1p1l.jpg (to show what map)
Also consider your view point and which
required more work (Animation over water, while raining)."
FWIW
GTX-570, i7-950, Asus P6X58D, 6Gigs of ram, no pagefile.sys
Wish they'd show CF 5770s.. Debating whether or not to buy a second 5770 on the cheap or just upgrade to a newer card
Once again we see that the top tier Nvidia is priced wayyyy over the top Radeon, but performs way worse.
I don't understand why there's so much brand fanboyism with computers. This would obviously indicate that it makes sense to buy Radeon if you want your money's worth, since this holds true down to the lower performance cards as well. It's basically been this way for years. Yet, oppositely, Intel has been blowing away AMD's processors for a while now, so you get your money's worth by buying in that direction for that particular product. It just makes sense.
Besides, after the way Nvidia shit all over their loyal fans with that GPU debacle, I'll have a hard time trusting them again, as should anyone else. There are still video cards and laptops floating around out there, particularly on Ebay, which are just waiting to die on some unsuspecting second-hand consumer. I'm always having to warn people about buying anything used with Nvidia products in them until they do their research. Not everyone I know was so lucky though, because I still have a perfectly good laptop laying here with just a dead Nvidia graphics chipset in it, which they gave to me out of disgust when it died immediately after their warranty period expired.
Brand loyalty doesn't do you any good if you're in second place. Or worse, when you're stuck with dead equipment. Look at benchmarks, do some research, and buy what's best for the price. That's the point of PCs vs Apple: we can put any brand of product in it for any aspect of operation to achieve the best performance at a good price. It's silly to do anything otherwise.
There is no major nail in coffin situation for pc games any more as they are ports of software to run on 6+ year old, cheaply made game consoles, even if your system does suck, drop the resolution and effects a bit and your good to go.
My dual core AMD system with a 9600GT cost less than 200 bucks 3 years ago, and I can still run these games with just an occasional jitter at higher resolutions than the console (not much higher but still), but yet every game release there is some doofy benchmark telling us something that has not changed for over a half decade.
i5-750 and it's replacement, the i5-2500k both scream when paired with a GTX 460 1GB or above. I am seeing in the 50-70s at "medium", 40-50s at "high" and high 20s-mid30s at "ultra". the i5-750 stays around 93% through pretty much all of the various multiplayer maps for me. the i5-2500k is about 25% more CPU
moox. for a new generation.
The price tag that comes with this is too high.
ok. you get what you pay for. However, it's not required to buy the highest end hw to play games. the games I like to play require me to see detail on screen, so the size is less important than image quality and low latency.. in fact the larger screen would force me to pan my eyes more often, slowing response. in addtion, unlike crts, modern hdtvs add a ton of lag making time sensitive gameplay (like fighting/driving) a pain in the ass. fps is out of the question. it's ok if you're messing around at a party, but if you really want to do your best, it's annoying. double that if your tv's timing is different from your buddies.' perfect your timing on one and play on the other, see what happens. I know many play that way and do well, but that's because the games are slowed down and paced to make up for it. Compared with traditional pc shooters, gameplay is still like driving a car with a pair of tweezers...and rubberbands
I have played the GTA and Fallout series a lot on a console, still do. Good games are good games. Also I find it easier to play for a long time when I am seated in my big couch in front of my big tv, not on a desk chair with a "tiny" 24 inch monitor.
good compared with what exactly? certainly not the games that lasted for years due to flexible community expandability. I had fun with fallout3 but I wouldn't have bothered with a clunky joypad if that's all I had. inferior controls lead to inferior mechanics. add the ergonomics of a kb/mouse and the couch/tv/controller thing of the 80s and early 90s is painful for all but the simplest games. I am disappointed that the industry decided to backslide rather than move forward to even better interfaces. rather than make newer more challenging stuff, they moved towards games anyone can win... those 'achievements' embedded in every game now are a prime example of this mentality. another would be regen health.
to each their own, but I've largely stopped playing simply because there aren't many good games coming out nowadays.. today's top titles last maybe 5-10hrs at the most and cost $60. they're too easy. the multiplayer ones are hobbled by horrible portals designed simply to keep the players hooked on the vendor in order to keep playing.. that way the vendor can pull the plug if their old product starts to threaten their newest cash cow. it also prevents other threats like community mods and content.
For those that are interested in a closer look behind the scenes of the Frostbite 2 engine DICE recently held a 1 hour talk about the inner workings of the graphics in BF3. It's pretty amazing what can be done with DX 11 these days.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Nobody is forced to pirate anything, if you don't like Origin, don't buy EA games.
Wow...nice. Instead of pointing out ways the guy could actually get enjoyment out of the game you and several others act like douches, real nice. Most likely that means the game is broken and is only usable if you dedicate 4-8 hours a day living in the thing, thanks for the tip.
And folks wonder why many of us old timers don't play online much anymore. When I was running with a clan on the Mechwarrior series we actually LIKED when new blood came in, and not as target practice either. they would ALWAYS want to go for an ultra heavy which of course would get them killed, so we would tell them to start with the lights and work as a scout/harasser with a team until they got their skill level up. This would let them feel they were actually accomplishing something as it taught them the needed skills they could use later on a missileboat or heavy assault.
But now games with any real difficulty or challenge seem to be about who can be the biggest teabagging douchebag asshole. No help for the noobs, NO trying to build the base, just an excuse to be the biggest cockhead you can possibly be, nice. But don't be surprised if the fanbase drops like a fucking stone before the game even makes it to bargain bin because "Call of Warfare Major Douchebag Edition" has been released and you find it isn't as fun being a giant prick with nobody to see you act like an asshole.
It is guys like YOU sir that make it quite easy for the game companies to kill dedicated servers and flip the switch on games the second a new one is released so they can maximize profits because guys like YOU make sure nobody but the most hard of hardcore ever play the thing and they have moved on long before the game gets any real legs. bravo, good job, I'm sure the corps love you (and your money) for it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Dude, do you think perhaps that you might just be bad at the game?
I thought about that, but generally I have been pretty good (not great, but pretty good) at every FPS I have tried... I saw no reason why I should suddenly be so impossibly bad at this when I was fine with others.
As it turns out, I actually was fine when I played last night. I don't know what went so horribly wrong the first few hours I played, but suddenly I am seeing the enemy just fine (especially when you equip flashlights, thanks for that guys) and managed to stay near the top most rounds of play.
It might be that your not used to the maps yet
That's something of an issue, but I can usually work around it. I was playing the mine level (forget the name) last night, guarding a flag at the north entrance - A helicopter crashed near by and I was ready to take out the paratrooper when he grabbed the tank I had no idea spawned there and took me out. But I did manage to respawn and take him out with an RPG before the flag was lost, so even not knowing the map I was able to do OK... certainly knowing the tactical points on a map is a huge benefit, but I'm used to being handicapped in that regard as I don't play often enough to learn the maps nearly as well as dedicated players.
I had a much better time so in the end I think you are right, I just needed a bit more time with the thing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'll give you some pointers from my experience. Right now I heavily play Recon and Assault. I don't touch Engineer or Support right now.
As assault I use the first Assault weapon unlocked from MP Co-op. As Recon I used the Recon weapon unlocked from MP Co-op. This has actually gotten me accused of being a hacker because I was Rank 3 at a time I was using them and the idiot thought I was using weapons too advanced for my rank. One other thing to note is that as more and more players on a team start to operate by methods of warfare the efficacy of their action collectively increases.
With assault, I always weapon an optic scope and have a suppressor equipped. On rush my style is one where I will find a nest that is at a low to medium elevation (compared to the surrounding terrain) usually a decent distance ahead of the M-COM stations. I go prone, watch one of the common pathways, and wait. I shoot people as they pass by me. Last time I did this I went 8 kills before I was found out. So basically, I utilize the surrounding terrain in order to minimize my visual profile. There's a lot of stuff going on and picking out unmoving targets can be very difficult. It is, in essence, a version of Patton's idiom "Grab 'em by the nose and kick 'em in the pants." The M-COMs have the attackers attention (grabbed by the nose) and I'm kicking them in the pants (flanking action). The nice thing is that battlefield objectives tend to grab players by the nose, so flanking is a lot easier to pull off without coordination. On the other hand, guarding against flanking is almost non-existent. I have on numerous occasions been killed to flanks while trying to deny pathways to the defenders. In fact, that's one of the biggest things I do when playing recon is watching the flanks. I find that most objective areas are heavily crowded which reduces the number of sniping positions you can take to defend them. Flanks aren't as crowded and really open up the opportunities while more often than not denying enemy snipers the ability to target you without moving along the same flanks you're defending. I have many times held off multiple attackers trying to flank my team as a single recon. If I don't, they end up spotted so that teammate's are aware of them. All I can say is learn the classes and leverage the advantages within your kit and how your outfitted yourself. Flashlights are both a boon and a bust. They give away position but they also mask your position as well. It's difficult to frag someone with a flashlight that is on when they're facing you because you can't make them out. Laser sites are worse though. I laugh at snipers that use laser sights.
I hate some of the urban environments because of how painful taking certain objectives can be. Here's a slight overview of some maps I dislike.
Market/Bazaar: The alley control point on conquest is a bloody nightmare for an attacking force. Three players can effectively control that point and the only way to dislodge them is to use grenade to get them to flush out of their holes long enough that you can gain ground. This is partially offset by the fact that the other two control points are much easier to swap hands.
Metro: Metro is a nightmare. Each section of the map, except the first and last, on Rush is a nightmare to take over. Most times I see the attacks fail Rush at the 2nd set of M-COMs. Conquest is worse. It can be summed up as "US rushes to B and hopes they get it and establish a bridgehead." Every time I've played that map except once the PLC got B and the US lost. In such instances I end up sitting as medic and revive people for points as the get killed over and over trying to get B. I often end such matchs with something like 2 kills, 1 death, and around 4000-5000 points.
My biggest issues with BF3 are the same as with any other BF game. Idiots. Idiots make the game experience worse. Let me list the ways of idiots. Here's a hint, most of these deal with people looking out for themselves rather than the team.
1. John Rambos. These are the players t
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork