Battlefield 3: No Win XP Support!!

Windows XP users should really take in a breath of fresh air and upgrade to Windows 7. Windows Vista was absolute rubbish and not worth the upgrade but Windows 7 is a completely different story; very stable, performs well and many new features. Price shouldn't be such a huge problem since the last time an XP user probably paid for an OS was when XP originally came out 10 years ago, so mustering up ~$100 after 10 years shouldn't be something to complain about.
 
good that means it wont be a direct console port and that the console version and pc version wont be built on the same engine.

Uhh...Frostbyte 2 works on consoles as well I believe, just the PC version of it is designed differently. Kind of like with Just Cause 2. The console version and PC version technically share the same engine, but the PC version of the engine is modified to support the PC.
 
BF2 was also the first game in the series to drop Win98/Me support as well.

Now, since FrostBite2 is supposedly D3D11-only, does that mean I'm going to have to replace my GF280 with a GeForce 4xx or Radeon 5xxx/6xxx series card? Didn't I see something about D3D11 being backward compatible with D3D10.x chipsets by disabling certain features (i.e. tesellation)?

the dx11 api supports fallbacks to older hardware feature sets.

dx10 and 10.1 are literally pointless now, the hardware is supported just fine in dx11 plus added benefits like various optimizations. even dx9 level hardware will run on the dx11 api.
 
Windows XP users should really take in a breath of fresh air and upgrade to Windows 7. Windows Vista was absolute rubbish and not worth the upgrade but Windows 7 is a completely different story; very stable, performs well and many new features. Price shouldn't be such a huge problem since the last time an XP user probably paid for an OS was when XP originally came out 10 years ago, so mustering up ~$100 after 10 years shouldn't be something to complain about.

Vista has been a very stable O/S since they fixed it with service packs and is similar to Windows 7; Windows 7 is a bit more optimized and has a few more features.
 
Prone is understandable but lean not so much. Lean has never been in battlefield.
 
Good. Time to move forward out of the Stone Age. Get Windows 7.
 
Even though this is old news, I just want to throw in my two cents: thank GOD. Progress is what the PC as a platform is all about..
 
XP users have been coddled by devs only due to the limitations of consoles. I'm kind of disappointed that new consoles haven't come out, because then we'd truly be able to leave behind this stagnation. People who refuse to upgrade XP and say "if they don't develop for me, they'll lose a customer" are really delusional. If you think it's XP users, and not consoles, that are the main focus, you're crazy.
 
Vista has been a very stable O/S since they fixed it with service packs and is similar to Windows 7; Windows 7 is a bit more optimized and has a few more features.

I'm still on Vista as well cause I haven't really seen a reason to update my main machine to 7. Not that I wouldn't like 7 but I don't trust an upgrade path nor do I want to format. I have never had issue with Vista and I've been using it since it came out.
 
XP is not "ten years old". It has been very actively updated until just a few years ago. And, it has sold, even if only on netbooks, into last year. XP is still the most used OS.

The real problem with XP is that any system running is either old or low-end, not the hardware you want for your games. Who but those retard console gamers would want to play games on primitive hardware? "I got 512MB video and system RAM combined! Suck on that Wii losers!" - proud 360/PS3 owner.
 
Were you guys using windows 95 in 2001? Jesus, windows 7 is awesome. From first RC to now it's been nearly perfect. I loved XP and it had it's place, but let the jersey be retired in infamy.
 
Windows 7 is really just what windows Vista should have been, vista wasn't so bad after SP1, but then again everyone had the same response with XP when it first hit the scene, it was really bad until SP2 which address a lot of the issues. It's funny how fast people forget that :)

Anyway, there really isn't anymore argument anymore, XP has dragged on far too long now and will be retired, hopefully with people moving to windows 7 x64 we should see developers look to take advantage of some of the DX11 features even if it's just to speed up rendering a bit.

My big worry is still consoles, will the next round of consoles simply drag us into another 6+ year slump? I fucking hope not.
 
My big worry is still consoles, will the next round of consoles simply drag us into another 6+ year slump? I fucking hope not.

Depends on the economy and the state of the game industry. We would probably be looking for new consoles soon if we were in better shape money wise and if the 1st parties thought it was worth the money. Though I still think we'll get one of the three of them talking about a new console this year or next.
 
Windows 7 is really just what windows Vista should have been, vista wasn't so bad after SP1, but then again everyone had the same response with XP when it first hit the scene, it was really bad until SP2 which address a lot of the issues. It's funny how fast people forget that :)

Anyway, there really isn't anymore argument anymore, XP has dragged on far too long now and will be retired, hopefully with people moving to windows 7 x64 we should see developers look to take advantage of some of the DX11 features even if it's just to speed up rendering a bit.

My big worry is still consoles, will the next round of consoles simply drag us into another 6+ year slump? I fucking hope not.


I agree. I really fucking hope not. Consoles have killed the evolutionary point of pc graphics the last five years to the point that we're handicapped right now. You think Crysis or Crysis 2 look great? We should honestly be looking better than that in 2011.
 
I agree. I really fucking hope not. Consoles have killed the evolutionary point of pc graphics the last five years to the point that we're handicapped right now. You think Crysis or Crysis 2 look great? We should honestly be looking better than that in 2011.

No consoles are only part of it. People aren't upgrading like they used it. It gets exponetially more expensive as you try to push the graphics boundary higher and Crysis didn't sell enough to justify it. Did you see the massive bitch fest that happened when Crysis released? What developer wants to deal with that shit?
 
No consoles are only part of it. People aren't upgrading like they used it. It gets exponetially more expensive as you try to push the graphics boundary higher and Crysis didn't sell enough to justify it. Did you see the massive bitch fest that happened when Crysis released? What developer wants to deal with that shit?

I think a lot of it has to do with many people buying notebooks instead of desktops as well. Retailers just don't have good PC for games these days.
 
No consoles are only part of it. People aren't upgrading like they used it. It gets exponetially more expensive as you try to push the graphics boundary higher and Crysis didn't sell enough to justify it. Did you see the massive bitch fest that happened when Crysis released? What developer wants to deal with that shit?

But upgrading isn't worthwhile unless software actually takes advantage of that new hardware, which I agree is mainly due to consoles. Console limits are artificially holding back what games COULD be doing/look like.

People weren't rushing to upgrade after Crysis because it was the only title that pushed things to the max.
 
"Battlefield 3: No Win XP Support!!"

Really? That's totally new to me! Oh wait, it isn't. Welcome to 5 months ago.
 
No consoles are only part of it...Did you see the massive bitch fest that happened when Crysis released? What developer wants to deal with that shit?

+1. Consoles have a big part of the blame but the crybaby spolit-brat mentality of a lot of forum-going PC gamers has a lot to answer for, too.
 
on topic: once you use Windows 7 day in and out, you realize just how slow, bloated and buggy and downright fugly Windows XP is......

I just recently went with Win7 on my new build, after using WinXP for YEARS, although I was late getting it as I was still stuck on Win2k for the longest time. Once I upgraded to WinXP, Vista was right around the corner it seems. I am thankful I skipped Vista, but man... I'm kind of pissed I waited this long to get Win7.

With that being said, hopefully BF3 will be awesome.
 
Every game that comes out and pushes the boundries gets bitchers. But imo we're not where we should be graphics wise in 2011 and it's because devs are scared to push the envelope due to consoles and some not keeping up with the times.
 
Good. You didn't see people demanding windows 98 support in 2008.

These old farts need to come into this decade. They're probably the same kind of people who maintain ham radio licenses.
 
But upgrading isn't worthwhile unless software actually takes advantage of that new hardware, which I agree is mainly due to consoles. Console limits are artificially holding back what games COULD be doing/look like.

People weren't rushing to upgrade after Crysis because it was the only title that pushed things to the max.

Hardware always out paces software. Once in a while a game comes across that surpasses the current hardware trend, but its rare and it is generally only a single title. Between the original Far Cry and Crysis the community had turned to total shit. A good portion of the community has now turned into a bunch of whiners who bitch and moan about everything and use shit to excuse piracy. At they same time they bitch about things they have no understanding of at all. Add that to the fact that Crysis sold well, but obviously not well enough to make it worth other developers licencing the engine or putting the kind of money required to push it harder. It costs developers a good bit of money to rework an engine to fully take advantage of the PC. If gamers support studios that do this well we will probably see more of it. Sadly most of the community probably doesn't care and won't stop bitching to actually do something about the situation.
 
Good, people still use Win XP? No excuse now Win 7 is so good

I still have Windows XP on a separate hard drive. Ironically, I only use it to play Bad Company 2 because I get about 50% more FPS with the same settings on XP than 7.
 
I still have Windows XP on a separate hard drive. Ironically, I only use it to play Bad Company 2 because I get about 50% more FPS with the same settings on XP than 7.

I'm willing to bet that if you just forced BC2 into DX9 mode in the config files you would get that same performance boost in 7.
 
No XP? Shoooooooooooooooot.

Oh wait, I'm not using it anymore. :p
 
Vista was fine out of the box for the most part, this "wait till SP1" myth crap has to stop.

Vista had its fair share of issues early on. The network performance was pretty abysmal in fact. Obviously a lot of problems were due to piss poor drivers by other companies, but lets not try to sugar coat that the OS was problematic at the start. Not as bad as XP, but still....
 
I'm willing to bet that if you just forced BC2 into DX9 mode in the config files you would get that same performance boost in 7.

What makes you think I didn't do that? I also didn't notice a huge difference between DX11 and DX9 in Windows 7; they both seemed to result in low frame rates.
 
What makes you think I didn't do that? I also didn't notice a huge difference between DX11 and DX9 in Windows 7; they both seemed to result in low frame rates.

On the same hardware there's no reason BC2 should be that much faster running DX9 on XP compared to 7, somethings not right.

XP was fine it it's time but those days are gone, XP has been gone from my personal systems for two years now and there's not a day that I've missed it. 7 has just been much better for me than XP ever was and not just gaming. I'm a big Tablet PC guy and 7 is FAR SUPERIOR to XP on that form factor. If XP suits your needs then fine, but please don't think that for a moment that 7 isn't a big jump from XP. If you think that then you simply haven't used Windows to full potential but most people don't even around here.

I think that for high-end games like this it's getting safe to ignore XP users simply because people still on XP aren't going to be the ones buying games like this anymore, XP's days as a gaming are all but gone.
 
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Depending on drivers for videocard manufacturers, some drivers do run better under XP than say vista/7. But it's usually older hardware / drivers.
 
Can someone source an actual reliable release date? Partly due to the fact I'm wondering if I should get a 6950 now, or wait for the next gen. Since speculatively this is likely to be the most graphically demanding game I would be interested in for the foreseeable future. Current 5770 is just acceptable enough for BC 2 (could be better), so I doubt it will cut it.
 
good, BF has always been a trend setting franchise, its nice to see them continuing to push things along. As far as release dates for the game, the communities best guess right now is that we will be seeing some kind of beta or demo late summer-early fall.
 
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