Battlefield 3 Open Beta Performance and Image Quality @ [H]

USMCGrunt said:
Min spec requires 8800GTS so they'll be able to run the game though may not be able to do so with all the eye candy on.
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Yeah I saw that but after reading a bunch of posts on various forums I started to get nervous but i shouldn't get caught up in that crap. 8800GTS, damn I had one of those years ago so I would think a GTX 260 should run it just fine.
 
Exactly. Just wait till its out to decide what weather or not your current GPU will run the game well.
 
Min spec. implies 800x600 all low, 30fps or so at best, so I don't think it's going to be pleasant for any 8800 owners. GTX260s will maybe manage 1024x768 or 1280x800 medium detail with a reasonable frame rate.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Well I am from Texas and bigger IS better, but a personal attack on "what I know?"

What's the point of having an Olympic size swimming pool if you have to fill it with a garden hose? Don't get me wrong I'm very happy with my 6950 2GB card however when you drop down to a personal attack on "what I know" your post loses a lot of credibility.

Playing the "it's about cost" card doesn't really jive with me, if you are spending 700 dollars on a single GPU, "cost" has nothing to do with the equation. The fact I was able to rock my GTX280 up until last week is a definite testament to the joys and longevity a REAL 512bit bus can bring. I'm not saying it was the crown jewel in performance but it did the job, and did it well.

In todays world of huge shader counts, 2/3/4GB memory sizes 512bit is more than welcomed over here.
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My point is they know what they are doing by dropping back to a 256bit. And have all the internal data on their GPU's to back it up. And cost does matter not only for the end user but AMD and Nvidia also. The manufactoring cost goes up alot when they have to slap a 512bit bus on a card, which may or may not benefit from it.

Can you clearly show me that Nvidia's currently GPU's are memory bandwidth limited?

And that is great that your 280 lasted as long as it did, but how can you be so sure the 512bit memory bus was the determining factor?

You may have seen it as a personal attack but its wasn't. Nobody on this forum knows how to better design a Nv and AMD gpu other than themselves.
 
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Any CPU benchmarks using Caspian out there? Metro uses nothing compared to Caspian.
 
Well I know my 6950 2GB at 1920x1200 didn't do to well on that map. I was getting like 30-50 it was all over the place...
 
I played the Caspian Border map throughout the last weekend of the beta at 2560x1440. Most of the time the game was smooth, but during intensive action sequences I did notice some slow downs. Unfortunately, I was too engaged in the action to bother to take any FPS or VRAM results:)

However, I used to think that a single GTX580 with 3GB RAM would be sufficient to play at 2560x1440 with reasonable settings; based upon Crysis 2 and Metro 2033. Now I'm not so sure and I'm considering SLI.
 
Well, it depends on reasonable. Battlefield 3's no more demanding than Crysis 2 or Metro 2033 - the latter is far more demanding, but in multiplayer people often want higher frame rates, and in games like Crysis 2 and Metro 2033, people expect to live with lower detail, whereas in a multiplayer game they play on a routine basis, people are used to turning the settings all the way up.
 
whereas in a multiplayer game they play on a routine basis, people are used to turning the settings all the way up
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I thought competitive players tend to turn the image settings down to get better frame rates.
 
Truly competitive players bottom out the settings to get 200fps+ to absolutely guarantee they won't lag, but since in general multiplayer games aren't anywhere near as demanding as single player titles, it's a lot easier to turn settings up.
 
SLI/Crossfire is the way to go these days pretty much. Single gpu stuff doesn't really cut it at super ultra settings.
 
1 gtx 580 should be enough to run bf3 at high settings at 1920x1200 get get 50-60 frames with out dipping below that. Just not sure if I want to spend $480 on a video card. If my wife knew I did that she would kill me....
 
Not with full AA and AO on it won't, especially not in the full version. If you turn either AA or AO off you might get 50fps ish at 1920x1200, you'd probably need to do both to see over 60 reliably.
 
HardForumer said:
Damn, this is all so confusing.

I'm hearing of people playing BF3 maxed out with a single 6950 and getting above 40-50 FPS and people getting around 30FPS with a GTX580 maxed out.
I'm hearing that you don't need more than 1GB of VRAM but some people say that you need more than 2GB.

SO...
I'll be gaming at a max resolution of 1920x1200, which card will I need to max this game out? What amount of VRAM will I need?
Should I get a single GTX580 lightning extreme for $595 and get another one in the future if/when needed?
2x evga 570s with 2.5GB in SLI for $800?
2x HD6970s in Crossfire for $720?
2x ASUS DCII 6950s 2GB in crossfire for $594 and unlock them to 6970s?

I want at least 4XAA or equivalent, all settings on ultra in BF3, at a good FPS without any drops below 30-40.
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I don't know about which AMD card works best but I can tell you that a 5801.5Gb IS enough to play well @the settings and res. you want with a q/core i7 clocked over 3.2GHZ- a 3Gb 580 would be even better..I am speaking from experience and I even played on your US servers...I'm still not impressed with BF3?? though, hoping full game is THE winnner..
 
Based on the Beta, which will probably be slightly less demanding than the full game:
Using 4x MSAA only, no postprocess AA, but with HBAO enabled and Ultra detail, 1920x1200 res:
GTX580: Average fps: 51, Minimum fps: 37
GTX570 SLI: Average fps: 80, Minimum fps: 58
HD6950 Crossfire: Average fps: 79, Minimum fps: 57
HD6970 Crossfire: Average fps, 87, Minimum fps: 63

To allow for the extra demand of full ultra (which was not present in the beta), a GTX580 is going to be cutting it a bit fine, I think HD6950 Crossfire or above really, to guarantee a fairly smooth frame rate.
 
beta with 3840x800 not smooth in spite of crossfire 6850/6870 all low settings.
rush mode, np, but caspian border showed a drop in fps that simply didn't cut it for me.
I would assume the retail will be more optimized and polished and hopefully more optimized drivers will make it fps smooth again. Don't hold my breath for it tho...
its takes a lot more toll than BC2 for sure, at least the beta.

retail out soon...
 
Using an HD6850 and an HD6870 together? Seems a bit of a waste considering you're only basically getting HD6850 crossfire performance ouf of that (Which yes, isn't enough for 3840x800 on Caspian Border - this is primarily a video memory issue though, 1GB is massively inadequate, but the GPUs will be powerful enough, just).
 
samuelmorris said:
Using an HD6850 and an HD6870 together? Seems a bit of a waste considering you're only basically getting HD6850 crossfire performance ouf of that (Which yes, isn't enough for 3840x800 on Caspian Border - this is primarily a video memory issue though, 1GB is massively inadequate, but the GPUs will be powerful enough, just).
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not likely a videoram issue.
rush mode run it just fine still not to a level I think is good. if it was a videoram issue, there be other signs due to reloading of texture and such and that didn't happen.
there was several graphical glitches, tried a few drivers for bf3 which just didn't work so good. reason for this I had 2 6850 but shifting to 120hz required a new card, well my sisters kid become happy as he got a new card.

I am looking forward a better optimized engine in retail and drivers but don't expect any miracles. waiting for 7000 series...
 
my performance on the beta with my xfx 9600gt xxx card was better than expected. all detail was lowest settings, had nice framerate through the game at 1360x768 on a 26" hdtv [ max pc res over vga ] i can prolly go to 1080i if i go over hdmi. my hdtv supports 1080i [ 1920x1080 ] resolution over hdmi i tested it with a 360 and directtv and it works
 
zod96 said:
1 gtx 580 should be enough to run bf3 at high settings at 1920x1200 get get 50-60 frames with out dipping below that. Just not sure if I want to spend $480 on a video card. If my wife knew I did that she would kill me....
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Depends on who brings home the bacon :p:p:p
 
If I'm primarily gaming at 16x10 resolution is a 2gb card necessary for this game? Will I be ok with a 1gb card AMD or NV?
 
You'll be OK with a 1GB card at 1680x1050 - that's not to say a 2GB card wouldn't perform slightly better, but you wouldn't be missing much.
 
I'm hoping this game will run on my htpc which has a x3 720 and a 4870 with 1gb. Will be great to test out if the 4th unlocked core makes a big difference.
 
Shago said:
I'm hoping this game will run on my htpc which has a x3 720 and a 4870 with 1gb. Will be great to test out if the 4th unlocked core makes a big difference.
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I have a very similar system where im rocking a 285 vs your 4870. If the GPU's share the same performance than you will be able to run 16x10 medium/high settings no aa or ao. Or 720p with 4x aa and maybe ao and everything high except for textures.

What I wished I had tested for while the beta was out was the load on my cpu's. I wanted to see if it was using all 3 cores or not.
 
Shago said:
I'm hoping this game will run on my htpc which has a x3 720 and a 4870 with 1gb. Will be great to test out if the 4th unlocked core makes a big difference.
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It will run. Will it run at 60fps? no. Will it run well at ultra detail? no, but it will run, and as long as you don't use a very high screen resolution, it'll run with reasonable settings and still look pretty good.
 
samuelmorris said:
You'll be OK with a 1GB card at 1680x1050 - that's not to say a 2GB card wouldn't perform slightly better, but you wouldn't be missing much.
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How would a 2gb card perform better?
I play with a 1gb card @ 1080p and its fine, please take your fud somewhere else.
 
me said:
You'll be OK with a 1GB card at 1680x1050
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Like I said, 1GB is fine for 1680x1050, and at a stretch even 1920x1080, but the game does use in excess of 1GB video memory if it has it available. The BF3 engine can dynamically adjust detail to fit with lower video memory cards without compromising too much performance. Just because it's fine with 1GB at that res does not mean it would not be slightly better with a 2GB card.
 
I think you both are wrong, and we wont know how much Ultra settings taxes a GPU in BF3.

We will found out tuesday if 2gb is needed. The beta did not have all the bells and whistles.
 
If you wanted to run the game completely maxed out, then only having 1GB on a 6870 or GTX560Ti is academic, because they wouldn't be powerful enough to do it anyway. We're talking about having a few compromises here. At absolute max in retail, I wouldn't want to be seen with less than 2GB per GPU, even at those resolutions.
 
Seems like my single GTX 460 won't cut it at 1920x1200, or will it?
 
Depends. If you turn the AA and AO off, you'll get away with an average frame rate of about 50-55fps on 'High' (not ultra), and a minimum frame rate of about 40. That'd be acceptable to most people.
 
The VRAM debate is kind of academic anyway unless you're running multi-monitors. Even if you "run out" of VRAM at 1920x1080 it isn't as if the framerate cuts in half or anything ridiculous like that.
 
MavericK96 said:
The VRAM debate is kind of academic anyway unless you're running multi-monitors. Even if you "run out" of VRAM at 1920x1080 it isn't as if the framerate cuts in half or anything ridiculous like that.
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Not in BF3 certainly, in other games this is the case, which I think is where a lot of the controversy is coming from.
 
in the bata I knew I was going well over 1gb as it was so I loaded up some pics to use up some vram before starting a game one day to see what would happen. the game went wonky and started flickering and cutting out a bit in spots. I doubt that was a coincidence since I had been playing it several times a day since it came out just to test stuff and never saw anything like that.
 
Forceman said:
Not at high settings, no.
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At high settings yes, at ultra settings 4xaa no, not even a gtx580 can.

Here is the latest performance numbers released today.
1gb memory IS enough and a gtx560ti is beating a 6950.

Battlefield3-Final-GPUs-1920-4xMSAA-FXAA-v2.png
[QUOTE=Forceman;
 
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That matches up with the beta performance quite well, the minimum fps requirement is fairly similar (5% difference) but the average fps requirement has gone up a fair bit.
 
Yea, it looks like a overclocked gtx560ti/1gb 6950 will play fine at 1080p ultra settings no AA. The gpu runs out of gas before the memory amount.
 
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