Battlefield 3: Will you be going SLI, or waiting for the next wave of cards?

Going to see how well my system do when the game comes out(in sig). If I can play it in med ok then ill wait for mid next year to upgrade to whatever is the latest then. :)
 
I personally have a GTX 480 on a i7 950 CPU and 6GB of high end Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 RAM and it's running the BETA fine. I will await Kepler in early 2012. In fact I've already earmarked money in my accounts just for a top-end GTX 600 card. Out!
 
I have a second GTX470 in the mail. I figure this will hold me over for some time until I need to upgrade 18-24 months down the road.
 
I'm already SLI for it... have been for quite a while (not just BF3 but other games as well). 2560x1600 demands juice...

GTX 570 SLI here at the moment. BF3 beta at the "ultra" settings (which aren't full ultra as it will be at launch supposedly) on Caspian Border definitely could use more juice to maintain proper minimums for me... bring on the 28nm GPU's already! :D
 
hafnium911 said:
Going to see how well my system do when the game comes out(in sig). If I can play it in med ok then ill wait for mid next year to upgrade to whatever is the latest then. :)
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Why speculate? Go grab the beta, it's open for everyone.
 
right now i have a single GTX 480. It gets me playable 50-70 fps in BF3 on"High" settings @ 1920x1080.

Good card, but all of the sellers local to my area are selling their used ones for MORE than a gtx 570, which bothers me, because the 570 is pretty much on par with the 480 at 1080p resolution with lower noise, heat, and power consumption, and greater room for overclocks.

My goal is to get BF Ultra settings at 1080p as close to 120fps as possible, and the only way i can fathom doing that is getting a triple 670 (or whatever they call the next generation) setup. I want to play the single player in 3d, and have multiplayer super smooth.

So yes, i will be waiting for the next wave.
 
currently have a GTX 460 SOC, and have been thinking of going SLI. Correct me if im wrong, but the 460 does scale pretty darn well, does it not? And the cost will be kept to a minimum while waiting for future gen cards.
 
NIVO said:
currently have a GTX 460 SOC, and have been thinking of going SLI. Correct me if im wrong, but the 460 does scale pretty darn well, does it not? And the cost will be kept to a minimum while waiting for future gen cards.
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yeah they scale very well. one thing to consider is you'll be held back a bit by the 1Gb of vram. at 1920x1080 i've ran into a few instances where i've bumped up against the vram limit.
 
No complain over here SLI 460 1gb, OC to 800/2040. I don't know exactly the FPS but it's plently enought for me

Setting ULTRA, 0AA, POST AA to HIGH..1920x1080
 
Went SLI 4 months before the beta, knew it was going to be taxing... Good performance so far for me, I game on my LCD 42".... I suggest to anyone with a 460, get another one... I have yet to see any issues with SLI (stutter, artifact, tearing) with any game whatsoever, except for the obvbious issues with BF3 beta. One thing I have to also mention is that the BF3 beta is more sensitive to pushing the cards further. I get artifacting in BF3 at a certain clock speed whereas I wont in ATItool artifact tester.
 
Does BF3 support 120hz in multi-player? That would make me consider revisiting a multi-GPU setup.
 
Tiporaro said:
Just curious, what settings are you running at to fill out 120hz at that res? Assuming you're on the 2x6950 rig in your sig.
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running Custom with mostly high settings with deferred AA to off, post process AA to high,

textures, terrain, and mesh on ultra which is actually high If I understand correctly. Getting around 45-55 mostly, even as high as 65 sometimes in the park area. I get better fps when indoors on the metro map.

Very recently I lowered resolution to 2800xsomething so that I can get my minimap, squad list and see my health because running portrait eyefinity in the beta sucks and you can't see everything even using screen adjustment. Using the 2800xwhatever you can use screen adjustment to allow yourself to have a full hud.
 
I currently don't have a GPU. Debating whether to buy a 580 gtx or something around $300 and waiting for better cards to come out. I'd like to play on high settings in the mean time. 1920x1200

Suggestions?
 
No SLI for me, but seriously considering crossfire for my 6950. Just a little bit extra to make sure I can play it however I want.
 
lt_wentoncha said:
Gah, well, I just can't in good conscience spend 1k on graphics cards. Leaning towards:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1288245&CatId=3669

In SLI mode and if I can't get all the eye candy, well, TFB.
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Honestly, with those beasts in SLi, unless you're on a surround gaming setup you should be fine, my 6970s run BF3 pretty nicely at 2560x1600 (except for the HORRIBLE artifacting but that's all the game)

Striker9 said:
I currently don't have a GPU. Debating whether to buy a 580 gtx or something around $300 and waiting for better cards to come out. I'd like to play on high settings in the mean time. 1920x1200

Suggestions?
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At 1920x1200 you probably want to be looking at a 6950/GTX 570 or above to get decent performance, I'm sure others will chime in and give you more exact advice.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Why speculate? Go grab the beta, it's open for everyone.
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People are speculating because he beta doesnt have the ultra or even high support.
The setting is there, but it doesnt do much. The full rollout will be with the final version.

I am in the same wonder boat. I have a 1920x1200 monitor and wonder if my single GTX 580 SC will run the game maxed with smooth framerate.
 
I play BF3 on Custom,(ultra detail, 16AA, high everything else), 1920x1080, with GPU in sig. I get 45 frames minimum in the park of Operation Metro, with the average being more like 50-55FPS, and the high being 65ish.
Inside the average is like 60+ and with highs in the 80-90's. I personally just bought another 6950 2Gb Reference but i wont be CF'ing because im lending the card to a friend so he can play BF3 on high like me. But when the new GPU's come out he will buy one of those and i will get my 6950 back, and i will be crossfiring up my Rig. By then i bet all the bugs will be worked out, and crossfiring performance will be silky smooth with relatively no hickups.

UPDATE: And i just played Caspian Border for the first time and i am so happy to say my FPS is pretty much identical as before. When looking at certain things (lots of buildings fairly close to where i am standing) it will dip to 35FPS but surprisingly it is still very playable and didn't notice any negatives that usually come from a frame rate hitting the 30's. Things look up as well for the fact that this is just a Beta, and just Beta drivers. Im sure a few months after the final version is out, it will be more like a mid 40's minimum on Caspian.
 
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DeadByDawn said:
People are speculating because he beta doesnt have the ultra or even high support.
The setting is there, but it doesnt do much. The full rollout will be with the final version.

I am in the same wonder boat. I have a 1920x1200 monitor and wonder if my single GTX 580 SC will run the game maxed with smooth framerate.
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It isn't full Ultra but it's most of the way there...

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1037809160&postcount=19
 
NathanP2007 said:
I play BF3 on Custom,(ultra detail, 16AA, high everything else), 1920x1080, with GPU in sig. I get 45 frames minimum in the park of Operation Metro, with the average being more like 50-55FPS, and the high being 65ish.
Inside the average is like 60+ and with highs in the 80-90's. I personally just bought another 6950 2Gb Reference but i wont be CF'ing because im lending the card to a friend so he can play BF3 on high like me. But when the new GPU's come out he will buy one of those and i will get my 6950 back, and i will be crossfiring up my Rig. By then i bet all the bugs will be worked out, and crossfiring performance will be silky smooth with relatively no hickups.

UPDATE: And i just played Caspian Border for the first time and i am so happy to say my FPS is pretty much identical as before. When looking at certain things (lots of buildings fairly close to where i am standing) it will dip to 35FPS but surprisingly it is still very playable and didn't notice any negatives that usually come from a frame rate hitting the 30's. Things look up as well for the fact that this is just a Beta, and just Beta drivers. Im sure a few months after the final version is out, it will be more like a mid 40's minimum on Caspian.
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This makes me happy -- i Just ordered an XFX 6950 2GB yesterday from the egg, should be here Tuesday to replace my 280GTX. Been in the nvidia camp for a while, but AMD has been doing great things with the Radeon in terms of price/performance/power draw. In addition the Radeon's ability for doing massive computations in Elecomsoft's Wireless auditor program is something useful to me.

Did you happen to get this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150549

I'm only marginally familiar with the 6950 unlocking people have been doing. It's not super important to me, but if there is a very good chance of flashing mine and getting an extra 130 shaders I'd like that!
 
Haha, as it happens AMD were ahead with price, performance and power consumption even when you bought your GTX280, but never mind eh? :p
(edit: unless you bought it the month it came out, before the HD4870 arrived)
 
samuelmorris said:
Haha, as it happens AMD were ahead with price, performance and power consumption even when you bought your GTX280, but never mind eh? :p
(edit: unless you bought it the month it came out, before the HD4870 arrived)
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Yeah I was one of the very first to get a GTX280 - and I'd be embarrassed to tell you how much I spent on it too. I was nVidia to the core back then because I was also an early person on the CUDA massively parallel processing bandwagon for certain applications.

Back then too I didn't really care about price vs. performance or power. I just wanted 'The best" hah now with the economy and finances a bit different I can't be pulling stunts like that anymore.
 
I'll be fine with my GTX 295 with some eye candy turned down, until 7000 radeons or 600 series geforces :)
 
Would I be able to max the game out with 2x MSI Lightning 6970 @ 2560x1440? I have a Core i7 @ 4Ghz and 6GB of ram
 
collegeboy69us said:
This makes me happy -- i Just ordered an XFX 6950 2GB yesterday from the egg, should be here Tuesday to replace my 280GTX. Been in the nvidia camp for a while, but AMD has been doing great things with the Radeon in terms of price/performance/power draw. In addition the Radeon's ability for doing massive computations in Elecomsoft's Wireless auditor program is something useful to me.

Did you happen to get this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150549

I'm only marginally familiar with the 6950 unlocking people have been doing. It's not super important to me, but if there is a very good chance of flashing mine and getting an extra 130 shaders I'd like that!
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No both of mine are the Reference XFX 69502Gb. Though from what i understand people are having some luck unlocking the shaders on non reference cards. I wanted another Reference not only for the unlocking (dual bio switch) but also because of the fan style. Having a reference with a exhaust fan style, then one like you got would just heat up everything in my case more, cause the one you got takes case air and blows it right on the GPU, then the air heated bounces off and back into the case. I prefer exhaust.
 
collegeboy69us said:
Yeah I was one of the very first to get a GTX280 - and I'd be embarrassed to tell you how much I spent on it too. I was nVidia to the core back then because I was also an early person on the CUDA massively parallel processing bandwagon for certain applications.

Back then too I didn't really care about price vs. performance or power. I just wanted 'The best" hah now with the economy and finances a bit different I can't be pulling stunts like that anymore.
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I only remember the GTX280 coming out around the £320-£350 mark which is actually a fair bit less than the 8800GTX did, and a lot less than the 8800 Ultra, GTX480 and GTX580 did, at around £450 each (£500 in some extreme cases). Everything about the GTX200 series was better than most generations have been from nvidia - decent amount of memory (at the time), better hardware quality than usual, more reasonable prices. Shame they didn't stick to that philosophy with Fermi, ah well. Kepler is clean slate time, so I won't write them off just yet.
 
I don't know why people are so adamant on 60+Fps in this game, my 580 runs this game on ultra @ 50-60 fps and I don't notice the diff between 50-60 in this game at all.. 50+ is buttery smooth, and it never drops below 50 whatever the situation
 
50fps is bearable for most with a single GPU. The microstutter effect from crossfire/SLI makes it makes it much less tolerable on such systems.
 
I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'bearable'.. BUTTERY SMOOTH is a better way of describing 50fps in bf3 :D
 
samuelmorris said:
I'm pretty sure you'll find some people on this forum who would disagree with that :p
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more to the point: I'm sure you'll find some people on this forum who can AFFORD to disagree with that.

but seriously, 50 FPS is a great number, however I find that one of the most important numbers to look out for is minimum FPS. If you can get by with minimum FPS being over 30, than you are in a good place. I would rather have a lower AVG and a high minimum than reverse.
 
Generally though, with high-end games like BF3 people are using multi-GPU configs, and trust me, you want 60fps for that. For single-GPU games, I generally look for 45 as a minimum, 60 ideally.
 
Generally though, with high-end games like BF3 people are using multi-GPU configs
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the game does not denote what GPU configuration you play at. BF3 will most likely sell millions of copies on PC, but nearly 90% of the players will be on single-GPU systems. The flaw with this sort of thinking is the very human idea of "this is how I live, so this is how everyone else must live, right?" I have played the battlefield series in LANs for years with a large group of friends, and I've never seen one of them use a multi-GPU system. 'High end games' don't need high-end parts. Just for shits, I built up a demonstration system and ran Crysis on a e5400 and a GT220 with 2gb of ram. Yeah, the settings needed to be turned down like crazy, and it looked like shit, but it was still playable and I dare say.. fun!

If you want to be an enthusiast, be a true enthusiast, don't compromise. But in general, 'gamers' are happy with a min-avg-max of 30-45-60.
 
40fps in bf3 appears to be much much smoother than 40fps in bc2, which is very weird.

nice job Dice.
 
No, but those that do desire ultra detail in the game are typically using SLI/crossfire to do it.
 
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