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BF3 Advice:

L

Loggahead

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
471
All,

So, I have been playing BF3 on 360 and have been holding off on upgrading my PC fully to run BF3. I played BF3 yesterday on a new gaming rig and woke up this morning wanting more!

I would like to get by with just purchasing a video card to get me by until I have the funds to build a whole new rig (minus the card I would end up purchasing).

Here is my current specs:
Intel E6400 (mobo is only pcie x16, not 2.0)
4gb Ram
Win7 64bit
1440x900 native monitor

I feel that the one thing I have going for me is my lower native resolution, of which I plan on keeping the monitor until i rebuild my rig. Can you all give me some advice on a card in $200 (give or take) range? I know my e6400 is going to be a bottleneck, I just hope that a newer gpu would still benefit me... ? Also, i see that Newegg has some GTX560 cards that include BF3 vs the cheaper 560's with less cores for around $200...

-logga
 
what PSU do u have ?

and as u stated ur processor will bottleneck the card but, if u plan on upgrading in future u should go for GTX560Ti.

Overclock ur CPU.
 
That CPU will hurt you quite a bit in BF3 MP, especially with 32+ players in a game. Going from a dual to a quad in the BC2 days made a night and day difference. I can only imagine how BF3 runs with a dual in MP.

As others have suggested in other threads, see if you can find a cheap/used core 2 quad for your rig. A used q6600 or new q8300/8400 should only net you around $100 and will give you a massive boost for BF3
 
I think my fsb only goes up to 1333, so if I look at a proc, it seems I'd have to stick with the q6600?

I have overclocked my e6400 to around 2.8, it's currently clocked at 2.4 though. If I stuck with the e6400, what kind of performance would I be looking at?
 
I ran the beta on my E6750 (3.0ghz) + 5850 @ 1900x1200 medium settings and it ran fine. Granted that was 32 player rush on Metro, which I think is one of the smallest, if not the smallest map. I also played BC2 with the same hardware/settings without issues.

I bet you could toss a 5770 (just put one in my old rig which is now an HTPC) in there and do fine at that resolution with modest settings. I got one for under $100 on sale in the [H]ot Deals section last week.

As long as you keep your expectations tempered and run at no more than medium graphics settings you can get by without a total rebuild imo.
 
I'm working with my sister and her husband to build my nephew his own gaming rig for Christmas. We don't have a lot of cash, but we were able to land a sweet basic win7 machine off craigslist with similar hardware (same processor/ram, lower res LCD). I ordered off NewEgg the EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB and BF3 looks amazing with it! I'm not sure how it will handle a 64 man server in BF3, but from the quick test I put it through the other day it seemed to hold it's own. So I'd start with a video card upgrade like this one. Right now it's on sale too ($134, or 114 after MIR). If you feel the game is choking your machine, then I'd look into swapping out your CPU/Motherboard or at least add more Ram.... actually, do that too... Ram is dirt cheap right now so double up on that if you can. (8gigs).


*edit ... Just noticed your comment about the PCIx not being 2.0, so I don't know if this will work or not.
 
Last edited:
PCI-E 1.0 and 2.0 are compatible with each other. A new graphic card with PCI-E 2.0 will work on older motherboard with PCI-E x16 1.0 slots.
 
See the problem really is your processor. I have a sandy bridge celeron which is equal to a core 2 duo E7300 and i highly doubt I could play BF3 with it, heck I wouldnt even try. What do you plan on getting processor wise when you upgrade?
 
Let me open this up a little bit more:

1. I was had originally planned on upgrading to an Intel i5 or i7 in the future but really don't do anything computing wise that would rule out an AMD build...
2. Say I had $400-$500 to spend now (including video card)... what builds would you all suggest? I plan on keeping my XCLIO PSU and case. Maybe I should look at some AMD builds?
 
Going from a dual to a quad (e8400 to q9550) in BC2 was night/day better on a 4850 CF. I can only imagine this applies to BF3 too.
 
My personal gaming machine has the next step up in CPU, the e8400 dual core. It paired up with my ATI 5870 and 8gigs of RAM at 1920x1200 plays BF3 perfectly fine. Like I said in a post earlier, just upgrade your video card for now, that's all you really need since your monitor is only capable of 1440x900. You don't NEED a quad to enjoy BF3, especially at lower resolutions. Save your money for a rebuild down the road. You have enough (with a new video card) to play BF3.
 
Roger that Pringals!

So back to opinions on cards. Im seeing several newegg deals for around $220 after MIR on 560ti's 560 regulars can be had around $180. Ill spring the extra for the ti if it will net me some longevity. How do the AMD 6850 and 6870s stack up these days?

Ive also seen some 560ti's that include BF3... One is $250 for a zotac!? and the other is a gigabyte i believe for $310...
 
So.........

Lemme give a little update. Thanks to To3, I now have a q9400 that worked flawlessly with my mobo after a bios flash! We then tested the system with his new 448 core 560 ti card and my rig ran BF3 flawlessly at 1900x1200 (To3's monitor) with mostly high settings. It auto chose ultra for textures. I dropped shadows to medium, kept AA at med or low and used SSAO instead of HBAO. Because of this performance, I ordered this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130651

Back at home I couldn't help but test BF3 out on an 8800gtx and a Radeon 4870 while I wait for my new card to arrive. The 8800 performed playably (avg around 30-45 fps maybe?) at 1440x900 at all low settings except textures at medium, vsync on, AF 8x, AA off, mblur off, etc. The 4870 however actually performs very well at all medium settings with low AA, SSAO, etc! Its running buttery smooth at 1440x900 at around 45-60 fps avg.

At any rate thanks for all of the advice and thanks to the q9400 and a new card it looks like I'll be able to get a larger lcd in the future and ditch that legacy lcd resolution!

-logga
 
Loggahead said:
So.........

Lemme give a little update. Thanks to To3, I now have a q9400 that worked flawlessly with my mobo after a bios flash! We then tested the system with his new 448 core 560 ti card and my rig ran BF3 flawlessly at 1900x1200 (To3's monitor) with mostly high settings. It auto chose ultra for textures. I dropped shadows to medium, kept AA at med or low and used SSAO instead of HBAO. Because of this performance, I ordered this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130651

Back at home I couldn't help but test BF3 out on an 8800gtx and a Radeon 4870 while I wait for my new card to arrive. The 8800 performed playably (avg around 30-45 fps maybe?) at 1440x900 at all low settings except textures at medium, vsync on, AF 8x, AA off, mblur off, etc. The 4870 however actually performs very well at all medium settings with low AA, SSAO, etc! Its running buttery smooth at 1440x900 at around 45-60 fps avg.

At any rate thanks for all of the advice and thanks to the q9400 and a new card it looks like I'll be able to get a larger lcd in the future and ditch that legacy lcd resolution!

-logga
Click to expand...

welcome to gaming heaven
 
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