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BF3 graphics card

H

houe

Senior member
It is time for a graphics card upgrade. I've been running my 8800gts 512mb for a while but its time to move up. BF3 and Diablo3 are the games on my radar that I'll most likely be playing. I have dual 24" monitors running at 1920x1200. An I7-930 with 6GB ram and a 128GB m4 SSD. My budget is probably $200, but if there is a compelling reason I can go $250. Just looking for advice as I have not kept up at all with graphics cards. I know nothing right now...
 
Honestly its hard to recommend something right now, October is the "hardware month" and GPU refresh is about that time.

So you could get some awesome deals around the release date on older hardware or get something new.

Personally i would get GTX460 for cheap which will run bf3 fine at that rez. Then in october depending on how reviews favor the new cards go with them or a cheaper high end GPU now and sell that one.
 
We don't know, it's not out yet. If you must buy soon, ATI/AMD cards have historically done better in DICE games than their NV counterparts.
 
I would step up your budget to $250. BF3 is pretty hard on your cards. I was in the alpha and when SLI was not working properly it was killing a single GTX 480 at my resolution.

Performance was all over the place in the alpha though, wait until the open beta is out which will be for the most part what is going to be released engine wise.

Again I would spend the $250 though, for 1920x1200 you want a beefy card to run the game nicely, a 6950 2GB would be a good choice at that price.
 
Step up to $250, and get either a gxt560ti or hd6950. The 6950 has more vram and can drive 3 displays at once, but the gtx560ti's have bigger factory overclocks and support Nvidia-specific features. I personally have the MSI twin frozr III gtx560 ti and it runs like a champ with an overclock that puts it even with the more expensive gtx570.
 
Grooveriding said:
I would step up your budget to $250. BF3 is pretty hard on your cards. I was in the alpha and when SLI was not working properly it was killing a single GTX 480 at my resolution.

Performance was all over the place in the alpha though, wait until the open beta is out which will be for the most part what is going to be released engine wise.

Again I would spend the $250 though, for 1920x1200 you want a beefy card to run the game nicely, a 6950 2GB would be a good choice at that price.
Click to expand...

I was thinking this also , but I think the 6950 needs to come down a little in price. I mean you can get a gtx570 for 25$ more. A few months ago they were selling for 219$ AR, that was a good price and at that price I would recommend it in this case.

In this case it would be better to spend $204AR on a gtx560ti and give it a little overclock.
 
ok so it sounds like the 560 and 6950 are the two recommendations (aside from waiting of course). Thanks! Is there a difference between 560 and 560ti or just marketing hype?
 
The ti version is roughly 15% faster.
While the regular gtx560 is good @ 1900x1200, I would recommend stepping up to the ti version ,for better longevity.
 
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Silverforce11 said:
If you can't wait, grab the cheapest 6950 2gb you can get. Easy unlock/OC to 6970.
Click to expand...
No currently wide-available models are the reference design that can be unlocked.

houe said:
ok so it sounds like the 560 and 6950 are the two recommendations (aside from waiting of course). Thanks! Is there a difference between 560 and 560ti or just marketing hype?
Click to expand...
Non-ti = overclocked 460 (336 shaders)
ti = extra shaders (384) + high clocks
 
Someone on this board posted benches of the BF3 Alpha, and the AMD cards sucked on it. It worries me as I have a 6950 2GB XFX, and it scored like crap, even lower than 5850 IIRC, which is just insane. 560ti stomped my card, even with tons less VRAM.

I hope it's just issues with the Alpha, drivers, and such. I'm gonna be furious if I have to dump a ~$250 card just to play this reasonably at 1920x1200.
 
Hmm, maybe I overreacted a bit, I remembered it as worse than it actually is. The 6950 is slower than the 5870 though, which is crazy to me.
 
I was in the same boat as the OP, rather than wait for either camp to release here new hardware I decided to up my budget and buy a GTX580 from Microcenter for $400 AR. I was thinking the same thing as one of the posters on here about buy it now sell it later, but from my experience with used video cards nobody wants to pay very much for a third gen cheap video card. Hoping I can recoup 2/3's of the buying price of this new card, and if I can't maybe I'll be able to find a discounted one when the new cards come out and SLI it.
 
Spjut said:
I guess you mean this benchmark?
http://gamegpu.ru/Action-/-FPS-/-TPS/Battlefield-3-Alpha-test-GPU.html

Remember, AMD doesn't support DX11 multithreaded rendering yet in the drivers, and Civilization V got a huge boost on Nvidia hardware when they enabled it...BF3 will also utilize DX11 MTR

AMD's DX10.1 cards take a huge beating here though
Click to expand...

Those benchmarks don't seem to have been done to normal quality standards. For example, the cards were benchmarked in different systems using totally different processors and even a different OS in some cases, yet the results are supposed to be comparable somehow?
 
GotNoRice said:
Those benchmarks don't seem to have been done to normal quality standards. For example, the cards were benchmarked in different systems using totally different processors and even a different OS in some cases, yet the results are supposed to be comparable somehow?
Click to expand...

Really? Then forget everything I've said in this thread 🙂 I hope and am reasonably confident that the 6950 2GB should do well.
 
Spjut said:
I guess you mean this benchmark?
http://gamegpu.ru/Action-/-FPS-/-TPS/Battlefield-3-Alpha-test-GPU.html

Remember, AMD doesn't support DX11 multithreaded rendering yet in the drivers, and Civilization V got a huge boost on Nvidia hardware when they enabled it...BF3 will also utilize DX11 MTR

AMD's DX10.1 cards take a huge beating here though
Click to expand...

These don't look bad for either brand's GPU's. SLI/Crossfire aren't working yet, though. 🙂
BF3_benches1080.jpg


The CPU chart is interesting too. Definitely likes more cores, but doesn't seem to prefer Intel or AMD. The performance differences are about where I'd expect them to be. Should be fine on any modern quad core above the Athlon II. Even Core2 quads are fine.
BF3_CPU_Benches.jpg
 
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