**OFFICIAL** AT Battlefield 3 FAQ and News Thread

[VulgarDisplay]

Caspian Border password is now: videokilledtheradiostar

Exactly like that.

 

[novasatori]

looks like it's all back up

hopefully servers wont be crashing every round now

 

[gorcorps]

Booted up the PC this morning so I could start downloading the beta. Apparently "unlocked september 29th" doesn't mean unlocked september 29th.

Won't be playing today... I'll be lucky to even get it downloaded with all of the people that will be doing the same thing.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

OK, why does September 29th not mean September 29th? I believe it is now the 29th all over the world...what gives EA?

 

[MegaWorks]

Can't download the game???? AHHHHH I want to play today!!!

 

[novasatori]

well even the preorder beta guys had to wait till like 5 hours past the original time they said it would start, and the time was at 8am eastern, so maybe in 20 minutes or you can wait till noon eastern like we had to eventually wind up waiting

 

[smackababy]

I downloaded the beta at peak time (around 5PM CST) and it took around an hour for me. However, it should be noted I have extremely good internet and this was for Origin early access. I average around 48 Mbps.


I finally got some full matches in last night and I have to say I really like the game more. I hope they patch things during this beta, but I am looking forward to the full game quite a bit.

 

[scooterlibby]

When I join a server, BF3 opens into a frozen windowed white screen. I can't actually play and pressing Atlt+Ent only restarts the server joining process, and doesn't put me in a working full screen. Anyone else having this problem?

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Caspian password changed, thanks DICE.

 

[imaheadcase]

BF3 beta is now available for PC download!

Apparently, EA instructions are just dumb and it shows up randomly to people and not when they say. Big surprise from EA i know right?

Downloaded it in 10min, now i can't even access battlelog though, so will be awhile i guess till i can actually play. lol

 

[Termie]

Booted up the PC this morning so I could start downloading the beta. Apparently "unlocked september 29th" doesn't mean unlocked september 29th.

Won't be playing today... I'll be lucky to even get it downloaded with all of the people that will be doing the same thing.

OK, why does September 29th not mean September 29th? I believe it is now the 29th all over the world...what gives EA?

Can't download the game???? AHHHHH I want to play today!!!

Downloading now...maxing out my DSL connection. Remember you have to download Origin first. Took me a while to find it, but here it is: http://www.origin.com/us/about. The "links" on the EA page aren't actually links to the game, since you can't download from EA's site: http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3/1/beta. <-- note annoying fake download buttons!

 

[imaheadcase]

I downloaded the beta at peak time (around 5PM CST) and it took around an hour for me. However, it should be noted I have extremely good internet and this was for Origin early access. I average around 48 Mbps.


I finally got some full matches in last night and I have to say I really like the game more. I hope they patch things during this beta, but I am looking forward to the full game quite a bit.

That is extremely slow for 48Mbps. Even on my 60meg connection, at 4.4MB/s it only took 10min (normally i get 7.7MB/s).

Word is they are putting out patches everyday now for game, its just they are rolling them up for release date. Unless its a critical patch needed for gameplay it waits till release.

 

[flamingelephant]

Where is the game hiding on Origin? I can't find it on the free section or anywhere else... also tried rebooting Origin...

Anyone having the same issue?

 

[flamingelephant]

Figure... as soon as I post about it "magically" just appears in Origin now without me doing anything....

 

[smackababy]

That is extremely slow for 48Mbps. Even on my 60meg connection, at 4.4MB/s it only took 10min (normally i get 7.7MB/s).

Word is they are putting out patches everyday now for game, its just they are rolling them up for release date. Unless its a critical patch needed for gameplay it waits till release.

I was playing HoN and the match lasted an hour, how long the actual download took I have no idea. >_>

 

[Zargon]

Caspian password changed, thanks DICE.

is it not videokilledtheradiostar anymore???

eauk is looking liek it has changed, but hard to gauge who is and isnt a tard

 

[GullyFoyle]

twitter.com/zh1nt0: "The update we ran now is posted in Battlelog. Check the News section "

Can someone post the change list from today's (Battlelog?) patch?

 

[Stuxnet]

They've said they don't want the public having access to Caspian Border yet, and that if specially selected people/clans/communities keep divulging the password, they'll stop with it altogether.

 

[Stuxnet]

Can someone post the change list from today's (Battlelog?) patch?

Fixes include (from #3):

&#8226; Fix for the "Your active soldier is not ready for duty" problem newly registered users have been seeing
&#8226; More updates to the filter handling in the Server Browser, default servers now have even more available slots
&#8226; Fix for Battle reports listing in Profiles

Fixes include (from #2):

&#8226; Allowed Pending EA-ID accounts on the site
&#8226; Minor tweaks and updates to the Stats pages based on reports from the Forums
&#8226; Improved copy on the Origin friends import screen
&#8226; Minor tweaks to the Party and join system

 

[GullyFoyle]

pcgameshardware.com - Battlefield 3 Beta: 18 Radeon and Geforce cards + SLI & Crossfire benchmarked

Battlefield 3 benchmarks
Battlefield 3 Beta: 18 Radeon and Geforce cards + SLI & Crossfire benchmarked
Battlefield 3 is going to raise the bar in terms of graphical quality. Since you can't create something out of nothing, the game demands very fast graphics cards. Time for an upgrade? We've done comprehensive benchmarking to give you answers.

The system requirements for the Battlefield 3 beta are high. For pleasing gameplay EA and DICE recommend a quad-core CPU accompanied by a recent graphics card with 1 GiB video memory. Always keep in mind that the beta does not represent the maxium image quality of the full game – nevertheless it's running slow.

Battlefield 3 Beta: Minimum spec
- OS: Windows Vista 32 Bit
- CPU: 2 GHz Dualcore (Core 2 Duo 2,4 GHz or Athlon X2 2,7 GHz)
- RAM: 2 GiByte
- HDD : 20 GByte
- GPU (AMD): DirectX 10.1 with 512 MiB RAM (Radeon HD 3000, 4000, 5000 oder 6000 Series, HD 3870 or faster)
- GPU (Nvidia): DirectX 10.0 with 512 MiB RAM (Geforce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 oder 500 Series, 8800 GT or faster)
- Minimum details @ 1.280 x 720

Battlefield 3 Beta: Recommended spec (High detail)
- OS: Windows 7 64 Bit
- CPU: Quadcore
- RAM: 4 GiByte
- HDD : 20 GByte
- GPU: DirectX 11 with 1.024 MiB RAM (GTX 560 or Radeon HD 6950)

Battlefield 3 Beta: Test scene
Our test is simple: We're starting at the city, running down the bank near the water for 20 seconds (logged by Fraps). This scene on the Metro map sports a wide view distance, particle effects and, as a result of the sprint, streaming. Indoors the frame rates are about 30 to 50 percent higher. Since we're using the latest drivers from AMD and Nvidia, the Catalyst 11.10 Preview and Geforce 285.38, these results are state-of-the-art.

Battlefield 3 Beta: GPU benchmarks
GPU power is everything: Although Battlefield 3 shines with excellent multicore scaling (inherited by Bad Company 2), the firefights on typical systems and resolutions are completely GPU-bound. You'll need a high-end graphics card for fluent gameplay in Full-HD with 4x MSAA, post effects and 16:1 AF.

Remarkable: Nvidia's drivers give their cards an edge over the competition. The Geforce GTX 570 outperforms the similar-priced Radeon HD 6970 by nine percent, even though the AMD card runs faster in our overall benchmark index. Upcoming drivers from AMD and Nvidia will push the framerates by time and maybe change the current placing.

<see the site for the charts>

 

[GullyFoyle]

Lets blow stuff up! Battlefield 3 PC Beta Physics and Destruction Gameplay

 

[Axon]

Whatever code Origin is using, it doesn't get along with itunes. Itunes is already crapware, so...you know.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Looks like uncaps are out of bounds on Caspian? Chalk up another victory to the jets if so. I couldn't be 100&#37; sure due to lag and the fact that the map/minimap don't do much to tell you where you are.

 

[Stuxnet]

I've been pleasantly surprised by the performance, honestly. I've got an i5 750 and a Radeon 5850, running on high, and don't have any problems. I'm not running fraps so I have no idea what the actual FPS, but it's > 30, which I wasn't expecting.

 

[GullyFoyle]

pcper.com - Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Testing and Image Quality Evaluation - Day 1

Author: Ryan Shrout
Date: September 28, 2011
Subject: Graphics Cards
Manufacturer: EA
Tagged: radeon, nvidia, geforce, bf3, battlefield 3, amd

The Battlefield 3 Beta

It was an exciting day at PC Perspective yesterday with much our time dedicated to finding, installing and playing the new Battlefield 3 public beta. Released on the morning of the 26th to those of you who had pre-ordered BF3 on Origin or those of you who had purchased Medal of Honor prior to July 26th, getting the beta a couple of days early should give those of you with more FPS talent than me a leg up once the open beta starts on Thursday the 29th.

My purpose in playing Battlefield 3 yesterday was purely scientific, of course. We wanted to test a handful of cards from both AMD and NVIDIA to see how the beta performed. With all of the talk about needing to upgrade your system and the relatively high recommended system requirements, there is a lot of worry that just about anyone without a current generation GPU is going to need to shell out some cash.

Is that a justified claim? While we didn't have time yet to test EVERY card we have at the office we did put some of the more recent high end, mid-range and lower cost GPUs to the test.

Before I jump into the results, I thought I would just take a quick moment to describe the way Battlefield 3 works on the PC as it is quite different than what you might be used to with other PC games. Rather than just launching the game, you first have to launch Origin, which is essentially EA's take on the Valve Steam client. Yes, I am one of those people that desperately wanted EA to just adopt the Steam platform so we could have "one to rule them all", but giant companies like this just don't do that. So Origin it is. After opening it and logging in, then selecting the BF3 Beta, rather than starting the game you actually get a browser opened up:

The entire server browser, friends list, group creation and more actually launches from your default web browser rather than the Origin client or even the BF3 game itself. And since we saw disabled buttons for co-op and for single player selections I am guessing that even when this game is released on October 25th, this interface will remain.

The controls aren't really THAT bad and in some ways it is nice to be able to look for servers to join while still having other windows open and being able to do or check on other tasks besides Battlefield 3. The server list doesn't update as often as I would like so you never know if you are trying to join a server that has become full since the list originally loaded but most of my first day of testing was done hitting that magical "quick match" button.

Initially, the BF3 game loads in a window and that happened in ALL CASES for me. EA tells you in several places that the shortcut to go full screen is "ALT + ENTER" and in my case only the left ALT button actually did that. Other than that minor nuisance, the game loaded up pretty well.

Our Testing Process and Headaches

Testing a multiplayer game is hard and is made even more so by the fact that you cannot create your own servers to control who joins, etc. This left me running around on seemingly random servers (since getting on the same server twice seemed nearly impossible) trying not to die during my many 120 second FRAPS runs. Because of this, keeping an exact path and process for our benchmarking testing was impossible and instead we mitigated that issue by playing it for MANY sets of benchmarking results for each card and in each setting. We then had to manually look at the results and find which were the "average" while kicking out those that had especially high or especially low scores.

For the most part, we were able to get fairly consistent benchmark runs though at the expense of whatever team happened to be saddled with me. (Sorry Internet!) Here you can see a set of three results from the outdoor section of the Metro map on the GTX 580 with Ultra quality settings:

So even though there was some variance that is pretty much impossible to avoid in a large multiplayer game like this, my methods did result in good repeatability.

As I mentioned above, all of our testing was done on the "Operation Metro" map as it was the only one publicly available on the first day of the beta. Rumors are circulating that soon the second map will open with 64 player support and vehicles so we are going to keep an eye on that for sure and see if performance is drastically affected.

There were two sections of the Metro map though that had very different performance characteristics and thus we tested them independently. Of three main areas on the map, the first starts in a larger outdoor area, the second takes place inside tunnels of a subway while the third returns outside in a more cityscape style design. My testing differentiated between the first outdoor section as being the most GPU intensive while the indoor section was much easier on the graphics card. You will see results for both map areas on the following pages.

Also, just to get as many different cards in as we could with the limited amount of time in a day, we ran all of our testing at 1920x1200 resolution and at Ultra quality settings.

We will start with performance testing between our NVIDIA and AMD cards on the next page and then take a quick look at image quality comparisons between NVIDIA and AMD following that.

Our test setup included a Core i7-965 Nehalem processor, 6GB of DDR3 memory and a 600GB VelociRaptor hard drive. We used the latest drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD that were released specifically yesterday for Battlefield 3: 285.38 for NVIDIA and 11.10 Preview for AMD.

...<follow the link to see all 6 pages of results>