Tech Report's "Inside the second" graphics testing for BF3

[crisium]

Any Core 2, Athlon II, or Phenom II seems quite fine at this game, as long as you are at at least 3.0GHz (maybe a bit more on cache-less AII's). It's a GPU dependent game, but only so long as you have the proper CPU frequency.

Definitely get that CPU of yours to 3.2 if you can, settle on 3.0 if you can't.

 

[toyota]

Any Core 2, Athlon II, or Phenom II seems quite fine at this game, as long as you are at at least 3.0GHz (maybe a bit more on cache-less AII's). It's a GPU dependent game, but only so long as you have the proper CPU frequency.

Definitely get that CPU of yours to 3.2 if you can, settle on 3.0 if you can't.

again for multi player its much more cpu intensive.

 

[crisium]

Sure it is. But I still stand any Core 2, AII, or PhII at 3.0 (3.2 for the AII) will run the game fine on High if paired with a 6870 or better. Are you disputing that? I'm not sure what the point of your most recent post is in the discussion. Do you think Skurge's OC to 3.0 or 3.2 will not help? Explain yourself.

 

[DietDrThunder]

What resolution? What does "low as possible" means - under $100, under $200, under $300 or more?

I have the SAMSUNG P2770FH 27" 1ms LCD monitor that I got on sale at Newegg when they had them for $239 plus FS. Max resolution is 1920 x 1080. I'd like to stay around $200 price range for the video card.

 

[Termie]

Any Core 2, Athlon II, or Phenom II seems quite fine at this game, as long as you are at at least 3.0GHz (maybe a bit more on cache-less AII's). It's a GPU dependent game, but only so long as you have the proper CPU frequency.

Definitely get that CPU of yours to 3.2 if you can, settle on 3.0 if you can't.

Not quite - any QUAD CORE chip in those families will work, but a dual-core will severely limit any graphics card to 40fps or below in multiplayer, which is close to unplayable.

again for multi player its much more cpu intensive.

Sure it is. But I still stand any Core 2, AII, or PhII at 3.0 (3.2 for the AII) will run the game fine on High if paired with a 6870 or better. Are you disputing that? I'm not sure what the point of your most recent post is in the discussion. Do you think Skurge's OC to 3.0 or 3.2 will not help? Explain yourself.

I can't speak for Toyota, but you read what he wrote. Basically, multiplayer requires a lot of CPU - it is not strictly a "GPU-limited" game. Unfortunately, I'm going to guess that Skurge will never be satisfied with the multiplayer performance in BF3 on his e6600.

I wasn't satisfied playing BC2 on my e8400, and that had plenty more in reserve than his e6600 (which I owned prior to the e8400). Just for comparison's sake, I average about 70% load on my OC'd i7-860 in BF3, evenly distributed on all four cores (basically, the cores appear as one line on the graph). The game requires a ton of CPU, period.

Back to the original topic, I didn't find Tech Report's article all that helpful. Apparently, both AMD and Nvidia suffer some odd stuttering problems, but it depends on the level (and this is all single-player). Well, that doesn't help us much. If anything, it suggests the engine needs some work, as a card that performs fine in one level apparently kicks the bucket in the next level.

 

[Silverforce11]

Have to concur, i recently played BF3 mp with a Q9400 at stock vs OC to 3.6ghz and there was a big difference.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Back to the original topic, I didn't find Tech Report's article all that helpful. Apparently, both AMD and Nvidia suffer some odd stuttering problems, but it depends on the level (and this is all single-player). Well, that doesn't help us much. If anything, it suggests the engine needs some work, as a card that performs fine in one level apparently kicks the bucket in the next level.

I think it depends a great deal on what effects are being used at the time. I remember reading that AMD has better optimized shaders but Nvidia is faster with tessellation. Whether or not the new drivers changed this, I don't know.

 

[GoStumpy]

As much as I tout the i3-2100's ability to play BF3 at 40+FPS, I have to admit that it IS running at 85+% pretty much the entire times, sometimes spiking right to 100%. My GPU is running at 99% the entire time (I dont think afterburner shows 100% for some reason), so in my opinion, a i3-2100 is prefectly paired with a HD6850.

Now, if I had a more powerful graphics card, I am pretty sure I would need a more powerful CPU, or the i3-2100 would become the bottleneck.

 

[GaiaHunter]

I have the SAMSUNG P2770FH 27" 1ms LCD monitor that I got on sale at Newegg when they had them for $239 plus FS. Max resolution is 1920 x 1080. I'd like to stay around $200 price range for the video card.

Generally under that price you should find the NVIDIA GTX460 and GTX560 and the AMD 6850/6870.

Maybe you can find 6950 and GTX560Ti near that price.

Additionally 5850 (faster than 6850) and 5870 (faster than 6870) are good options.

 

[soccerballtux]

does anyone have more up to date CPU benchmarks of the final BF3 build? IE ultra settings but running at 640x480 on a GTX580. That russian site was only running the alpha version...wondering what the final numbers look like.

 

[Silverforce11]

They would have to do it in MP because CPU doesn't make much difference in SP.

Obviously that would be a pain to do with all the different setups and variability of MP.