Would an i3 stand up to BF3?

Broken Hope · 23 Aug 2011 at 12:47

Phil2008 said:
My E8400 would run BF3 quite easy with its new 6950

No.

Phil2008 · 23 Aug 2011 at 13:34

Broken Hope said:
No.

Ah... Im guessing it will be slightly higher then that, as that E8400 is at stock. Im amazed Its slightly ahead of the i3 tho. So I might have to upgrade after all, but I still will wait and see how it runs first

Luke · 23 Aug 2011 at 18:54

Hmm... slightly worried how my opty 1354 @ 2.2 is going to handle it. As I'm gaming on an ML115 I can't upgrade the CPU...

~>Dg<~ · 23 Aug 2011 at 23:39

aceofspadesrob said:
that may be true but i went from a Q6600 @ 3.4ghz to a I3 2100(will be getting i5 this month but was to get system on buget at time) and i have seen a huge improvement in bc2 but my 5830 is poo going with 6850's in xfire so it can chew thru bf3 XD

so why not just get another 5830 :confused:

your swopping a 6850 x 2 which are same as a 5830 . pick second hand 5830 and away you got and a decent wedge saved.

aceofspadesrob · 24 Aug 2011 at 01:12

~>Dg<~ said:
so why not just get another 5830

your swopping a 6850 x 2 which are same as a 5830 . pick second hand 5830 and away you got and a decent wedge saved.

sorry ment 6950s anyone know if i3 2100 would bottleneck 2 of those cards in xfire?

Jay85 · 24 Aug 2011 at 01:24

Hurrah for Phenom II 955BE chip! lol

d_brennen · 24 Aug 2011 at 01:39

Here's a little anecdotal evidence (which I cannot back up with proof lol) going from a Q6600 @3.6, 4GB DDR2 with a 5850 to a 1055T @3.6 with 4GB DDR3 and the same 5850 near doubled my MINIMUM frame rate in BfBC2 multiplayer @1920x1080, same settings. The minimum is more important than average or maximum FPS IMO

Purgatory · 24 Aug 2011 at 06:02

Broken Hope said:
No.

low quality setting @ 640x480 ? Who plays at that res and setting? They are straining the cpu and not really showing a real world example like 1920x 1200, 1920 x 1080 etc what most of us are using now. Is there a different res test of that and some real settings, so that way the graphics card is put to work not just the cpu fighting to hit frame rates not needed? Linky pls

NVM found the site with other tests they did. Check the link out guys this site even says a GTX 590 is almost as fast in this game as an Ati/AMD 5870 ...humm. Also anyone with a decent quadcore and a good graphics card will be fine by looks of it at even max settings, Trimming the settings down will again improve things and this is alpha test so I bet the optimising has not been done or done well well yet. So I stick to saying wait till it's released and see if it plays fine on your setup if not update, updating for 1 game a whole sysem is pointless to later find the game runs no better or 10% better on a new system... Classic example Crysis 2 is a complete joke when it's run in DX11 because no optimising has been done or they intentionally added useless data into the the game to make it look like you need to upgrade and their almighty game is so powerful it needs the latest kit x 2 in graphics cards etc etc :rolleyes:

. NOW reality does it really look any better then DX9 ? NO.. only thing better is the higher res graphics files they added. All the DX11 stuff is so badly done it's unreal and not worth the performance hit.

http://translate.google.com/transla.../-FPS-/-TPS/Battlefield-3-Alpha-test-GPU.html

Final8y · 24 Aug 2011 at 06:20

Purgatory said:
low quality setting @ 640x480 ? Who plays at that res and setting? They are straining the cpu and not really showing a real world example like 1920x 1200, 1920 x 1080 etc what most of us are using now. Is there a different res test of that and some real settings, so that way the graphics card is put to work not just the cpu fighting to hit frame rates not needed? Linky pls

NVM found the site with other tests they did.

http://translate.google.com/transla.../-FPS-/-TPS/Battlefield-3-Alpha-test-GPU.html

While your right about the 640x480, ruining at 1920x 1200, 1920 x 1080 etc will not bring the fps down enough to make the dual cores look any better in that test.

Purgatory · 24 Aug 2011 at 06:39

Final8y said:
While your right about the 640x480, ruining at 1920x 1200, 1920 x 1080 etc will not bring the fps down enough to make the dual cores look any better in that test.

Agree the frostbite engines like cpu cores as BFBC2 proved that a quadcore is where it's at for that game, so the more cores the better really.

So if you have a decent quadcore it should be fine I hope unless they later add in some useless code in a future update or DX11 additions that slow the engine right down or make the havok physics engine work very hard for little visual gain.

I don't know it's like every other game wait and see what it looks like and how it runs on what you have and when maxing it out does your system crawl.. if so time to update if you really need all the bells and whistles enabled.

For OP, if you can afford an update to an i5 2500k that would be a very good update for your machine mate no matter what game you are playing and it will make the system faster for everyday use. So no harm updating that i3 to a i5

. You can still get a good price for the i3 right now, so should all be good if you can sell it. Also by then you may find you want something better then an amd 6850, the new 7xxx series maybe out by then. That's why I say wait regarding graphics cards updates at the moment and if you have a quadcore cpu, if you don't have a Quadcore cpu then upgrade the cpu to a Quadcore atleast and then look for the new series graphics cards. This way your money goes further for real improvements not minor jumps that are not here or there in real world use.

Ahaa just realised you didn't buy the i3 system yet, so save a bit more money mate and get the i5 instead and sell the system you have and raise some money for the graphics card that way. Also can you not stick an amd 6 core cpu into that system you have and overclock it ?. That maybe the best way to go if you can do that and save yourself a lot of money and add more memory to that system to make it 8Gb and some faster drives.

max51 · 24 Aug 2011 at 09:14

Why not think about one of these. Cracking CPU mixed with the Asus board
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=cp-305-am&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=2060
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-a8-3850-llano,2975.html

Phil2008 · 24 Aug 2011 at 10:12

Come to think about is, if my pc will only achieve 25fps in low detal at 640x480, the game is very poorly optimised and I can see there will be a few moaning ppl.

Zefan · 24 Aug 2011 at 10:27

I can also confirm that Frostbite doesn't like dual cores. My GTX 480 should rip it up, but I'm let down by my pants dual core

Broken Hope · 24 Aug 2011 at 10:31

Purgatory said:
low quality setting @ 640x480 ? Who plays at that res and setting? They are straining the cpu and not really showing a real world example like 1920x 1200, 1920 x 1080 etc what most of us are using now. Is there a different res test of that and some real settings, so that way the graphics card is put to work not just the cpu fighting to hit frame rates not needed? Linky pls

It's a CPU test, find me a site that does a CPU test at a high res with max details, you won't, that's how they are done, they take all the strain off the GPU so they can test how the CPU's actually compare, so less of the rolleyes.

Phil2008 said:
Come to think about is, if my pc will only achieve 25fps in low detal at 640x480, the game is very poorly optimised and I can see there will be a few moaning ppl.

It's not poorly optimised at all, it just actually makes use of multiple cores properly. Dual cores are old now, for gaming quad core is actually being used these days. Developers can't win can they, they don't write games that make use of the hardware and people complain, they do make use of the hardware and people complain, what do people expect them to do?

Phil2008 · 24 Aug 2011 at 10:39

I think Ill be upgading before it comes out, prob to a i5 or bulldozer depending whats the fastest at the time of upgrade.

But I'll be quite gutted to get rid of current system, as its lasted me far longer then any of my previous builds, I build it 3yrs in march and its been a excellent system.

Revenga145 · 24 Aug 2011 at 12:07

Phil2008 said:
I think Ill be upgading before it comes out, prob to a i5 or bulldozer depending whats the fastest at the time of upgrade.

But I'll be quite gutted to get rid of current system, as its lasted me far longer then any of my previous builds, I build it 3yrs in march and its been a excellent system.

I too am thinking about getting rid of my 965 BE for a Bulldozer or Sandybridge chip. This has lasted me like 3 years, far longer than I expected, but all the same, I think it'll be worth it. Almost certainly.

~>Dg<~ · 24 Aug 2011 at 12:27

why upgrade before games out ? :confused:

play the beta in like 2 weeks time or less then decide .

any decent quad of 3 gig will be fine for this game.

ScratchFive · 24 Aug 2011 at 13:53

I don't pretend to know anything about frostbite but my G6950 (clarkdale 32nm i3 without HT and less L3 cache) runs DX11 Crysis 2 (high[lowest?!?!] settings) @ +60FPS consistently.

It does bottleneck my 2 460s by about 10-15% (according to 3dmark...) but I'm waiting for a good point to upgrade, and that is not now.

iamtheoneneo · 24 Aug 2011 at 14:30

Luke said:
Hmm... slightly worried how my opty 1354 @ 2.2 is going to handle it. As I'm gaming on an ML115 I can't upgrade the CPU...

is that a joke?
why are you gaming on a server???

Purgatory · 24 Aug 2011 at 17:00

Broken Hope said:
It's a CPU test, find me a site that does a CPU test at a high res with max details, you won't, that's how they are done, they take all the strain off the GPU so they can test how the CPU's actually compare, so less of the rolleyes.

I know what the test does mate, my point was it's better to get a real world situation tested, that way we as consumers know if we should upgrade or not. The 640 test is worthless, all it shows is the cpu can't feed the graphics card enough data to process. Real world testing will show at higher resolutions (what people play at) the frame rate is a lot higher and maybe acceptable.. That test to the non-techie or a person that does not understands the test means time to bin even your 2 year old pc or worse this years dual core sandy bridge chips i3, which is not true as you know.

I agree with you so before you fire back at me please read what I said a few times. I test in the way it's done is a good cpu stress test to me and that's all it's good for it does not give real world playability results.

Chin up mate and thanks for sharing that chart in the 1st place it helped me look up the site to see real world figures too

. Also the way to make games better is to use game engines like frostbite on the PC that can take real advantage of our expensive hardware, loving what they are doing with it and allowing many cores to be used and even HT. This is the future of gaming on the PC and happy to see it finally evolving again and not damn console ports.