2006 system upgrade for BF3

Tackle_Berry · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:31

Hi I am looking at upgrading my system to be able to play Battlefield 3 at reasonable settings, it doesn't need to me Ultra just medium and smooth would be fine. I want to do it as cheap as possible as i mainly use my mac for everything, this will be just for Battlefield.

My current system:

Intel Duo E6600 overclocked to 3ghz
4GB DDR2 Geil 800mhz
Asus P5N32-E-SLI
Antec 900 Case
Antec TruePower Quattro 850W PSU
BFG 880GTS 512MB
500GB eSata 5400rpm

Any help would be great!

ChrisGTL · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:33

Can you OC the E6600? If so, how much?

What budget you got in total?

bobbarley · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:36

Ash2097 said:
Hi I am looking at upgrading my system to be able to play Battlefield 3 at reasonable settings, it doesn't need to me Ultra just medium and smooth would be fine. I want to do it as cheap as possible as i mainly use my mac for everything, this will be just for Battlefield.

My current system:

Intel Duo E6600
4GB DDR2 Geil 800mhz
Asus P5N32-E-SLI
Antec 900 Case
Antec TruePower Quattro 850W PSU
500GB eSata 5400rpm

Any help would be great!

What graphics card do you have? That's going to be the biggest factor.

ng93 · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:37

What resolution monitor have you got?

And by "reasonable settings" I assume you mean mid-high?

Tackle_Berry · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:38

Sorry forgot to mention already overclocked at 3ghz I did have it at 3.4ghz but temps were way to high.

budget is max £400 would like less then £300 if thats possible.

Just another thing I thought to mention I have played the Beta at lowest everything in the way of settings and I have massive lag, just incase you look at the BF3 min settings and see i should be able to play it.

Tackle_Berry · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:39

And graphics card is a BFG 880GTS 512MB

Tackle_Berry · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:41

My monitor is 1920x1080 and yes settings med-high would be fine.

TrojanWhore · 28 Sep 2011 at 18:59

the E6600 might struggle a bit, even overclocked. AMD Phenom quads start around £70 but you'll need a motherboard too, which start around £50 and £30 for DDR3 RAM.

IF you need to buy a new graphics card, a 6850 would be fine and start at just above £100

If you've got the money I'd spend an extra £20 on the cpu and get the 965BE CPU as it will OC easier if needed later on, and comes with deus ex, which you could sell if you don't want to play it.

most 6850s come with another copy of deus ex, and some with dirt 3 as well

However, if you don't want to spend any money which isn't needed, you could wait till next month, and see if OCing your CPU (perhaps upgrade the cooling) made it playable with all settings on low, I bet it'll still look great!

ng93 · 28 Sep 2011 at 21:36

Not 100% on this, but should be a good start.

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with DIRT3 & Deus Ex PC Games £109.99
1 x Gigabyte 990XA-UD3 AMD 990X (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £94.99
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.40GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail with FREE Deus Ex PC Game £89.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) £19.99
Total : £350.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).

The motherboard supports crossfire 8x/8x and bulldozer, so should have a good upgrade path.

6850 is a good card and comes with two free games.

Freezer 7 should give you some OC headroom.

Tackle_Berry · 28 Sep 2011 at 22:30

Thankyou both will have a look at this option in the morning, I appriciate your help.

trisonetwo · 28 Sep 2011 at 22:51

thats a great budget build above

jamesfreddie · 2 Oct 2011 at 17:16

Why dont you just grab a better heastsink and have your cpu @ 3.4GHz and grab a 560Ti?

Corsair A70 32.99
GPU 167.99

Total 200.98

Then when you can afford it upgrade to sandy bridge 1155

Predicament · 2 Oct 2011 at 17:34

ng93 said:
Not 100% on this, but should be a good start.

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS ATI Radeon HD 6850 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card with DIRT3 & Deus Ex PC Games £109.99
1 x Gigabyte 990XA-UD3 AMD 990X (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £94.99
1 x AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 965 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.40GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail with FREE Deus Ex PC Game £89.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9AD3B1K2/4G) £23.99
1 x Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1155/ 1156 / 1366) £19.99
Total : £350.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).

The motherboard supports crossfire 8x/8x and bulldozer, so should have a good upgrade path.

6850 is a good card and comes with two free games.

Freezer 7 should give you some OC headroom.

This is a wonderful spec.

kmax86 · 2 Oct 2011 at 17:52

maybe a second hand q6600 (~£50) and overclock it and a 6950 2gb (£200-250). you also have an option of buying a cooler for ocing the q6600.

im also thinking of doing this, replacing my e2140 @3.2ghz

jamesfreddie · 2 Oct 2011 at 19:00

kmax86 said:
maybe a second hand q6600 (~£50) and overclock it and a 6950 2gb (£200-250). you also have an option of buying a cooler for ocing the q6600.

im also thinking of doing this, replacing my e2140 @3.2ghz

+1

Randomface74 · 2 Oct 2011 at 19:05

Why not get a 560Ti first and see what difference it makes?

Witcher1979 · 3 Oct 2011 at 13:46

kmax86 said:
maybe a second hand q6600 (~£50) and overclock it and a 6950 2gb (£200-250). you also have an option of buying a cooler for ocing the q6600.

im also thinking of doing this, replacing my e2140 @3.2ghz

+1

tonyt3rry · 3 Oct 2011 at 14:00

same fan as mine, i dont have overclock tho

alan · 3 Oct 2011 at 22:41

I've got a very similar setup and was thinking of upgrading my gfx card, then later going for a complete overhaul. Will the e6600 (or my 4x512mb 533mhz ram) bottleneck a newer generation gfx card like the 6850/6870 or 560Ti ???

feck199 · 3 Oct 2011 at 23:06

I had a e6600 running a 6950 2gb, and recently upgraded to an i5 2500k, 8gb ram, and it was a massive improvement. Really opened my eyes to how much my cpu was bottlenecking me. Some games went from a 40-50fps to pushing 100+ without vsync, really was a big difference.

Oh and its worth saying, bf3 runs perfect on one screen, i'm pushing it trying to run in eyefinity @ 3x1 get between 25-35fps it almost feels like its running good enough but not quite. Making me want another 6950, pretty sure its just short on vram, at times the textures just cant update quick enough.