Best Graphical Settings for Battlefield 3

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What order is it best to adjust the settings for best graphics and decent fps
I don't really understand what all the settings do although if I don't get any tearing I should turn vsync off and motion blur could go off as well.

Starting with everything on Ultra what is the best order to try turning settings down or off
 
stick fraps on and looking at your card i would go for 1920x1080 with everything set to high

that should net you 60 pretty much constant

you maybe able to tweak and put a couple on ultra and still get 60 fps constant . 60 fps is what you want min really.
 
Much better to set everything as low as possible, turn up the things that are important to you i.e. textures or shadows, then turn things up as far as you can whilst maintaining a decent FPS
 
I know a lot of competitive gamers will have plenty of things like shadows/fog turned off because it makes it easier to spot the competition...

kd
 
Ill be turning off MSAA useless, Motion Blur, my monitor is only 1680 too so i should get decent fps with most things on high with my 6850 but if not i guess ill CF it as ive sold my PS3 after playing BF3 beta on that and comparing to the pc ewwwww.
 
I'd personally wack it all to ultra then decrease the things that were least important to me one by one. Motion blur and HDR / ambient occlusion / bloom I dislike for example.

I'd rather have a beautiful 40fps than a smooth 60fps personally, I know a lot of people would disagree with that.
 
I'd personally wack it all to ultra then decrease the things that were least important to me one by one. Motion blur and HDR / ambient occlusion / bloom I dislike for example.

I'd rather have a beautiful 40fps than a smooth 60fps personally, I know a lot of people would disagree with that.

That is what I would prefer as well, should be smooth enoough at 40fps for me

The setting I'm not sure about are
Antialaising Deffered
Antialaising Post
Anisotropic Filter
Ambient Occlusion

Which ones are better on higher settings over the others
 
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Are you still running the GTX 580 in your sig? If so i'd have thought you'd have no problem running with everything set to ultra at 1080p.

I'm running it on a 560ti with:

1920x1080, everything bar shadows set to ultra (Shadows set to high)
AA deferred - Off
AA Post - High
Motion Blur - On
Anisotropic filter - 16x
Ambient Occlusion - off

If your having FPS trouble my recommendation is to first turn Ambient Occlusion to SSAO or off. Next to go would be MSAA either 2x or off, if your resolution is high enough you shouldn't notice much difference.
Your priority should be first to have it running at your monitors native resolution, then everything on Ultra (turning down shadows if need be).
 
That is what I would prefer as well, should be smooth enoough at 40fps for me

The setting I'm not sure about are
Antialaising Deffered
Antialaising Post
Anisotropic Filter
Ambient Occlusion

Which ones are better on higher settings over the others

Antialiasing Deffered should allow 2x MSAA, 4x MSAA and Off. If you can get away with it try 4, otherwise try 2 as it's nice to have some AA to smooth the jaggies. Ambient Occlusion is a form of shadowing, more like highlights than actual shadows though. Ansisotropic Filtering is in a nutshell how far away textures from you become blurry / out of focus. Off/1x = not far away, 16x = quite a distance.
 
For me with 2x5850's I run at 1080p with motion blur off because it's horrible, everything on ultra, 2xAA and get 60FPS unless something massive is going on then it can drop a bit.

Ambient Occlusion and AA are the biggest FPS killers.

Anisotropic Filtering should always be on 16x no matter what as it's more or less free anyway.
 
I don't get my retail BF3 until Friday hopefully, just wanted to be ready so I could get into gaming as quick as pos, lol
Thanks for all the advice, since I built my pc I usually just put all the settings of a game on the highest they will go, not really knowing what each does, now I have more idea
Cheers
 
For me with 2x5850's I run at 1080p with motion blur off because it's horrible, everything on ultra, 2xAA and get 60FPS unless something massive is going on then it can drop a bit.

Ambient Occlusion and AA are the biggest FPS killers.

Anisotropic Filtering should always be on 16x no matter what as it's more or less free anyway.

Which drivers are you running and are you getting 90%+ use on both cards? I'm not...
 
The AA Post-processing, I can't really see the point in using MSAA if your resolution is high enough. I see very little "jaggies" with the Post-processing set to Medium and MSAA off completely running at 1920x1080. For the performance difference, I'd turn MSAA off.

With my 6950+2500k, I set everything to Ultra and turned off MSAA, Motion Blur and HBAO/SSAO, personally I don't like the effect of HBAO, so turning it off benefits me. Lowest I've seen is 44fps and that was when a building falls down, so obviously a lot of smoke was generated. I may turn the shadows down to High to keep the frame rate higher more consistently, but it seems very playable at the minute.
 
Hey guys, wondering how my phenom 2 X4 quad at 3.40 ghz, 8 gb of ddr3 ram and a 2gb 6950 will run at 1680 x 1050 on a 20 inch samsung monitor, playable at high settings ?
 
Does motion blur even effect FPS?

It does, it's one massive shader that effects the entire screen when you turn. It's one of the most intensive post-processing effects.

I also strongly recommend leaving MSAA off, it's a relic from a by-gone era of horribly inefficient anti-aliasing solutions. For what it does, it hurts the frames too much and uses far too much video memory up. Post-process AA is the way to go, and hardly costs anything to run, even on high. I think it's a form of FXAA.
 
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