My Planned BF3 Gaming Rig, some questions....

Soldato
Joined
8 Mar 2007
Posts
10,938
Hi all, I’m building a new rig to play Battlefield 3 on and I’ve got a couple of questions for you guys.

Firstly here’s this bits I plan to buy: -

QTY x Item Description-Item(SKU)
1 x Processor -Intel Core i5-2500K (BX80623I52500K)
1 x Motherboard-Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P (GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3)
2 x RAM-Crucial Ballistix Elite 8GB (BLE463D2001CE1TXO.Y16F94)
2 x SSD-OCZ 60GB Agility 3 SSD (AGT3-25SAT3-60G)
1 x PSU-Corsair Enthusiast Series TX850M (CP-9020004-UK)
1 x Cooler-Antec Kúhler H2O 920 (0761345-77086-6)
2 x GFX Card-EVGA GeForce GTX 570 HD 732MHz 2560MB (025-P3-1579-KR)


Cost: £1,250

I already have a case and other bits from my current build. Now I will mainly be using it for gaming, but it will also be my main computer too with Microsoft office being run, Photoshop and some video editing.

Anyway, here’s my questions,

CPU – Will the 2500k be enough?
I read a BF3 benchmarking article on Tom’s Hardware which said that there were no gains using a i7 2600k/2700k over the i5 2500k in the game but he was testing with a single GFX card and in single player. I am planning to SLi and will be only ever playing multiplayer so should I just take a deep breath and spend the extra £50 on the i7 2600k?

I am planning to upgrade to LGA 2011 half way through next year so don’t want to spend more on a CPU now than I absolutely have to.

RAM – Do I really need 16GB?
I’ve noticed the higher speed modules only come in 2GB chips, meaning my PC would max out at 8GB which is why my initial plan is to buy the slightly slower 4GB chips so I can fit 16GB. But should I just go with the faster 2GB modules and be happy with 8GB total?

Do I have enough power?
Ultimately I’ll need enough juice to run….

2 GTX 570s
2 120GBs SSDs
1 7200rpm HDD
1 Blue Ray Drive
1 Antec Liquid Cooler

Will the 850 watts from the TX850M be enough or should I plump for an 1000 watt model?

Thanks for your advice in advance….
 
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thats about the same spec as mine ive not got a ssd and mine rips though bf3 on high and some ultra settings ive only got a 650w psu too.
 
you dont need sli for bf2 unless your at some silly high res..

im playing it at 1920x1080 @ 40fps and very smooth with no stuttering at all on a crapy
x6 1055t
4gb memory
gtx460 1gb

all settings on high with 4x aa. the game only has 1 setting higher which is ultra and i doubt you would be able to use ultra settings with a card that only has 1280mb of memory.

even on high the game uses 1gb of ram, i managed ultra in singeplayer at 30fps but had the odd pause when the game ran out of memory the mp maps are much bigger and use atleast 20-30% more gpu memory than sp.
 
you dont need sli for bf2 unless your at some silly high res..

im playing it at 1920x1080 @ 40fps and very smooth with no stuttering at all on a crapy
x6 1055t
4gb memory
gtx460 1gb

all settings on high with 4x aa. the game only has 1 setting higher which is ultra and i doubt you would be able to use ultra settings with a card that only has 1280mb of memory.

even on high the game uses 1gb of ram, i managed ultra in singeplayer at 30fps but had the odd pause when the game ran out of memory the mp maps are much bigger and use atleast 20-30% more gpu memory than sp.

I presume you meant BF3 and not BF2. I will be playing at 1980x1080 on a true 120Hz screen so I wanna to get more than 40fps if possible.


As for doubting 2 570s wouldn't be able to handle Ultra, I was going by the advice in the Toms Hardware article from a guy who benchmarked the game.

"A GeForce GTX 570 handles 1680x1050 pretty well. However, I’m willing to bet that you didn’t buy a £270+ card to play on a 17” screen. Two GTX 570s should handle Ultra quality with aplomb at 1920x1080."
 
yea i meant bf3
As for doubting 2 570s wouldn't be able to handle Ultra, I was going by the advice in the Toms Hardware article from a guy who benchmarked the game.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4146633&postcount=36
if i were you and i wanted to garuntee a problem free ultra bf3 @ 1920x1080 i would get a pair of 1.5gb cards.

you almost seem hostile to my advice and im only trying to help :(
 
yea i meant bf3

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4146633&postcount=36
if i were you and i wanted to garuntee a problem free ultra bf3 @ 1920x1080 i would get a pair of 1.5gb cards.

you almost seem hostile to my advice and im only trying to help :(

Yes, but a single GTX570 has 1280MB so two in SLi will give me over 2.5GBs in vram, easily enough according to that forum post you linked to which states at the max in Ultra it can use 1.4GB.

I'm not hostile at all, sorry if it reads that way I'm just pointing out that your advice about two 570s not being enough seem to be contradicted by a guy from TH who's benchmarked the game that's all. There are also tons of videos all over Youtube of BF3 in Ultra being played on a 570 Sli set up.
 
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when your in SLI, total VRAM is only half, so you will only have access to 1280mb. i too have a 570gtx and i can play with everything ultra @ 1080p (although with 2x msaa) and the lowest ive seen my frame rate drop to was 40, it is 60+ 90% of the time
 
in sli/crossfire both cards need the exact same stuff in memory on each card
its not 1280mb+1280mb = 2560
the second GPU will just be a clone of the other cards memory
if the karkand dlc maps are bigger than the ones we have now which are pretty small for a proper "battlefield" game then i can only see the memory usage going up even further.

theres people with 2gb memory cards in one of the bf3 threads on this forum talking about disabling windows aero etc to try and saveas much memory as they can.

1280 is borderline if you want to risk it go ahead but i dont see the point when theres 1.5gb and 2gb versions of the 570
 
in sli/crossfire both cards need the exact same stuff in memory on each card
its not 1280mb+1280mb = 2560
the second GPU will just be a clone of the other cards memory
if the karkand dlc maps are bigger than the ones we have now which are pretty small for a proper "battlefield" game then i can only see the memory usage going up even further.

theres people with 2gb memory cards in one of the bf3 threads on this forum talking about disabling windows aero etc to try and saveas much memory as they can.

1280 is borderline if you want to risk it go ahead but i dont see the point when theres 1.5gb and 2gb versions of the 570

Fair enough, I'd assumed SLi'd vram would work in the same way as RAID 0 memory worked but obviously not.

I can only find 1 model of card that has more than 1280mb is the HD version of the EVGA...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-150-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1010

I can't find any 1.5GB models although I've only checked 3 or 4 sites. The EVGA 570 HD I can get for £300 (which is a fiver more than the 1280MB Classified versions) but it has lower clock speeds than the classified so not sure if the trade off is worth it.

P.S I've updated my shopping list to the 2048mb version of the 570, thanks for the advice
 
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