Upgrading For The Awesome Battlefield 3

[chief barker]

Lol ditto

Love it

 

[Sukh]

The only thing you are going to need to update is your graphics card. In its day, the GTS250 was a good card, like my HD5770, best sub £100 graphics card you can buy according to PC Format Mag.

I would update to either a 6870 or a GTX560ti which both some in just under £100:

GTX560Ti: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-247-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1341

6870: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-126-MS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

Have prices gone up massively since this post?

 

[Sukh]

Anyone? The cheapest now is £160ish?

 

[dave1983]

looks like it, and on a good note my speccy is the recommended with GtX460 coming just on par.

it's a shame though the gpu isn't even a year old and already/almost outdated. I remember last Sept/Oct everyone buying this gpu as it was the best bang for a buck. Shame my mobo can't take SLI, as it's only crossfire which is highly frustrating

 

[opethdisciple]

looks like it, and on a good note my speccy is the recommended with GtX460 coming just on par.

it's a shame though the gpu isn't even a year old and already/almost outdated. I remember last Sept/Oct everyone buying this gpu as it was the best bang for a buck. Shame my mobo can't take SLI, as it's only crossfire which is highly frustrating

The 460 still has life in it.

There will always be games which are next gen, which means that very capable gpu's for the vast majority of games, are just slightly out of the loop in some games, unfourtutaly BF3 may be one of those.

But remember that the game will scale.

Turn off a few features and it will still look great and run fine.

Im hoping my 5870 delivers a high enough IQ (for my satisfaction) at satisfactory frame rates.

Cheap upgrade would be another 460 for sli?

 

[mrk]

Major rewrite of the frostbite engine - supposedly written top down for DX11 functionality.

From a casual look at it, it would appear the engine uses multi-threading quite heavily for physics and even lighting so its likely to be important to have a decent multi-core CPU as much as a decent GPU for the game.

This is the reason I firmly believe my GTX460 (Asus Direct CU Top) will be just fine in BF3, in BC2 I get 60fps+ in DX11 1920x1200 4xFSAA so I imagine with the ground up DX11 rewrite of Frostbite I should get even better performance in BF3 at the same settings.

I have an i5 2500K @ 4.3GHz though so physics and lighting should pwn ass

 

[ScottMC7000]

Humm, I've been looking at the Nvidia MSI 1280MB GeForce GTX 570 Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC.

That would be the top of my budget I recon, seeing as the most expensive one I've bought in the past was £240.

I have found it a tad cheaper on competitors sites however.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-129-MS

 

[CinderzFTW]

The MSI GTX570 TwinFrozr III is an amazing card! The overclocking abilities of the MSI cards are above the rest at the moment, apart from the ASUS cards which are the size of houses with the triple heatsink design.

The cooling on the 570's with the MSI cooling system is very good too. Will not go above 55C underload.

Great choice and will work like a dream in your system.

 

[ScottMC7000]

The MSI GTX570 TwinFrozr III is an amazing card! The overclocking abilities of the MSI cards are above the rest at the moment, apart from the ASUS cards which are the size of houses with the triple heatsink design.

The cooling on the 570's with the MSI cooling system is very good too. Will not go above 55C underload.

Great choice and will work like a dream in your system.

Yep, from these benchmarks which will be a useful link to everybody here, the 570 is only second to the 580..pretty impressive.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

 

[rolypolyman]

BF3 requirements.

Recommended card is a 560. Although I always think of recommended = minimum.

 

[ScottMC7000]

These look like the official specifications that are going to be on the box. It's defo new card time

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
OS: WINDOWS VISTA (SERVICE PACK 2) 32-BIT
PROCESSOR: 2 GHZ DUAL CORE (CORE 2 DUO 2.4 GHZ OR ALTHON X2 2.7 GHZ)
MEMORY: 2 GB
HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
GRAPHICS CARD (AMD): DIRECTX 10.1 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 SERIES, WITH ATI RADEON 3870 OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
GRAPHICS CARD (NVIDIA): DIRECTX 10.0 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 SERIES WITH NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
DVD ROM DRIVE
_________________________________________________________________

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
OS: WINDOWS 7 64-BIT
PROCESSOR: QUAD-CORE CPU
MEMORY: 4 GB
HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
GRAPHICS CARD: DIRECTX 11 COMPATIBLE WITH 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA
GEFORCE GTX 560 OR ATI RADEON 6950)
SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
DVD ROM DRIVE

 

[CinderzFTW]

@ Scottmc7000: The GTX570 is second best to the GTX580, but the 580 is too expensive and only worth the money IF you have the money. It's the world's best single GPU card against the dual core cards of the 6990 and 590.

The 570 will play anything you throw at it fully on the highest possible settings for the next few years at least

 

[ScottMC7000]

@ Scottmc7000: The GTX570 is second best to the GTX580, but the 580 is too expensive and only worth the money IF you have the money. It's the world's best single GPU card against the dual core cards of the 6990 and 590.

The 570 will play anything you throw at it fully on the highest possible settings for the next few years at least

Yeah.. I wouldn't pay any more than what I've seen the 570 at. I don't intend changing for another CPU Mobo for at least another 4 years yet anyway.