System Requirements

**LA_MERC_FragFood** · October 29th, 2011, 08:58 PM

Ended up going with this one - it's on the way.

Liked the ATI version of that Gigabyte one you got, Highwind, but my case wouldn't accommodate the extra length. Yes, I considered taking a die grinder to my drive cage to make the room, but decided against it. Plus it can apparently be easily modded (flip a switch) to unlock / overclock to a 6970, and 2GB of RAM should take care of textures for the next generation of games. Time will tell.

**LA_MERC_WBHighwind** · October 30th, 2011, 11:25 AM

I had looked into going with a 6950 but Ive never had an ATI gpu before and I didnt see a reason to change now. The reason I had looked into getting a 9650 is just because you could do a firmware update and turn it into a 6970. Seems like a good value buy. I dont know if you can do that to all of them though.

**LA_MERC_Onji** · October 31st, 2011, 08:06 AM

for those interested Tom's Hardware just did a performance test of 30+ video cards with BF3. Both nvidia and ati

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ance,3063.html

Also, Anyone have a grand i could have to get a 590?

**LA_MERC_FragFood** · October 31st, 2011, 08:41 PM

Uh, so if I'm extrapolating that right, I've been satisfied wtih sub-20 fps performance with my 4850 at 1920x1200? Ouch. I don't know what I'll do with this 6950/5970 I have coming. I don't think I've ever had "Recommended" hardware before...

**LA_MERC_Onji** · November 1st, 2011, 07:34 AM

Originally Posted by LA_MERC_FragFood

Uh, so if I'm extrapolating that right, I've been satisfied wtih sub-20 fps performance with my 4850 at 1920x1200? Ouch. I don't know what I'll do with this 6950/5970 I have coming. I don't think I've ever had "Recommended" hardware before...

Wow, that's going to be like night and day for you. Should be awesome.

**LA_MERC_DocSparky** · November 1st, 2011, 11:51 AM

Frag, put in an order for the same card (2GB HD6950) this morning. I guess I need to pick up the game on the PC now. What's the best deal out there? Yea, I know I can look but if you know of a really good deal then post it here.

**LA_MERC_Onji** · November 1st, 2011, 01:00 PM

Best that I know of is this one for $10 off

http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Art...0173985&sr=8-3

You'll basically get a code you input into origin to redeem.

**LA_MERC_FragFood** · November 1st, 2011, 04:30 PM

Originally Posted by LA_MERC_FragFood

Uh, so if I'm extrapolating that right, I've been satisfied wtih sub-20 fps performance with my 4850 at 1920x1200? Ouch. I don't know what I'll do with this 6950/5970 I have coming. I don't think I've ever had "Recommended" hardware before...

Extrapolation aside - CTRL-ALT-S will pop up your FPS and some other stats for as long as you hold it. Yes, I AM getting between 17 and 21 FPS (in the "firefight alley" that we all know and love). Some readings as low as 7 FPS

I obviously have set my standards for "It's working fine for me" way too low. New card came in today, so that 17-21 FPS is with my Gigabyte (4850, 1GB DDR3, PCIe 16x) card, default setting of "High" that the game automagically put in there when I installed it. I'm going to try and get a relatively similar server situation and see how it pans out. Will report back once I get everything up and running.

**LA_MERC_FragFood** · November 1st, 2011, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by LA_MERC_DocSparky

Frag, put in an order for the same card (2GB HD6950) this morning. I guess I need to pick up the game on the PC now. What's the best deal out there? Yea, I know I can look but if you know of a really good deal then post it here.

You end up getting the Sapphire one? I'll let you know how it works out. I'll just be running stock to see. Not gonna flip the switch or overclock.

**LA_MERC_FragFood** · November 1st, 2011, 07:30 PM

Updated Update - Initial Measurements:

Sapphire 6950 2GB PCIe 16 card as mentioned earlier (Cayman chipset according to GPU-z, so should be switchable and overclockable to 6970 level)
AMD Catalyst 11.9 drivers (from AMD, not the ones with the card) because I had them installed already
Map: Grand Bazaar
Area - "Firefight Alley"
Resolution - 1920x1200, 32bbp, 75Hz (my default desktop setup)

First reaction - "Huh. So THAT'S what a decent framerate looks like."

Same position, very close to same orientation, high activity:

Ultra - 33FPS
High - 53FPS
Auto - 59FPS

Honestly no real difference between Ultra and High, at least in this scenario.

Didn't drop more than ~2FPS while playing, peaked 10-15FPS higher in all modes.
Also seemed "sharper" somehow. Dunno why, maybe all the new whiz-bang rendering stuff it's got that my 4850 didn't have. 2GB vs. 1GB RAM? Better shadow gradation, less highlight clipping, no smearing.

Woo hoo! Am I gonna tweak it? Am I going to try and hack it to a 6970? Am I going to mess with different drivers to try and wring every last ounce of performance out of this freakin' nice card?

Nope. Working just fine, better than any video card I've ever had available for playing. Ain't broke, not gonna try and fix.

Crap. Now I'm acting old.

Will update as warranted.

Delta in performance from System requirements Lab

**LA_MERC_Onji** · November 2nd, 2011, 07:41 AM

Woo! Awesome frag.

**LA_MERC_WBHighwind** · November 2nd, 2011, 01:22 PM

Just so everyone knows, in order to display a permanent FPS figure, go into console by pressing ~, then type"Render.DrawFPS 1". This will show continuous FPS number in the upper right. Last night on Bazaar in a 64 player server with settings on Ultra and 1920x1080, my 570 was dipping into the upper teens on the start of the map with 20-30 players on screen. Otherwise it usually averages about mid 50s with occasional dips into the low 40s. As depicted by tomshardware article, CPU really has little effect on the game other than maybe level loading. This game needs a high powered GPU for FPS and a solid state drive for fast level loading to really get the best performance overall.

**LA_MERC_DocSparky** · November 7th, 2011, 06:55 AM

Got my HD6950 2G card installed and running. It auto-set to Ultra, but that was choppy. I dropped it to High (1920 x 1200) and it would still chop in dark areas. I dropped some of the filtering, but no real change. Finally at Medium (1920 x 1200), it would play without the chop or lag (except for the tunnels of Metro). Even though it might be butter smooth for a few seconds, that slight chop when jumping around a corner gets you killed most of the time.

Either the E8400 that I have can't keep up or I have some background task goofing things up. At medium it is as least playable and I'll have to wait on the system update. My wife is already giving me some grief because of the cost of the video card, so I'll hold off for now.

I may put a 2nd hard drive in there and reinstall Win7 clean to get a comparison. BTW, we need more people in the voice comm as that definitely helps the squad play. Frag and I did much better after I got that going.