News - Battlefield 3 PC specs detailed

[HEXUS]

Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine is set to be a poweful beast. Has your machine got what it takes?

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[Grey M@a]

Bah, starting to get to the point where the gaming rig needs upgraded again, was hoping for at least another year or so out of it xD

[G4Z]

Same here mate, Can anybody reccomend me the best card to upgrade to from my radeon 4870?

Seems to me like a lot of the midrange current and last gen cards are quite similar. i would drop £200 on this upgrade.

[Grey M@a]

Been out of the graphics card market a long time myself, but I would guess an nVidia 5xx series or a 68xx series ati card I guess for the near future. I wonder how much life is left in the Q6600 as that is slowly dropping off the lists and making its way towards the lower end of the recommendations these days.

Forgot to add, might need a slightly bigger PSU for the latest and greatest cards, same with myself. This machine is around 2 -3 years old now, was in a shuttle but that died so went back to a bigger case and stuck with the parts, replacing the 8800GTS at the time with the Asus 5870. Another year and I will be happy then will look at the latest tech or a step behind and see what can be had for cheaper

[format]

Think it might be finally time to upgrade my CPU. Currently on an intel e6750. If I can get a new motherboard and processor for around £200 I'll be pretty happy.

[Irien]

Same here mate, Can anybody reccomend me the best card to upgrade to from my radeon 4870? Approx 200ukp.

For that kind of budget you're probably looking at a ATI 6950 1/2Gb. Scan's stock is, unfortunately, miserable at the moment Everything seems to be out of stock, except a pricier Asus. That's one step down from their "top" card, the 2Gb 6970. (Ignoring the dual-chip 6990). The "bargin" card might be a clearance 5850/5870 or a 6870 (slightly slower than a 5870).

On the Nvidia front, Overclockers were selling off some Gigabyte GTX480s for sub-200ukp which made for a nice bargin, as they give similar performance to the GTX570 which typically sells for about 235.

The 560ti comes in under 200ukp, and would be a step up from the 4870, but if you can stretch to the 570/480 grade of performance, you're into the "nearly the best that they sell" bracket, rather than in the mid-range.

The "bargin" card is probably an overclocked GTX 460 1024Mb, which can be had for sub-150ukp, and runs pretty much everything. For example http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1gb-e...resplusmafia-i which is 138ukp for similar performance to a 560 (or maybe 560ti).

I'm sure the Hexus reviews will help you decide which to go for.

[watercooled]

Same here mate, Can anybody reccomend me the best card to upgrade to from my radeon 4870?

Seems to me like a lot of the midrange current and last gen cards are quite similar. i would drop £200 on this upgrade.

Purely guesswork really as I have no idea how well BF3 will run. But in answer to the question of a GPU to upgrade from 4870 for <£200 I'd say AMD 6870, Nvidia 560 Ti, AMD 6950 depending how close to £200 you want to go.

Edit:
@Irien: I agree, a 5870 would be a great choice if you can grab one for the ~£140 price they were at a while back but stock seems to have pretty much dried up everywhere now, not least because they are highly desirable by Bitcon miners.

[jonathan_phang]

Hmm... Some fairly generic requirements there. Have been debating whether or not this game/engine is the shove I need to upgrade architecture to SB. As with many people I'm still rocking the Q6600, but I wonder how CPU limited this game really is... Are DICE affilitated to either of the GPU schemes (The way its meant to be played and um.. the other one), as that might have a bearing on what hardware people want.

Only on ATI 5 series, running 2x 5850s but hopeful that they have done some testing on multi GPUs. As much as I want to play this from day one, might have to wait to see if its worth changing architecture.

[Terbinator]

'Real' 64bit support then?

[danroyle]

Hmm... Some fairly generic requirements there. Have been debating whether or not this game/engine is the shove I need to upgrade architecture to SB. As with many people I'm still rocking the Q6600, but I wonder how CPU limited this game really is... Are DICE affilitated to either of the GPU schemes (The way its meant to be played and um.. the other one), as that might have a bearing on what hardware people want.

Only on ATI 5 series, running 2x 5850s but hopeful that they have done some testing on multi GPUs. As much as I want to play this from day one, might have to wait to see if its worth changing architecture.

I dont think they are Affiliated yet but seeing as its owned by Ea they tend to go nvidia for all the NFS games.

I did my full upgrade over the last month (started a new job so wifey said i could do a full upgrade and make it good enough to last a couple of years) looks like i will run it with ease on mine.(although i did just plumb £570 into the upgrade minus £350 for my old bits)

[watercooled]

'Real' 64bit support then?

I hope so, but I wonder how the likes of Steam would handle it as its game folder is in the 32 bit program files folder?

@jonathan_phang: Don't quote me on this but I think I remember hearing BF3 is an AMD sponsored game.

[G4Z]

I will probably overhaul my whole PC not long after after shelling out for some new graphics.

I do think the Q6600 has a bit left in yet, even my 4870 has little trouble with the latest games if you kill the quality a little. To be honest, i have given myself a nice little problem here in that the stuff I bought 3 years ago has lasted so well its hard to decide which way to go.

I think it will probably be a 6670 for me a little nearer october unless something else appears.

[1stRaven]

Graphics is going to be interesting. I am running 2 x 6870 and it'll be interesting to see how they cope with this game.

[Terbinator]

I hope so, but I wonder how the likes of Steam would handle it as its game folder is in the 32 bit program files folder?

I'm going to say fine. I know Crysis 2 has been removed from Steam and so on, but the 'Hi-res texture pack' can only be run under 64bit.

[jonathan_phang]

@Dan - I've been on the cusp of moving to SB, for not a lot of money, an OC i5 should be fine, and I'm hoping that my xfired 5850s keep me in good stead for a good while yet. My only concern is the sheer amount of physics etc that will probably get dumped onto the CPU, and guess the Q6600 might start to show its age. Probably wont need SSD so basically just mobo/CPU/cooler/RAM... still £400-ish tho.

@watercooled - would be good to be able to use more of that RAM that everyone seems to be buying... Also, if its an EA game, its most likely not going to make it only Steam, but onto Origin. Not sure if that would have the same problem though.

[Ferral]

I have plenty headroom with my system thankfully. I wonder if it will fully utilise all four cores of the cpu. Either way the horsepower I have now should last me a good while as we are only starting to see requirements for quad CPU's on games.

On another note I've been reading that its not going to be available via Steam, just Origin (understandably), Direct2Drive and another one similar.