Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards Tested 171
New submitter wesbascas writes "Have you ever wanted to play a new PC game, but weren't sure where your PC falls between the minimum and recommended system requirements? I don't have a whole lot of time to game these days and with new hardware perpetually coming out and component vendors often tweaking their model numbering schemes, knowing exactly what kind of experience I'm buying for $60 can be difficult. Luckily, somebody benchmarked Battlefield 3's campaign on a wide range of hardware configurations and detail settings. If you've purchased a system in the past few years you should be in luck. The video cards tested start with the AMD Radeon HD 4670 and Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and go up to the brand new Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590. I hate it that my aging Radeon HD 4870 isn't going to cut it at 1080p, but am glad that I found out before buying the game."
If you're curious about the game itself, here's a detailed review from Eurogamer and a briefer one from Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
WTF? (Score:4, Funny)
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LOL I remember upgrading to a Savage 4, but I had to go to the PCI variant, as I didn't have an AGP motherboard. The results... were not good. Little to no performance improvement over my old card, for a whole lot of money.
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Pff, dual Voodoo 2's all the way. Savage is for grannies that check their e-mail.
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Pff, dual Voodoo 2's all the way. Savage is for grannies that check their e-mail.
A geek's intellectual hatred is the worst.
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3Dfx and glide are the future!
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No, I'm pretty sure it's Rendition Verite.
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You're sort of making the case for doing things the way they're done. User input affects performance greatly, so how do you expect to have any sort of basis for comparison without running all the cards through the same sequence?
It's also right there in the article that these benchmarks aren't done using a timedemo, but a specific sequence in the game chosen by the reviewer.
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I wonder why the AMD and NVidia results are separated, and there is no direct comparison between them? By comparing tables from different pages, my take is: Radeon 6990 kicks the GTX 590 by roughly 30%, with comparable lower end cards showing a similar pattern. Both companies do great, but AMD does greater.
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Maybe if it was a little more up to date.
I can't decide... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I can't decide... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is a bigger slashvertisement for Tom's Hardware, or Battlefield 3. Meanwhile, there are much broader testing services such as Can You Run It? [systemrequ...ntslab.com] that will give you data on one page instead of thirty and on a much wider variety of games than Battlefield $$$.
That site is all very well, but it gives no real world performance. It's all theoretical. According to that site, my PC can "run it" just fine, but it would have to be at the lowest possible graphic settings according to the real world tests.
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I"ve noticed that myself, my rig should run The Witcher 2 without too much trouble according to the site, but in practice the system plays laggy and ultimately it's not playable. Kind of like Quake when I first bought it.
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My rig should run The Witcher 2 without too much trouble according to the site, but in practice the system plays laggy and ultimately it's not playable. Kind of like Quake when I first bought it.
Hmm. Regardless of what the publishers claim, if your system was struggling with Quake when it first came out, I *very* strongly suspect its performance on a game that came out earlier this year is going to be sub-par. ;-)
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The performance difference between a 560 and 570 must be huge. I don't have any display issues running 1920x1080 on ultra settings except one issue with green flashes. However I think this is probably related to drivers more than anything. They don't impact the smoothness of the graphics at all.
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Something with a giant table has a place especially if you are thinking of getting hardware you don't already have.
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All Can You Run It? does is check your system against the minimum and recommended specifications. That's about as "broad" of a "testing service" as determining your eligibility to run a marathon by the number of legs that you have.
reviews (Score:2, Insightful)
Better yet, before reading this article, read some user reviews for the game and realize ou don't care if your machine can run it, because the majority of people think itsterrible and EAs origin software is spyware.
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I love BF3...
Perhaps a poll of CoD players would agree with you but other than that, I think it is a well received game.
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Oh, is that why it has a 90% [metacritic.com] composite critic score? Yeah yeah, technical glitches and whatnot, but as for actual gameplay... oh yeah, you must play CoD and are just trolling. Carry on.
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That's the critics' score.
The actual users' score is considerably lower, approximately 7.1 out of 10 as of 8:40pm. I've noticed that when there is a disparity between the critics' score and the users' score so soon after release, that the users' score tends to go a lot lower the more people play it.
Face it, the people who are playing Battlefield 3 in the week after release are the ones who have been dying to play it for a while. They're inclined not to
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I noticed something very interesting at metacritics.
If you go to the "professional" critics, at the bottom of each reviewers' name, there is a link to a graph of all of their previous scores.
All of them have ratios of 10:1 or greater for Good Reviews to Bad reviews. That means they give TEN good reviews (or much more) for every ONE bad review.
Now, does anyone believe that only one in ten of any new game coming out is a clunker? Most of the "professional reviewers" give FIFTY or MORE good reviews for every
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So I can play multiplayer without Battlelog and Origin?
Great, then I take everything back.
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Origin is annoying mostly because I hate the fact that it's there just for BF3 and will never be touched again. Battlelog is annoying in some rights but once I've gotten used to it I found I prefer having it over how I dealt with BF2 and BFBC2 for some things that I considered valuable. Battlelog contains significant amount of stat information that I love to see. I used to have to rely on 3rd party websites to see a lot of this information. Upcoming unlocks, what's needed to acquire them, etc. There's some
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The Campaign is terrible because it's just a poor MW rip off, but the Multiplayer is great.
Origin is god-awful though and its "integration" with Battlefield 3 is laughable; it's like EA took one look at Steam and said "We're not going to do any of the cool stuff that they have, on principle".
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Pretty much the exact same story here. Origin isn't as nice to use as Steam and the price they charge to buy the game over it is ludicrous (I was able to save £15 - on the Limited Edition - by buying the thing in a bricks and mortar store and then importing it - something I've never had to do with a Steam game). The browser interface you have to use to launch the game is deeply irritating as well. That said, it does all work pretty much as described.
The engine is very nice, particularly on Ultra
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I hated Origin and the game user's homepage, but it offloads a lot of the player authentication from the game itself which likely simplifies the game because it doe snot have to worry about user authentication. It is also nice to have all my stats in one place which obviates my need to go to a 3rd party system to analyse my progress.
I think that more game makers who want to compete with Steam will end up utilizing the Windows Game center feature so there is still a one stop shop for all of your games no mat
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They actually have figured out that they should support PunkBuster problems more....now they actually put a link on a banner on the player's home page that directs you to the latest Punkbuster.
Not sure I like this game much (Score:2)
For reference, I really liked Battlefield 2: Bad Company, and even Battlefield 1942 (playing both on a PS3).
The graphics look great, that is not a problem. But to me it seems like too much action happens at too far a distance - I am often killed in multiplayer by people I never see. I'm used to sniper kills from previous games, thats fine every once in a while but it sure feels in this game like almost every kill is a sniper kill, and that's juts not fun - when I die repeatedly for 10 minutes without ever
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The one on PS3 was BF1943 not 1942. I've played all of them. I had bf 1942, bf2, and bf 2142 on the pc. Then I stopped caring about PC games much and played mostly on consoles. Dying at the drop of a hat even when you are in a squad is a symptom of a crappy squad and some bad luck. There are a few things that could help:
1. Learn where the sniper nests are. There are usually a few places that the s
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Shame, you missed the best of the bunch: Battlefield: Vietnam.
It still had the pre-modern combat constraints that left knife-fights a viable option, but gave us helicopters, patrol boats and jungle warfare.
Still one of my favourite ever games.
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Killing stuff with very few hits is still present - on hardcore mode.
Driving submarines and carriers makes little sense gameplay-wise. The game is about flag control and assault/defense, not "fapping around with tech".
Granted someone could tell that to people who take jets and helicopters, only to discover that they can't pilot them beyond the first wall.
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I get so pissed when I get in a helicopter or tank or Humvee just to realize the driver is a moron and gets me killed.
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the killability can be set by the server. On most hardcore servers, they reduce the health to 60% so you can barley survive a fall but if you get hit with a bullet or a grenade explodes 10 feet from you, you die.
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First, thanks for the correction on 1943, I have not played it for a while and shifted a year.
1. Learn where the sniper nests are.
That's not the issue though - it's not snipers that are killing me, it's every other kind of player. I don't live long enough for snipers to even see me... what I'm saying is that EVERY kill, even from an engineer or support class, feels like a sniper kill in that they are really far away when I die.
Again, although I was annoyed at snipers in BF:BC2 I could deal with them (I onl
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with every BF game I play there is a breaking period where I have to relearn the visual cues that tell me a bad guy is in my field of view. Until I learn that, I am a sack of ground beef.
Tactics also change slightly from game to game... in BF3, killing someone by hitting the wall they are behind is possible with out the Noob Tube and Grenades are actually something you should run hard and fast from.
I think you have it... (Score:2)
with every BF game I play there is a breaking period where I have to relearn the visual cues that tell me a bad guy is in my field of view.
I played again last night, and things were much better. For whatever reason, I was able to see people, I didn't get insta-killed (well not without reason like spawning on a squad member in a firefight with a tank). I was able to hold my own, and my scores were reasonable.
So, I guess I was just too tired or something the first play through, because I can do about as wel
Re:Not sure I like this game much (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll give you some pointers from my experience. Right now I heavily play Recon and Assault. I don't touch Engineer or Support right now.
As assault I use the first Assault weapon unlocked from MP Co-op. As Recon I used the Recon weapon unlocked from MP Co-op. This has actually gotten me accused of being a hacker because I was Rank 3 at a time I was using them and the idiot thought I was using weapons too advanced for my rank. One other thing to note is that as more and more players on a team start to operate by methods of warfare the efficacy of their action collectively increases.
With assault, I always weapon an optic scope and have a suppressor equipped. On rush my style is one where I will find a nest that is at a low to medium elevation (compared to the surrounding terrain) usually a decent distance ahead of the M-COM stations. I go prone, watch one of the common pathways, and wait. I shoot people as they pass by me. Last time I did this I went 8 kills before I was found out. So basically, I utilize the surrounding terrain in order to minimize my visual profile. There's a lot of stuff going on and picking out unmoving targets can be very difficult. It is, in essence, a version of Patton's idiom "Grab 'em by the nose and kick 'em in the pants." The M-COMs have the attackers attention (grabbed by the nose) and I'm kicking them in the pants (flanking action). The nice thing is that battlefield objectives tend to grab players by the nose, so flanking is a lot easier to pull off without coordination. On the other hand, guarding against flanking is almost non-existent. I have on numerous occasions been killed to flanks while trying to deny pathways to the defenders. In fact, that's one of the biggest things I do when playing recon is watching the flanks. I find that most objective areas are heavily crowded which reduces the number of sniping positions you can take to defend them. Flanks aren't as crowded and really open up the opportunities while more often than not denying enemy snipers the ability to target you without moving along the same flanks you're defending. I have many times held off multiple attackers trying to flank my team as a single recon. If I don't, they end up spotted so that teammate's are aware of them. All I can say is learn the classes and leverage the advantages within your kit and how your outfitted yourself. Flashlights are both a boon and a bust. They give away position but they also mask your position as well. It's difficult to frag someone with a flashlight that is on when they're facing you because you can't make them out. Laser sites are worse though. I laugh at snipers that use laser sights.
I hate some of the urban environments because of how painful taking certain objectives can be. Here's a slight overview of some maps I dislike.
Market/Bazaar: The alley control point on conquest is a bloody nightmare for an attacking force. Three players can effectively control that point and the only way to dislodge them is to use grenade to get them to flush out of their holes long enough that you can gain ground. This is partially offset by the fact that the other two control points are much easier to swap hands.
Metro: Metro is a nightmare. Each section of the map, except the first and last, on Rush is a nightmare to take over. Most times I see the attacks fail Rush at the 2nd set of M-COMs. Conquest is worse. It can be summed up as "US rushes to B and hopes they get it and establish a bridgehead." Every time I've played that map except once the PLC got B and the US lost. In such instances I end up sitting as medic and revive people for points as the get killed over and over trying to get B. I often end such matchs with something like 2 kills, 1 death, and around 4000-5000 points.
My biggest issues with BF3 are the same as with any other BF game. Idiots. Idiots make the game experience worse. Let me list the ways of idiots. Here's a hint, most of these deal with people looking out for themselves rather than the team.
1. John Rambos. These are the players t
Conclusion is right (Score:2)
Dude, do you think perhaps that you might just be bad at the game?
I thought about that, but generally I have been pretty good (not great, but pretty good) at every FPS I have tried... I saw no reason why I should suddenly be so impossibly bad at this when I was fine with others.
As it turns out, I actually was fine when I played last night. I don't know what went so horribly wrong the first few hours I played, but suddenly I am seeing the enemy just fine (especially when you equip flashlights, thanks for
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Perhaps you need to learn to not run out in the open and use proper tactics when assaulting a point.
It does help to play on a squad that has the ability to communicate with each other.
Already do that thanks (Score:2)
Perhaps you need to learn to not run out in the open and use proper tactics when assaulting a point.
I don't do that - I am running cover to cover, or sometimes slowly advancing mostly under cover, generally trying to move with other players to take a point. Again, I have played BF:BC2 - what I didn't mention was only on hard mode, where shots do more damage and you cannot see where attackers are located (I liked the challenge of figuring out sniper positions). Although I was not the greatest player I was
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It just feels like BF3 is meant only for the more hardcore FPS players and has lost the feeling of fun I enjoyed with all the other variants. It's too serious now, requires too much of a time investment to get to the point I feel like it might be fun again.
I canceled my preorder because to me it felt the complete opposite. Auto regenerating health (vehicles and people), unlimited ammo in the vehicles, spawning on any member of the squad, shitty flight dynamics, etc. It is like they took the worst of Bad Company 2 and noobed it up even more, then added jets.
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Operation Metro should only be a Rush map. As a conquest map... if Russia gets point B with enough force right off the bad, then it is nearly impossible for the US to move beyond the steps... especially if the RU is playing plenty of Assault and Support roles with lots of grenades.....My friend got 7000 points as an assault class because he launched 3 grenades.... it killed 23 in total before he died....why? because the US stacks up on the steps.
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Conquest has the same problem - Russia locks down point B and lets no one through. Game, set, match, and a huge RPG hell in between.
It's not about the mode, it's about the fact that map doesn't scale up with player numbers nearly as well as open maps.
You're right, Metro is terrible for conquest (Score:2)
Operation Metro should only be a Rush map.
A-GREED. Operation Metro does not work at all well for Conquest. It's way, way too linear -- there are very few ways to flank once you get into the subway tunnel.
I'm really looking forward to the Back to Karkand pack -- the maps there are built for Conquest and will be a nice bit of BF2 nostalgia.
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On the other hand, as the US I will go assault and rack up the points reviving my idiot teammates who cluster on the steps.
Some of that is in BF3 (Score:2)
I appreciate your long missive about realism, though it is not really realism I am looking for - I feel like BF3 has gone too far in that direction, and is now in kind of an "uncanny valley" for realistic use of weapons, where neither you nor I am at all happy with what they are doing.
They have tried to address some of the things you've pointed out. If you shoot in the direction of the enemy, their vision blurs to simulate the effects of suppressive fire. A sniper needs to go prone and use a bipod to get
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A sniper does not need to use a bipod. It just helps a lot. Holding shift holds your breath and steadies your aim for a second or two. This is effective for a crouching sniper. I'm not certain of all the underbarrel attachments. Bipod may be best because it provides the stability as long as its deployed. That makes it much better for narrow pathways where you have maybe 1.5 seconds to respond to and shoot a target running from cover to cover. Laser sights are idiotic in my opinion. Flashlights not so much.
Aww.. (Score:2)
I'm really disappointed in Battlefield 3. They could have taken a little more time making the single player decent. I can't keep up with all the super players online, so the SP campaign means at least as much to me as MP. At best, I'm going to be cannon fodder for online teams and more likely I'll just play a few times and decide it's not worth going back. Very often, online multiplayer just brings out the worst of cyberspace behavior and that might turn off older gamers like me. I'm more interested in
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I'm really disappointed in Battlefield 3. They could have taken a little more time making the single player decent. I can't keep up with all the super players online, so the SP campaign means at least as much to me as MP.
To be 100% fair, Battlefield has always been a multi player game. In the original BF 1942 the single player component was simply the multi player maps with bots, there was no campaign to speak of, you just played the maps in order. I hope EA has bought this back but I highly doubt it.
All they're doing by short-changing the single players is making them wonder why they should lay out another $60
I'm guessing you're on console. I ordered my copy on PC for US$40 from the UK. OK, so I have to wait a week or two for it to get half way around the world but that's a benefit. It gives EA time to find some of the bigger bugs b
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The suggestion about driving jeeps is really useful. I'm great at driving games.
Do you have any other recommendations for ways to approach FPS multiplayer games if you're a (let's say slightly) below-average player?
I'm older than most of the gamer community, so I don't have a lot of friends who are playing games online at t
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Battlefield is a team-oriented game. As such, one of the best ways for a less skilled player to play is to support a more skilled player. For example, say you're in my squad. I love tanks and I'm incredible with them but I often get screwed over by idiots in my gunner seat or being repair starved (I never play engineer). The gunner spot in tanks is optimized for an engineer. Spawn as an engineer get in the gunner seat. You provide anti-infantry support for the tanker and when it gets damaged you can hop out
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I don't trust Rank as a judge of skill.
#1 - It's still near launch so ranks aren't a good judgment. It's easy enough for someone to be a low rank but be a BF veteran and know how the game works.
#2 - I've seen something called the Nemesis exploit which features a group of 4 players, 2 per team the shoot and revive each other over and over. One YouTube video of this that I've seen showed them with over 8,000,000 points in a single match. It means that anyone I see at a high rank (I would say anything over Ran
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It's not. It's usually squad rush/conquest where it's 4v4.
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Absolutely right.
On private server games, I could usually find a group that didn't mind being patient with my while my skills ramped up.
It's not that I don't get better, I do, but I don't start out as good as everyone else, usually, in FPS multiplayer games. In driving games, I'm great and can compete with anyone, but FPS take me longer to get the hang.
Turned it into a Run & Gun - Rambo type game (Score:2)
It's a huge disappointment. Sure it's gorgeous, but they have made it Battlefield Bad Company clone as they do nothing to facilitate team play which is why BF2 was so fantastic (especially on teamplay servers). Sure BF2 wasn't always a team play game, but it happened if you fell into the right group of folks.
In BF3, the squad system is hidden, the squads are smaller, there is no squad leader, no squad based VOIP, no squad way points, no intrasquad commands, and no commander. I played on teamplay BF3 ser
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I'm not sure what you are talking about, the squad system is right there, it's not hard to get into one or switch to another one.
there is no squad leader, no squad way points, no intrasquad commands
There is a squad leader it has a star next to their name. They can order what to defend and or what to attack, so yes there are intrasquad commands. way points are gone unfortunately, but I don't think anyone was using them.
no squad based VOIP
There is squad based VOIP.
and no
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Where is the squad based VOIP? I see no VOIP in the game. Just the shitty browser communicator
I see the squads, but they are awkward to use. There is no ordering by the squad leader, it's just crap
Teamplay and tactical gamer are the places for "team games" versus frag fest.
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Ordering isn't "crap" once you get used to it. You just need to function like an actual squad leader, stand a bit back and issue orders like attack, defend and so on.
Takes a while to get used to, but becomes easier once you learn, like most things in the game. Lack of proper in-game voice (for PUGs) is pretty annoying though.
There are squad leader commands (Score:2)
There is no ordering by the squad leader, it's just crap
While it is clumsy, there are squad leader commands in Battlefield 3. Specifically, the squad leader taps "q" while pointing his cross-hair at the point he'd like his squad to attack or defend. In the 3d representation of the point's location in space, there will then be a box around the point on all the squad members' screens.
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The point of the commander was not the commander abilities, but issuing commands to coordinate the team. Without a game mechanic for this, it only happens in prearranged clan matches.
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WTF are you talking about? The most effective people are the people with the best squad cohesiveness.
What I want to see is a special vehicle talk so you can talk to the driver even if you are not in their squad.
Virtual Machine (Score:2)
That's all nice information, but what I really need to know is what hardware setup and software would allow me to run this game and the spyware it comes with in a virtual machine, so it can not spy out my pc?
Or will I be forced to pirate this? I was going to buy but I guess that won't happen anytime soon now.
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Nobody is forced to pirate anything, if you don't like Origin, don't buy EA games.
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Copyright grants a monopoly on the product. If you feel you need to get the product, you cannot choose alternative venues, and are indeed "forced" to acquire it by infringing on someone's copyright.
Of course, this gets us into a philosophical discussion about entitlements. But that doesn't change the fact that there is no competition for the product itself under the current regime, and that you are indeed forced to use illegal means to acquire the product if the terms set by monopolist are too harsh.
Personal graphic comparison (Score:2)
I'm in a clan and it makes gaming so much better. I posted this to the clan site
figured with this thread I could get even more use out of it.
----
"When I first started playing BF3 I started in
campaign mode to set my controllers (didn't work).
Graphics BF3 Vs COD4
Here's the Heli scene (BF3 and COD4) - both at the very
start where you would want to show off your artwork.
BF3 - Not full screen
http://i44.tinypic.com/xf2dz9.jpg [tinypic.com]
COD4 - Full Screen (1680X1050)
http://i41.tinypic.com/m4n0g.jpg [tinypic.com]
http://i44.tinypic.com/24d1 [tinypic.com]
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You missed the whole "vehicle" sound, obvious driver on the right, and "thought it's a helicopter"?..
Another thing to note, COD tends to pretty up cutscenes, and even so both resolution and textures were visibly crap in comparison to BF3. In BF3, what you get in cutscenes is what you get in the game itself.
5770 (Score:3)
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Benchmarks always spark controversy (Score:3)
Once again we see that the top tier Nvidia is priced wayyyy over the top Radeon, but performs way worse.
I don't understand why there's so much brand fanboyism with computers. This would obviously indicate that it makes sense to buy Radeon if you want your money's worth, since this holds true down to the lower performance cards as well. It's basically been this way for years. Yet, oppositely, Intel has been blowing away AMD's processors for a while now, so you get your money's worth by buying in that direction for that particular product. It just makes sense.
Besides, after the way Nvidia shit all over their loyal fans with that GPU debacle, I'll have a hard time trusting them again, as should anyone else. There are still video cards and laptops floating around out there, particularly on Ebay, which are just waiting to die on some unsuspecting second-hand consumer. I'm always having to warn people about buying anything used with Nvidia products in them until they do their research. Not everyone I know was so lucky though, because I still have a perfectly good laptop laying here with just a dead Nvidia graphics chipset in it, which they gave to me out of disgust when it died immediately after their warranty period expired.
Brand loyalty doesn't do you any good if you're in second place. Or worse, when you're stuck with dead equipment. Look at benchmarks, do some research, and buy what's best for the price. That's the point of PCs vs Apple: we can put any brand of product in it for any aspect of operation to achieve the best performance at a good price. It's silly to do anything otherwise.
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Humans tend to defend the position they invested in, even if it may have been a bad choice in hindsight.
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The benchmark world only ever reports on one metric, but people buy on wide array of metrics. This is not fanboyism it's just people weighing up one product vs another according to what they see fit.
I am an NVIDIA fan. No not fan, I have taken a few opportunities to buy ATI cards back when they were ATI. My experience with them is terrible. The graphics drivers on my laptop were horrible. The AMD graphics card on my girlfriends laptop fails to be recognised by online driver install tool despite the card bei
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I bought nvidia for CUDA and better openGL, fully aware that I will be getting slightly less bang for a buck. Moved from 4070 to 560Ti. Not regretting it, especially after the whole rage fiasco.
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You pretty clearly didn't read the cards tested. The Radeon 6990 wasn't on the Ultra page.
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I don't understand what your point is.
I've been buying video cards since long before ATI and Nvidia were the only choices. Or before 3D was standard, for that matter. Everything from Trident, to Voodoo, to Matrox. I still remember when Nvidia came along and was a joke compared to anything 3dfx made. Then in the end, Nvidia ended up buying them out. Times change.
So my point still stands. Before Nvidia's huge faulty GPU blunder, when they had a better card for a better price, that's what people should h
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Good choices. I went the same way, though with a GTX 460 1 GiB before the 6950 was released. Still waiting for a generation with a high-end card worth the asking price.
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I did a full system upgrade for BF3. The only thing that stayed constant between my last build and this build was using DDR3. I upgraded from SATA 3.0Gb/s to SATA 6.0Gb/s on the motherboard. My previous machine was still handling games just fine with a 8800 GTS. I nabbed a 570 this time around because they were offering a free copy of Arkham City with it. I'm not a graphics junkie. I get a good card and if something is a couple percent lesser than another option I go with whatever gives me the best perceive
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Honestly that depends on a couple of factors even with windows only gaming. First of all, there are games that use opengl (rage for example) and for those games, it's nvidia or ati driver hell. No real choice there sadly.
Second is CUDA. It's used for quite a lot of stuff including some rather nice looking physics (alice 2, upcoming batman game, mirror's edge...).
I moved from 4870 to 560Ti, and honestly, I didn't notice driver settings or driver quality per se being significantly different. What I did notice
No shit (Score:2)
There is no major nail in coffin situation for pc games any more as they are ports of software to run on 6+ year old, cheaply made game consoles, even if your system does suck, drop the resolution and effects a bit and your good to go.
My dual core AMD system with a 9600GT cost less than 200 bucks 3 years ago, and I can still run these games with just an occasional jitter at higher resolutions than the console (not much higher but still), but yet every game release there is some doofy benchmark telling us s
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There is no major nail in coffin situation for pc games any more as they are ports of software to run on 6+ year old, cheaply made game consoles, even if your system does suck, drop the resolution and effects a bit and your good to go.
^ You don't get it. PC gaming is just a shadow now.
The PC being open and accessible drove innovation. It was about way more than special effects and resolution. Modding, public level editors, scripting tools, free server code, etc. all defined 90's PC gaming. Now you've got about the same big companies driving all platforms, with about the same features.
All the innovation you see on fledgling platforms like iOS and Android - just wait until The Big Game Manufacturers take them over too, in years to co
Pity about the EULA (Score:2)
So not getting it.
I downloaded it for free (Score:2)
and tried it out on my hardware.
runs fine, single player is so so.
did the beta, wasn't too bad. Probably buy it after xmas when the prices come down.
Seriously, you want to know if it runs, download the fucking game and try it. If it doesn't, don't waste your money. If it does, then you can safely buy it if you want.
What about integrated graphics? (Score:2)
I'm a hardcore BF2 fan and won't buy it anyway (Score:2)
This game has very little of the elements that make Battlefield 2 fans so loyal. I have no clue what marketing "genius" came up with the idea to call a Bad Company sequel the long awaited Battlefield 3 and thought we'd be dumb enough to swallow the bait.
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This game has very little of the elements that make Battlefield 2 fans so loyal. I have no clue what marketing "genius" came up with the idea to call a Bad Company sequel the long awaited Battlefield 3 and thought we'd be dumb enough to swallow the bait.
Oye... I take it you've not actually played the game if you think it's a BC sequel. It is definitely a BF2 sequel. Is it the greatest game ever in the BF universe? I dunno, that's a judement call I suppose... but BF3 is definitely far more like BF2 than anything like BC/BC2.
Lots and lots (and lots!) of bugs to work out, for sure... but certainly no more bugs than BF2 had when it launched. At least I can play it for more than 10 - 15 minutes at a time without something going tits up like BF2 was on relea
BF3 graphics tech talk (Score:3)
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Some of the things I really like - procedurally generated trees and grass. And the radiosity.
But the more realistic you try to make stuff, the more my brain notices stuff that isn't quite right.
DX 10 & 11 are clearly a lot better than DX 9 though.
It won't run for sure! (Score:2)
I am still using Windows XP Pro. SP3. :P
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Read the text between the graphs for answers to your questions.
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i5-750 and it's replacement, the i5-2500k both scream when paired with a GTX 460 1GB or above. I am seeing in the 50-70s at "medium", 40-50s at "high" and high 20s-mid30s at "ultra". the i5-750 stays around 93% through pretty much all of the various multiplayer maps for me. the i5-2500k is about 25% more CPU
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you also gave up
1. better control interface. this is a killer for me. I don't even bother with fps on a console. after years of quake, it's like returning to the dark ages.
2. lower latency display with higher resolution and sharper image. graphics heavy games like battlefield3 aren't even 720p on consoles. the output is scaled to 720 by the console, then refiltered again by the tv before display. most hdtvs have horrible latency as well. that coupled with the joypad interface makes the whole game akin
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> without any gfx upgrades, titles will look better on a pc monitor and gfx card
The price tag that comes with this is too high. PS3 games look pretty good on my big screen tv, I don't really care about it being "true" 720p or any other specific format. We're not talking about Wii video quality here.
> consoles cater to the here today gone tomorrow attitude that publishers foster to increase their profits
I have played the GTA and Fallout series a lot on a console, still do. Good games are good games. Al
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The price tag that comes with this is too high.
ok. you get what you pay for. However, it's not required to buy the highest end hw to play games. the games I like to play require me to see detail on screen, so the size is less important than image quality and low latency.. in fact the larger screen would force me to pan my eyes more often, slowing response. in addtion, unlike crts, modern hdtvs add a ton of lag making time sensitive gameplay (like fighting/driving) a pain in the ass. fps is out of the question. it's ok if you're messing around at a pa
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The controller is fine for FPS games and HDTVs have the same amount of lag that PC monitors do.
Um... no. No, and also, no. If you think a controller is fine for FPS gaming, you are not very good at FPS games. This is a fact, not an opinion. The controller does not offer the precision that a KB/Mouse offers, plain and simple. The best console player in the world of any given FPS game will get schooled by an average PC KB/Mouse player. The speed and precision just aren't there with a controller.
Anyone who has progressed beyond just sitting down to a quick game of deathmatch to something resemblin
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It is false because of these two statements:
[quote]The controller is fine for FPS[/quote]
It's not "fine" for FPS gaming. It may be "adequate", "marginally acceptable," or possibly even "workable." But it is not "fine." Fine implies that does everything required of it, and being as it has almost no precision, it falls short in that area (as well as others, but you only need one area to be less than "fine")
[quote]games and HDTVs have the same amount of lag that PC monitors do.[/quote]
HDTVs do not have the