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.
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.
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.
Re:Gaming on PC is expensive (Score:2, Insightful)
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 to driving drunk compared with kb/mouse. without any gfx upgrades, titles will look better on a pc monitor and gfx card.
3. proper pc titles come with map and mod making utilities, dedicated server binaries that give players the ability to setup and control the game any way they want outside of the vendor's portal, and minimal whitelist style drm at the worst. These things add value to the game to give it longer staying power, and thus mor time for people like yourself to become skilled. consoles cater to the here today gone tomorrow attitude that publishers foster to increase their profits. yes, battlefield 3 fails here.