84% Of Gamers Do Not Meet Recommended Spec for BF3
If you saw our post last week about the rapidly expanding PC market, then you no doubt understand the large influence that PC gamers have over the future of video gaming. This dominance is empowered by our stellar $550 budget gaming PC build list, which has made it possible to enter into the realm of PC gaming without breaking the bank. One of the biggest questions in the comments for all of our builds lately has been simple: "Will it play Battlefield 3 on max settings?" or "Will my PC play Battlefield 3?"
From what we've learned through Steam's hardware survey, a stunning 84% of PC gamers currently do not meet the recommended specifications to play Battlefield 3 (DICE suggests that a GTX 460 or ATi 5830 is the lowest recommended card). Don't fret: these aren't absolute requirements, so you can still play it with an NVIDIA or ATi card that is lower than the recommendation; however, if you're focused on getting the best graphics quality, this may be of particular interest to you.
The representatives we've spoken with over the course of the last week have used the same phrase to describe the impact this will have on the PC market: "It's the Crysis Effect" seemed to be the standard answer. Yes -- the very same that Crysis did for PC gaming back when the 8800 was the dominant card is what, increasingly so, it seems Battlefield 3 will do for the 2011/2012 video hardware advancements. The 'Crysis Effect,' for those who may not wholly remember, is classified as a surge in graphics processing unit sales and research, yielding more powerful units and compelling gamers to upgrade to newer, more powerful cards (and with the upcoming 1000% gain in video processing power, we're not surprised).
So, what will your performance be with different cards? Our hardware experts -- the very same who bring you our PC build lists each month -- working with information we obtained from NVIDIA's Tom Peterson, have broken it down for you below; we started with high-end cards as we suspect many of you will be upgrading soon:
GTX 580/AMD 6990: You will be able to play at maximum settings and possibly even be able to support multi-monitor setups (though may require reduced shaders or AA).
GTX 570/AMD 6970: You can play at near-max, if not max, settings but will not easily support multi-monitor or 3D effects without decreasing quality.
GTX 560/AMD 6870: You will need to reduce anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion; you may need to reduce shaders on large servers.
GTX 460/AMD 5830: You will need to massively reduce anti-aliasing and may need to disable soft shadows, bloom, or other atmospheric effects.
GTX 8800/AMD 3870: You will need to reduce or disable the following options: atmospheric bloom, atmospheric smoke, high-dynamic range lighting, soft shadows, ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, and motion blur.
If you want to play with 3D Vision (we reviewed it here) or other 3D technology and still maintain ultra (or near-max) settings, it will likely require 2xGTX 580s to maintain your quality. Other factors, such as multi-monitor setups, may call for more powerful cards, like the 590.
If you're itching for more Battlefield 3 in the mean time, check out our analysis of the Fault Line videos. If you're worried that your PC won't play it on the settings you desire, why not check out some of our advice on our forums or $550 and $744 PC builds? We've answered a lot of these questions already, but please feel free to post your graphics questions below!
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Badvock wrote:Whilst i might agree with the 8800 struggling past medium, I ran the Beta on high settings (pseudo max at the time) on an overclocked 2500 (@4.7Ghz) with an SSC Gtx 460 at 2560x1600 on a dell 30" with no problems at all. I have a second PC with a Q6600 oc at 3.2 with a GTX275 at 1680x1050 again with absoloutly no problems. Seems to be a way of pushing new Gfx cards if you ask me. this crass marketing could serve to put people OFF the game if anything.We're running our own benchmarks on the fully released version of the game -- we'll be personally testing the GTX 570, GTX 580, 9800, 5870, and possibly a few other ATi cards.
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2011-10-27 09:25:04 | Badvock - slightly OTT
Whilst i might agree with the 8800 struggling past medium, I ran the Beta on high settings (pseudo max at the time) on an overclocked 2500 (@4.7Ghz) with an SSC Gtx 460 at 2560x1600 on a dell 30" with no problems at all. I have a second PC with a Q6600 oc at 3.2 with a GTX275 at 1680x1050 again with absoloutly no problems. Seems to be a way of pushing new Gfx cards if you ask me. this crass marketing could serve to put people OFF the game if anything.
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Brian wrote:This is marketing!
I ran a test with several of the cards we mentioned here -- we won't know for sure how realistic this is until the full version is released, at which point the GN team is going to run benchmarks on our array of video cards and do a post on what the full game requires.
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niko wrote:Thanks for the response
No problem! Let us know if you have any other questions or problems.
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Shadowboricua wrote:My system:
i7 2600K on P8P67 Pro board
GTX 460 2GB x2 SLI
Vertex 3 120 GB on SATA III
Corsair 1200W PS
Running BF3 beta at MAXIMUM (Ultra) settings with V-Sync ON at about 60 FPS. Now, I know that this is not representative of the final product, but I am impressed with the graphics on the Beta.That CPU is no doubt giving you quite a power boost there :) Nice CPU, the SLI is of course also very powerful.
Glad to hear that it's working out nicely for you!
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2011-09-27 20:21:00 | Shadowboricua
My system:
i7 2600K on P8P67 Pro board
GTX 460 2GB x2 SLI
Vertex 3 120 GB on SATA III
Corsair 1200W PSRunning BF3 beta at MAXIMUM (Ultra) settings with V-Sync ON at about 60 FPS. Now, I know that this is not representative of the final product, but I am impressed with the graphics on the Beta.
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