Graphics Card for playing battlefeild 3 @1920x1080 @max £250

Im banking on my 480 being powerful enough

 

Should be good. My 2 5770s give very playable frame rates with everything on high, HBAO on and 2x MSAA.

 

With a big hardware-breaking title, I reckon it's more sane to wait until after release to see how the performance, patches and driver updates all shake down, and until a few new cards have been released. The current hardware will really struggle with it, because it's the current hardware, and Battlefield 3 isn't a current game, it's the next generation's game.

Think back to Crysis' release. In the buildup, people were clamouring to blow all their money on 8800GTX SLI and HD 3870 crossfire setups just to be able to run it on decent settings. A few months later, fairly affordable single-card solutions were available that did the job just as well, for much, much less money. If you try to prepare for Battlefield 3 now, you'll be like all those people with their £800 8800 Ultra SLI machines, struggling through Crysis at 20-30 fps, wondering where all the money went, knowing that in half a year everyone will get this performance for a tenth of what you paid for it.

It comes down to a choice: you can spend £800 for performance X now or play the game on reduced settings for a few months and then spend £300 for performance X. The drop-off in value-for-money towards the very top end of the hardware market is so dramatic that you'd need a really, really good excuse to go all the way up there. There are only two possible reasons: (1), you've got £500 sitting around and have literally nothing better to spend it on than video games, or (2) you derive a serious amount of personal pleasure out of being able to play breaking titles on full settings.

(2) is half understandable. Some people just really love video games. (1) is conspicuous consumption, and makes you a terrible person.

I like to think of these choices in terms of money and time. If you choose to buy an £800 Battlefield 3-capable graphics solution now, you're purchasing, for £500, the ability to play Battlefield 3 on full settings for 3-4 months. (Because after that, you could get the equivalent solution for about £300.)

Assuming even the most rigorous and unhygienic of gaming schedules, that's about £2 - £2.80 an hour for your playing time on Battlefield 3, or £30-£40 a month. And you're not paying £30-40/mo for your games generally - all the other games would have run fine on a graphics solution that cost £150, or probably just on your existing setup in most cases. It's £30-40 a month just for Battlefield 3.

The dropoff in value is so steep and the benefit so slim, specific and transient that it's second only to actually burning the money yourself. And futureproofing doesn't make up for it, not even close - because if you're a maximum settings person now, you'll be a maximum settings person in two years' time when the next graphically ground-breaking game comes out, and you'll have to do this again and again in an endless cycle of thousands of pounds of burnt money that could have been used for anything else if you'd just settled for mid-range graphics settings in a few video games for a few months.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS​

 

You say conspicuous consumption, I say charitable donations to nvidia/amd

 

Well, I suppose they do collaborate with Stanford Folding, which in turn uses their hardware to cure diseases, so there's a very roundabout moral defence there

 

Just done a bench with fraps through 1 whole game and got minimum 27fps: Max 70fps and ave 36.552fps.
Thats with everything on high and 2x AA, so anything above a gtx 460 1GB is absolutely fine considering there will no doubt be some performance tweaks before full release.
If things get too much on a bigger map or with more going, then Ill just reduce the AA to 0 and maybe change one of the settings to medium.

 

480 pretty much = 570, so I would agree.

 

Sweet, judging by chris fraps, my 480 should smash it then.

 

Challenge accepted lol

 

My 580 averaged around 55 - 65 fps with everything absolutely maxed out, so no need for sli . However when the game is released, the single player may be more demanding, who knows.

That average was before I updated the drivers . I haven't checked after that so I might be getting a nice little surprise when I turn on the game tonight.

 

I didnt notice any difference TBH, Im wondering if so called performance tweak in the new driver is aimed at low end cards or SLi set-ups maybe?


Also bare in mind chaps, I have my 460 quite heavily oc'd,not as much as id like though seem to have hit a ceiling.
Upping the core v seems to net me a bit more and is stable during unigine but things started going weird on the desktop which havnt happened since i lowered the volts and the oc slightly.
Mine is pretty level with a 470 @ stock and sometime 1 or 2 fps higher but obviously in a game like this that extra vram will make a difference.
Mine is using something 997MB of vram in BF3.

now now noizy, i know just how good CF 5770's can be lol

 

6870 Crossfire was averaging around 90 to 100 FPS with everything set to ultra (high limited apparently), 2 x AA, 16 x AF at 2048 x 1152 resolution with no micro-stuttering on the preview drivers.

I'm confident I'll be running it at ultra with no problems.

 

how do you check the fps? and where are the settings in the beta?
I wanna see what my 1920x1080 screen and gfx can achieve.

thanks.

 

Download and instal fraps http://www.fraps.com/ , open it up and click the second tab, click MinMaxAvg box and then once your playing the game press F11 and it will record your fps, once the level is finished press F11 again and then in the top right corner click on view and it will open up the folder where the results are stored.
The settings can only be accessed in game, just press esc. Cant see why we cant do it before the game though, very weird

Youll be fine with your 5850 with everything on high and 2x AA.

 

Thank you very much, will give it ago when at home.
+rep

 

Yep. What Chris said. I use FRAPS when I'm benching a new game to get the average FPS but when I'm just playing I have RadeonPro display the FPS. The in game only setting menu is a bit of a pain but once you've got your optimum settings how often do you go and change them? Not very often I'd guess.

 

So here is question for you all...2GB 560ti or 570?

 

570, it has better longevity, but for less than £200 you can pickup the 2GB Twin Frozr Ti which might be better if your games use more than 1.3GB VRAM.

Honorary Yorkshire man

 

The 2gb 560Ti and overclock to 570 levels plus youll also have more headroom with the extra vram, but then again you can also oc the 570 to get even more frames...if it was me id go 560 but then im tight

£200 quid for an MSI Twin Frozr 560 Ti 2GB
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-...gpu-880mhz-shader-1760mhz-384-cores-plusfree-

Not in stock at scan though it might be somewhere else.
EDIT: Just noticed Quiet PC have them in stock but @ £215, Scan reckon stock is due on the 4th Oct.

Cheapest gtx 570 @ scan was 251 quid

 

thanks, my problem was i couldnt even find the settings! lol.

By the way am sure you can find a higher spec gfx second hand in the usual places.

(And just for your info i bought my card a while back for £250)