**OFFICIAL** AT Battlefield 3 FAQ and News Thread

[Nizology]

Toms Hardware - Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked

Great benchmark data there! Good to see my 5870 still going strong. Thanks as always for keeping us updated Gully!

Wow. Been waiting for this.

My takeaway - the game runs acceptably at the most common resolutions on current harwdare (keep in mind, many people are playing with CPUs clocked significantly faster than the test bed)

And the big conclusion - unless you are pushing very high resolution on purpose, or just "have to" play @ultra instead of @high, the higher end GPUs are a total waste of money. Look at the scores for a 560Ti and 580 at 1050p and 1080p and tell me those 10-15 extra frames are worth the 2x+ price? especially when the lower card is so playable?

An overclocked CPU shouldn't affect performance much.

It seems a lot of the current gen GPUs are more than capable of handling it at High/Ultra settings. :thumbsup:

 

[SLU Aequitas]

once you play Ultra you wont want to go back
to me it was absolutly worth an extra 250 bucks for a second 6950 not only for Ultra but for Ultra Eyefinity

Ultra is totally worth it. Eyefinity though...how's the IFF working?

 

[CVSiN]

Ultra is totally worth it. Eyefinity though...how's the IFF working?

play hardcore

but yeh for me a mere BF mortal that has a hard enough time hitting someone with an ORANGE HEY SHOOT ME over their head.. yeh it kinda sucks!

 

[liquidblue]

Finally got in a couple of matches yesterday after the server patches for PB. Of course I was running around following people because I had no idea where to go, but so awesome.
I have a 560ti and got many of the settings on Ultra and didn't dip below 50 fps on the cliff map. Was worried since this card was only recommended for high settings and was thinking of upgrading but this looks amazing as it is.

 

[uclaLabrat]

For those wondering about smoke grenades, you have two unlocks to get. First as assault score 11,000 points to unlock the M320. Then get 20 kills with the M320 to unlock smoke grenades. (10 kills with the M320 unlocks shotgun ammo.)

The noobtube is a godsend in urban maps like bazaar. Two of my clanmates had locked down a corridor with another shooting over their shoulders at anyone in the field of fire, it was a death trap for my squad trying to advance towards E...pop around a corner twice, lob a nade at their faces, nailed the two with the first one, and the other guy behind the dumpster with a second, squad advances. Then I had it equipped when another clanmate rounded a corner point blank, so I hit him in the number with it, which of course caused incessant bitching. He was like "Oh just going to noob tube from 2 feet away?"

WTF you want me to do, switch to some more manly weapon when you're in my face? I had it equipped!

 

[leeland]

I have a dumb question that I will toss out there...and a couple of comments

I cannot (or feel like it doesn't change) modify my mouse sensitivity on the fly with my Logitech mouse...MX 518

hitting the sensitivity buttons appear to have no affect on how fast the mouse response in game...

As a result if I wanted to crank it up to max when trying to fly a jet or crank it way down when sniping it doesn't change and feels like the same response...

Anyone else have an issue with changing the sensitivity during the game?


One other comment about the game...I still think the game for all it's glory is an Epic fail if it doesn't have VoIP built in for squad and team communication...

IMO the game play within the squad and team would be SO much more fluid if you could quick chat vs. trying to type something in the heat of the moment...

And for the people that say get on ventrillo or xxx that is a fine option but half the time I have no idea who the hell is talking...if they would be in my squad...team or some random person...

Call me simple but I wish it could have been like in BF2...

For instance...last night I unlocked that laser designator for the recon class...

I set it up just to see what it was doing...locked on to several tanks...but nothing happened...I had no idea if I was helping anyone...or if they were somehow notified that I locked onto the tanks...

If I could have just broadcast a message to my squad quick or team maybe it would have made a difference.

One last thing...are you able to find an empty server to practice flying or does it basically lock you down until 7 people are on a map?

 

[GullyFoyle]

BF3 Stats, with sigs site is up!


(Don't laugh, I still only played less than 3 hours...)

Look...Here's one with Zargon and me...Big Meanie!

 

[dyndragon]

One last thing...are you able to find an empty server to practice flying or does it basically lock you down until 7 people are on a map?

Play on our server, listed in the OP. We have minplayers set to 1, so you can jump in and practice.

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf...f-2377cb1940fd/Derptown-BF3-64p-Conquest-CHI/

 

[hans030390]

Sorry if this has been covered before, but is anyone else getting weird freezing/stuttering issues in the game? I'll be playing, and then the game will temporarily freeze while playing looping audio. It comes back after a few seconds, but is really choppy and stutters for a bit after. Sometimes it doesn't freeze entirely, but will do a bunch of small freezes successively, hence the "stuttering".

I have since updated to the 11.10 Preview 3 AMD drivers. Haven't had a chance to see if those help.

 

[Termie]

I still haven't spent much time trying to properly set up my joystick, but I spawned in a chopper the other day so I took it for a short ride. My forward/backward control was reversed but at least I can confirm that the game recognized the joystick.

Ok, maybe there's something wrong with my Saitek - I've seen a few other people posting about that. I'm going to give my Xbox controller a try this weekend. I simply cannot fly choppers with a mouse!

Toms Hardware - Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked

Interesting stuff. The results for cards of the past few years are clumped in the 40-70 range for 1920x1080, which is great. That means lots of people with relatively modern hardware can play the game at a reasonable resolution. Shocking how much MSAA kills the AMD cards - if they don't sort that out in the drivers, I'd pretty much call MSAA (and thus full ultra) a no-go on any AMD single-GPU card. Also disturbing was that despite the awesome crossfire performance (really kills SLI, BTW), the crossfire stability was terrible. Particularly disturbing because my second 5850 arrives today...

Finally, the results on the CPU front were incredibly surprising. They didn't really test any dual cores without HT (other than the gimped bulldozer, which did suffer), so when they say dual-cores run fine, I think they're ignoring the fact that you still can use (and may need) 4 threads for the best performance. On the other hand, they acknowledge that in the quads, HT is detrimental to performance. Good to see you don't need huge overclocks or the latest quads to play, though.

 

[GullyFoyle]

Sorry if this has been covered before, but is anyone else getting weird freezing/stuttering issues in the game? I'll be playing, and then the game will temporarily freeze while playing looping audio. It comes back after a few seconds, but is really choppy and stutters for a bit after. Sometimes it doesn't freeze entirely, but will do a bunch of small freezes successively, hence the "stuttering".

I have since updated to the 11.10 Preview 3 AMD drivers. Haven't had a chance to see if those help.

What are you doing at the time? Playing multiplayer or single player, etc.?
Do you have crossfire (hardware details)?

 

[baronzemo78]

I played on tugboat last night for the first time.

First of all I had a blast. I apologize to any team mates who thought I was crazy running around not knowing where to go. I'm sure I also gave a few of you some good easy kills. I'm not very good at this game.

I play from my couch on a 55" TV with 7.1 surround sound and it is amazing, but I have a real hard time reading the text on the screen. If any squad mates were yelling at me I probably didn't read it. Any advice for this? I can't easily move up my couch.

Also, any recommendations for what you have your mouse buttons set for?
I have G9 that I love but I can't decide what to use for the thumb buttons or tilting the mousewheel.

Thanks.

 

[leeland]

Play on our server, listed in the OP. We have minplayers set to 1, so you can jump in and practice.

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf...f-2377cb1940fd/Derptown-BF3-64p-Conquest-CHI/

Thanks for the link!

 

[GullyFoyle]

I have a dumb question that I will toss out there...and a couple of comments

I cannot (or feel like it doesn't change) modify my mouse sensitivity on the fly with my Logitech mouse...MX 518

hitting the sensitivity buttons appear to have no affect on how fast the mouse response in game...

As a result if I wanted to crank it up to max when trying to fly a jet or crank it way down when sniping it doesn't change and feels like the same response...

Anyone else have an issue with changing the sensitivity during the game?

I haven't tried, but do you have "use raw mouse input" enabled? That could affect this.

 

[leeland]

I haven't tried, but do you have "use raw mouse input" enabled? That could affect this.

To be honest I am not sure...what does the option allow for?

 

[Termie]

More performance numbers, already posted to the other thread on the forum, but relevant here as well: http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/

Confirms that dual-cores, even with HT, can play the game, and there is virtually no difference between any quad-core (or above) CPU.

Also, more evidence of AMD's dominance in the dollar-for-dollar performance matchup with high settings, and it's complete failure with ultra (due to MSAA).

 

[hans030390]

What are you doing at the time? Playing multiplayer or single player, etc.?
Do you have crossfire (hardware details)?

Playing multiplayer on high settings, no MSAA or motion blur. I'm running a single 6870 with a 3.2GHz Phenom II X3, 4GB RAM, Auzentech Bravura sound card, etc. Aside from the strange, periodic freezing and stuttering, it runs extremely smoothly. It doesn't seem to occur at any particular moment either.

 

[Nizology]

Anyone know how the "Skill" value is calculated in the stats page?

 

[Termie]

Playing multiplayer on high settings, no MSAA or motion blur. I'm running a single 6870 with a 3.2GHz Phenom II X3, 4GB RAM, Auzentech Bravura sound card, etc. Aside from the strange, periodic freezing and stuttering, it runs extremely smoothly. It doesn't seem to occur at any particular moment either.

I think there's some chance that you may be system memory limited. I'm using between 4.5GB and 6.5GB during gameplay, and at least one of the articles published today mentioned that SSDs may help for texture streaming (which might be more necessary with 4GB of ram). Just a hunch, and given how cheap memory is right now, you might invest in another 4GB just for the heck of it.

 

[skipsneeky2]

More performance numbers, already posted to the other thread on the forum, but relevant here as well: http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/

Confirms that dual-cores, even with HT, can play the game, and there is virtually no difference between any quad-core (or above) CPU.

Also, more evidence of AMD's dominance in the dollar-for-dollar performance matchup with high settings, and it's complete failure with ultra (due to MSAA).

Wonder how the results will pan out in a 64 player server?

Hard to believe a x2 560 is capable of hanging with quad cores in this game.

If your not multitasking as you game is that article saying a 2500k is a wasted purchase?

Alot of people upgrading simply for this game .

 

[sigurros81]

Just curious, anyone running Xfire? I'm looking into buying another 6870 card but I hear that the game's having a lot of issues with Xfire, but those who got it to run fine are experiencing 90% increase in performance.

 

[Termie]

Wonder how the results will pan out in a 64 player server?

Hard to believe a x2 560 is capable of hanging with quad cores in this game.

If your not multitasking as you game is that article saying a 2500k is a wasted purchase?

Alot of people upgrading simply for this game .

Yeah, it's really not clear if any of this testing was in the multiplayer game. Tom's at least mentions multiplayer testing in passing on the first page, but the other articles specify that they used the single-player game. TechSpot said the following:

"We used Fraps to measure frame rates during a minute of gameplay from the single-player mission Go Hunting."

All of the Tom's charts show the same scene name, so perhaps they benched the exact same single-player level.

Likewise, Guru said the following: "Before we begin with the graphics performance tests a little explanation. We use a run that is located in the Operation Swordbreaker level...."

Thus, I think the jury is still out on whether the multiplayer game can really be run successfully on a dual-core. Beta benchmarks showed a 10fps hit when running multiplayer, so obviously it's more demanding, but we'll need to see additional CPU scaling analysis to really know what's going on.

 

[drizek]

I was getting much worse frames in SP than MP. In multi I get around 40fps on ultra. On SP I get between 20 and 45 on Ultra and then 60fps vsync capped on High.

 

[Kev]

Free physical warfare pack code courtesy of me:
BF8Y-E2UU-ZDNY-95XL

 

[leeland]

Free physical warfare pack code courtesy of me:
BF8Y-E2UU-ZDNY-95XL

what does that get you?

EDIT: NM I was able to find a google link through work that wasn't blocked finally...