Help me decide for BF3 upgrade

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EvoFreak

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
179
Hello everyone! Ive been away in pc gaming for a while because I lost interest of the games being realease before. Anyway BF3 is coming in few days and this game really pulled me back to pc gaming. Help me decide as to what to should i upgrade to get a good performance this game.

my current system is

C2D e8400 @ 3ghz
4gb ram
radeon 5770

I oc my e8400 to 3.8ghz before and it was stable but I returned it to stock because i wasn't gaming anyway.

Here is what i don't know what i should upgrade... Should i upgrade CPU/MB/RAM or just get a used 6950 that a friend of mine is selling? My budget is limited right now. Im thinking of just grabbing the 6950 and OC the current rig i have now.

Thanks guys!
 
I think the video card will bottle neck you more than the cpu but honestly, both probably will. At 3.8 dual core you should do quite well in most scenarios as benches have shown BF3 to be more GPU reliant. I can't really speak about 64 player maps with lots of destruction though...

I am in the same boat as you actually. I had a higher end dualcore and just bought a quad off the forums and trying to upgrade my video as well.
 
thanks for the reply madtrix. Thats what im concern about too. Recommended requirements is quad. How about buying something lower than 6950 and just use the extra i save to buy the quad as well. Now my concern is socket 775 is outdated soon and i just don't like the idea of buying another socket 775 processor and knowing it's gonna be outdated soon.
 
never sacrifice video card for cpu. grab the 6950 for now and take your cpu back to 3.8GHz. Save money to upgrade cpu/mobo in the future.
 
thanks pandora. How much of a boost will i see from 5770 to 6950? I'll be running this at 1650x1050 resolution by the way. Possible for Ultra settings?
 
should be good for ultra settings. wont know for sure till tuesday when reviews/benchmarks come out
 
Probably will be okay for Ultra at that res. Definitely OC your CPU though, if you can get it that high.
 
well I hate to burst your bubble but you are likely to see almost no improvement in BF 3 upgrading from a 5770 to 6950 at 1680x1050 with your cpu. just in general your cpu is barely going to cut it in BF 3 and will be a massive limitation for a 6950. even in BF 2 with a 192sp gtx260, which is equal to a 5770, my E8500 at 3.8 was the bottleneck at 1920x1080. I could lower my res and my performance did not change one bit. so again at just 1680, you are wasting your money getting a faster gpu for BF 3 as long as you have that core 2 duo. you may be able to turn up a setting or two but your mediocre fps will not improve and they could actually go further down since many settings impact the cpu as well.
 
You need a quad bud -- I had your exact chip OC'd for Bad Company 2 and went to the 9550 and it was night and day. Hard to justify $200 for a S775 quad though, you might as well pick a 2500K with the Asrock mobo and 8gb of ram that everyone and their brother gets around here for around $350-$400.

Drop the settings back, and save up for an updated rig -- new vid cards and intel socket is due out in the next 4-6 months.
 
Oh I missed that it's a dual and not a quad...

Yeah... I would upgrade everything, lol.
 
i've been doing some reading since i made this thread and im leaning towards upgrading the cpu. Looks like quad is a must. Are AMD that bad against intel i series? Thanks for posting guys.
 
How much do you want to spend?

Like Triglet said, a 2500k is your best performance/cost ratio at this moment I'd say.
 
You need a 955BE and a GTX 560.

these are the minimum requirements to play on highest settings as listed on the nvidia website.
 
Yeah itll depend on how much youre wanting to spend. A new i5 setup is going to set you back at LEAST $350 if you want a good motherboard.

Another way to go is to drop a Core 2 Quad in there but theyre getting pretty scarce these days new in the box and the only ones I can find really are the Q9550 for $300 at Newegg so you might be better off getting the new i5 build.

You could go ahead and get something like a 6970/GTX570. You will be a little hamstrung with that E8500 but itll get the job done til you can scrape up the cash for a proper new Sandy Bridge build.
 
OK here is what im thinking so far... Upgrade to i5 2500k with cheap mb and ram since im gonna leave it stock. Im still planing to keep the 5770 for a while. When i was browsing for cpu i noticed there is i5 2500 (no k) what is the difference? Is i5 2500k (stock) big upgrade from e8400 (OC to 3.8)?
 
yeah you must have been out of the loop for quite a while. :p

2500 and 2500k are the same except the k is fully unlocked and can be easily overclocked. thats what you want so you can easily overclock later but at stock speeds its just fine since your gpu will now be the limitation.

a 2500k can be about twice as fast as the Core 2 duo at 3.8 but it really depends on the game, gpu, res and settings to determine that. as for BF 3 it will make a massive difference as long as you have a decent gpu.
 
Look for a used Q9450 or Q9550 (if your motherboard supports them) and then get the 6950 to go with it. That's your easiest upgrade.
 
Buy a cheap q8xxx cpu and overclock it and a cheap gtx460 and overclock it. It will be faster than a e8400 and a 6950 in BF3 for about the same $.
 
This is what you should expect with modern battlefield games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiqS341ibbc


i should also add, back when i did play bc2 in a clan, all the people who did horribly/complained about lag/performance issues/whatever were always on Core2 platforms.

DICE pushes hardware limits. I cannot stress that enough. Just, dont get hopes up with old hardware.


I should say, when i got BC2, i was faced with the same problem. Get a 6600/9650 for my p5q + 8800gtx, or get an i7/i5. I got an i7 930, and it was a night and day difference immediately.
 
thesecond said:
This is what you should expect with modern battlefield games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiqS341ibbc


i should also add, back when i did play bc2 in a clan, all the people who did horribly/complained about lag/performance issues/whatever were always on Core2 platforms.

DICE pushes hardware limits. I cannot stress that enough. Just, dont get hopes up with old hardware.
Click to expand...

Any Phenom II x4 / Intel quadcore @ 3.2 or more will be just fine for BF3.
 
buy this proccessor and mobo from me!! ill hook u up cheaper then anything u can find online ;) just made the switch to 2600k its an i5-760 QUAD CORE with Asus P7P55D-E LX

I will upload pictures hell I am even willing to give you my old Antec SuperLanboy case with the Vantec 3 fan 1 light controller have no use for it bought a corsair 400r too! heres a pic of it running ::

nxoq2o.png


that was back when i first built it in december 2010 but i ended up giving it less vcore from 1.192 to 1.168/1.176 vdroopd with a shitty h50 and medium speed yateloon fans 200x20 for 800/1600 mem! heres a 4.3 pass it does 4.4 to but i like low volts instead never abused still under warranty!!

mafh3l.png


that was for benching testing the max of the chip i eneded at 4ghz final speed

59x92u.png
 
Forceman said:
Look for a used Q9450 or Q9550 (if your motherboard supports them) and then get the 6950 to go with it. That's your easiest upgrade.
Click to expand...

This and get a slightly better card than 5770 and you should be good.
 
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