Battlefield 3 PC: Graphics Comparison - Ultra vs Low-Settings in Detail

PC Games shows you the differences between low- and ultra-settings in Battlefield 3. Check out their graphics comparison.

[lugia 4000]

Yes, PC is better. But we all knew that.

[Gazondaily]

Did you even read the title or click on the link? Its a PC comparison between the two settings.

EDIt- that website is horrible. Its inundated with ads that take up half the screen.

[Army_of_Darkness]

That the pc is able to upgrade its abilities with a little money;)
Otherwise it wouldn’t stand a chance against the ps3 or xbox 360 with its low settings! OMG, it Looks gawd awful.

[rabidpancakeburglar]

Army_of_Darkness
I'm actually really surprised by just how bad the low settings are. It looks like the sort of graphics you got when some developers were still complaining that the ps3 was too hard to work on. The high settings look great though.

[f789790]

What ads? AD BLOCK PLUS!

[tehgam3r]

I like my PC <3
High settings is all good :P, can run ultra but framerate is like 20 - 30 :/

Comparing these to xbox and ps3 is painful. But on the bright-side it still looks good as!

DICE you have done a very good job <3

[blaziliuz12]

Failing to read the article is a fail

[Xalaris]

[anti-PC elitist comment here]

[Jafooli]

Lol, he's right, but got the wrong article.

[fcpthebest]

Ok, what you gotta understand is that an article is more than just a title...

[Bolts]

This is Bi-Failing.

1. Failing to read the article before commenting.
2. Failing to read the god damn title before commenting.

It's as if Lugia 4000 stop reading at Battlefield 3 PC: Graphics before spewing some canned knee jerk reaction.

[StealthyRay]

The slider is more useful than side-by-side comparisons. The jaggies are horrible on the low side and there is dust on the ultra.

One more day to go!

[f789790]

The jaggies seem to be in extreme abundance. I'm wondering if this is from image compression, not the game itself.

Most of the textures don't look that bad on Low. I'll probably be running around there with 2aa. I don't mind putting off upgrading until necessary.

[dirthurts]

No game looks that jaggy on my monitor. Must be compression.

[ProjectVulcan]

No AA :( ouch. The battlefield games need AA, they have a lot of square flat edges. 2 X AA would clear up the very worst so it wasn't quite so eye stabbing. I believe in the beta an 8800GT was enough to squeeze on a little AA on low

[DwightOwen]

Hopefully my 6950s in XFire can handle this on Ultra. I may have to flash them to 6970s.

[hazeblaze]

I think you should be fine. I have dual 6990m's in CF. And they handled Ultra in the beta around 50 fps... Granted, all of the polishing of the 'true' Ultra was likely not in the beta, but I'm still expecting 40+ fps.

[arjman]

You realise those dual 6990m's you paid for (oh the thousands of dollars) are equivalent to downclocked desktop 6870's

[kevnb]

u mad arjman? Im pretty sure he knows what he has.

[DarkKinght]

i played beta on ultra with my 5990

[gamesmaster]

wtf? dual 6990's only got you 50 fps? my single 6950 unlocked got me 50 fps on ultra. i dont understand?

[InNomeDiDio]

THERE WAS NO ULTRA IN THE BETA PEOPLE!

Germans PC Mag said you need a GTX 580 to max it out in 1080p an get around 30 FPS. But if you do so BF3 looks like a damn Trailer! Simply amazing. They called it Avatar of VideoGames.

[peowpeow]

@ gamesmaster

He said 6990m. I'm not too sure but doesn't m mean mobility? I.e. weaker than desktop versions

[f789790]

InNomeDiDio they're just comparing their obviously well off builds going "lol i don't know, will it run it on ultra???"

[DwightOwen]

I was able to get around 60 FPS running BC2 on max settings. DICE seems to have an affinity for AMD cards. I'm banking that Battlefield 3 will be just as optimized.

[Sexual_Hrrsmnt_Panda]

6990m's are pretty crappy dude.

A regular 6990 will push well over 60fps with everything maxed.

[dirthurts]

I have a 5850...and it's a little concerned right now.

[tmoss726]

I have that too. Run it on high no problems. Never lower than 30 FPS.

[NeoTribe]

Nope better go drop another 500 bones.

[AsianOnRoute69]

In all honesty, I'm playing battlefield 3 right now on ultra everything, with only crossfire 5830s, and I am getting a solid 50 - 60fps, albeit, my cards are overclocked on both core to 1000mhz and mem at 1250mhz each, but yah, I think the recommended requirement of needing a gtx580 to really max out the game is complete bs.

[Detoxx]

i really hope my ps3 phat and my tv can run battlefield 3, otherwise i would have to buy a ps3 slim *sarcasm

[Jamaicangmr]

Best comment ever lol! +Bubble. I have a pretty High spec rig but timing on this post was sublime.

I had to call my friend and tell him about it.

lolololololololololololool!!! !!!!!!!

[ATi_Elite]

Now that was funny! +bubbles

But i would be cool to run two PS3 in SLi configuration!

[news4geeks]

not much difference to your average skittles fan

[EazyC]

SKITTLE TITS!

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Normally I am not a huge fan of comparison articles because I find 90% of them tend to do half assed jobs of comparing. There are a few good ones though...

That said, I like seeing the difference of a high end vs low end PC. It's a good perspective to give for those looking to play this game and wondering if they need to upgrade their pc.

Hopefully one of these sites will do the ultimate comparsion: High End PC, Low End PC, PS3, PS3 with installed High Tex Pack, 360 and 360 with installed High Tex Pack. Let us see the full spectrum of options...its a lot of work but would be pretty cool to see them all lined up.

[tubers]

NITPICK TIME!:

" It's a good perspective to give for those looking to play this game and wondering if they 'WANT' to upgrade their pc. "

I do agree to your overall message though.

[WorldGamer]

Sick, I think I can see an extra piece of trash in the Ultra High setting version. Man, that will be a game changer for game play.

Extra trash FTW.

j/k, lol.

Nice comparison.

[Shadowaste]

low=console version

ultra=yummy

[qwertyz]

not even a proper comparison they should have used high res uncompressed screenshots and videos to compare rather than compressed screenshots would have giving a better comparison but the best comparison will be watching both games run right before your eyes.

ultra settings 1080p makes all console games look like ps2 games

by the way you are WRONG. pc low settings is superior to the console version because it still has much larger maps and player count and with some AF engaged and resolution increased to 1440x900 it destroys the console version and every console game in the visual department
also remember that the console versions run LOW settings sub-HD(1280x704) with no v-sync or texture filtering at 30fps(which will drop when the engine is under pressure) and yet still has much smaller maps and much lower player count

[Mrmagnumman357]

Yeah, adding AF as well as a higher res will definitely push the pc version on low above the console version.

[f789790]

Your right about the high res part, but why waste bandwidth on that when we all already went there. :/

[Bubblemachine]

Lo all.

I played the PS3 beta and it ran pretty well tbh, some slight tearing, but i heard that's been fixed.

I built a new rig.

I5 [email protected]
6870 1GB
8GB RAM
750GB SATA 6G/S

Runs Dirt3@over 100fps 1920x1080.

Interestingly i get 60+fps in crysis warhead.

I'm expecting 50-60fps in BF3.

Great time to be a gamer, what with UNCHARTED3 as well.

[f789790]

Oh my god! A reasonable build. Where did you come from?

[DwightOwen]

The only possible issue I could see is with your graphics card. It's plenty fast, but 1 GB of VRAM in graphics-heavy games like Crysis or Metro 2033 may not be enough to avoid texture pop-in. However, DICE is pretty good at getting the most from AMD cards. You should get above-average FPS. Everything else looks great!

[xoxideu]

minimum looks like a ps1 game

[dirthurts]

What????
Even at min it looks pretty fantastic, except the jaggies.

[Cosmit]

I played the BETA on minimum specs on my PC. I also played the PS3 BETA VERSION.

The PC version on LOWEST Settings looked better than the PS3 version. That was while my brother was playing on PS3 version, and me on PC at the same time.

But maybe things will be different with the texture pack for PS3.

[hadriker]

From the reviews I've read the issues seem to arise from the campaign. Pretty much every review has said that the MP has "raised the bar" "will probably be the best MP experience this year" etc etc.

TL:DR
Campaign - Not terrible, but didn't live up to the hype. A by the numbers experience.

Multiplayer -OH GOD OH FUCK OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD.

I think that's the reason that you see reviews like IGN and joystiq who, despite being pretty critical of the game, still gave it a good overall score.

Speaking from my experience of being able to play through the SP for a few hours. There is still the occasional glitch, the AI is kind of stupid, it is very much tryin to copy the feel of the CoD SP experience. But it is still fun, but I think its obvious where most of dices time have been spent, on the MP.

Oh and with a quad core and a geforce 560. I am able to set everything to Ultra and the game is absolutely gorgeous

[DwightOwen]

Battlefield has always been primarily a MP game, so I don't mind the campaign being a little underwhelming.

[Bolts]

People play BF3 single player?

Why?

[iMpuTeD]

i would def check this out on my pc but i wouldnt be able to max it out and get good frames prob like 10-15 fps lol

[Treyb3yond]

Ok. I'm bored with these endless pc graphics articles. Ugh.

[B00M]

So I guess your also bored with the endless console graphic articles every time a new game comes out?

[poo342947294792]

rocking 2 580s on a [email protected] 8GB ram 1920x1200 all ultra locking fps to 60.....force some extra AA in nvidia control panel for the extra boner moments lol