New Video Card Recommendations for Battlefield 3

[pparks1]

So, I'm interested in getting Battlefield 3 for the PC when it releases near the end of October.

The rest of my PC is going to be just fine, aside from my current video card. Today, I'm running an Intel Q9550 quad core at 3.2Ghz, 8GB of DDR2-800 G.Skill PI RAM, 80GB Intel X25m-G2 SSD, 1TB WD Caviar Black, 23" 1920x1080 monitor,Corsair HX620 modular PSU, ABS M1 mechanical keyboard and a Logitech G9 laser mouse.

Many years ago, I had some ATI based cards. Radeon 9700Pro and a Radeon X800XT. My last few cards have been Nvidia, 7600GT, and a 9800GTX+

My birthday is at the beginning of Oct, so thinking of asking the wife to get me the video card for my birthday. More than anything, I want the card to be QUIET. My mobo is NOT SLI or CROSSFIRE, so I only want a single video card. Reasonable power consumption is something that I would take into consideration, but isn't my primary concern as I don't leave this PC on all of the time.

So, you guys want to make some recommendations in the $150 to $300 range that will work great for BF3, running 1920x1080, single card that is SUPER QUIET when not gaming? I also do a fair amount of video rendering in Sony Vegas Movie studio 2010 Platinum...so I think some of the power will be beneficial to me there as well.

Friend of mine recommended the Sapphire 6870 Vapor X (approx $199). He has the 5870 and says the Vapor X is nearly silent;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102925&Tpk=Sapphire 6870 Vapor X

I was thinking about the eVGA GTX560 FTW+ (about $215). This would keep me from having to ditch my Nvidia rather.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...yMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

 

[stormy13]

Personally I would wait until the game comes out and see what the benches for it say. Will mean playing with your current card till then, but at least then you will know which card to go for instead of an educated guess. That and with a little bit of luck when the game does come out it will be a little better optimized than like when BF2 came out.

 

[pparks1]

That's not a bad suggestion....I would just have to believe that my current 9800GTX+ would provide rather crappy results. So, anything would be a significant performance increase. My BD is about 10 days before the game releases, so I'd like to get the card and get it working...that way I can load the game on release day and get to playing.

 

[essenbe]

I just installed the Vapor x 6870 2 days ago, so I can't give much of a performance recomendation. But, it is pretty quiet until the fan gets above 60%, then can become a little noiser but not as bad as some. Before purchasing it, I read many reviews, and all were quite positive. I have OC'd it slightly just to test and it did well. It passes Passmark and Furmark. So far i am quite pleased. Although i know you don't really care, but WEI is 7.8.

 

[Wishmaster]

I've heard alot of good things about the 560s. Although I can not confirm from any personal experience with them.

But if it works anything like the 570, it should be very quiet and cool at idle.
I have a manual fan profile set for mine, that ramps up slowly to 60% once it hits 70C.
Even at that, I don't notice the extra noise.
The default fan speeds let it get a bit warmer under load, but its a bit quieter too.


This of course is pure speculation on my part that the 560 would be similar. I would think that it would be however, consider the architecture itself is the same.



As far as the ATI Vapor-X ...
My last card was a 4890 Vapor-X, and I loved it. It was quiet compared to other 4870/90s, but not as quiet as my 570.
But, to be fair, the newer ATI cards are quieter than the 4890 was too.


Honestly, I think either card would fullfill your needs.

But what would sway my decision either way the most would be the other features each offers that is of the most benefit.
Such as, does you video encoder use CUDA and is that important? Will it work as well with AMD?
Is PhysX important?

 

[pparks1]

But what would sway my decision either way the most would be the other features each offers that is of the most benefit.
Such as, does you video encoder use CUDA and is that important?

Thanks, good suggestion. I checked and Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 does indeed make use of Cuda when encoding using the Sony AVC encoder...which just so happens to be what I use. Quick research online shows about a 10-15% improvement in encoding times...which is nothing to scoff at since video encoding does take quite a bit of time.

I think that I am going to persue an Nvidia card with CUDA support. I think that just sold me on the NVIDIA over ATI/AMD.

 

[Terronium 12]

Best suggestion I can give you before passing off to sleep, is get a 560 DCII. Believe me when I say these things are quiet.

I believe nVidia is on the verge of releasing refreshes for (again, I believe) the 560-580, so you can wait for those to pop up as well.

 

[smarteyeball]

Best suggestion I can give you before passing off to sleep, is get a 560 DCII. Believe me when I say these things are quiet.

Yep. Reference cards may be quiet already, but these after market cooled babies are great. Well worth the extra $ and slot space.

 

[JaidynM]

I have an MSI GTX 560 at the moment and am loving it. Not sure about the EVGA card but the MSI is dead quiet. If you were to get the Twin Frozr, you would be even better off. Great overclocking as well as icy cool temps. It's also dead fast when I game with little disruptions.

As for the DCII, sure, they're a good card but what put me off them is the difficulty to SLI. I'm not planning on running a multi or even two way GPU setup but in the event that I do, I'd like to be able to. I'm not sure what the 560 DCII is like but the 580 is definitely a difficult to SLI even on an Extended ATX so I'm assuming the 560 will act similarly.

 

[pparks1]

Thanks folks, I will check those cards out. The lack of SLI to me doesn't matter 1 bit, I have 0 intention of doing it. Never considered it in the past, never bought a mobo that even supports it.

 

[JaidynM]

Thanks folks, I will check those cards out. The lack of SLI to me doesn't matter 1 bit, I have 0 intention of doing it. Never considered it in the past, never bought a mobo that even supports it.

In that case, the GTX 560 DCII should do you just fine. Though I still highly recommend the MSI GTX 560 Twin Frozr.

 

[Keiichi25]

I have an Alienware OEM nVidia GTX 560 Ti card myself, the only problem I have run into with the 560 is what they call a TDR (Timeout Driver Recovery) error if I have it on Adaptive Power versus Performance. Some of the newer cards will be using the adaptive power loads, basically switching up on the clocks for GPU/Memory/Shader to use less power. But so far, graphics looks pretty good in general, will say I have noticed with Deus Ex some texture twitching, but the game also cites the AMD/ATI graphics logo instead of what other games tend to lean for nVidia. So I would agree with Stormy and see about waiting what some of the benchmarks say for BF3 for the cards to see if it is worthwhile to jump to a new card or not.

 

[pparks1]

So I would agree with Stormy and see about waiting what some of the benchmarks say for BF3 for the cards to see if it is worthwhile to jump to a new card or not.

I would have to believe that without question it would be worthwhile to go for a new card based on the fact that I'm currently using an Nvidia 9800GTX+ 512MB card. But waiting for release to see which Nvidia card is out and gets better results on this particular game is a good idea. And the longer I wait, the more the price comes down.

 

[Keiichi25]

Well, plus, you may find out that nVidia might not be the way to go in the case of a game. I mean, with Deus Ex, I was seeing some texture meshing/flashing on my nVidia the way they did some of the surfaces, so I am thinking it was optimized for an AMD card more so than an nVidia card. Also, in some cases, you might get one card, and find out that BF3 might be doing something that requires a different card characteristic, which means you blew some money on a card that will still not be optimal for what you want from BF3 or perhaps on the same level as your current card and no way to return it.

 

[MadSupra354]

I recommend the 6870 Vapor-X or MSI HAWK edition 6870. Those are both very quiet.

 

[pparks1]

I think i'm pretty set on going with Nvidia for my card as my video editing software makes use of CUDA and this will cut down my rendering times.

 

[Wishmaster]

It might be worth considering not only the 560 but the the 570 as well. Depending on what budget you want to allow for the upgrade.

Poking around at Tiger Direct, it seems the main difference will be:

560: $189-$229
384 Cuda Cores, 1024MB VRAM, 256bit Bus

570: $315-$329
448 Cuda Cores, 1280MB VRAM, 320bit Bus
(this was for eVGA though)

For me, the decision was basically for gaming performance and Phys-X support,since Im a avid gamer. Encoding via Cuda was not important to me.

And while the extra gaming performance in and of itself may not be a major point for you, the extra CUDA cores may be of benefit for the GPU accelerated video encoding.
I'm not really sure how much difference there would be for encoding though between the two, as I just use CPU.

We all have different expectations and needs out of our hardware, and this may not even be worth it it to you.
But I thought this was worth throwing out there for consideration.


You may already know this, but TigerDirect sometimes has deals to pull in new customers.
Usually a $10 off coupon for a purchase of $100 or more, and sometimes free shipping.
Just sign up for it, and usually takes a couple days to get it via email.

When shopping around for the best price, this may useful.

I usually use NewEgg myself, but on occasion TD just has better prices.

 

[pparks1]

Wishmaster,

Thanks for taking the time to offer some suggestions. That's exactly what I was looking for with this post. I would have rep'd you, but apparently I did you recently and cannot do it again.

 

[paulpicks21]

Hi pparks,

Don't think the specs have been discussed in relation to this game yet so I thought I would add them here -

Minimum requirements for Battlefield 3

OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz
RAM: 2GB
Graphic card: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible Nvidia or AMD ATI card.
Graphics card memory: 512 MB
Hard drive: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version


Recommended system requirements for Battlefield 3

OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
RAM: 4GB
Graphics card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, GeForce GTX 460, Radeon Radeon HD 6850
Graphics card memory: 1 GB
Hard drive: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

Based on these I am really hoping my 560ti will cut it. Time will tell I guess as I am really looking forward to this game!

Cheers

Paul.

 

[pparks1]

Why would your 560TI not cut it...it's at or above the recommended spec?