New Video Card Recommendations for Battlefield 3

pparks1 said:

There is nothing wrong with ATI cards, quite a few of my friends have them. It just wasn't the right choice for me.

I did arrive home to a NewEgg box at my door. My eVGA Nvidia 570 GTX has arrived. I don't think that I will get a chance to install it until tomorrow night or perhaps on Saturday.

You're more patient than I.
Id be running a benchmark right now :P

Glad you got it. I think you will like it very much.

Wishmaster said:

pparks1 said:

There is nothing wrong with ATI cards, quite a few of my friends have them. It just wasn't the right choice for me.

I did arrive home to a NewEgg box at my door. My eVGA Nvidia 570 GTX has arrived. I don't think that I will get a chance to install it until tomorrow night or perhaps on Saturday.

You're more patient than I.
Id be running a benchmark right now :P

Glad you got it. I think you will like it very much.

Ditto!!

Yeah, patience comes from the fact that it probably won't work 100% correct and I will end up spending time troubleshooting something. I knew if it didn't work, I would have had to commit myself last night to getting it working. So, it's best for me to hold off and wait until I have adequate time.

Alright, new card is installed in my box. The card was a bit longer than I expected, and thus I had to remove my center hard drive carriers...which is ok...as I wasn't using them.

At first, couldn't get any video. Quickly realized that only 1 of my 6 pin power cables was plugged in all of the way. The second one wasn't latched.

This card seems to initialize in my BIOS faster...but by time my video actually comes on, it's almost to the point of starting Windows. So, it's good that I know that you press DEL to get to the BIOS.

My WEI increased from a 7.0 in both graphics categories to a 7.9 in both categories. This card is much quieter than my previous 9800GTX+ at idle and while under load.

I was able to play BF3 Beta, at 1920x1080 with all settings on High, vsync enabled, full screen and it was as smooth as could be. I played for about 30 minutes, and CPU fan stayed around 50%. Card was around 80C, my CPU was around 48C and things are running good. This is using the Nvidia 285.38 beta drivers.

Found a really good read on the web with regards to the video setup of BF3 and how the game will perform across various Nvidia graphics card offerings.

Guides: Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Guide - GeForce

I don't think you would be disappointed with either card. My 570 is 1280MB. I highly doubt the difference between 1GB and 2GB will make any difference.

1280MB is be plenty of VRAM.
At least with a single monitor at 1920x1200 res or less.

If you want to run multiple montior or really hi-resolutions beyond that, then the extra VRAM would be useful.
But then again, most who are doing that are also running multiple GPUs too which help make up for it.






pparks,
If you want it a bit cooler under full load and you do not mind a little extra noise, you could always set a more aggresive custom fan profile using eVGA Precision.
Although 80-85C is usually considered normal for these cards under full load & should be fine, I always liked to keep mine a bit cooler.

More aggresive fan profiles are more noisy though, but not that much IMO. I never notice it.


I set mine on a slope increase. By the time it hits 60C its at 50% and up to 60% at around 72C.

With that fan profile it usually stays between 65-70 under heavy loads.
Many other games that do not stress it than much are much lower 55-60.



So you liking the card overall so far I take it?

pparks1 said:

Found a really good read on the web with regards to the video setup of BF3 and how the game will perform across various Nvidia graphics card offerings.

Guides: Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Guide - GeForce

That's a good article, thanks for the link.

Glad you are happy with the new card pparks