[Gooderham] Computer Upgrade

[Gooderham 1st MRB]

I am having a difficult time playing BF3 on my computer with its current specs. I am curious about what to upgrade first and I know that I will need more RAM and a better Video Card. Here are the specs I am currently running with.

Radeon HD 5770 Video Card

Intel i5 750 Quad Processor

Western Digital 500GB SATA2 Hard Drive

MSI P55-CD53 ATX DDR3 Motherboard

GSkill 4GB DDR3 Ripjaw Memory

I was thinking of upgrading my video card to a GeForce GTX 560 Fermi

[Dillon 1st MRB]

What is your power supply? A 5770 system only draws ~115 watts at idle, ~220 at load. A 560 ~150 at idle, 390 watts at load.

To be comfortable, you are going to need a solidly built 500w (or a cheaply built 650+w).

What resolution is your monitor? If you are at 1680x1050 or less, you would be great with either an overclocked (by factory) 460 (Nvidia) or 6850 (AMD).

If you are at 1920 x 1080, I would either go with a 560 ti (the ti is pretty important) or a 6950.

What games will you play with it? If you are only looking for BF3, I would go wtih the 460/6850 level of hardware. Or, get a 6950 1GB. More than 1 GB of memory is really only needed for resolutions above 1920x1200, in most games.

[Gooderham 1st MRB]

Thanks Dillon, I have a 700W PSU, so I am pretty sure I am good there. My monitor is an Acer 19W with a resolution of 1440x990. Maybe I can go with an OC 460 or 6850 then...

[Dillon 1st MRB]

Unless you are going to a much higher resolution, then I would definately advise against going with too powerful of a card. You may want to look at making a good long term investment in an excellent monitor. HP, Dell, Apple all make great ones. Prices are getting ~$300-$400 for very nice 24" displays at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200.

[Gooderham 1st MRB]

hmmmmm

It seems to always come back to Nvidia vs. ATI

[Dillon 1st MRB]

You won't lose out either way you go. I would shop around between a 460 1GB, a 6850, a 560 (non-ti), and a 6870. However, because you are looking at BF3 specifically, you need to include the 6950 and the 560ti. If you got the time to do some reading, here is something pretty cool:

Tech Report review: 560

I would really lean towards the 560 or the 6870 for myself. Now, in looking at your situation with regards to BF3, you need to really look at the 560ti and the 6950. Here is a great read regarding gpus and BF3

Xbit Labs - Contemporary graphics on Battlefield 3

I would strongly recommend you read this article.

What I found interesting, particularly in the Image Quality page is stated here:

Take note of the green curve which represents the performance of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti. This graphics card dislikes smoke and has problems rendering sunbeams passing through substances. This may be due to a lack of driver optimizations, but you have to give up the maximum visual quality settings with this card as yet.

As of right now, there is something buggy with the nvidia drivers (probably). For some reason, it will have a pretty noticable drop in framerates when smoke or sunbeams are rendered. Overall, the Nvidia's drivers are giving higher framerates. However, they are suffering much lower lows. That being said, I am pretty confident that they will resolve this.

For my money, and if you wanting to run BF3 to its fullest potential for the future, I would go with a 560ti and count on nvidia fixing BF3's smoke and sunbeam issues with a driver release.

If you don't want to take that risk, I would look at a 6950. But know that it is highly likely nvidia hardware will run it a bit better.

[Dillon 1st MRB]

I would recommend this particular card:

EVGA SuperClocked 01G-P3-1563-AR GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Here is why: Its the same price as many other cards, but its factory overclocked the most. Its $249.99 with a $20 rebate card, bringing it down to $229.99. At that price point, its a big winner.

Reference clock on a 560ti is 822mhz, and this one is clocked to 900mhz. Nearly a 10% increase right off the bat, for the same price. Memory is clocked from 1000 gddr5 to 1053, giving it an effective speed of 4212mhz. Between these two factors, you can get quite a lot out of your card without taking the risks of overclocking it yourself. I've been extremely happy with my superclocked 460 1gb. It is clocked at 850mhz vs 675 stock, and it performs at more 6870 levels, close to a 560.