corymartin66

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Jun 3, 2012
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is BF3 on lowest setting still better than ps3? and my other question is can i run it at low or med setting with a GTX550ti 1ghz oc and a AMD Althlon x3 440 and still play 64 player matches?
 

wr6133

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Feb 10, 2012
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Settings depend on your resolution and what you can/will accept in terms of FPS

1920X1080
If you want to stay near 60FPS (the golden number in PC shooter games) you will be limited to low

At medium that card will be averaging 30FPS or less (not really acceptable for a PC shooter)

You can fiddle with the settings mixing mid and low to get the result you want.

At lower resolutions obviously you can up the details and have higher FPS.

Your CPU may present a slight issue on 64 man maps that are small and hectic (alot of constant action) it wont be alot but you may notice some drop in performance (dont worry about it people play on alot worse)
 

Optimus_Toaster

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Jul 22, 2012
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Whilst I do not know whether you CPU will bottleneck your GPU, I do know that my GTX550Ti at stock clocks can run BF3 at the following settings whilst get a constant 40 fps:
Resolution: 1360x768
VSync: Off
Textures: Ultra
Shadows: High
Effects: Medium
Mesh: High
Terrain: High
Terrain Decoration: Ultra
AA Deferred: 2x MSAA
AA Post: Medium
Motion Blur: Off
Anisotropic filter: 8x
Ambient Occlusion: HBAO

For some reason lots of people seem to have this silly idea that a GTX 550 ti cannot run any games at anything past medium/low, even in 720p but evidently it can. Furthermore I recommend Nvidia's tweak guide for finding which settings will get you the best performance boost at the lowest visual cost.
Link here: http://www.geforce.com/optimize/guides/battlefield-3-tweak-guide/#1
 

wr6133

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I used to use a 550ti it's in my wifes PC right now so I just went and fired it up and had a look.

All settings High,X2 MSAA, 720p



Bandicam takes off anything from 5 - 10 FPS. Video is crap but the FPS is all you need to see
 

JimmoR3M

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Aug 13, 2012
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In answer to your question about quality against a PS3, yes the Low preset looks similar to a PS3, and very close to a Xbox 360. I'd try these settings given your current spec and the size of your Monitor.

Resolution: 1920x1080
VSync: Off
Textures: Ultra
Shadows: Medium
Effects: High
Mesh: High
Terrain: High
Terrain Decoration: Ultra
AA Deferred: None
AA Post: Medium
Motion Blur: Off
Anisotropic filter: 2X
Ambient Occlusion: HBAO

These are the settings I set my girlfriends up and she has a similar spec to yourself, also using a 550ti OC but on a 24" Display. On a 1920x1080 display you really won't see alot of difference between using a small and medium-large amount of Anisotropic filtering (barely any difference at all). You should see around a 42-44 average FPS, but there are some spots in Operation Metro (around A on Conquest) that you will see a drop down to about 33-35 FPS. 64 player games shouldn't be a problem with these settings.

The frame issue you have isn't with the GPU, you will deffinately see a bit of a bottleneck from a Tri-Core Processor, but uprgrading for the sake of a few frames (and we are talking 5-10 frames here) isn't really worth the money. I'd plod on and save until sort of Medal of Honor Warfighter (if you're bothered about it) or BF4 and then do a full upgrade.

Hope this helps!
 

wr6133

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Thats the above settings

Honestly at that resolution I would crank it all low get a solid 60FPS visually there is barely any difference, playwise though 30 FPS average you will underperform compared to 60

*EDIT* at 720p those settings would get a higher FPS though