Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked

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Are you wondering how your PC will handle Battlefield 3 before buying the game? We pulled a series of all-nighters to get almost every graphics card in our lab tested, in addition to a handful of processors, to answer your performance-oriented questions.

Benchmark Results: Nvidia Graphics Cards, SLI

I don’t have duplicates of everything in Nvidia’s portfolio, but I do have some of the cards you’d be most likely to combine in SLI for a game like this one.

Using High quality settings, we can see that there’s some overhead at 1680x1050, yielding the worst scaling (though I’m not sure how many people consider 58% and up horrible).

Step up to 1920x1080 and you can almost get away with two old GeForce GTX 285s. Unfortunately, a lack of DirectX 11 support and some nasty visual artifacts with low Terrain Quality automatically dialed in means I wouldn’t recommend that configuration in Battlefield 3 anyway.

Stick with a couple of GeForce GTX 570s and even 2560x1600 is available to you. At that decidedly graphics-limited resolution, you’ll see the biggest gains attributable to SLI—from 76% to 80% using a GeForce GTX 500-series card.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
315 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kyosuke
    pffft. My HD 6870 handles Ultra maxed just fine!
    Reply
  • jrnyfan
    Great review, thank you very much!
    Reply
  • great review. but I am curious if a gtx 560ti can run ultra on a playable fps? because I am about to buy one :D
    Reply
  • orellius
    nevermind my comment about 560 Ti, I see it in the benchmarks (high) but it is not on the main page list of cards (missed putting it there?) (yes, I used the search feature in my browser, no 560 to speak of)
    Reply
  • orellius
    blah, I guess my first comment didnt come through, nevermind then! ha
    Reply
  • spentshells
    Wow does it look good, I played the demo on Xbox did it ever look dumb
    Reply
  • m0th2
    sirus3020great review. but I am curious if a gtx 560ti can run ultra on a playable fps? because I am about to buy one
    Without any form of AA you can run it on ultra and get over 30fps on every map @ 1920x1080 easily (over 60 when close quarters). Depends on your cpu and if you OC your gpu though. i have mine at 940/2100 and its always above 40fps.
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    AWESOME! thank you very much for this. looks like i wont have to upgrade my CPU then. i have HD4870 and i play this on medium settings but still i want the ultra settings. :)
    Reply
  • aznshinobi
    Great read, lovely to see a wide assortment tested, specially my 5850. Thanks for taking the time Chris, I'm sure it must've taken FOREVER to bench and swap all those cards.
    Reply
  • canadian87
    Frikkin' finally, now I can upgrade safely. :)
    Reply