Upgrading from Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 to Core i7-4770K

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 (BF3) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released in North America on October 25, 2011 and in Europe on October 28, 2011. It does not support versions of Windows prior to Windows Vista as the game only supports DirectX 10 and 11. It is a direct sequel to 2005’s Battlefield 2, and the eleventh installment in the Battlefield franchise. The game sold 5 million copies in its first week of release and the PC download is exclusive to EA’s Origin platform, through which PC users also authenticate when connecting to the game.

Battlefield 3 debuts the new Frostbite 2 engine. This updated Frostbite engine can realistically portray the destruction of buildings and scenery to a greater extent than previous versions. Unlike previous iterations, the new version can also support dense urban areas. Battlefield 3 uses a new type of character animation technology called ANT. ANT technology is used in EA Sports games, such as FIFA, but for Battlefield 3 is adapted to create a more realistic soldier, with the ability to transition into cover and turn the head before the body.

Benchmark Results: With the settings at Ultra for both the new and old setups, I was quite surprised how little the new system affected frame rates in BF3. I netted just 7.5% more frames per second with 1920×1200 and a 6.5% increase with 1280×1024. Can you tell I reached the limits of my GPU here?

Like Metro Last Light, I wanted to see how CPU or GPU limited I was, so I ran BF3 in Medium settings.

Benchmark Results: This game definitely goes to show that I’m getting GPU limited here. With only a 7.6% difference at 1920×1200, I think it’s time for a different video card if I wanted even more out of it, even on Medium.