According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.
We configured the game to run on three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. We also dropped the Texture quality from ultra to high.
EDIT: We updated our results a few hours after publication after we discovered an (as yet) undetermined glitch with the secondary 3960X EE system and the beta AMD driver. We had to reinstall the operating system and the driver as the HD7970 GHZ core seemed to be downclocking when running at 5760×1080 resolution. This was brought to our attention when we noticed 3DMark Vantage scores were dropping below 20,000.
The HD7970 GHZ slots in between the reference clocked GTX680 and the overclocked KFA2 GTX680 LTD OC card at these settings, averaging 76 frames per second.
I dont get it… i may be a little dumb here, i dont get it, i bought a 7970 Black edition card which was OC’d to 1Ghz + on the core, and had dual fan cooling when the 7970 was released ages ago now.. so whats different, and what would i be getting extra for my money now?
fair review, seems like a good card, and i love AMD hardware, but yeah the reference coolers do not impress. Sapphire should make a great version with heatpipes, two fans etc.
Interesting to see the power concumption has increased. I doubt it will hit £400, probably closer to £430.
id wait for sapphire or XFX models, with improved coolers, they normally can match the reference card price.
Yeah im not sold on this, its going to cost too much for what you get. Nvidia OC 570s are much better value for similar performance.
@muppit.
Basically very little apart from a worse cooler and slighty faster memory…
its alright. but whats the big deal? bring out a new card with a better cooler or something. clock it higher? not very creative.
problem is, amd`s heads are a bunch of cowboys in suits because: for amd to survive, it needs a CEO like nvidia, someone who knows gpu`s or even something about games… i bet Rory has never played a game, so what would he know about coolers, fans, temps and performance? relying on AIB`s or OEM`s will get you bankrupt..wait & see AMD.
not only is Rory going to kill amd but the whole amd crew is going to, bcoz none of them seem to have any clue.