Maximum PC

I knew that Battlefield 3 would not run great on my computer, but I wasn't expecting it to run this badly. My specs are:

Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.0 ghz
4 gigs DDR2 800
1gb GTS 250
Resolution 1920 x 1080
Driver version 8.17.12.8562 from 10/15/2011
Windows 7 x64

With everything on low or turned off I get about 25 FPS at 1920 x 1080. At 640 x 480 I get ~55 fps consistently with some drops to 45 fps. I have a hard time believing that I shouldn't be running a constant 60 fps on such a low resolution. Is there some sort of configuration change I can make to at least make this game get 40 or 45 fps with everyone on low at 1920 x 1080? It's not enjoyable to play the game at 20-25.

Sorry mate but that's the truth, your system is dated by 5 years now and quite a bit behind the times for playing the latest games. That gts 250 is basically a rebadged 9800 gtx, which really is even an older gpu. And no, there is no way for you to get your system working at 1080p res even on low settings at a decent frame rate. I'm surprised you can even get 20fps.

If you want to play PC games, time to pay to play. New system if you really want to get the true BF3 experience and honestly, it won't cost you as much as you think.

I built this PC in May of 2009 and I'm in college now so all my money goes towards that. I will probably have this computer for at least 3 more years.

I am aware that the parts are fairly old, but it does decent enough. I can get ~50 fps on Skyrim on medium settings, and ~45 on Starcraft II on high settings, so I was expecting a bit better out of low on this game. I know Battlefield 3 is suppose to be the 1000 pound gorilla for graphics, but that doesn't mean that low settings should still tax your system THAT much.

Skryim and Starcraft II are based on older gen game engines, while highly modified and they do have some more advanced API features from dx10/11 to push gpu's, the game engines are just more scalable for almost any gpu hardware; even on an Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics core built into an i5 or i7 cpu.

Frostbite 2 engine is really a much more modern and advanced gaming engine compared to those two. Lots of special effects, lighting effects, physics and layering a lot of meshes are happening in any given scene. And yes... this will tax your machine THAT much more.


This was THE game that everyone was upgrading for. The reason why even MPC did a whole article about building a killer setup to run BF3.

Upgrade your GPU. I have a E6600 @ 3.0 Ghz (overclocked) GTX 285, and 4GB of DDR2, and I ran the beta very nicely.

I agree, probably could get away with putting in a new card in there, but honestly, your cpu would still be bottle necking the gpu by a large margin. I had a 5870 in my Core 2 Duo machine and when I build my i7 system, I saw over twice the frames from the same card, and that was going from a 720p on the C2D to a 1080p resolution on the i7.

You could always attempt to OC to get a little more life out of the cpu, but even a good mid level card at half speed should still provide you with the necessary computational power to play modern games.

Your specs aren't bad. The video card is horrible. That needs an upgrade for sure. The processor could be upgraded also. Your machine appears to be obsolete for about 3 years. I highly recommend upgrading. If you need help ask me.

You need a quad proc and a new video card

shouldnt be that bad though
with those specs, it may be outdated as far as a gaming machine...but min requirements show it shouldnt be that bad
when games are like that for me i make sure all uneeded PC processes are ended