Battlefield 3 Performance - 1,920 x 1,080

This is where it gets tough, as 1,920 x 1,080 is not only a demanding resolution, but it's also the most popular among PC gamers. In fact, according to the Steam Hardware Survey, over 20 per cent of users are gaming on 1080p screens.


It looks as though DICE's claims weren't wrong; with the Ultra preset and its 4x anti-aliasing, even the fastest single-GPU cards are unable to produce a minimum frame rate above 46fps, let alone 60fps. The AMD cards seem to be particularly badly affected by the application of 4x AA, with the HD 6970 2GB managing a minimum frame rate of just 34fps; only 1fps more than the much cheaper GTX 560 Ti 1GB.

Further down the order even potent cards from last year such as the GTX 460 1GB struggle, just surpassing the minimum playable frame rate of 25fps.


Switching from the Ultra preset to High drops the 4x AA, and while the image quality is reduced, the performance is much improved, especially for AMD cards. Every card manages a minimum frame rate of above 25fps, with every card from the GTX 560 Ti 1GB managing a passable minimum frame rate of 44fps.


The drop to the Medium preset disables much more of BF3's graphical finery, including motion blur and most of the anisotropic filtering. It also switches from HBAO to SSAO, and drops the anti-aliasing post processing to medium, as well as dropping all the detail settings.

The result is noticeably reduced image quality, particularly around edges, but also substantially improved performance. Even at 1080P, we see cards from the GTX 560 Ti 1GB upwards deliver minimum frame rates of at least 55fps, and even low end cards are able to top 30fps.


At the lowest settings, all anti-aliasing, ambient-occlusion and motion blur is disabled, in addition to the low detail presets and a drop to just 2x anisotropic filtering. However, most cards now manage a minimum frame rate of at least 60fps, even at 1080P.