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Battlefield 3 specs - imac good enough?

T

Travis Bickle

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 11, 2011
54
0
found these (unofficial) specs for BF3:

  1. Minimum
    Hard Drive Space: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version
    OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7
    Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHzRAM2GB
    Video Card: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible Nvidia or AMD ATI card

  2. Recommended
    Hard Drive Space: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version
    OS: Windows 7 64-bit
    Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPURAM 4GB
    Video Card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, GeForce GTX 460, Radeon Radeon HD 6850

i'm looking to get the 21.5" imac:

  • 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
  • 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB
  • 1TB Serial ATA Drive
  • AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GDDR5

sometime this year and wondered how does the Radeon HD 6770M compare to the recommended Radeon HD 6850 ?

Before i get flamed i know that imacs are not primarily gaming rigs and i have indeed built gaming rigs in the past but as i'm getting one for the first time and intend to keep it for some considerable time i wondered how good it would be for playing the odd game of Battlefield? I've only ever really played the BF series of games going back to 1942 (still the best and WW2 is so much better than modern as a theatre of war - but that's another debate) and hoped that i could fire it up to maybe get in touch with some old clan buddies to reminisce and maybe frag a few of them on my shiny new imac ;)

cheers all.
 
So far Bad Company 2, the latest title is very demanding.

My gaming rig has 4.0Ghz i7 930, GTX470 in Sli, 6G of Corsair Dominator. It runs around 80fps on max setting on 1920x1080.

Using medium setting, same resolution and only on one GTX470 (no sli) i get on average 60fps.

Really i dont think you can run that with Macs. Never look for those games minimum requirement, 2.0Ghz core2duo would either take 20minutes or crash instantly when you load a game.

Anyways even if you can run it on a Mac, the keyboard and the mouse (or even trackpad) will not help to your gaming, if you switch for a gaming set, really compromises the 'elegant' factor of an iMac.
 
You probably won't be able to run it above medium. Bad Company 2 was a doozie, and I expect no less from Battlefield 3.
 
I would get the highest end iMac, the BTO model.

Quad Core i7 3.4GHZ
4GB System Memory
AMD Radeon HD 6970M with 2GB GDDR5 Video Ram

Should get you the Medium-High Settings, at least default.

Thats what I will be ordering in about a month and a half.
 
Of course it will be able to run it, the question is how well. The 6770M will probably be fine for playable framerates at low- to medium settings at most.

If you want to use an iMac for a bit of gaming, the 27" with the 6970M is the best option. Skip the i7 upgrade if you're on a budget, the graphics card is all that matters in most 3D games.

BTW: The 6970M is actually a slightly underclocked 6850, but don't expect it to run high settings at the iMac's native resolution.

kixx said:
really i dont think you can run that with Macs.
Click to expand...
Macs will play that game just as good as any normal PC with similar hardware would. Just don't use the highest settings and you'll be fine.

kixx said:
2.0Ghz core2duo would either take 20minutes or crash instantly when you load a game.
Click to expand...
*rofl*
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

The high end 27" meets the recommended specs for Battlefield 3.
 
I've been using bootcamp on a 27in for about a year now, and I can play just about everything on medium settings.

That being said, I do not recommend buying an iMac in hopes of playing BF3. I am currently in the beta for Battlefield 3 and can't play it. Unfortunately Apple does not provide the latest drivers for the graphics cards in the bootcamp package (they're always a year or more behind the curve). I've tried installing a couple of different drivers from AMD, neither of which fully take hold.

The problem is that some games require you to have the latest driver sets and refuse to play without them. Battlefield 3 just happens to be one of these games. I get an error stating "Detected AMD driver 10.7; minimum 11.7; please update drivers before playing the game." Some people claim to have better luck with the mobility drivers over the bootcamp drivers that AMD offers. I've seen no benefits to either of them as far as being able to play BF3.
 
Last edited:
Icy1007 said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

The high end 27" meets the recommended specs for Battlefield 3.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't. It meets "minimum" by a good margin. The recommended is a desktop 6950. That card is way faster than the 6970m. The 6950 is closer in performance to my 5870 which is faster than 5770, 6850 (6970m based on), 6870, 6950. I know it is all confusing to people.;) The desktop 6970 is almost 75% faster than the mobile one.
And no one is talking resolution. You could probably play just fine at 1280x720 but no way in hell you are doing 2560x1440 at pretty much any setting other than lowest.

Here are the REAL specs:
Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) 32-Bit
Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ or Althon X2 2.7 GHz)
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics Card (AMD): DirectX 10.1 compatible with 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 series, with ATI RADEON 3870 or higher performance)
Graphics Card (NVIDIA): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 series with NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT or higher performance)
Sound card : DirectX compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD ROM Drive

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
Processor: Quad-Core CPU
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 20 GB
Graphics Card: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 or ATI RADEON 6950)
Sound Card: DirectX compatible
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD ROM Drive
 
Last edited:
I've been playing the BF3 alpha and beta on my current gen high-end iMac with the 2gb 6970m, ssd etc.

With all settings set at medium on a resolution of 1920x1080 it flows like a charm, no lag and no issues at all. It just looks amazing. I could probably tweak it a lot more as I use a older version of the catalyst drivers and the game requires the latest to actually run but I bypassed that as I was way to eager to start playing.
 
desudesu said:
I've been playing the BF3 alpha and beta on my current gen high-end iMac with the 2gb 6970m, ssd etc.

With all settings set at medium on a resolution of 1920x1080 it flows like a charm, no lag and no issues at all. It just looks amazing. I could probably tweak it a lot more as I use a older version of the catalyst drivers and the game requires the latest to actually run but I bypassed that as I was way to eager to start playing.
Click to expand...

I can't even get it to run. It returns an error 'Detected AMD Driver Version 11.2; minimum version 11.7; please update drivers on http://www.amd.com before playing the game.'

I have an iMac 2011 with Radeon HD 6970m with 2Gb - updated drivers from amd.com - same error. Not sure what to do.
 
High end iMac 21.5" here, upgraded the ram to 12 gig, can run the Beta on high at 60 fps. I know the Beta isn't true representation of high graphics so I'm expecting low/med. :)
 
Driver Issues

Had a lot of issue with drivers on my 2011 21.5" iMac with Battlefield 3 Beta tried to install AMD drivers, but could not get them to work. Fell back on Bootcamp, but the driver versions on there are fine for older games, but they don't update them fast enough for newer games. The beta chugs along on 11.1 which is what bootcamp has avaliable the 11.7 that is needed is not. Don't really have time to mess around with my computer like this being in university. I guess whatever will just have to play Battlefield 3 on my 360 at some point or wait until bootcamp updates. I am studying interactive arts and sciences a computer game development program should go do some school work on that, but if anyone has a insight about drivers solutions available it may save me a lot of guess work.
 
MrCod said:
I can't even get it to run. It returns an error 'Detected AMD Driver Version 11.2; minimum version 11.7; please update drivers on http://www.amd.com before playing the game.'

I have an iMac 2011 with Radeon HD 6970m with 2Gb - updated drivers from amd.com - same error. Not sure what to do.
Click to expand...

Log into th battlefield battle log thingumajig and there's a notice to download the latest bf3 specific drivers. I had to install those and then it worked fine.

Performs really well too :)
 
I finally got the beta AMD driver 11.8 to stick. Game is running good. Now if I could just figure out how to change all the settings without actually being live in a game!
 
I just switched from a PC with Core 2 Duo, 4GB, and a HD6850 1GB. To a 27" iMac with the 6970m 1GB, i7, and 4GB of RAM. It runs SC2 almost as well as my PC did, but at native resolution, whereas my PC was 1900x1200 or something close to that.

So I'd say that the top 27" model should just about meet the recommended settings, which would run well on medium settings, more or less. Seems like to run games at max settings you need to go pretty far beyond the developer's specs.
 
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