DICE preps E3 Battlefield 3 demo, mocks Call of Duty Elite

DICE has confirmed that it's putting the final touches on a playable demo for E3. Conference-goers will be able to play a multiplayer map called "Operation Metro," which appears to offer well-rounded glimpse of Battlefield 3's gameplay. Players will experience both large and small-scale combat along with the ability to disable vehicles, mount weapons and more, according to DICE GM Karl Magnus Troedsson.
Although folks at home won't be able to experience the action firsthand, the developer noted that EA will stream its press conference on Monday. According to GameSpot's countdown page, the keynote seems to start around 12:30PM PDT. You can also expect to see new trailers, screenshots and in-depth press previews next week, so there's plenty to look forward to even if you can't make the trek to Los Angeles.
Additionally, Troedsson announced some features that won't be showcased at E3, including an "extensive co-op campaign" -- a first for the Battlefield franchise. He also took the opportunity to mock Activision's recently announced "Call of Duty Elite" premium subscription service. Apparently, DICE is whipping up a Battlefield 3 "Battlelog" that offers similar social tools, feeds and stats free of charge.
Due in November and developed with the company's new Frostbite 2.0 engine, Battlefield 3 is shaping up to be one of the, if not the biggest PC game of 2011. Based on previous announcements, we know that the title features four classes, more unlockables than Battlefield: Bad Company 2, meaningful character customizations, as well as improved level destruction, character animations and war sounds.

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DiRT 3 GPU & CPU Performance Test

As one of the first games to take advantage of DirectX 11, we've been using Dirt 2 to benchmark graphics cards since its arrival in late 2009. Although it's been a crucial part of our testbed, Dirt 2 isn't quite as taxing as it was when the first DX11 cards arrived. For instance, today's GTX 580 can average 75fps while running the game at 2560x1600 with max quality settings. Likewise, the GTX 590 and HD 6990 delivered solid 70+ fps in our recent triple-monitor gaming review.


With Crysis 2 disappointingly restricted to DX9 and few other knee-buckling games on the immediate horizon, we've been eagerly awaiting the next iteration of Codemaster's racing series. The company answered our prayers last week, launching Dirt 3 for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Developed with the latest (v2.0) EGO game engine, Dirt 3 is a spectacular looking racing game with some surprisingly high, but also incredibly vague recommended system requirements.


Codemasters recommends that you play with an AMD Phenom II or Intel Core i7 processor and an AMD Radeon HD 6000 series graphics card, but fails to mention specific models or anything at all from Nvidia. Meanwhile, the minimum requirements say you can scrape by with a paltry Athlon 64/Pentium D and HD 2000/GeForce 8000 class graphics. While it's nice that gamers with five year-old machines can play Dirt 3, we're more interested in knowing what it takes to experience the game with all its visual splendor.
As usual we've compiled the performance of over 20 graphics cards, all DX11 capable, at several different resolutions.


Although we're not here to judge Dirt 3's gameplay, we can at least note the latest installment packs more cars, locations and tracks than its predecessor or any other game in the series for that matter. Players aim to climb the world rally standings as they race their way through weather-beaten rally stages in Europe, Africa and the US. Dirt 3 also introduces a game mode called "gymkhana," which offers a series of obstacle course challenges made famous by rally driver Ken Block and his various YouTube videos.

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GeForce GTX 590 vs. Radeon HD 6990

With the release of the dual-GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990, closely followed by the competing Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 we saw graphics card performance reach new heights. With bandwidth throughput in excess of 300GB/s, these cards can consume more power than entire computer systems. Moreover, the two GPUs on board of either product are so complex that combined make up for 11,000 million transistors.

Generally speaking this type of graphics card is designed for the most demanding of PC gamers as they enable ultra high resolutions without even thinking about compromising visual quality. As of recent the only problem faced by gamers is that we haven't seen a great deal of computer games that really push the envelope, like the original Crysis game did, for example.

Many had expected Crysis 2 to be the game that would bring even the most power hungry gaming systems to their knees. Sadly the reality was far from it as Crysis 2 in its current condition is nothing more than a well polished DirectX 9 engine port.

What we describe has become a widespread practice in the industry with a majority of new PC game releases being console ports to one extent or another — in the worst of scenarios to an overwhelming degree. Given the limited horsepower of today’s console, which are now up to 5 years old, games designed with them in mind fail to stress modern PC hardware.

AMD and Nvidia have seen this coming and decided to get a little creative. AMD was the first to aggressively push multi-monitor support with their Eyefinity technology. Announced along the Radeon HD 5000 series, Eyefinity allows you to connect 3 or 6 monitors to a single graphics card. By supporting SLS (Single Large Surface) the technology is able to group together multiple monitors which the operating system recognizes as a single ultra high resolution screen.

Nvidia responded with Vision Surround when they launched the GeForce GTX 400 series. Vision Surround has been adopted by the GeForce GTX 590 and it's been a driving force behind this graphics card offering.

By utilizing three monitors games can become roughly 3x more demanding as the graphics card is required to render an overwhelmingly higher number of pixels. Whereas we commonly test graphics cards at single monitor resolutions of 1680x1050 (22”), 1920x1200 (24”) and 2560x1600 (30”), today we are taking these and adding two more LCD monitors for effective resolutions of 5040x1050, 5760x1200 and 7680x1600.

We'll show you the kind of performance you can expect when playing nearly a dozen popular games using triple 22”, 24” or 30” monitor configurations.

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