Over 20% high-end PCs fried at the Battlefield 3 booth at GamesCom 2011, now with video!

There seems to be a rather huge problem overshadowing the next installment of Battlefield. The game, Battlefield 3, seems to be rather unoptimized. During our behind-the-scenes gameplay hands-on we saw over 14 machines that either broke down during our hands-on or machines that were already disfunctional when we arrived.

[Miiikeyyy]

It's so good it destroys Pc's? :O Holy shit

[evrfighter]

its a play on words.

DICE says its a driver issue. Author has no clue that

fried cards = dead no longer usable
bad drivers = perfectly fine card still

could be called a troll article if you will.

[BakedGoods]

I've heard of drivers failing to compensate for heat/fan activity which fries the card.

[Volomon]

BakedGoods is right, it wouldn't be the first time bad drivers = fried cards. Nvidia put out a bad driver not that long ago that fried cards. Think this was only 6 months or so ago.

What's worse is these are computers chosen to show off the game so, how the hell didn't they check it before the showing? THAT is what is telling about how bad BF3 is (possibly). It almost doesn't matter what the driver was because they should not have updated to unstable/new drivers if they were untested for demo purposes.

[Solidus187-SCMilk]

also if this is true it probably has something to do with them being on constantly all day.

[malol]

at those booths they have to run it at SUPER ULTRA setting since they are marketing it and want it to look as best as possible

then again im sure the final product is going to be more optimized and hardware friendly than what it is right now

[TheIneffableBob]

@BakedGoods

Yes, but that's very rare. Video card manufacturers make sure to have proper safety features in place so that they don't have to spend millions on unnecessary replacement costs.

[superrey19]

@bakedgoods
Yea I've heard of that, but at that point the fault lies on the GPU manufacturer such as Nvidia AMD/ATI, not on the game.

[Ocelot525]

a gpu driver controls the fans, a bad driver CAN destroy your GPU.

some years ago nvidia released faulty drivers that destroyed GPU's

[SilentNegotiator]

"also if this is true it probably has something to do with them being on constantly all day"

Good thing there aren't any gamers that will do that.
/s

lol

[RedDragan]

Was the room properly air conditioned?

Just asking lol...

[Kakkoii]

@Ocelot: The GPU driver does NOT control the fan speed. Fan speed is part of the cards internal BIOS. Even if you have no graphic drivers installed, the fan on the card will still run to keep it cool. To change fan speed, you need to use a program like MSI Afterburner, which can modify the bios.

[vortis]

@Kakkoii

What an absolutely fail comment, dude.

No offense but ATI drivers DO control fan speed from the driver-to-firmware-to-hardware process from the CCC.

I keep my fans at 85% at ALL times, and sometimes higher when I'm in Crossfire mode.

I lost an ATI 4x card because it had faulty drivers and wouldn't turn the fan up when playing games that utilized specific shaders, which really put the card into overdrive. The drivers eventually caused the card to fail because they were unoptimized for that series.

I also lost three Nvidia cards due to the same reasons. But they were part of the 7x series which were known to fail anyway due to overheating.

[hiredhelp]

yeh i do know that while pre alpha was going on. they did realese a beta drive for nvidia.
supposidly cos when the game launches nvidia will have a proper signed driver to run bf3. thoe not heard about ati cards.

[gamingdroid]

This is one of the reasons why I don't like PC gaming. It is superior in graphics, price and control, but man does it suck to d!ck around with incompatibilities.

[ATi_Elite]

Actually that was the new anti-camping software kicking in. LOL

[KwietStorm_BLM]

lol!

[Solid_Snake-]

lol.

[NBT91]

lol.

[sourav93]

lol.

[Snakefist30]

lol.

[RyuCloudStrife]

lol.

[LordLaguz]

lol.

[Vip3r]

lol.

[TheComedian]

lol

[Bull5hifT]

LMMFAO i Lub Mi Sum C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker .............................. ............................... ,EDIT:im an A-Hole by Da Wey

[Istanbull]

lol? are you there?

[turgore]

lol

[PickAShoe]

lol

[kingslayer1000]

lol

[clarkdef]

lol

[pixelsword]

olo!

...D'oh!

[Semir]

lol

[Ice2ms]

C-C-C-C-C-ombo Breaker v2.0

[bub16]

lol.

[Northtouch]

lol

[PwnerifficOne]

lol.

[Undeadwolfy]

lol.

[Why o why]

lol.

[SkullBlade169]

lol

[Organization XII]

lol

[Tr10wn]

lol

[Zanarkand]

lo.ol

[Sticky__Rice]

lol!

[Acezakj]

mw3 <- LOL.

[ilikegam3s]

K that means, that wen i get bf3 it will kill my gfx card, then i can claim warranty :D then buy a new tank card hahah.

[MostJadedGamer]

Why do people still play games on the PC. There are so many problems with PC gaming that it is a flat out joke. We see another one of the many, many, many reasons why PC gaming is dying.

[hazeblaze]

Lol, PC gaming is not dying, it's growing. And people still play on PC b/c it a better playing experience. I have a PS3 and a gaming pc. There is not a single game on consoles that have graphics that approach my pc!!!

And while most games on consoles are 720P or less, we have games in 1440p on pc. More detailed graphics than you've ever seen if you only game on console.

Basically, I only buy exclusive for the PS3... which is cool b/c it has some great exclusives. (Then again, PC has more exclusives than ANY console).

[radphil]

Definitely live up to your name as mostjadedgamer. :p

[ilikegam3s]

you must be kidding right?

[specialguest]

Traditionally, the PC version of a game often has more features and modes. There are also hundreds of mods created by the mod community(all free). Mods for visual changes, sound, weapons, and even create a whole new game. Console only gamers have no clue how cool mods are. Remember Zombie Mode on COD? Yeah, that could have just been another mod, nothing unheard of.

Another key factor is when you play a mutiplatform game on the console vs the PC, you will find that the level of competition is dramatically different. There are more casual players on the console and therefore more noobs. Where as on the PC, most players are serious and the level of competition is greater. I've experienced this first hand many times. One example is SF4. Played both the PS3 and PC version online and PC players are hardcore.

Also, the PC version of a game is often times the definitive version. It's everything the developer intended the game to be with no cut backs.

[rattletop]

pc gaming is dying?
lol
http://www.yeahthatsfunny.c...

[Asgaro]

Haha "PC gaming is dying" ?
Where have I heard that before?
Oh I know, EVERY SINGLE MONTH OR SO I read that statement.

We're still here, you know. PC gaming will never die.

[MostJadedGamer]

"There is not a single game on consoles that have graphics that approach my pc!!!

And while most games on consoles are 720P or less, we have games in 1440p on pc. More detailed graphics than you've ever seen if you only game on console."

Who gives a crap about graphics when you have a million other problems to worry about with PC gaming. Graphics are meaningless if the game frys your PC.

PC gaming in general is such a buggy unplayable experience that graphics are totally meaningless.

[dreamtheater87]

Sweeping generalisations are absurd. Issues can crop up from time to time sure, but any good developer/publish will address them.

I rarely have PC issues, and it's not like consoles are immune to it. Red ring of death, PSN network going down? Shit happens.

Plus, I see it as a good barrier to entry for PC gaming. Morons like you don't play PCs because you can't work out how to download a patch or search for a solution.

[damnyouretall]

dude wth. star wars old republic, bf3, arma3. i love my consoles but pc is still the shit

[hiredhelp]

MostJadedGamer
Over the course of the past few years or so devs had put most efforts into consoles. there for resulting in fixes and patches for some pc games. even drivers.
But im here to tell you that alot of devs have decided they comming back to the pc game side of things. so things will get better not slacking off. Why do pc gamers bother If you ever had a good system and played some decent games youll know the reason why pc gamers do what they do and love.
When something isnt right beleave me pc community kicks ass dont roll over we make sure things get sorted.

[MRMagoo123]

SWTOR lol you use that as an example of pc gaming being good????

[Zanarkand]

Get shit on

[hazeblaze]

I don't buy that for a moment. The game couldn't fry the system... the gpu or cpu would have to overheat. If they overheated, it is more likely to the machines being overclock'd than the game itself.

If you overclock your machine and don't monitor the temperature, there is always the risk of overheating.

If it were a problem with the game, it would just cause the game to crash... not the entire system.

[JsonHenry]

The game COULD fry the system, and here is a recent example - http://www.gameinformer.com...

[JsonHenry]

I remember when SC2 launched it was killing video cards by making them overheat. They patched it though so it doesn't do that any more. But it CAN happen. Not sold out on this story though.

[ATi_Elite]

GPU's burning up lol yeh that happens like every other Series!

Sometimes it's a games software and sometimes it's a bad card! I remember the dangerous Nvidia driver set 196.75 that was burning up Nvidia cards left and right!!!

and the 8500GT idling at 80+C

the HD4870 and 480GTX were shipped with Fire extinguishers cause they ran so hot. LOl

[xAlmostPro]

This is worrying as im currently planning to upgrade my PC to run bf3 and skyrim :/ i really don't wanna fork out for my comp to go on fire haha

[zeddy]

this could just be players ejaculating sticky subtances caused by overwhelming excitement.

[FanboyPunisher]

Not really worried; even if it was the HW it wasnt the software that did it; it was the HW itself that failed the SW just showed the issue.

[hiredhelp]

UPDATE!! this must be serious just did a google on every site the video been taken down.

[ALFAxD_CENTAURO]

But how a game can decompose a hardware? If the game is not optimized, then is not working as it should been working, but it can't decompose a piece of hardware, it should appear errors messages or any other kind of notification.

Seems to be more like the maintenance as a custom build or any other technical issues from the beginning that is not related with the game.

[Northtouch]

Thats how badass this game is. I dont know how but I think Chuck Norris is invloved somehow.

[Jack_DangerousIy]

Really? We are still doing the Chuck Norris thing?.
Ugh. lol

[neonlight45]

If Chuck Norris still thinks they are funny, who are we to say otherwise.

[RedDragan]

Chuck Norris doesn't think they are funny. He thinks kids need to grow up a bit.

[Northtouch]

Lighten up its a joke. Jheez.

Im sorry for trying to be funny :|

[Mr Patriot]

ok

[WhiteLightning]

What is this...Brainiac Science abuse :)

<British TV Show for those who havent seen it>

[dark-hollow]

British tv shows suck....
That comes from someone who lives in England.

[Jacks_Medulla]

Spaced, Top Gear, and the Inbetweeners say hello.

[Hicken]

Although I really only watch the comedies, I have to disagree with you.

I also note that you didn't say you were British, only that you lived in England.

[WhiteLightning]

British tv shows suck......

Whaaaa

Nearly all the old sitcomes on GOLD say hello

Plus IT Crowd, Blackbooks, Father Ted, Inbetweeners, 8 out of 10 cats, QI, etc

You have to admit Britain has the best Comedy shows

[r21]

one great show: Doctor Who

[Jocosta]

What about The Young Ones? Old, yes, but still great.

[iagainsti120]

@Dark-hollow British TV is better than most American TV this coming from an American. I have been watching Doctor Who Since 1994 (i loved the classics), Little Britain, The IT Crowd (its also my avatar :) ), Top Gear, Red Dwarf, Monty Python, i could go on and list more but i dont feel like it right now.

Now on point this seems like a driver issue "NVIDIA machines were running 128.12 drivers." For a GTX580 the current version is 280.26 so those drivers are SOOOOOO out dated. hell 196.75 was causing GPU's to melt down. So im going to chalk this up to a troll journalist with an agenda.

Edit - Not to mention that the whole web site seems dedicated to Positive MW3 News and negative BF3 news (just from skimming the headlines of other articles on the website). Just take a look and you will see.

[theonlylolking]

Top Gear is the only good show that comes from the british network.

[specialguest]

There is no originality on most American tv shows. A lot of it was borrowed from other countries.

[Imalwaysright]

"You have to admit Britain has the best Comedy shows" No just no im not american or british but the best comedy shows are american. Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 3rd Rock from the Sun and the king of kings All in the family are waaaaaaaay better than any british comedy shows.

[WhiteLightning]

@Imalwaysright

LOL...American comedy better

No...just no, that's what Britain is well known for

The Likely Lads, Fawlty Towers, Allo Allo, The Good Life, Are You Being Served?, Yes Minister, Only Fools and Horses, Absolutely Fabulous, Red Dwarf, The Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted, Blackadder, One Foot in the Grave, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Porridge, The Thin Blue Line, The Office, Coupling, Game On, Rising Damp, On the Buses, George and Mildred, Man About The House, the now unfashionable Love Thy Neighbour, Monty Python's Flying Circus Spaced, Father Ted, Black Books, Peep Show, Green Wing, The Inbetweeners, The IT Crowd, Shameless, Da Ali G Show, Bo selecta, Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, French and Saunders, Absolutely, Little Britain, The Catherine Tate Show, The Fast Show, As Time Goes By, Steptoe and Son, Dad's Army, Keeping Up Appearances

and those are just off the top of my head. What's a matter can Americans not admit it because it's true most of the world recognize this. The US have tried to do America remakes of our shows more then us copying them....alot off them don't even make it through the pilot

[Ju]

@iagainsti120 I highly doubt that. BF3 asks you to update to a 280.x driver. I am not even sure if you can run it with a driver which isn't supported. The beta required a driver which wasn't even released - I had to download a beta driver. The 280.26 released just a couple of weeks ago. Mine still froze, even with the 280.26 driver.

[Imalwaysright]

1st Im not american!
2nd I cant even believe that you mentioned blackadder wich is boring as hel, Allo Allo is to repetitive and gets boring fastl yes minister its very intelligent but its not that funny and i never heard of half the shows you mentioned.

3rd just from the top of my head Everybody loves Raymond, agent 86, Bill cosby show, the jeffersons, Prince of Bell air, How i met your mother, Shit my dad says, Frasier, Titus, mash, Cheers and Big Bang Theory (imo the best comedy show today)...

I like the acid humour of Brittish comedys but i think that american comedys are lighter, convey their stories better and often touch moral issues. In the end their both good and enjoyable.

[darando]

Still game anyone :)

[ATi_Elite]

The game hasn't gone GOLD!

They are still gathering data to see what's the best optimization and system requirements for BF3 and who knows some morons at Gamescon could of just spilled their drink on the PC or jizzed their pants and kicked it really hard!

[dark-hollow]

That's a lot of drinks spilled.......

[ATi_Elite]

well they carry a lot of drinks

this might explain the drinks spilling!!

[Solidus187-SCMilk]

or alot of jizzed pants.

[Jazz4108]

Don't forget Benny Hill

[GamersRulz]

welcome to PC world, where you need to be careful or you would get fucked up.

[btk]

I like my games realistic but dang....

[MARKUS_MAX1MUS]

meh probably old code, we will see how the beta runs because very few games ever change that much at all once in beta stage, they can say its old code all they like at that stage but the game will be sitting in a warehouse by then ready to be shipped.

[Bay]

Could be due to external factors, like room temp and insufficient cooling area, airflow, etc...

I've never heard of a game that was directly the cause of parts frying, it's usually an external cause unrelated to the game itself.

[Lavalamp]

Frostbite? More like heatstroke! Hahahahaha... oh I'm not funny.

[allyc4t]

That was good!

[Motorola]

Maybe it happens when you lose a match, that's more of an incentive to play the objective and win than any other FPS out there.

[Gamer_Z]

If those high end PC's are catching on fire than my laptop would probably explode in my face if i tried to play BF3.

[Pandamobile]

Not necessarily. Usually overheating comes from overworking the GPU on unnecessary things like running a menu with an un-capped frame rate.

L4D running at 200+ FPS made my videocard heat up way more than Crysis at 40-50 FPS.

[JonnyBigBoss]

I'm so sick of gaming on PC. I only touch mine when I want to play an MMORPG.

[caboose32]

Thanks, we all really needed to know that.

[karlowma]

These systems were likely thrown together just for the show. Any PC builder knows that there is a period where you work out the quirks in your system, dealing with incompatibilities, tweaking frequencies and voltages, getting everything to run optimally. I kind of doubt we will be seeing any "dead PC's" specifically from this game.

[aGameDeveloper]

In my experience, many companies are donated machines from PC manufacturers, just for the period of the show. These may be models that are not even on the market, yet, and thus may have issues that have not been ironed out. You show up the day before the event, grab the PCs from the manufacturer's loading area, and wheel them over to yours to install your game (the manufacturer may drop them off at your booth). If you are lucky, they will at least ship one to your office a few days before the event to test out.

[KingSlayer]

Tis why I console game.

EDIT:

DRIVER ISSUES??
OS ISSUES??

lol XD

[malol]

RROD ??
YLOD ??

lol XD

[malol]

lol
90% of PC issues are fixable
and all parts are replaceable too

but on consoles
you are f*cked if you are out of warranty
which most likely you are already out of

consoles burned = trash buy a new one
graphics card burned = replace it new card = an upgrade !! = win !!

[peowpeow]

Warranty + RMA ftw

[KillerPwned]

Hmm This is a fishy article.

"There were both NVIDIA and AMD machines scattered around the area, the NVIDIA machines were running 128.12 drivers."

That pretty much says it their, in Alpha it asked for Nvidia drivers that were not even out yet but i still had the latest installed. Alpha still worked perfectly it was just a error EA had then announced to everyone.

This is not the first time i heard this happen with big name games coming out for PC. So this is nothing to worry about at all.

[Eu]

Problably some drivers arent up to snuff and/or the code is yet to be optimized to said drivers/hardware and such....at least I do hope so...

PC games...where the devs can simply trow the code on the hardware and HOPE it doesnt end up burning it....because we all know IT CAN happen...

[josephayal]

Why pc? PS3 is way more powerful than any super pc ever build

[caboose32]

Are you f*cking retarded?

[Mikeyy]

LMAO!

[trenso1]

ROFL!

[Sieg]

This is an example of a bad troll. Read and learn people....

[Voxelman]

It's probably more an issue of having a hundred high end PCs in a room full of people plus alpha drivers. It's not a problem with the game (other than the fact it's probably using every resource possible) but a problem with overheating.

Also considering it's still an Alpha build and you generally don't start heavily optimising until Beta it's not surprising it's not fully optimised yet, not that optimisation has much to do with hardware overheating.

And at least it's not as bad a failure rate as 360 lol

[1PC2PS33360]

no way!!!

alpha software with problems????

weird!

/s

and I seem to remember the xbox360's going to mass market with a 54% failure rate, sounds like dice is doing pretty good with alpha code!

I'm on my 4th 360 and second ps3...fatty died and it was a sad, sad day!

so lighten up, this game will be pure gaming bliss on pc, on consoles it will be amazing too for what they are!

[tomazi]

What are we seeing here? two PCs turned off... indeed... legit story.

This whole story is kinda fishy IME - I call Bullshit:

["Every build has different system requirements so we're not sure". It seems the developers are just coding away without looking at how things affect the game.]

-I played the Alpha... and that statement is just plain wrong.

[Therefore it seems that the developers are not really paying any attention to what machine the average gamer has. The game wasn't running 60 FPS on high either, even though the machines were supposed to be high-end systems.]

-Wow, what a journalist - great conclusion... the author is welcomed to look at the story showing the benchmarks from all kind of PCs a Russian site held during the Alpha. you'd be surprised by the sheer number of low end card who ran the game (in it's Alpha build)

-how does he know the FPS and the settings? anyone saw fraps in the video? if he was recording the while he was shown that why can't we see it?

-Again with the amazing journalistic skills: if he'd bothered to try and find out what PCs were used he would have found they're not High-end... but ultra High-end with 580 SLI or 6990... if you want to use that kind of H/W I suggest to make sure the rig is done by real professionals... there are

[It is fairly surprising that no other gaming-related website is reporting this issue, perhaps due to the no-camera policy inside the Battlefield 3 booth. However, since we believe that this is an issue that should be known to every PC gamer and Battlefield fan we're going to post it anyway.]

-even the author comments that no one else is reporting this (you can report it without the uninformative video).

[redcar121]

pc gaming is giving gaming a bad name

[Jio]

CTRL+ALT+DEL comic as picture? I just threw up a little.

[pijinio212]

i blame DRM on this failure..lol

[Rovdjuret]

Last time i checked, the game was in alpha might be why its not optimized....
thats just me...
Troll article

[bozebo]

Bad PCs, probably installed by some marketing deal.

[MasterCornholio]

Feel the power of the dark side

[Neko_Mega]

Battlefield 3, so awesome not even Call Of Duty could blow your computer away lol.

Fun.

[Big_Dom]

Fried machines? I highly doubt it. In fact, I doubt a single machine "fried" during the convention. The machines probably just crashed or froze and there is nothing more to it than that other than faulty code or bad drivers.

[Ingram]

Bad setup probably.Why has this slightly derived on PC vs console gaming...?

[Ju]

LOL. Ha ha. Yeah, uncontrolled shader power. I had a beta key - but my ass old 9800GT couldn't handle that game. Ran for 10sec and than the driver crashed. I thought that was just my PC, but LOL, push shaders and the GPUs give in. LOL. I think this is the first game really squeezing a PC.

[lizard81288]

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.modmywhat.com.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Great Story
>_______>

[Anti-Fanboyer]

20% my ass. Repi on twitter confirms bullshit.

[Somebody]

When I first played Company of Heroes, it damaged my PSU. It was a cheap PSU so I was just asking for it.

Yeah the article is trolling. Trying to get the console's gamers' up with this little incident since everybody's attention is all on the DX11, 64bit PC version. What a sad attempt using an unfinished, unoptimized game to make a point.

[parasit3]

ths gam3 mus b beast thn

[Sebianoti]

Can someone fix the site for god sake? or give us a link to the video?

[nilamo]

why is this considered a good thing?

[kesvalk]

DOOM 3 had the same problem on launch, it fried a lot of video cards...

[MARKUS_MAX1MUS]

Tried to tell you Origin was a bad idea.....