Today we are going to be taking a look at a recommended build for Star Wars Battlefront II that is UNDER $1000 based on the recommended settings. In addition to that, we will be taking a look at some initial benchmarks for Battlefront 2 on four different graphics cards tested during the current open beta.
DICE has a great track record of optimizing their games extremely well on the PC with the Frostbite engine, enabling users to get great scaling on a wide variety of hardware as long as you’re willing to get in there and tweak some settings to get 60fps consistently. Surprisingly though you won’t need to break the bank to run Battlefront 2 even up at Ultra settings. Here’s a look at the minimum and recommended requirements from DICE:
Star Wars Battlefront 2 Minimum PC System requirements:
OS: 64-bit Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
Processor (AMD): AMD FX-6350
Processor (Intel): Intel Core i5 6600K
Memory: 8GB RAM
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB
Graphics card (NVIDIA): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB
DirectX: 11.0 Compatible video card or equivalent
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Hard-drive space: 15 GB
Recommended PC System requirements:
OS: 64-bit Windows 10 or later
Processor (AMD): AMD FX 8350 Wraith
Processor (Intel): Intel Core i7 6700 or equivalent
Memory: 16GB RAM
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB
Graphics card (NVIDIA): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
DirectX: 11.1 Compatible video card or equivalent
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Hard-drive space: 15 GB
So now that we have this information we can begin discussing a killer parts list that should allow you to run Battlefront at ultra settings while still maintaining 60fps at 1080p.
Optimized Under $1,000 Star Wars 2 Battlefront PC Build
| MSI Gaming B350 TOMAHAWK | AMD Ryzen 5 1400 | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB | EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 GAMING |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
| WD Blue 250GB PC SSD | WD Blue 1TB | Phanteks Eclipse P400 | EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 |
 |  |  |  |
CPU & Motherboard
There’s no denying that AMD rocked the boat big time in 2017 in terms of the amount of performance it can offer with their new lineup of Ryzen processors. For the price to performance, I feel that the Ryzen 5 series probably offers the best bang for the buck since it still has hyperthreading which will help in Battlefront with how well its optimized to utilize all cores and threads available to it.
For that reason, I’ve decided to go with the Ryzen 5 1400 which retails for around $160 at the time of writing this. For that, you’re getting a great quad-core CPU with hyperthreading and the ability to overclock. On top of that, AMD includes their Wraith Stealth CPU fan cooler which does a great job of cooling this particular CPU since the TDP is quite low at just 65W.
Thankfully there are also quite a few good B350 boards out there that won’t break the bank at less than $100 and won’t really limit you that much except for connectivity on the backside of your PC. So for the mobo, I’ve picked the MSI B350 Tomahawk at $80 because I’ve personally done extensive testing on it and used it in two different builds in the past. One the board first launched alongside Ryzen 7 earlier this year it had some issues with different types of RAM, but since then MSI has deployed a number of BIOS updates that makes this no longer an issue. Just be sure to update your BIOS if you decide to pick it up.
Graphics
This is going to be one of the most important parts of any gaming build, but you won’t need to go too crazy to hit 60fps on Battlefront 2. For $200 you can grab the EVGA GTX 1060 3GB card which is a great value in the current GPU market. In my testing, the GTX 1060 6GB card can even handle 1440p quite well as you’ll see later on. You could of course go with the 6GB card, but that will cost you about $60 more with this model. I do feel that price increase is worth it. However, more and more games are pushing video memory usage these days over 3GB. So if you have a few bucks left, then this is where I’d spend it.
Memory & Storage
With Ryzen, memory speed is incredibly important to get the most out of the CPU because of how AMD’s Infinity Fabric works with the different cores talking to each other. So I’ve gone with 3000MHz clocked Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM with 16GB on two DIMM’s. Overall it’s a very good memory option for AMD’s Ryzen. Thankfully that won’t hurt your pocket too much as the difference right now between the 2400MHz version and 3000MHz is only $10. You just have to enable the default XMP profile in the motherboards BIOS and you’ll be good to go.
For storage, I would suggest an SSD to pretty much anyone unless you’re on an extreme budget. Solid state storage has also become much cheaper than a few years ago and you can now find several drives at 256GB for under $100. The Western Digital Blue SSD goes for $90 and should do nicely for your OS and even some games if you want better load times. If you have the extra space its certainly worth considering putting Battlefront on the SSD to load the game and levels faster.
You wouldn’t want just 256GB though especially if you plan to install other games. Most new AAA titles these days are anywhere from 20-50GB’s and some even more than that. A 1TB mechanical should do you fine like the Western Digital Blue drive for just $50.
Case and PSU
For the case, you have nearly unlimited options and at the end of the day you should pick what suits your taste and needs best. However one chassis does stand out in my mind as an easy recommendation and that’s the Phanteks Eclipse P400. For $70 you’re getting a very well designed and thought out enclosure from the guys over at Phanteks that makes it incredibly easy to build in. You’ll also have plenty of space if you want to expand the build out in the future. Lastly it has great routing for cable management so the final build should look quite tidy.
Last but certainly not least is the power supply. I pretty much always suggest EVGA G2 series PSU’s and this will be no different. You can grab the 550W and it will be more than enough to power this system. With Ryzen only drawing 65W and the incredible power efficiency of Nvidia’s Pascal graphics cards, you really don’t need much more than a nice 550W modular PSU.
So what type of performance can you expect? I did a series of benchmarks on my Intel i7 7700K which is also four cores and four threads albeit a bit faster than the Ryzen 1400. In my experience, it should not present an issue for getting good performance on the 1400. I tested on four different graphics cards on the latest drivers for AMD & NVIDIA at 1080p and 1440p on ultra settings. With the specs out of the way here’s a look at the average FPS and 1% low of all frame times captured.
Star Wars Battlefront II GTX 1080 vs RX Vega 56 vs RX 580 vs 1060 Benchmark for 1080p and 1440p
Test Benchmark Video for SWBF2
Summary
As you can see the GTX 1060 6GB version did a smashing job at running the game over 80fps average at 1080p and I would expect performance on the 3GB version to be on par with that. If you’re looking to do 1440p you may want to strongly consider the 6GB GTX 1060. The only reason I’m not suggesting an RX 580 here is because in the current market they’re damn near impossible to find and when you can they are usually being sold above market value since cryptocurrency miners are gobbling up every AMD card they can find because of there better compute performance compared to NVIDIA.