Sometimes? understatement of the year.. I run BF3 on ultra an get steady 30-35 fps in PS2.. The fact is that most people with a decent GPU are bottlenecked by their CPU at around 30-35 fps.. I'm pretty certain that if the OP upgrades to a dedicated GPU he should also be able to enjoy 30-35 fps The HD3000 is not meant for gaming, it's suited for displaying HD films and playing browser games, it ends there.
Both my machines drop to 30 FPS in big fights and if i get hit by the server lag at the same time, drops to 5 FPS. Forget everything you knew, this is a new level of hardware attrition. my PC was built by myself at a cost of around £500, my laptop was bought at a cost of about £700, if you don't have that kind of money, then i'd say you MIGHT get away with just putting in one of the previous generation 5 series like my 560Ti, but you will struggle for framerates, because your processor won't be able to send the information to your new card at anything like the rate needed. Also, check your power supply is able to handle the power requirements of a dedicated graphics card. The 560Ti might be old now,, but it takes 2x6 pin PCE connectors and needs atleast a 550 Watt (preferably 600-650 to be safe) power supply. My bet is your PC has something like a 350 watt power supply, so you will need to budget £50 for a decent PSU (don't be tempted to buy a cheap £20 one, if it goes pop, it will take your nice new graphics card with it). Also consider upgrading the RAM, i haven't yet and am regretting only having 4GB, try and up your self to 8GB while you're at it.
On a 7870 Asus Direct CU II overclocked and an i3 3225 unlocked to 3.4GHz. Honestly, I run this game on ultra textues and high graphics with shadows off and flora on medium. After Patch 2 I had to turn a lot of stuff to medium but kept textures on ultra. I don't know what you're talking about. You can run this game just fine on an i3, but most likely only on ivy bridge i3s and not on sandy bridge (at least as well due to the multithreading).
