Yestereday we reported that the build of Battlefield 4 currently running at the Xbox booth at PAX  Prime is actually a PC version running on high end PCs. Some tried to diminish the issue by arguing that those PCs aren't actually high-end PCs, but either Xbox One development PCs or rigs with specs similar to the Xbox One to faithfully represent what Xbox One owners will see when they'll finally get their hands on the game. 

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Unfortunately, that's not the case at all.

Yesterday a picture of the PCs used to demonstrate the game at the PAX Xbox booth was posted on Reddit by user DanTMWTMP (you can see it on the right, click to enlarge). The picture is dark and blurry, but it does show some rather unmistakable elements of the rig, that is actually an officially licensed "Battlefield 4 Official Gaming PC GOLD" by the German manufacturer MIFcom, and commercially available (if you're willing to spend the € 1,399 it costs). It's also the same PC used by EA DICE to demo the PC version of the title at Gamescom as you can find stated in the product page itself.

The case is a custom version of the Corsair Vengeance C70 Gunmetal Black, with battlefield branding and red glow added to the side glass panel. The button panel on the front top is unmistakable, with the large power button followed by the hard drive led, headphones and mic jacks, two USB ports and a very noticeable reset button with a military-like safety cover.

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I'm sure some will pick up the fact that the power button appears red in the picture above, but that's just because the power is off. When the computer is powered on and in the dark, the red cover doesn't show (as it's completely opaque), and the power button appears white just as in the picture from PAX, as you can see below (picture courtesy of HardwareHeaven).

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And it's not just the same case. First and foremost, the custom Battlefield 4 case (indicated by the intense red glow on the side) is available only with the licensed PCs by MIFcom (the product page says "Exklusiv bei MIFcom - in Zusammenarbeit mit EA Games", which means "Exclusive to MIFcom - in collaboration with EA Games"), but there are some clear elements that tell us the story of what's inside the case as well.

The case itself has a large grilled panel on the top for ventilation, In the picture from PAX we can clearly see a bright glowing spot through the grill. That's the glow from the backlighted logo of the Corsair H100i  CPU water cooling block, which is the same included in the PC by Mifcom. You can also clearly see its reflection on the interior of the box used to hide the PC.

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The most telling element is small, but very visible. The red glow is not the only one noticeable as it reflects against the wooden box used to hide the PC. It's easy to see a blue-purplish secondary glow. That's a very peculiar element of a very specific kind of video card (there aren't many video card available with their own leds, let alone with leds of that color): we're talking about the MSI Radeon 7970 Lightning, a $475 high end video card.

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Of course the licensed Battlefield 4 PC by Mifcom has exactly the same video card; the configuration used at Gamescom had two of them to be precise. Above you can see the opened case with the cards inside (led glow included) and below there's a nice close up of the GPU by itself, with its very peculiar leds in plain sight (picture courtesy of OverClex.net).

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As the picture below shows, the PC also seems to use exactly the same green backlighted keyboard used at Gamescom, the only big difference is that at Gamescom the machines weren't hidden and didn't have Xbox One controllers attached.

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Since the PC is commercially available, we have its precise specs, that I included below for your perusal:

  • CPU (Processor): Piledriver AMD FX-8350 (4.0GHz 8x, 16MB cache)
  • CPU Coolers: H100i Corsair CPU water cooling (2x 120mm Fans, Dual Radiator)
  • Mainboard: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 (AMD 990FX, USB3.0/SATA3, Military Standard)
  • Graphics card: Lightning BE MSI AMD Radeon HD 7970 (3GB | 1070MHz base clock - 1150 MHz Boost)
  • Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 CL9 (2 x 4GB DIMMs)
  • SSD: 120GB Corsair Neutron GTX (SATA3, 550MB / s / 550MB / s)
  • HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2TB (SATA3, 64MB cache, 7200rpm)
  • Blu Ray Drive: LG GH24NS95 (24x Double Layer)
  • Sound Card: HD audio onboard
  • Power Supply: Corsair Gaming Series GS 600W (80PLUS Bronze, 140mm Blue LED Fan, Semi-Passive)
  • Case: Corsair Vengeance C70 Black Edition BF4 (USB 3.0 Portable)

That's most definitely a high end gaming PC. In comparison, the specs of the Xbox One aren't even in the same order of magnitude and the rig definitely isn't a fair representation of the console's performance. Of course the version of the game is the PC one, as demonstrated by the PC UI and mentioned by TotalBiscuit in his video impressions. He also explains that it had some spotty framerate drops. You can pretty much be sure that a version of the game designed to run on console would literally fly on this kind of high end PC.

These are all the facts we could gather. Now you can draw your own conclusions.