Battlefield 3: Official Thread

You should be able to lower the resolution and see if the same dips happen. I would think that a cpu related bottleneck would still show with lower resolution and that would eliminate the gpu bottleneck.

They do indeed. @ 1280 X 800 they still occur.

@ 1080p I never drop below my 61 fps cap on empty servers. while Im not sure where the scales begin to tip, the dips are less pronounced with fewer players in game.

I tend towards 64 player full servers though.

You may want to start a separate thread if you're really concerned about getting to the bottom of this. It will get more visibility if it is out of this thread.