User blog comment:Bovell/Battlefield 3 Alpha Trial system requirements/@comment-24.16.133.95-20110728055458/@comment-1990578-20110728075458

You may want to get a quadcore CPU, but everything else is fine.

For settings in the alpha, there's only "low", "medium" and "high", as well as monitor resolutions. The three options don't let you change anything since the game is still in alpha; advanced options will be added later.