Given the ignorance with which Bethesda named the official System Requirements, I imagine that the Launcher was created equally stupidly. Set the quality settings sensibly and ignore the launcher.
Ignore the first part of this comment and follow the second.
It appears to me that there is simply a lot of hardware issues. These can and will be fixed in patches, so if your computer SHOULD be able to run at Ultra, my guess is that some time soon it probably will.
My computer, seen below, can run BF3 almost all the way up. But Skyrim auto-detects at High, and is unplayable at Ultra where it should be. I haven't been able to narrow down the culprit because I'd rather play the game on High than not at all.
That said, my dad's computer auto-detects at Ultra even though it is fairly weaker than mine.