Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked [X-post from r/battlefield3]
tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graphi...
tomshardware.comPosted Oct 28, 2011, 10:24 AM UTC
132114
tomshardware.comSo those CPUs eh?
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My poor e8400 c2d is getting raped. I try to join 64 players and it's unplayable on medium settings with a 6870, the processor maxes out and I lag like hell. I'm sure the i3 2100 is fine though since Sandy Bridge is so much better.
Ugh I need to upgrade to a 2500k soon.
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I have no idea why you were downvoted. A core 2 duo will bottleneck you, and the i3 2100 is indeed much more powerful, to the point where 2 cores wouldn't be a problem.
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$80 difference between the i3 2100 and i5 2500k at MicroCenter. If I'm putting together a rig, is that $80 worth saving, or should I just get the i5? I feel like I'm about to answer my own question, but since I do plan on playing other modern pc games besides bf3, I should probably just get the i5 and make my life a little bit easier?
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I would just get the i5 (I did). It really depends on the cost of your build, so an i3 isn't a bad option in some cases. I don't like it due to lack of overclocking, but at the same time it's going to perform just as well or better in most games than any Phenom X4 (and often just as well as a 2500k), and you'll have a nice upgrade path with the LGA 1156 motherboard.
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If that $80 means you get to upgrade from a GTX 460 to a 560 Ti, get the i3.
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He was downvoted because the i3 gets and unwarranted and inexplicable amount of hate around here.
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Thanks for the info, I was recently wondering if my e8400 can handle BF3, and to be honest I was almost sure that it can. People overestimate the power of CPUs needed to avoid bottlenecks (pretty much thinking that a high-end CPU is needed when buying a high-end GPU), but it seems that it's finally time to upgrade.
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32 player is fine on medium at 1080p. 64 is like 20 fps if that. I too thought the e8400 might handle the game. I was going to upgrade soon anyway though for other games.
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Could anybody explain why this post was downvoted? If the parent is wrong it would be nice to say why, instead of simply downvoting.
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Depends more on the map when you're playing 64 players in my experience.
I'd get 30 or so on half the maps and i can hit a solid 50 or higher on others, at 64 players. All medium settings at 1080p.
E7400 here, so even worse than that guy.
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Can you OC the e8400? I've seen nearly *7,000pts difference in 3Dmark06 from just overclocking.
*Edit for accuracy.
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Never tried overclocking it. I'm running the stock air cooler, I do plan to OC my 2500k when I get it.
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Finally we can put the "I heard BF3 will scale past four cores" behind us.
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Evidentially same for two cores, not sure how though.
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DAE feel this is one of the worst written and executed benchmark articles they have ever read?
The charts are spread out across 8 different pages, they don't bother to test 1GB vs 2GB, they test the effect of 4x AA but nothing higher, AMD/nVidia results on different pages... WTF!!
Looking at the 30 different charts I think 1 thing is clear. You don't NEED a pair of GTX 580s in SLI to enjoy the game at 1920x1080 on Ultra.
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Yeah, they don't even say what settings the SLI tests were run on (High, Ultra, Low?).
Not a great benchmark article.
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above the charts are the settings
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Oh. Whoops!
Still, navigating these benchmarks are a pain. Thanks for the info!
(I wish they reviewed my old-ass SLI GTX 280s, but you can't have everything haha)
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The article doesn't do crossfire or AA/MSAA/Post-process for enough of the cards, IMO. So I did some regression analysis so you can figure out the predicted frame rate given some variables
Crossfire frame rate given single card frame rate
> [Crossfire fps] = e^(1.712+0.7377*ln([singlefps]))
FPS with High post-process, 4x MSAA, FXAA given FPS under normal testing conditions (AMD only)
> [FXAA and 4xMSAA FPS] = -0.0598 + 0.6420 * [given FPS]
According to the models:
CF 6850s should give you 95.8 FPS. Add all the AA goodies and you get 61.8 FPS (give or take a few).
CF 6870s should give you 63.8 FPS with MSAA and FXAA
CF 6950s should give you 75.8 FPS with MSAA and FXAA.
CF 6970s should give you 82.4 FPS with MSAA and FXAA
CF 6990s should give you a blowjob for what you're paying for them. Also, the FPS is capped so I can't calculate it.
Let me know if you want me to do it for nVidia, I was just wondering about two 6850s.
Statisticians of buildapc, correct me if I'm wrong. I've taken two semesters of stats my whole life.
Edit: added more stats, formatting, fixed significant figures
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Good lord this is some cool math. Also good to know that grabbimg a second 6870 once the 7k series is out (and the inevetable pricedrop on the older cards happens) will be a sweet investment! Unless of course the 7k series is using alien technology or something.
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This should be at the top...
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So apparently Crossfire does a lot better than SLI in BF3, according to those benchmarks. There's like a difference of 15-20% in efficiency.
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generally crossfire scales better
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I have one 6950 and I'll get another one when I can no longer run ultra\high at >40. I can't think of a better way to do it =]
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For a 93% fps increase I can't justify not getting a second 6950.
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only matters if you have a 120hz monitor, otherwise you won't get any more than 60fps no matter what your card is doing.
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I have three. it is wonderful.
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The 6000 series has always been a great scaler, that was one of the main selling points of the 6850/6870 when it first came out. The cards were only on par with the lower 5800 series but scaled way way better.
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Actually I'm fairly certain the crossfire numbers are inflated due to microstuttering. The perceived frame rate will be much lower.
nvidia doesn't suffer from microstuttering as much as crossfire, so the two worlds are neck and neck
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Is microstuttering really as big of a problem as everyone makes it out to be? Is it even perceptible above 60FPS? Not trolling, real question.
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Very happy with my 6970 2gig right now and its performance here on Tom's, but reading his trouble with crossfiring is a bit disheartening. I was really looking forward to upgrading my PSU and throwing another 6970 on there around Christmas but now I'm just nervous about spending the money....
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some don't have the problems. ON the upside, the amd cards scale insanely well. my two 6950's do the same work as two 580's.
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That review stated that the xfire scaling worked fine until the last minute patch. I assume this is something that will be solved with subsequent updates. No reason to think it wont be.
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cool, cause I really want to do it. Not getting the full potential of my 120hz monitor with just the one.
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I'm running crossfire 6950 unlocked at about 6970 clocks on ultra at 1920 1200 getting fps between 75 and 95. So even with 2 6970 you probably won't be able to vsync at 120fps. Good setup though
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vsync no, but I'll be able to see those 75-90fps and 60hz would only see 60fps, right?
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Same, though I'm confused as to why the 5970 seemed to have tested better?
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It's not that strange. The 5970 is the 6990 of the 5xxx series, i.e. it's a dual GPU card (two 5870s to be exact).
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I see. That makes total sense, I never looked into it. Thanks!
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It makes sense as to why it would be so much better but their naming pattern will never make sense.
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me too, that was actually really strange. Looks like it is super high end for the 5000 series at this price: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS436US436&q=5970+radeon&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=5438854216561907006&sa=X&ei=w8mqTvSuM6nc0QGmrsC2Dw&ved=0CEMQ8wIwAQ
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I'm running trifire with 6950s and no issue. Happily plodding away, all settings maxed, vsync locked at 60fps always.
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I read the post title and thought they were running one game instance with 30 video cards.
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Does my motherboard support 30 way SLI/crossfire? I want to max Battlefield 3 and Skyrim, help me buildapc!!!
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I want to max Battlefield 3 and Skyrim
At the same time using a small nuclear PSU.
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Man those 6000 series cards scale well in crossfire, can't wait to get my 2nd 6870.
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Could someone explain to me why he couldn't stabilize the AMD cards? After reading it, it seems that he has to restart BF3 every time he switches resolutions. This, to me, is disturbing. I am looking for an upgrade to a 6990, if one ever comes along...
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Current driver weirdness. May be related to multi-gpu. Happens to me (3x 6950), my buddy (2x 5870) and another guy (2x 6950).
Since your settings sync with the cloud, you set them, crash once, and then it's fine. It'll be fixed soon, I'm sure.
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So, it's just mainly settings? Just need to set it just right with Catalyst? Was afraid that there were some main board issues or something of the like.
In your experience, you setup your 3 x 6950s and it crashes once then it's all right? What happens if you change your settings? I have to admit, I have never had any gpu related crashes similar to what was read.
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I haven't any other issues aside from random crashes/disconnects/PB kicks that affect everybody.
But, yeah, I toggled the main video tab to Ultra, changed FOV, turned on Vsync, hit Back, hit the keep settings buttons, and then it locked up. I used CTRL-ALT-DEL to get out. After that, it's been fine. All the settings are as they should be and FPS is fine. Something about changing the settings in-game makes it crashy right now. I wouldn't worry about it at all.
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I see. Guess it is merely a glitch. Hope there's a sort of patch either to the game or to Catalyst.
Thanks for your answers. Really appreciate them.
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AMD is due for an updated driver any day now. I'm sure it will be fixing a lot of BF3 issues.
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Can anyone tell me what settings the SLI and Crossfire were run at? I have looked all over the place, can't find it
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Probably Ultra, but default to High settings for a conservative guess.
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It looks like default High settings. If you compare the scores the single cards are getting they are within 1% of the results of the High scores.
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Heh, would be a nice change of pace to see mobile gfx cards included. I run a laptop with a 2.0ghz i7 and 6770m. BF3 runs pretty good on low on my 23" monitor. I had some problems with 1080p, but the lower settings worked fine. I havent bothred to bump up the gfx quality yet, I have a feeling my laptop might melt.
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Seems like AMD is better. Compared 1920x1080 on High
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Is the article stating that dual cores perform the same as quads generally or is that just for single player ?
I was agonizing over getting an Intel i3 2100 for my budget build
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Do it! I'm completely satisfied with my i3-2100 budget build.
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Yea i already built it and I'm quite happy with it. I went with the i3 2100 and hd 6870 and it runs very well and was able to build from scratch for around 800 (needed case, monitor, etc.) I'm still just a little sad seeing people gettin the 2500k for 150 tho but oh well.
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The i3 2100 has hyperthreading, meaning that it's two CPU cores are doubled to four logical cores. It should perform similarly to a true 4-core
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Hypertheading doesn't perform anywhere close to a real cpu core . Maybe 10% extra.
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Hyper threading isn't going to perform on par with an actual CPU core, (this makes up much of the performance difference between the i5 and i3) however the extra threads makes the i3 performance more similar to 4-core processors rather than 2-core processors. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=289
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The performance of the i3 has little to do with hyperthreading. The reason why it performs so well compared to a 4 core 955 is that each core in the Intel Sandy Bridge series is just so damn fast by itself. The two cores in the i3 can handle a similar amount of work as all 4 core in the Phenom II.
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also the last page of the article mentions that hyperthreading caused stuttering and needed to be turned off in some cases
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interesting. i was playing the beginning of the single player campaign with my i7-2600 and GTX 580 on Ultra at 1920x1080 and the drawfps was pretty consistently in the 35-50 range. i turned it to Auto, which looked in between High and Ultra and saw a jump to 60-80. my half-serious take-aways from this article is that i need: SSD, another 580, and a 120hz monitor.
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O_O i agree on the ssd but why another 580? i would only see the 120 hz being useful if you want 3d..
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my past gaming experience is entirely multiplayer fps, mostly when we did it on CRT's so i'd want as many frames per second as possible, hence the 120hz.
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120hz is so beautiful if you are getting 80+ fps. I bought a 120hz monitor and will only by them but I'm not using 3d.
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3d is pretty cool, if you get a 120hz monitor you should give it a try anyway.
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I have a 120hz monitor, I'll probably pick up some glasses sometime and mess around with it.
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Fuck me...
If you can run Crysis Warhead, Witcher 2 (minus ubersampling) and Metro 2033 on the highest possible settings, then you most certainly can run BF3. BF3 doesn't come even close to these 3 when it comes to gpu demand.
Those are the 3 most graphically demanding games imo.
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Crysis Warhead runs a lot better on my machine than BF3. Agreed about The Witcher 2 and Metro 2033.
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Is Witcher 2 really that much harder to run? With ubersampling, yeah, it's probably the hardest game out there to run, but without ubersampling I thought it was pretty close to BF3 in terms of graphics card requirements.
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Whelp, looks like buying the Nvidia GT 440 over the Radeon 5770 was a stupid idea. I didn't need this to tell me that though.
It's a shame they didn't include the popular i5 2500k in their benchmark tests though
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I doubt performance would have been much different, i5 2500k is probably within 2-5 fps of the i7.
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Im sure the i5 would perform the same as the other cpu's.... so not a shame
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Can't tell for sure until they test it though. I'm sure it wouldn't be that far off the i7 2600k but...
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560 Ti here. I'm consistently stuck at low teens with bursts up to 30-40 occasionally. Mostly happens on larger maps. I have a e6700 dual core at like 3.2 ghz though, which may be the cause. Anyone know if thats the case?
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Your processor should be ok. Not great, but ok. What settings are you running on? edit: if you hit [`] and type [render.PerfOverlayVisible 1] you will see a graph in the lower left of your screen. If the yellow (cpu) graph is higher than the green, and spikes occasionally, then you're having performance issues with your cpu.
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It automatically puts it at high, but even when i switch to the lowest settings performance only increases like 3 fps. This only happens on the 64 player maps really.
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sounds like cpu is holding you back. I'm getting ~75 with a mix of medium and high settings when nothing is going on on the big open maps. I don't see any bad performance spikes. My setup also includes a 560 Ti, but it's paired with a 2500k.
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Ah ok, that would be it then. Its slightly higher, but it will randomly spike 2/3 times its average for what seems like no reason
EDIT: Actually, now when I go in it still dips into the low 20s, but the cpu is slightly under the gpu, and they are both chilling in the bottom 1/4th of the graph. What the hell.
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If it isn't the cpu then it might be a case of bad drivers.
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It was like this in the beta with nvidias old beta-beta drivers, and with their new official drivers for bf3. So probably not.
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For some anecdotal evidence:
AMD Phenom 955 Black Edition @ 4.00ghz
4gb RAM
Sapphire HD 6850 (Core clock @850mhz, Memory clock @1150mhz)
Runs at 60fps on "High" settings. It can run higher, but I turned vsync on because screen tearing is really annoying.
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does anyone notice the static bags ontop of those fuzzy carpets?? maybe i was living in fear.
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Aw dang. I knew I shoulda chose 6950 over my 560ti. AH well, the main reason i jumped on the 560ti was because it came with arkham city and i figured I could save 50 dollars.
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Why can't they just compare all of the cards in one big chart so i can easily compare the ATI cards to the invidia cards? i read an article like this for an easy comparison, not so i can spend 10 minutes going back and forth to find out the true winners.
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open up two tabs? thats what I did. not ideal but a quick work around.
no worries, someone on reddit will compile it on a spreadsheet in like 3, 2, 1.....
*ehem
You mean like this?