Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked

[upgrade_1977]

Toms great article!! Been waiting for this review. Could you please do an article on how to make high quality 1080p fraps video's on youtube? The quality in that video is awesome, and no matter what I do I just can't get my video's to look that good.. Tried watching youtube how to video's and about 10 different programs, Sony vegas seams the best to me but my video's still don't look "THAT" good.. THANKS


GOD I LOVE THIS GAME!!
On my setup I don't have any micro-stuttering w/hyperthreading (or sli)
This game runs great, and is the best looking game i've ever seen. Can't get enough.

Here is a 20 min video I made if anyone is interested:

BF3, PC, 1080p, Ultra settings, Single Player Compilation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw0qFuyGZHY

This is a compilation of single player footage from me playing the first day after release. Actual gameplay graphics are much better in video, I ran fraps in half quality to keep FPS smooth during recording. Love this game!! IMO this is the best game ever made!! Best single player, Best multiplayer, Best graphics, Best sound, best gameplay..
Soon as I get some time to play i'll make a multiplayer video. If you like this video and want me to make more video's pls give thumbs up, or comment. Thanks!!

Game Settings: Ultra Settings (preset), 4X AA, 1920 x 1080 (1080p)
FPS w/ fraps off average 60-100 (varies alot sometimes hits 100+ Game runs great very well optimized IMO)
FPS w/fraps on 30-60

Recorded with fraps = Half Quality
Edited with Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10.0
Nvidia drivers = 285.62

System:
Windows 7 64bit Ultra
Gigabyte EX58-UD3R SLI
i7 920 @ 3.2ghz (hyperthreading enabled)
8gb DDR3 (2x4gb) Corsair Vengeance 1600
2 liquid cooled Nvidia Gtx 480's in sli (stock speeds)
H.D. = Hitatchi 1TB 7200 main system
2nd H.D. = Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 for fraps

 

[HistoryBuff44]

great article. kinda glad now i didnt upgrade from my 5850 to 6850 a while back

 

[gallovfc]

How about 720p on mainstream cards ? Some of us buy these cards then later decide to get a second one for a Crossfire/SLI array. Would it be necessary ??

 

[nebun]

like i said before, ported games will not look good on PC...no matter what you do to them

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]gallovfc[/nom]How about 720p on mainstream cards ? Some of us buy these cards then later decide to get a second one for a Crossfire/SLI array. Would it be necessary ??[/citation]
sli and corssfire will bring your frames up and have a better play experience in almost any game

 

[upgrade_1977]

like i said before, ported games will not look good on PC...no matter what you do to them

Not quite right

How ports work:

Games ported from console ---> PC = looks bad, plays bad

Games ported from PC ---> Console = looks great on both PC and better then most games on console


BF3 was designed on PC first, and then ported to console, thats why looks better then any game i've ever seen, and it runs very, well for the amount of visuals it has.. I really can't believe it runs as good as it looks. It's very well optimized, my friend has it running (on low settings) on an old dell xps quad core with dual 9800gt's in sli, and it runs decent.

 

[blbeta]

There are some CPU limits for people like me who have really old one. There are just some games that don't run well. BF3 is a recent one and Champions online never ran well either. They do not like my old tech.

During Beta: I would almost never go above 30FPS often dipping to 15FPS. The map with vehicles? Forget it. These numbers did not change on high vs low settings. Also barely changed going form Native 1680x1050 all the way down to 800x600

Most games do still play well with medium-high settings.

AMD Athlon X2 6400+ (3.2gHz)
4GB Ram
GTX 260 896MB (core 216)Tried most recent drivers and beta one ment for BF3
Win 7 64bit

I'll be upgrading CPU, MB & RAM first to see how that effects it. My CPU had a good run but is getting too old tech wise. If I still don't get decent FPS@1680x1050 then I will do Graphics Card as well.

 

[Guest]

I'm a sad little monkey. My 6850 doesn't look like it does so hot on there. I have the Black Edition though... I wonder how much, if at all, that matters here. I just bought the darn thing too.

 

[Guest]

I notice that when the article references 1680x1050 resolution, it's followed by the statement, "However, I’m willing to bet that you didn’t buy a $300+ card to play on a 17” screen" Why would you even make this comment, when 1680x1050 is typically on 20-22" monitors?

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]FG[/nom]I notice that when the article references 1680x1050 resolution, it's followed by the statement, "However, I’m willing to bet that you didn’t buy a $300+ card to play on a 17” screen" Why would you even make this comment, when 1680x1050 is typically on 20-22" monitors?[/citation]
Most recent 20-22" monitors I've seen have been 1080p.

 

[ikaruga]

Thanks for your work, but if this is a review for gamers, why there are no "min fps" values? (imo those are the most important numbers in competitive fps gaming)

 

[linford585]

[citation][nom]Chris Angelini[/nom]Sure, a 6970 might handle 1680x1050. But if you’re rocking a $350 card and gaming on a 17” monitor, it’s time to go shopping![/citation]

Gotta make a quick note on that there Chris!
Not too long ago, 22" monitors were all 1680x1050, and 24" were all 1920x1200. I'd say most people at the time didn't want the aspect ratio of 1920x1080 on a PC. Many of us are still rockin those 22" 1050 monitors, and it wouldn't make sense to upgrade to a 1080!

That said, I love maxing BF3 with my 6970!

(Just skimmed through the review at the moment, can't wait to read it all later, thanks!)

 

[Th-z]

There were concerns that because AMD's driver hasn't supported DX11 multi-thread rendering, the performance for them in BF3 would be bad. But after seeing benchmarks across different sites, it doesn't seem to affect them at all. I am curious, is it because:

1. Even the engine supports it, the game or level design didn't expose the benefit of it.
2. The scenes used for benchmark didn't expose the benefit of it.
3. AMD driver is doing something else to minimize the impact.

Maybe Tom's can do some investigations into this?

I know it's a lot of works for you guys, but perhaps a follow up of this review to include Phenom/Athlon and Core 2 in the test, to see how older platforms do in BF3. It's rare that an AAA title targets PC as primary platform nowadays. So people please, if you're going to play this game, support it by buying it.

 

[clonazepam]

[citation][nom]blbeta[/nom]There are some CPU limits for people like me who have really old one. There are just some games that don't run well. BF3 is a recent one and Champions online never ran well either. They do not like my old tech.During Beta: I would almost never go above 30FPS often dipping to 15FPS. The map with vehicles? Forget it. These numbers did not change on high vs low settings. Also barely changed going form Native 1680x1050 all the way down to 800x600 Most games do still play well with medium-high settings.AMD Athlon X2 6400+ (3.2gHz)4GB RamGTX 260 896MB (core 216)Tried most recent drivers and beta one ment for BF3Win 7 64bitI'll be upgrading CPU, MB & RAM first to see how that effects it. My CPU had a good run but is getting too old tech wise. If I still don't get decent FPS@1680x1050 then I will do Graphics Card as well.[/citation]

I'd start off with a graphics card update first... someone with more experience with your particular processor can chime in, but I'm not sure the performance boost from a more modern cpu/mobo/ram combo will have nearly the same boost going from a 260 to something more modern like a 6950/6970/560/570...

If you play GTA IV, then you definitely want to uprade everything. For a game like this, and Crysis 2, the cpu will probably have the least amount of influence on game performance.

This is all from a "gaming only" perspective because I'm not going to pretend to know what you do with your pc.

 

[geekapproved]

HistoryBuff, a 5850 to 6850 would not be an upgrade, it would be a downgrade.

 

[geekapproved]

It never amazes me the stupidity of some of the people posting on this forum.

 

[BlackHawk91]

Nice article but I would have really liked to see a more GPU demanding benchmark.

 

[bradleyg5]

Anybody else having troubles with MSAA? I have two GTX 460 1GBs in sli and I get 45-50fps on ultra with 4xAA but there are these frame drops where it goes to 20-30FPS and stays there for an amount of time and then goes back to 45-50fps. it really feels random in that I can play through the exact same area or look at the same action and get either frame rates.

I was having this issue in the beta as well. Is it that the 1GB isn't enough video memory to do 4x AA? I'm really curious if anybody else is having a performance issue like this.

 

[zer0net]

It should be ok for my 5770 dont feel like upgrading for now.

 

[ITsonic]

[citation][nom]orellius[/nom]nevermind my comment about 560 Ti, I see it in the benchmarks (high) but it is not on the main page list of cards (missed putting it there?) (yes, I used the search feature in my browser, no 560 to speak of)[/citation]
Go to http://www.gpureview.com/ and find out.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

[citation][nom]bradleyg5[/nom]Is it that the 1GB isn't enough video memory to do 4x AA? I'm really curious if anybody else is having a performance issue like this.[/citation]
That's entirely dependent on the resolution you're using, but based on the symptoms you've described it sounds more like a driver issue. If your vram capacity was causing a bottleneck, then you would probably see consistently low performance.

 

[burtzz]

guys there's something about this charts that let me really thinking about it.

I'm buying a new rig next week, so I read this article very closely.
I'm tend to favor AMD, because it was always my brand on GPU's for years and I'm pretty satisfied.
But even being an AMD fanboy, theres something that I really want to know, its how precise and correct this charts are.

THIS:
2xHD6950@1080p=118fps ; 2xGTX580@1080p=116fps

I was going for a HD6970, but the fact the the performance at ultra is poor (even believing that its a driver issue because at high quality hd6970 goes over a gtx580), and after seing the crossfire performance, I really may stretch my budget and go for 2xHD6950

 

[burtzz]

guys there's something about this charts that let me really thinking about it.

I'm buying a new rig next week, so I read this article very closely.
I'm tend to favor AMD, because it was always my brand on GPU's for years and I'm pretty satisfied.
But even being an AMD fanboy, theres something that I really want to know, its how precise and correct this charts are.

THIS:
2xHD6950@1080p=118fps ; 2xGTX580@1080p=116fps
Is this correct??

I was going for a HD6970, but the fact that the performance at ultra is poor (even believing that its a driver issue because at high quality hd6970 goes over a gtx580), and after seeing the crossfire performance, I really want to stretch my budget and go for 2xHD6950

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]Never had a problem with it before. Normally I wouldn't set them down bare like that, but delirium had set in at some point and the assembly line got a little more sloppy ;-)[/citation]
Totally understand, this is one colossal review, i mean i wouldn't last past the 2nd day had i been the one testing. Great job!

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]That's entirely dependent on the resolution you're using, but based on the symptoms you've described it sounds more like a driver issue. If your vram capacity was causing a bottleneck, then you would probably see consistently low performance.[/citation]
yeah...not low performance though, i suspect it would crash the game :O
i was playing AA2 and had set the AA level to 16xQ super-sampling. shot over one gig on "SF Snakeplain". game just crashed.
Needless to say, America's Army isn't really the most efficiently coded game....

Remember the 6950 1GB vs 2GB article? i don't know if BF3 actually uses more than 1GB...someone will have to run GPU-Z or something...i won't know till tomorrow, though i don't think that it'll be the VRAM that'll bottleneck my 9600GT with this game

 

[IM0001]

Could the DX10 Nvidia problem be anything to do with the fact that the AMD(ATI) Cards are DX10.1?