Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Benchmarked

[nosleep]

Sadly, this is not a good scene to gauge performance as it is not very demanding.

With that said, here are my results with a 4890 crossfire setup using the same scene and time frames:

1680x900 High : 68 fps average
1680x900 Low : 97 fps average
1920x1080 High : 68 average
1920x1080 Low : 92 fps average

Now, I say the benchmark scene is not that good for performance reasons because my fps can drop to 45 fps on other scenes. Specifically, a scene on mission one when ascending the stairs and sprinting into the small room right before you get to the roof with the sniper. I'm not sure what makes it so demanding, but my frame-rate drops like a rock every time.

Regardless, great article.

 

[Ephebus]

While ATI driver coders are at it, they might as well finally IMPLEMENT proper OpenGL support for their drivers, instead of the sluggish and buggy emulation layer we've had to put up with for years.

 

[call3z]

You say that Singleplayer doesn't care what processor you have. Is it the same in multiplayer? or will a lets say i5 760 handle it with 580 gtx sli?

Please respond!

 

[justjohn5]

I am so happy I decided to go with a gtx 570. Looks like it rips through the game with overall high fps. Thanks Toms!

 

[nebun]

[citation][nom]upgrade_1977[/nom]Not quite right How ports work:Games ported from console ---> PC = looks bad, plays badGames ported from PC ---> Console = looks great on both PC and better then most games on consoleBF3 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.[/citation]
if the game was designed to take advantage of most high end PCs then why is it that the game still looks and feels like a console game? trust me, it was designed to consoles in mind....crappy consoles if you ask me

 

[tinnitus]

is my PII 720 x3 2.8-3ghz enough or should I change my cpu? (4th core is bad)

 

[jecho]

Finally. I have been waiting for this

 

[cangelini]

You say that Singleplayer doesn't care what processor you have. Is it the same in multiplayer? or will a lets say i5 760 handle it with 580 gtx sli?

Please respond!

An i5-760 is a little unbalanced next to a pair of GTX 580s, but that config should be plenty capable of yielding good performance.

 

[bigoldbrute]

Nice pile of graphic cards : ).
Btw those post effects makes picture hard to enjoy. Whats wrong with those developer guys to make such a feature turned on by default !?

 

[sincreator]

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.

The best I can do is show you some old benchmarks of mine from Unreal Tournament 3 when I went from the 6400+ to the x3 710 Phenom II. IT WAS A HUGE UPGRADE. My FPS with 2 x HD3870 more than doubled. I had no idea that my CPU bottleneck was so severe at the time: http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/680572-HOC-UT3-Benchmark-utility The very first post shows my 1280x720 comparison of both CPUs and I also threw in the 1920x1080 individual result with the x3 710 PH II. The result was higher at 1080p with the new(x3 710) CPU than 720p was with the old(6400+) cpu. lol. So IMO a CPU upgrade is needed first. BTW UT3 is very reliant on the CPU, so this should show you a pretty good represtentation of what you were looking for.

 

[ojas]

Chris!- This is what i found on all three game modes today with a overclocked 9600GT.

No prob with shadows, and i get between 30-55 fps

I play at 1024x768, however so i could crank up the detail a bit:

Settings
Textures: High
Everything else: Medium
Motion Blur: Off
Ambient occlusion: Off
MSAA: OFF
FXAA: High
Anisotropic filtering: 16x
VSYNC: ON

In the Nvidia control panel, turned Triple Buffering on, rest set to "Application settings".

Cheers!

 

[Guest]

The 5970 beats the 6970 hand over fist. Is this a labeling error?

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]Breen Whitman[/nom]The 5970 beats the 6970 hand over fist. Is this a labeling error?[/citation]

Nope, it's AMD's confusing naming scheme. The 5970 is a significantly faster card.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]Chris!- This is what i found on all three game modes today with a overclocked 9600GT.No prob with shadows, and i get between 30-55 fpsI play at 1024x768, however so i could crank up the detail a bit:SettingsTextures: HighEverything else: MediumMotion Blur: OffAmbient occlusion: OffMSAA: OFFFXAA: HighAnisotropic filtering: 16xVSYNC: ONIn the Nvidia control panel, turned Triple Buffering on, rest set to "Application settings".Cheers![/citation]

None of that blockiness? Wonder if it has something to do with the High preset and a DX 10-based card, specifically?

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]None of that blockiness? Wonder if it has something to do with the High preset and a DX 10-based card, specifically?[/citation]

or the low preset the only things i had high were textures and FXAA.

nope, no blockiness, it looked pretty good, considering what was running it. Like Crysis 2 in DX9 on the high preset.

i used custom settings. if i remember correctly, you used the default auto settings? That sets textures to medium and everything else to low...which is what you tested at?

you mentioned shadows causing problems. maybe turning the shadows up a notch may help? i know partially applied ambient occlusion causes odd shadows at times (the last i tried was with NFS Shift), so maybe turning that off helps? (i think it's low-quality setting was turned on with the "low" preset).

i was actually surprised when i read your results, i didn't have any problems in the Beta either. I think i used the same settings then too. either the these or the medium preset, high was sort of killing my card

 

[fausto]

I play on a 22" 1680x1050, with an i7 930, and a 6970. I almost always play on 64 player servers, and I run the game on all ultra (MP I use no AA, SP I use 2x AA). These benchmarks seem pretty accurate to me. To help though, I did OC everything

Edit:
I should clarify, while clearly my average FPS in these servers is not the same as the Ultra preset FPS shown in this article (for a 6970), I still hold that a 6970 can play on ultra settings in big MP games.

That is:
A 6970 OCed to 925Mhz/1400Mhz can play on a 1680x1050 resolution, set to custom graphics settings - all set to ultra, and MSAA set to off, not just in SP but also MP.

Custom settings minus MSAA is not Ultra...that's custom. MSAA is expensive to run in this game. Without that you can't claim to run ultra.

While ATI driver coders are at it, they might as well finally IMPLEMENT proper OpenGL support for their drivers, instead of the sluggish and buggy emulation layer we've had to put up with for years.

what are people using opengl for these days? i can't tell you the last opengl game i bought.

 

[tychot]

[citation][nom]fausto[/nom]what are people using opengl for these days? i can't tell you the last opengl game i bought.[/citation]

ID Tech 5 and Rage.

 

[tychot]

I would be interested to know a little more about cpu performance. For instance, what cpu does it take to power dual 6990's running ultra at 2560x1600 in a 64 player game, or, how does the i3 handle 64 player games?

The reason I'm interested in cpu's is my mates looking to get crossfire 6970's to run high qual on his 2560x1440 screen in 64 player games and we need to find out if his current phenom X6 1090T is going to cut it.

Overall this has been an amazingly informative benchmark

 

[fausto]

[citation][nom]tychot[/nom]I would be interested to know a little more about cpu performance. For instance, what cpu does it take to power dual 6990's running ultra at 2560x1600 in a 64 player game, or, how does the i3 handle 64 player games?The reason I'm interested in cpu's is my mates looking to get crossfire 6970's to run high qual on his 2560x1440 screen in 64 player games and we need to find out if his current phenom X6 1090T is going to cut it.Overall this has been an amazingly informative benchmark[/citation]


informative about the single player...i put 0 minutes into that and only because i couldn't get into the multiplayer at first

 

[schkorpio]

i think it would have been a better idea to benchmark a more realistic representation of the game - rather than walking through a corridor 99% of the time - how often does that happen in bf3 multiplayer? ah heck all, hence the name battleFIELD.

this smacks of tomshardware being paid to make videocards look better than they are to generate sales from their site sponsors.

 

[schkorpio]

actually it worries me that $900 videocard only gets ~100fps inside a really tight corridor

 

[ojas]

BTW i noticed 800MB of VRAM usage, even at my medium DX10 settings. How much VRAM did the game use in high/ultra DX11? will >1GB cards finally make sense now?

 

[nerrawg]

Great article Chris, the fact that you guys bother to go in such depth to test a whole range of configs and then manage to get this article out in a timely fashion as well is definitely what puts TOMS a notch above a lot of other hardware sites!

 

[nerrawg]

Great article Chris, the fact that you guys bother to go in such depth to test a whole range of configs and then manage to get this article out in a timely fashion as well is definitely what puts TOMS a notch above a lot of other hardware sites!

 

[Guest]

Your test systems much suck. I get well over 70 FPS on ultra quality at 1080p with an ATI Radeon HD 6970.