Bf3 vs athlon ii 270

[brent10soccer10]

i have 8gbs of ddr3 1600, 4890, and the athlon ii 270 @ 3.8Ghz. i know the gpu and ram are sufficient to play bf3 but will a dual core cut it?
how about perhaps overclocking to 4Ghz?

 

[deadjon]

The Athlon II is fine

http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page7.html

If a 3.3 Athlon II can run it on high with an min FPS of 41 - your 3.8ghz one can too

Unfortunatly the 4890 will struggle with anything over medium settings at higher than 40fps, so oddly enough it is the bottleneck here

Your looking at a 6970 to make the Athlon II 270 a bottleneck on BFIII

 

[HEXiT]

bf3 is pretty much a tri/quad engine in other words it really does benefit from up to 2 extra cores. even with a 4890 you should be getting more than 40 fps on medium as your not using the dx11 feature set which is what hammers performance in this game.
but the reason your not is because the cpu is holding the card back. i guarentee that if you run gpu-z you will see your gfx will struggle to get more than 50% usage. and you will get terrible fps bounce (fps goes from good 30+ to bad 5+fps)

so i would recommend you get a x4 athlon as soon as your budget allows, if you can. that way you wont have to replace everything.

 

[deadjon]

HEXit I have NO idea what you are talking about here - If an Athlon II @ 3.3 can deliver 41fps minimum with a 580 at high settings, a 3.8ghz Athlon II should be able to provide 45 - 50.

Conclusion - your CPU is FINE for BF3 - it is not CPU Limited - look at the benches I posted.

 

[HEXiT]

you can look at the benches all you want, im talking actual experience...

 

[deadjon]

@ HEXiT - Fair doos, I personally have no experience with BF3

An Athlon II @3.8 or 4.0 will give you playable framerates - this I am 100% sure of.

After looking at info for the 4890 I realise underestimated its power - it should be able to play BF3 on medium with pretty damn good frames - the CPU will actually be a limiting factor here (In Multiplayer anyways)

Its your choice though - an upgrade to a Quad will yeild results but as far as answering your direct question - Yes the Dual Core will cut it - just maybe not as well as I initially thought

 

[HEXiT]

thats the problem. the 4890 is a powerful card. powerful enough to cause that athlon to bottleneck the frostbite engine. normaly i would say its a reasonably well ballanced, even if a little gpu haevy system. but frostbite really will show up the cpu. they had exactly the same issue with bad company. if your gfx was a little overpowered compared to your cpu. the game would limit gpu usage to 50 percent and cripple framerates...
the benches i have seen where they measure dual core performance are often on 2500k's with 2 cores dissabled which to be fare is a pretty pointless benchmark because no 1 in there right mind would have a 2500k and then hobble it in such a way...
i cant find 1 bench that uses a true dual core, because they know the news isnt good even though the minimum requirement is a 2.4 dual.

 

[deadjon]

The frostbite engine is actually very kind to Dual Cores

Its the 64 Player maps that arent xD

On Single player the GPU will be the bottleneck - thats the way it is (as you can see with the techspot benches, with the Athlon II involved)

What isnt benched is the 64 player multiplayer maps that are freakin' huge - that will take a strain on the Dual Core

 

[brent10soccer10]

thanks alot guys for the answers . also i should have mentioned my resolution, sorry about that :/. right now im monitor limited soo i have a flat screen 1280x1024. so sense you guys probably thought i was playing with a bigger monitor i can probably play this game on high no AA ??

 

[brent10soccer10]

and then on multi-player big maps put everything on low/medium settings

 

[HEXiT]

if you were playing on a bigger screen i would have said increase the rez and you will see the fps will pretty much be identical... like is said the frostbite engine really does need a strong tri or medium quad to work best.

 

[simon12]

At that resolution I think you will be good for high settings for single player see http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/battlefield-3-graphics-performance,review-32308.html for more info.

 

[loneninja]

The frostbite engine is actually very kind to Dual Cores

Its the 64 Player maps that arent xD

On Single player the GPU will be the bottleneck - thats the way it is (as you can see with the techspot benches, with the Athlon II involved)

What isnt benched is the 64 player multiplayer maps that are freakin' huge - that will take a strain on the Dual Core

The benchmark you linked, like almost all BF3 benchmarks is single player and it isn't cpu intensive at all. Although it's true 64 player maps really push the cpu, 32 player maps will too. Look at these benchmarks done of online multiplayer, a Phenom II X2 pulls single digit minimums. The new frostbite engine effectively uses at least 6 cores too.
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/14650-prestandaanalys-battlefield-3/5#pagehead

 

[HEXiT]

you know i just went and looked up the passmarks for the athlon 2 x2 and there rated at 2017 points. now i tend to compare all dual cores to eithere athlon 6000 x2 and an 88gt or an e6700 and a 4870 for a base line for a game to be playable... ie you should be able to play any game on them systems because there so well ballanced between cpu and gpu power. they play games like deus x @1920/1080i 30hz (yes its still playable) med textures, no fsaa and will getting 30 fps constant, for bf3 the same system runs on low-medium 1080i 30+fps minimum...

now your system with the 270 is comparable to the e6700. the 4890 is about 70% more powerful than the single gpu 4870 so you should be getting slightly better than 35fps low-medium settings @1920/1080 in theory. but the 4980 is doubling the pressure on the cpu. the cpu says hold up. the gpu responds by lowering the overall workload and this is where your fps starts to bounce. 1 minute your at 30 and the next second your down at 5. the cpu says rite im coping and all of a sudden your back at 30 till the next time the cpu asks the gpu to ease off the gas.
but as the other guy has also pointed out its not just your system its the size of the actual game... its unlikely there will be any more cpu optimization so if your struggling to get acceptable fps then maybe its time to upgrade to a quad. even an athon 2 x4 would do it... you would then be running a similar spec to a q6600 which is still a relevant gaming part. put together with a 4890 ans you will have a respectable low mid range system. that is very well balanced.

 

[catshannon]

bf3 is pretty much a tri/quad engine in other words it really does benefit from up to 2 extra cores. even with a 4890 you should be getting more than 40 fps on medium as your not using the dx11 feature set which is what hammers performance in this game.
but the reason your not is because the cpu is holding the card back. i guarentee that if you run gpu-z you will see your gfx will struggle to get more than 50% usage. and you will get terrible fps bounce (fps goes from good 30+ to bad 5+fps)

so i would recommend you get a x4 athlon as soon as your budget allows, if you can. that way you wont have to replace everything.

Right, I made a Tomsharware account just to raise a point on this old thread for anyone thinking of getting an x2 270.
Before my 6850 blew out due to my cat knocking a coffee into the hdmi slot i could run bf3 on high and some max settings with no fsaa, using a 270 clocked at 3.876ghz with a stock 6850 and 4gb ram.
With good fps, on single player only heavy partical scenes the fps would drop, online was nearly faultless in terms of fps stability. I agree that a 965be which is about £20 or 37$ more expensive is better, its a quad core and both can be clocked to 3.6 or 3.8 on stock cooler stable.