Battlefield 3 Beta Performance Testing and Image Quality Evaluation - Day 1
Indoor Operation Metro Testing
Update (9/29/11): We have new performance results for the GeForce GTX 460, Radeon HD 5850 and even the GeForce 9800 GT! Be sure you find those on the last page of our article!
First we will take a look at the performance of indoor section of Operation Metro that takes place inside a subway tunnel.
The areas encompassed in this run through are much smaller than the outdoor sections and thus tended to be much easier on the GPU hardware.
Our first set of results looks at some of the most recent NVIDIA cards including the MARS II dual GTX 580 from ASUS, the single GTX 580, GTX 570 and GTX 560 Ti. All four cards were easily playable in this section of the map with even the GTX 560 Ti, currently selling for about $220, able to pull in more than 40 frames per second with a minimum of 30 FPS. The difference between the GTX 570 and the GTX 580 was actually pretty minimal here though the MARS II results indicate that, with SLI scaling of something close to 70%, NVIDIA's drivers are already working outstandingly!
Our collection of AMD cards included the Radeon HD 6970, HD 6950 and the HD 6870 and even at a cost of only $180 or so, the HD 6870 was able to keep performance over 30 FPS for the majority of the time. The Radeon HD 6950 did break the 40 FPS mark putting it in line with the GTX 560 Ti but the HD 6970 was able to keep up with both the GTX 570 and the GTX 580!
PC Perspective Upcoming Events
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Thanks Ryan for your day 1 review, I along with the community greatly appreciate this at the time. I can't wait to hop on BF3 come Thursday to test out my GTX460. I could get 45 - 70fps at 1680 x 1050 on Battlefield Bad Company 2 at max so looks like BF3 is going to be pretty rough on my card. Can't wait to see more test from you and your crew.
Hopefully I'll be able toss in a GTX 460 today and post some updated results.
I have the following specs:
Asus M4A79XTD EVO
AMD Phenom II 1100T Black Edition
EVGA GTX 460 1024 GDDR5
8.0 Ghz 2X4 Kingston DDR3 1600Mhz Barracuda 1-TB
Had absolutely no problems running all settings on high with no noticeable glitches...except for ability to bind mouse settings.
You can contact me if you are looking for more information.
Good bit of research you have done to date....keep it up. First time visit to your site, not last I should think.
man the new metro benchy.....nice article
I used the 11.9 cat for my dual 5870. I didn't have any problems with mine. I was getting detween 45-70 fps@ 1920*1200. I didn't try my 3 monitor setup tho. I will later on tonight. My set up is. AMD 1090t@4.1 ghz 8gb gskill 2000 mhz flare. 2x120gb ocz ssd in raid. Ga-990fxa-ud7 mobo. 2xga5870 Gpu. 1200watt psu.
At first I was very surprised by your results then I saw you were using TWO Radeon HD 5870s. That falls much more in line with my thinking.
I also am using 2 5870s with an i7 920 @3.2. I am using the 11.9 driver also and am getting 55-85 FPS on Ultra setting @1920*1200
Pretty happy and the 11.10 driver is supposed to be better with cf support for bf3.
AMD just released a new video driver for the BF3 beta today and nvidia just did the same a few days ago. i think you need to retest things with the updated drivers. Awesome review Ryan.
If you read page one where Ryan tells us the specs of the PC being used he says and I quote ”We used the latest drivers from both NVIDIA and AMD that were released specifically yesterday for Battlefield 3: 285.38 for NVIDIA and 11.10 Preview for AMD.”
Hi Ryan, thanks for putting so much effort into testing BF3!
I was wondering, if you could do some CPU performance tests? Perhaps testing scaling with number of cores or frequency?
I would like to do that and see how frequency and CPU cores helps. May not be until tomorrow sometime that I can sort of play with that.
I just wanted to say that i have a Q9550 (3.6ghz) and a 6950 2Gb Flashed to 6970 shaders (BF3 Beta Drivers installed). I am getting 50 average outdoors in the park (never dipping below 40) and indoors the average is about 80, sometimes as high as 90FPS.
I game settings are on auto, which has res at 1920x1080, Ultra, 16x AA, and everything on High and Ultra.
To be honest i was expecting much lower frame rates. BC2 and the Witcher 1 had worse frame rates than im getting in BF3. Im loving it though, and im buying a second 6950 to Crossfire.
Odd however is my friend whos using my GTS-250 (512mb) is unplayable in full screen with everything on as low as it can go (at 1920x1080) but he played BC2 on medium everything (same res) and it was smooth.
Hey, I have the exact same setup and I'd be interested in your clocks, timings and voltages as I've little experience with this CPU and OC'ing it. Your help would be most appreciated.
Hi Ryan, i own a i5-2500k @ stock clocks 3.30Ghz...i am planning on overclocking it to 4.5ghz to take advantage of its "K" factor...so my question is...will that increase the fps ingame by much?
and in between...RAM, processor speed, GPU...which might you think will be a dominating factor and by how much?
On a different note Seeing as there isnt much difference between high and ultra except for a little smoothing of textures and the AA...would you kindly put up a performance chart of the cards running on high?
Because if there is a considerable increase in the fps, there might not be any reason to run the game at ultra at all... keeping in mind the comparitively high loss in performance.
any feedback is greatly appreciated :)
and thank you for all your hardwork, really is helping us make important decisions on our purchases.
Thank You :)
"Overall I think the NVIDIA cards are currently offering just a bit better experience than the AMD cards due to my instability with the HD 6970 and the better multi-GPU scaling being reported with SLI than CrossFire."
How can you say SLI scaling is better than Crossfire scaling when you didn't even test Crossfire? If you're generalizing, that's some pretty bad "scientific" testing.
I find this funny because the textures in the beta on ALL platforms are around half quality. They aren't even showing you the best graphics yet. Therefore, your benchmarks are a waste of time =P
This is incorrect - verified through both GPU vendors and their developer relations teams. That WAS the case in the alpha though.
You are of course aware that the majority of 'ultra' settings aren't functional yet, and don't do anything.. yes?
Reference? I am hearing the exact opposite from both NVIDIA and AMD.
Great rundown PcPer. Just gotta wait for the 7900HD's now :(
@durjoy184
Depends what the bottleneck is. What is your graphics card? I play Medal of Honor and had a Q6600@4GHz, with a 5850. when i changed to a 2500K, at stock, it doubled my frames. But still at 4.5GHz, it only added about about 5% more frames
AMD HD6870 stock clocks...i know its a mid-level card...but its all the money i had :\
lol you will be fine!!!
so your saying that i might get a considerable performance boost if i go from 3.3-4.5ghz? :O
and as for ur MOH situation...i think games like those that dont demand much of the cpu....just get overkilled after a stage and cant go any smoother....like...if im playing C0D right now....and play it after 4.5ghz....there wouldnt be any difference at all....but on games like crysis, metro 2033...which are more demanding...it may take effect
i just wanted to make sure of the same for battlefield 3 too before i did any overclocking. :)
for the poor folks like me who are still stuck on dual core CPUs, could you disable 2 cores, I mean set affinity to 2 cores only during the game to see the difference (and HT off)?
We might be able to fit that testing in over the next couple of days, sure.
That would be cool. I'm not really sure if it's worth upgrading to a 6870 while rocking an i5 650.
I think a visit to ebay might help.
Some serious bargins. Got my 990x there.
(Yip. Was nervous but it arrived and worked a treat.)
I did my brothers dell too. A Core 2 system. Just swapped out the chips,Dual to quad. Ebayed the dual and got some money back. Just need to check your chipset.
Definitely one of the best articles I've ever read, thank you for such an in depth look.
wouldnt mind seeing the ultara low end results - minimum spec ones , like HD4xxx or 9800GT , or a minimum cpu/ram combo (amd and intel)
I agree with HalloweenJack, I wouldnt mind seeing the ultara low end results. I play on a nice beefy PC at home and and barely functional one at lunchtimes at work.
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