Battlefield 3 VGA and CPU performance benchmark test [Guru3D.com]

MSAA is BF3 isn't/can't be done properly because of the deferred rendering. DICE isn't lying to you.

 

Sure it can.

In DX10+ anyway

 

You simply asked for a source of the info...

 

Idd I have, but I meant the underline part

 

You should consider it. It is a very nice setup.

 

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, but..FXAA=AA Post?

 

^ Yes.

 

What is causing the GTX570 to only score half the GTX 580 framerate at 2560x1600? Lack of VRAM?

If so this would mean the cards with more memory gain more by SLI / CF?

 

Surely yes. Insufficient VRAM can cause a big drop in performance and scaling like that.

 

finally someone who shares my viewpint. Single player benchmarks are completely pointless because multiplayer on large is incredibly CPU-intensive. these articles are going to mislead a lot of people into buying a dual-core only to realize that Multiplayer will be completely unplayable.

the best i've come across was a multiplayer benchmark on sweclockers.com. unfortunately they ran it at 1920*1080p ultra, but it led to some conclusions regardless. in MP, hyper threading makes a consierable difference, and an i52500k is pretty much required for 60+ FPS on large maps. my phenom II @ 3.8 runs at 95% usage and my 6970 stays at 80%. FPS dips to low 40's in open spaces and intense combat.

 

Just FYI:

This game runs great (~60fps) on my rig with everything on High, except shadows on Low, 1920x1080, 16xAF
(I still need to play some more with the settings to see how far i can go)

I used the crack to disable Origin, because that crap was making the game stutter like hell.
(i didnt test this thoroughly, but 1st run with Origin > stutter, 2nd run without > fluid & 60fps)

Multiplayer works great too.
Of course i didnt play any map with 64 players, because i think my CPU will choke to death there...

Rig is as follows now:
C2D 6420 @3.2Ghz
4Gb
HD5870


I'm just so damn happy this game runs well on my old C2D

 

I just ran Kharg Island 64 player with 2 cores disabled, to see if MP is as CPU heavy as some people claim....

Well my max FPS were the same with both 2 and 4 cores running.
2 cores I was averaging 95% GPU usage and about 90% CPU, 4 cores saw 70% CPU load and still 95% GPU.
Settings were all ultra plus 4x MSAA @1600x1200.

The only difference I noticed with 2 cores running was some occasional stuttering and lower min fps (about 5-10fps lower than with 4 cores).

I also tested with my Athlon II X2 3.7, with the same results...

So my conclusion is the same as TechSpot's results: BF3 is multi-threaded and makes good use of 4 cores....but it's not CPU heavy.

 

NOTICE-> http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=353848 because my "newer" thread has video (by Tom's Hardware) for results benchmark more much rigorous.

 

Pagefile and Battlefield 3

I thought this thread was dead since Oct ended, but I see it has come back some with recent mid-Nov posts...

Can we still expect an update to the article? ...on CPU, MP and more?

This was a good thread, albeit hijacked for a time so someone could brag about their system, but I digress.

I want to comment on the pagefile remarks of Pill, Blitz and Postman on page 4.

Q: Why disable the pagefile?
A: If you run an SSD with your O/S on it, the pagefile.sys comes out of drive capacity. An SSD is expensive and therefore, to most people, limited. The pagefile is proportional to your amount of RAM. Disable the pagefile and get that available space back. If you have a lot of RAM, for example 16GB, you can get 16GB back in free space on your SSD. That's a lot when you're talking 64GB or 128GB SSD. Of course, you can set manually enforced lower limits than the automatically system managed sizes - it's not all or nothing - but that's generally the approach.

There is a drawback. Pagefile.sys is the disk drive (SSD or HDD) overflow for when RAM is filling up. If you don't have sufficient RAM and you've disabled the pagefile, you've given the application (like BF3) nowhere to go - crash! And if it's not BF3 that actually crashed, it's anything else running in RAM that got pushed out by BF3 hogging it all.

That brings me to what Pill and Blitz were discussing.

4GB RAM is absolutely not enough to disable the pagefile and run BF3. Don't let the recommended system requirements fool you, "OS: Windows 7 64-bit". BF3 is not 64-bit. BF3 is 32-bit and as such cannot address more than 4GB of RAM. Remember why Win XP can't have more than 4GB RAM? Same goes for applications. However, since it can address up to 4GB, that's why the recommended system requirements also say, "RAM: 4GB". If you have 4GB RAM and a pagefile, if BF3 ever does use up all 4GB RAM the overflow safely and seamlessly goes into the disk drive. If not, like I said and what Pill saw - crash. That's why most people have been reporting the game really needs 8GB RAM. That's a good round number and as good as any guestimate. Few, if anybody, runs concurrent 32-bit apps demanding 4GB RAM each that would hit the 8GB RAM mark and force a crash. However, the possibility of a crash is still there if you disable the pagefile. It will always be there, it's just the risk gets smaller and smaller as the amount of RAM gets bigger and bigger.

Now you see the dilemma these guys are discussing, getting more and more RAM, if the pagefile is automatically system managed and you have an SSD, you lose more and more valuable SSD space. There will never be a universally agreed upon amout for every person because every scenario is different.

Conclusion: "Minimum" system requirements are just that. However, "Recommended" sys req are a bit of a misnomer. They are the specs for the general population to have a fairly good experience. That's not those of us reading Guru3D.com articles and benchmarks. Those of us are looking for a much higher level and to us, we would 'recommend' much higher sys req. Sorry, that's just the way it is. The world caters to the majority.

 

More Accurate Battlefield 3 Recommended System Requirements

My last post made me think posting my "recommended" system requirements for Battlefield 3 might help some.

Again, these are my recommended sys req, but I find them to be pretty accurate based on a lot of reading on this topic.

EA says:
Recommended system requirements for Battlefield 3
•OS: Windows 7 64-bit
•Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
•RAM: 4GB
•Graphics card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950.
•Graphics card memory: 1 GB
•Sound card: DirectX compatibl sound card
•Hard drive: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

I say (with some explanation):
Recommended system requirements for Battlefield 3
•OS: Windows 7 64-bit
(not for BF3 per say, but so you can address more than 4GB of RAM)
•Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
(these can be physical, actually four cores, or logical, meaning four threads on a dual core like the 2nd Gen Intel Core i3-family. Of course, running each thread in a seperate core should yield a performance boost, but I've not seen one quantified and proven.)
•Processor Core Clock: 3GHz or greater
(this isn't spec'ed by EA, but should be. 3GHz for either all four cores or the two cores running four threads.)
•RAM: 8GB
(see post above)
•Graphics card: too hard to say
•Graphics card memory: too hard to say
(GPU / VGA specs are hugely dependant on whether you want MSAA or higher resolutions, but let's say you do, then it's -
•Graphics card: Dual GPUs, starting at either CFX 6950 or SLI 570
•Graphics card memory: 2 GB
(VRAM / GDDR is used up by textures both at higher resolutions and higher AA / graphics settings. The 2GB cards are your best bet, if you can get them with the GPU you want. It's definitely not the 1GB EA claims because the SLI 560Ti fails solely because it's only offered in 1GB = 1024MB and the reason why I didn't recommend it. The SLI 570 manages because it's raw GPU power compensates for 'just enough' VRAM at 1.25GB = 1280MB. You'll need the 2GB versions of the 6950 and hence my recommendation.)
•Sound card: none
(this is an obsolete spec held over from the days when a sound card would save CPU cycles and the CPU was the bottleneck in games. Not so anymore, it's all about the GPU now. The CPU has been marginalized in its importance. As far as sound goes, motherboard on-board audio has come a long, long way. No one should be quibbling over this in the context of gaming when you can get 5.1, 7.1, Optical and Coax SPDIF included on the mobo nowadays.)
•Hard drive: enough to run the game
(it is what it is, if EA says it's 10-15GB okay. Of course, add some margin for your pagefile and doing it on a SSD vs a HDD is preferred. Isn't that where this whole conversation started?) :bonk: :backfire: :eyes:

 

deleted for spam, sorry.

 

you modified very bad to higher-end specs the system recommended!! therefore, you are stupid and ridiculous!!!

my gtx480 is optimized and is better than system recommended for 60fps+vsync(=amazing) at 720p - see link in my post #113 (sorry, I edited this number due to wrong number). loooooooooooooool

 

gotta love my 3 XFX Black Edition GTX 260's I paid $100 for

http://i40.tinypic.com/nqpzjt.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/2j5g9w1.jpg

:banana::banana:

 

@SBPATA8x8x-

Welcome to Guru3D

I've since added another 4GB ram for a total of 8GB and now BF3 runs beautifully with PF disabled.

First time ever for me that 4GB wasn't enough to run without PF...
I wonder if it has to do with Origin and/or internet browser running at the same time? I'm only guessing though...

There's no need to throw insults around....especially to a new member...

 

ok. sorry, I didn't see my 2 same posts (spam) but now yes because my internet or this server was slow.