Battlefield 3 recommended GPU specs out

[RussianSensation]

Don't know too much about this but ran across this chart...

Wow! That chart just about confirms that VLIW-4 architecture for AMD was a failure. In pretty much all the latest DX11 games, the GTX580 is stomping all over the 6970. I mean the avg. performance difference of 15% is no longer accurate. It's more like 25-30%. Hard Reset, Crysis 2, Civ5, Lost Planet 2, Hawx 2, and now BF3? AMD needs a brand new DX11 architecture, fast. Fermi GTX580 scales extremely well with overclocking and makes the HD6970 @ 1000mhz look like a last generation card. HD7000 series can't get here fast enough.

 

[crisium]

Looks like the Nvidia BF3 Beta patch really helped. The Nvidia equivalents are a bit ahead of their AMD counterparts: 460>6850, 560Ti>6950, 570>6970. Just enough to make a difference when you're fighting for frames.

 

[Silverforce11]

Wow! That chart just about confirms that VLIW-4 architecture for AMD was a failure. In pretty much all the latest DX11 games, the GTX580 is stomping all over the 6970. I mean the avg. performance difference of 15% is no longer accurate. It's more like 25-30%. Hard Reset, Crysis 2, Civ5, Lost Planet 2, Hawx 2, and now BF3? AMD needs a brand new DX11 architecture, fast. Fermi GTX580 scales extremely well with overclocking and makes the HD6970 @ 1000mhz look like a last generation card. HD7000 series can't get here fast enough.

How about Shogun 2, DA2, Dirt 3, F1 2010, F1 2011, Deus Ex, AvP, BC2, Fear 3, Metro?

All those games you mentioned besides Civ5 are TWIMTBP games. Look at the VRzone article, such a big difference 6970 equal to gtx580.. why?

Hard Reset: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/09/16/hard_reset_gameplay_performance_review/2
Looks like the 6970 is faster than gtx580.

Or how about wait for release (or heck, even more varied sources of beta benches) before jumping to conclusions about BF3.

Edit: I'm going to call shenanigans on that test bench from http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,8...Test-mit-SLI-und-Crossfire/Action-Spiel/Test/

No way are average FPS and min FPS that close together. They stuffed up with their test.

 

[RussianSensation]

How about Shogun 2, DA2, Dirt 3, F1 2010, F1 2011, Deus Ex, AvP, BC2, Fear 3, Metro?

I said in the "latest DX11" games. F1 2010, AvP, BF:BC2, Metro 2033 are not latest games.

Anyway, take a look at this review. It even shows those older games. Once a GTX580 is overclocked, it is easily 30% faster than an HD6970. There is no way an HD6970 either scales or overclocks that well.

http://www.techspot.com/review/423-gigabyte-geforce-gtx580-soc/page5.html

1920x1080 FSAA

F1 2011 - 30% faster
Hard Reset - 37% faster
Crysis 2 - 43% faster

But even in latest DX9 games, GTX580 is pulling way by a huge amount.

Red Orchestra 2 - 29% faster
Dead Island - 43% faster

Hard Reset: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/09/16/hard_reset_gameplay_performance_review/2
Looks like the 6970 is faster than gtx580.

HardOCP? I can't take a GPU review seriously where the reviewer thinks MLAA is better than FSAA. Sorry, but until AMD fixes blurring of textures caused by MLAA, this type of anti-aliasing method is useless. Under FSAA scenario, the GTX580 easily beats the 6970. HD6970 suffers > 50% performance loss at 4x FSAA.

Honestly, a gamer doesn't care if a game is "Gaming Evolved" title or "TWIMTBP" title. The fact is, there isn't a single game where AMD is now faster by a significant amount than NV, but there are now at least 5-10 games where NV's cards are way faster. AMD is doing a very poor job then with its Gaming Evolved (NV was easily able to catch up and beat AMD in Dragon Age 2).

Looks like Cayman GPU has some serious shader bottleneck. It's only able to edge closer to the GTX580 at higher resolutions as a result of superior texture fill-rate. But modern DX11 games are starting to exploit AMD's inferior DX11 architecture. Crysis 2 and BF3 are 2 of the biggest games this year. AMD better hope it does well in Rage and SKYRIM. Either way, it now makes sense why AMD needed to go with GCN. There is no way a "souped-up" Cayman would have been able to compete with Kepler. The only consolation was that HD6950 2GB could be overclocked/unlocked into a 6970 and it was cheap. But clearly, NV has now built a large list of games where it offers more features/better performance than AMD:

- Civ 5
- Mafia 2
- Batman AA (and probably Arkham City)
- Lost Planet 2
- Hawx 2
- Crysis 2
- F1 2011
- Starcraft II
- and looks like BF3 is going to join this list shortly

I can't think of a single game where an HD6970 is 20-30% faster than a GTX580.

NV's constant driver improvements are separating the 6970 and GTX580.

Overclocked GTX580 vs. Overclocked 6970 Review.

 

[Silverforce11]

So your NV card does better in some forms of AA or your preference for AA types don't perform well on AMD, so what? Comparing OC to non OC performance is valid since when? How about factor in the price difference in your overall comparison. Then factor in the power use as well. Your rant is completely baseless, AMD cards are competitive and offer great bang for buck.

HardOCP's MLAA for Hard Reset, look in image comparison.

Also, 8x MSAA where's the big lead? There's non if you aren't CPU agnostic, unlike GameGPU's tests, did they tell you which CPU they put AMD's high end on, x6 1100T or i7?
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/09/26/f1_2011_gameplay_performance_review/6

So some DX9 games its faster, big deal. What about OpenGL games? Semantics.

The fact that AMD GE titles perform well for both vendor GPU shows how unbiased AMD are. You can't say the same for NV.

Crysis 2 is not one of the biggest games this year, by far. For console, prolly decent, not even huge. For PC, it sold terrible for a AAA title. Ultimately, you could just set your tessellation slider to AMD optimized and it runs much better. You can do it!

Edit: To address your "latest" dx11 game, this year: Shogun 2, DA2, Deus EX, Dirt 3 along with F1 2011 (there's no huge perf gap like your insistence on using gamegpu's bench), hard reset (not dx11).

 

[RussianSensation]

Edit: I'm going to call shenanigans on that test bench from http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,8...Test-mit-SLI-und-Crossfire/Action-Spiel/Test/

No way are average FPS and min FPS that close together. They stuffed up with their test.

HD5870 is outperforming the 6950 and is only 0.9 fps slower than the 6970. Looking at the 27% performance advantage that the GTX260 216 enjoys over the 4870 1GB, it looks like NV optimized better for this game so far. Come on AMD, let's get cracking on those drivers.

 

[Skurge]

HD5870 is outperforming the 6950 and is only 0.9 fps slower than the 6970. Looking at the 27% performance advantage that the GTX260 216 enjoys over the 4870 1GB, it looks like NV optimized better for this game so far. Come on AMD, let's get cracking on those drivers.

Looks like those benches were done before either AMD or nVidia's new drivers were released. So old drivers, plus the fact that it's beta means. I wouldn't put to much into those numbers.

 

[smakme7757]

Although i havn't seen any numbers i'll presume that my GTX 580 and 4Ghz 2600K shouldn't have a problem with BF3 at 1080p/High settings with a light injection of AA.

But i guess i won't know until i give it a go.

 

[Silverforce11]

HD5870 is outperforming the 6950 and is only 0.9 fps slower than the 6970. Looking at the 27% performance advantage that the GTX260 216 enjoys over the 4870 1GB, it looks like NV optimized better for this game so far. Come on AMD, let's get cracking on those drivers.

You really think average and min fps are that close, it's legit?

VR-Zone: Gtx580 and 6970 run 1080p at ~50 fps. ~80% CF scaling.

 

[Lonbjerg]

not impressed at all for game that will kick my cards butt. tress look horrible and plenty of objects look very low res. and I still cant get over that sandbag setup that looks like one low res texture taken from Far Cry 1 or something.

I absolutly HATE the aliasing on the floor tiles...come on, this is 2012....aliasing is BAD!

 

[zlejedi]

[H]ardocp GPU benches are pointless unless you are part of that small minority running eyefinity or 30" display at home. They have 69x0 series cards running at similar frames to faster nvidia cards only because they test in scenarios where video ram on GPU becomes limiting factor.

 

[yours truly]

There's a lot of Caspian Border footage coming out. Checked out the first one on youtube and it looks good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO2hrjKeMY0

 

[Silverforce11]

[H]ardocp GPU benches are pointless unless you are part of that small minority running eyefinity or 30" display at home. They have 69x0 series cards running at similar frames to faster nvidia cards only because they test in scenarios where video ram on GPU becomes limiting factor.

So you buy 6990 and run 1080p or less.. ok. good for u.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Anyways. My 5870 is running everything on high with AA and HBAO off at 1920x1080. Don't know exactly how many FPS I'm getting, but it runs insanely smooth. Looks like I'm waiting to upgrade yet again.

This 3 year old card is still hanging around and I'm it's only just beginning to not meet the demand of certain games.

 

[toyota]

Anyways. My 5870 is running everything on high with AA and HBAO off at 1920x1080. Don't know exactly how many FPS I'm getting, but it runs insanely smooth. Looks like I'm waiting to upgrade yet again.

This 3 year old card is still hanging around and I'm it's only just beginning to not meet the demand of certain games.

use FRAPS and you will know exactly what your frame rates are.

and the 5870 came out exactly 2 years ago as of last Friday.

 

[Grooveriding]

[H]ardocp GPU benches are pointless unless you are part of that small minority running eyefinity or 30" display at home. They have 69x0 series cards running at similar frames to faster nvidia cards only because they test in scenarios where video ram on GPU becomes limiting factor.

VRAM is extremely important in BF3. Put it this way, people can't run ultra at 1080P without 1.3GB+ VRAM or they get hitching. I can't run ultra at 2560x1600 without turning down AA, and even then I am using 1.45GB VRAM.

I wouldn't run this game on anything but a 2GB 6950, 6970 or 580 if I was interested in trying to run it on ultra.

 

[Silverforce11]

Anyways. My 5870 is running everything on high with AA and HBAO off at 1920x1080. Don't know exactly how many FPS I'm getting, but it runs insanely smooth. Looks like I'm waiting to upgrade yet again.

This 3 year old card is still hanging around and I'm it's only just beginning to not meet the demand of certain games.

AO is what kills frame rate in a lot of games. So if you turn it off, that explains your smooth gameplay.

I can enjoy a game without AO, but i can't enjoy games without AA.

 

[toyota]

VRAM is extremely important in BF3. Put it this way, people can't run ultra at 1080P without 1.3GB+ VRAM or they get hitching. I can't run ultra at 2560x1600 without turning down AA, and even then I am using 1.45GB VRAM.

I wouldn't run this game on anything but a 2GB 6950, 6970 or 580 if I was interested in trying to run it on ultra.

how do you know they are getting hitching because of vram limitations? I have not seen one person playing at 1080 say that. if you have some kind of proof the game actually needs 1.3gb of vram at 1080 and is not just using available resources then please show us.

 

[Grooveriding]

how do you know they are getting hitching because of vram limitations? I have not seen one person playing at 1080 say that. if you have some kind of proof the game actually needs 1.3gb of vram at 1080 and is not just using available resources then please show us.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/battlef...reenshots-and-hd-video-walkthrough/13625.html

'At 1080p Ultra settings (with everything graphics details set to maximum), we get an average of around 50fps for a single AMD 6970/GTX580, 80fps for a AMD 6990 (2 GPU crossfire) and 140fps for a AMD 6990 in Quadfire, which is actually quite similar to the one-year old Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on maximum settings. It also needed around 1.3GB of GPU framebuffer for the ultra preset textures. A side-by-side monitor test showed indistinguishable image quality from both AMD and Nvidia solutions (drivers at default settings), so we know that there is no quack3.exe foul play yet.'

Notice as well there is no mention of results using a 570, 560 or 6870 ? All sub 1.3GB VRAM cards.

Here is an nvidia user who could not run ultra on a 560 @ 1080P due to VRAM issues.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=211104&st=20&p=1299431&#entry1299431
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=211104&st=20&p=1299576&#entry1299576

And my own experience affirms it too. Like I said, I'm using 1.45GB and that is using reduced memory settings. It's completely novel as I've never seen any game cause VRAM issues for me until this one.

Will be interesting to see as more benches come out on different sites some more looking into the heavy VRAM usage of BF3.

 

[bononos]

It looks very nice but if it doesn't run >30fps-min at avg settings on a single GPU <108W then this is a game I shan't play. I've been under a rock gaming wise for a spell so I can play many other games.

 

[Lonbjerg]

It looks very nice but if it doesn't run >30fps-min at avg settings on a single GPU <108W then this is a game I shan't play. I've been under a rock gaming wise for a spell so I can play many other games.

Buy a console...

 

[WMD]

I can't believe how bad it looks yet this game has to drop XP and DX9 as if it is light years ahead of everything else in graphics department.

 

[toyota]

those trees and especially the sandbags are just laughable looking for a modern game. even if this game was not hyped for graphics that crap would stand out.

 

[AtenRa]

On the 29th i will be able to download and play the BETA,

Except my CF ASUS 6950 1GB, I have also available an MSI Twin Frozr HD6950 2GB (unfortunately single card only), i will test to see if there is a difference up to 1920x1200 and let you know

 

[WMD]

I would say certain elements in farcry 2 looks better even if it is a 3year old game that ran on DX10/DX9. The grass for example is individually anti aliased and rendered far better.