Battlefield 4 CPU performance: Win 7 vs Win 8.1, up to 50% more fps

[boxleitnerb]

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Battl...als/Battlefield-4-CPU-Test-Windows-8-1091767/

I find this absolutely astounding. Even if they manage to improve performance for Win 7, Win 8.1 should retain a significant advantage.

On a side note:
The GPU used was a GTX 780. So much for "only DX11.0". Apparently, the features of DX11.1 that Nvidia supports are enough and work perfectly in reducing CPU load.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It makes no sense why the difference should be that high. Unless its something to do with emulating features. But I rather guess on ordinary sloppy coding.

 

[boxleitnerb]

“We use DX11.1, there are some optimizations in it (constant buffer offsets, dynamic buffers as SRVs) that we got in to the the API that improves CPU performance in our rendering when one runs with DX11.1. This will be in BF4.”

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/battlefield_4_gets_dx11_1_dx11_1_will_improve_cpu_performance.html

Has DICE ever mentioned what kind of speedup they are expecting?

 

[lopri]

Different core-parking on Windows 8 esp. for HT and CMT. I thought it was documented somewhere.

Compare it on non-HT/CMT quads. I doubt the OS will make such a big difference. My comment isn't meant to disparage anyone/anything. It's just that MS had "fixed" (and broke a few others) the HT/CMT issues existed on Windows 7 on Windows 8, and that graphs reflect it.

 

[sniffin]

Isn't this the result of the reduced overhead associated with DX11.1?

It's why a 2005 console with sub-Athlon XP IPC can run the same games 2013 gaming pcs can but with reduced settings. The amount of bloat in Windows APIs/drivers seems to be fairly disgusting.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Isn't this the result of the reduced overhead associated with DX11.1?

It's why a 2005 console with sub-Athlon XP IPC can run the same games 2013 gaming pcs can but with reduced settings. The amount of bloat in Windows APIs/drivers seems to be fairly disgusting.

The reduced execution overhead mainly came with DX10.0. Its simply...fishy.

Look at the numbers, we are not talking 5-10%. But 25-60%.

 

[showb1z]

They just didn't optimize for Windows 7 yet. First patch was to fix W8 performance issues (mostly fixed the terrible stuttering I had). There's going to be another beta patch that should do something similar for W7.
Benchmarks with the second patch should be a lot more indicative of what the real performance gap between W7 and W8 is going to be.

 

[inf64]

BF4 has some strange issues with 3 module PD chips. They perform worse than 2M FX43xx parts which is crazy... Win8.1 does improve things but still FX6350 performs much slower than 1090T (which in turn is much slower than 8350).

 

[cytg111]

Dodgy at best ..

 

[Skurge]

It's a beta, save the conclusions for the final game.

 

[Abwx]

On a side note:
The GPU used was a GTX 780. So much for "only DX11.0". Apparently, the features of DX11.1 that Nvidia supports are enough and work perfectly in reducing CPU load.

The other way around , the gfx can output more fps
because it has a reduced loading..

It s like running a DX11 game in DX10 mode , you ll get
higher FPS.

 

[ShintaiDK]

BF4 has some strange issues with 3 module PD chips. They perform worse than 2M FX43xx parts which is crazy... Win8.1 does improve things but still FX6350 performs much slower than 1090T (which in turn is much slower than 8350).

Unfortunately they only tested CPUs that are 6/12 and not 4/8. It seems 4/8 works as they should, but not those with 6/12 since its off the charts.

 

[SPBHM]

how can core parking be a problem when 6 cores are almost fully loaded?
this is probably something else

 

[ShintaiDK]

New patch out today it seems, that specificly address 6 core issues.

Patch-Notes:

- Two fixes for the long/permanent loading times
- Various improvements in performance for users running quad core or six core CPU's
- Fixed a crash that happened for some dual core CPU users after loading
- Fixed a crash relating to DirectX10 graphics cards
- Various stability fixes
- Various crash fixes

 

[inf64]

Good news, thanks for posting this.
For people who like to tweak more here is what you might want to try adding to your user.cfg file in the bf4 beta directory:

WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapEnable 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 128
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 0
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 0
PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 0
GameTime.MaxVariableFps 70
WorldRender.FxaaEnable 0
PerfOverlay.drawfps 1

I can play with these settings(in game low preset, 14x9 resolution)) with my 6870 1GB card, 8GB DDR3 and 750K@4.3Ghz. The fps is between 30 and 59. Note that there is occasional stutter on game start and it lasts around 30 sec to 1 minute (like the game is preloading textures or something in Vram). After that all is fine. I play in Windows 8 which is MUCH better for me than Windows7 SP1.

I have never ever seen my GPU stressed so much before like I do in this game. The GPU temps are easily 5-8 degrees higher than in anything I have ran on it before (didn't try mining and similar stuff tho). In Win8 with above config file CPU usage is ~80-90%.

 

[Techhog]

BF4 has some strange issues with 3 module PD chips. They perform worse than 2M FX43xx parts which is crazy... Win8.1 does improve things but still FX6350 performs much slower than 1090T (which in turn is much slower than 8350).

That site just scares me. 40FPS on a Titan at 720p...

 

[Spjut]

On a side note:
The GPU used was a GTX 780. So much for "only DX11.0". Apparently, the features of DX11.1 that Nvidia supports are enough and work perfectly in reducing CPU load.

Repi has already said on his twitter that the CPU improvements in DX11.1 will work on any DX11 GPU because it's all in software.

 

[bononos]

The other way around , the gfx can output more fps
because it has a reduced loading..

It s like running a DX11 game in DX10 mode , you ll get
higher FPS.

I thought dx11 is faster if the advanced features like tesselation is disabled because dx11 has better multithreading.

 

[SPBHM]

Good news, thanks for posting this.
For people who like to tweak more here is what you might want to try adding to your user.cfg file in the bf4 beta directory:
I can play with these settings(in game low preset, 14x9 resolution)) with my 6870 1GB card, 8GB DDR3 and 750K@4.3Ghz. The fps is between 30 and 59. Note that there is occasional stutter on game start and it lasts around 30 sec to 1 minute (like the game is preloading textures or something in Vram). After that all is fine. I play in Windows 8 which is MUCH better for me than Windows7 SP1.

I have never ever seen my GPU stressed so much before like I do in this game. The GPU temps are easily 5-8 degrees higher than in anything I have ran on it before (didn't try mining and similar stuff tho). In Win8 with above config file CPU usage is ~80-90%.

these settings (forced dx10? no AO? and so on) + low preset make the game looks really, really bad, I'm not seeing the point, the game should run with high preset with a 6870 and 900p, based on what I'm seeing with a 5850, and if you are going to as low as 30 because of the CPU anyway.

 

[Ed1]

todays patch seems to have raised my min fps a bit but need more testing as I did lower few setting in last days ,motion blur, advanced affects but overall 90% of settings are on high .
The game is CPU bottleneck here (i5-3570k/660ti) , as GPU is not being taxed that much, I have to check CPU usage but pretty sure its higher than GPU on avg .

Since its CPU limited you can probably raise vid settings pretty high but its just the min spikes you need to keep in check .

 

[skipsneeky2]

Todays patch with windows 8.1 preview for me is giving me cpu usage in the 78-84% range and the game feels much smoother.Running 1366x768 ultra no msaa i found situations of hitting mid 40s on certain parts of the map still which is weird,perhaps cpu bottleneck?Gpu usage is sitting nice and low but scale resolution of 200% can tank my card pretty quick with 99% gpu usage despite the low resolution.

 

[moonbogg]

Nice. I'll settle for less and keep windows 7.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Nice. I'll settle for less and keep windows 7.

Dual boot windows 8.1 preview with windows 7.What i decided to do and personally i can't complain and after installing classicshell and applying a few settings 8.1 has been alright enough where i might consider keeping it perm.

Windows 8.1 without classicshell is just awful,biggest pain in the ass but once its installed and set up how you like i can say its alright but out of the box 7 is years better.:thumbsup:

 

[SPBHM]

more than 1 year using Win8 here, and I can't complain, it has been a pretty good experience, maybe I'm lucky for using mostly keyboard shortcuts and ignoring the start menu most of the time even before win8, I don't know, but I didn't have much trouble adapting, and I'm rarely exposed to the modern UI.

but about BF4, I'm also thinking performance have improved for my little i3, I tried earlier on high (64p) and I didn't notice it going under 30 for most of the time (it did once, well into the 20s for a few seconds), and it doesn't feel to stuttery or anything, but, I'm not really a BF enthusiast and my BF runs are basically 10 mins of me dying a lot and giving up lol

 

[PPB]

WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapEnable 0 --> Ok this one might give you one fps or two, but it was mostly used in BF3 to distinguish better enemies inside buildings.
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 128 --> If res at 256 was crappy, I cant imagine what 128 would do, lol.
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0 --> Only useful if you are using Vsync. If not, you are just adding another buffer for no reason, loading the VRAM even more is not advisable, specially if you are running something like 1GB on FHD
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 0 --> This one is a tricky one, depends heavily on the CPU and GPU config you are using. Some people will see advantages running as high as 3, others would have a better experience running it disabled (0). Default is -1 (which means, it's handled by the driver config).
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 0 --> This is a dead command, was useful in BF3 to gain up to 10 fps in exterior scenes. On interior scenes it borked your performance with high zoom scopes (Metro im talking about you)
PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0 --> If you disable AO in video settings, this isnt needed.
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0 --> Might handle you a FPS or two.
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0 --> If you put 0% blur in video settings this isnt needed.
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 0 --> Not useful since the game is DX11 native. Only way to run it (at least BF3 did) in DX9, is using a DX9 card.
GameTime.MaxVariableFps 70 -->This caps your FPS, dont use it at 70 if you are running 120hz monitors (anyways I doubt anyone would get steady 120 fps in this beta, lol).
WorldRender.FxaaEnable 0 --> If you set AA post Off in video settings, this isnt needed. I like FXAA injector's better, it was a lot more customizable (hope they dont ban you for using it in BF4)
PerfOverlay.drawfps 1 --> Shows fps.