[H] Battlefield 3 Open Beta Performance and Image Quality

[WMD]

you cant be using ultra settings and 4x AA because your ram usage is nothing like anybody elses. it would be using around 1011 mb for your 1gb card with those settings.

I will test again tonight.

 

[happy medium]

you cant be using ultra settings and 4x AA because your ram usage is nothing like anybody elses. it would be using around 1011 mb for your 1gb card with those settings.

He might have checked it in a odd spot is all.

But it does seem the game uses more memory if you have it but with no performance increase or decrease as far as fps goes.

If my gtx460 1gb ran out of memory fps would usually drop like a rock, so far I have not seen that.
If you look at various benchmarks around the web, you dont see gtx560ti's,5870's and other 1gb cards tanking at 1080p because of only 1gb of video memory.

The gtx570's also seem fine at 1080p ultra settings 4xaa. If the 1.5gb memory was needed @ 1080p ultra settings 4xaa, the gtx570 would tank with these settings but its not.

 

[toyota]

well in my experience a game will just hitch a bit when temporarily running out of vram. now if its out of vram for a while and cant really load anything esle then yes performance will tank.

 

[happy medium]

Here is some more good evidence.

Notty is running 2 overclocked gx460's in sli and getting 70 to 100 fps @ 1080p ultra settings and using .......................drum roll 975mb of memory.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=32360342&postcount=55

 

[toyota]

Here is some more good evidence.

Notty is running 2 overclocked gx460's in sli and getting 70 to 100 fps @ 1080p ultra settings and using .......................drum roll 975mb of memory.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=32360342&postcount=55

well he is not running 4x MSAA or HBAO either.

 

[happy medium]

well he is not running 4x MSAA or HBAO either.

oooops missd that., thanks...........searching:thumbsup:

Catalyst 11.9 vs 11.10

@ 1600x1050 the 1gb 6950 seems fine.

I must add that Battlefield felt smooth even at 30-40 FPS and was playable, with only 3 cores the game started stuttering a bit and became annoying.

http://benchmark3d.com/battlefield-3-beta-performance-preview

 

[RU482]

I'm holding out for BF3SP1

 

[VirtualLarry]

This game sure kicks my OC'd 460 in the balls. 100% gpu and memory usage nearly all the time.

Hmm, interesting. Not good news for me, I have a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB OC card too. I thought it would be enough. I run at 1920x1200. Not good enough?

 

[badb0y]

I can't believe people are being so naive in this thread. Did you guys check the settings he was running at? I just ran the same settings and within 10 minutes I was sitting at 1458 VRAM being used it's obvious what is happening in those benchmarks.

If this beta is any indication of what's to come in the final retail version you need more than 1 GB of VRAM to be able to play this game comfortably at Ultra settings. There is no doubt in my mind that a GTX 570 or GTX 560 have the horse power to run this game but it's comming to a point where the VRAM is just plain bottlenecking the overall performance. I believe most GTX 570s come with 1280 MB VRAM and that's obviously not enough to comfortably run the game at Ultra settings with 4x AA and that's why the AMD 6950 is performing better at those specific settings.

This is nothing new for [H]ard they always stress the hardware to the max, that's not called bias that's called a different method of testing the game. If you drop the settings to high/medium with less AA the GTX 570 will obviously be faster than a AMD 6950 2 GB but the VRAM is definitely becoming a problem for nVidia cards in BF3 at least. I don't know about RAGE will have to check it out later. Damn man these games are making me go broke .

 

[3DVagabond]

This graph does not show VRAM limitation. When the card runs out of VRAM the framerate tanks to near zero.

This is not saying that users here are not seeing the game use 1400+ Mb of VRAM. Just that in this chart it's not an issue.

edit: It looks to my untrained eye () that there's more driver optimizations to be done.

 

[AtenRa]

How do you people see how much Vram its been used ??

MSI Afterburner has an option to show ram usage but i dont thing it is for Vram because it shows im using 1.25GB and my single card is only 1GB.

 

[toyota]

How do you people see how much Vram its been used ??

MSI Afterburner has an option to show ram usage but i dont thing it is for Vram because it shows im using 1.25GB and my single card is only 1GB.

checking vram usage only works for Nvidia cards unless something has changed.

 

[Grooveriding]

The game is super demanding on VRAM. I've never played a game that uses this much VRAM, ever.

If I turn up deferred AA from 2 to 4 samples, my cards go from sitting at 1.4-1.45 to locked at 1.5 and I get hitching. That really is all I need to see to know I am running out of VRAM.

There are easy ways around it, you can disable ambient occlusion, use high textures, or reduce MSAA. I reduced MSAA and it gets playable. The post AA seems to have little to no effect on memory, I believe this is the way MLAA/FXAA work though ? I don't like that AA effect, it blurs textures and makes the image less crisp. Don't mind that in a game like Deus Ex HR, but it's not pleasant for an online FPS.

 

[Carfax83]

How much system memory are you guys using? I haven't even tried downloading the beta yet. Playing online isn't my thing, but I still want the game for the single player campaign and as a system performance indicator..

 

[ViRGE]

The post AA seems to have little to no effect on memory, I believe this is the way MLAA/FXAA work though ?

Correct. It's just a single pass shader; there's nothing to store so the memory hit is minimal. Of course that's also why it's such a lossy form of AA.

 

[Keysplayr]

Ok, I just did a little experiment. I first started up two You tube videos, each using about 50 MB of video memory according to eVGA precision. I then started up BF3 Beta. Same settings as before. Zero impact on performance EVEN with 2 you tube videos running simultaneously and once again, the video memory usage never exceeded 1011. Mind you it doesn't stay pinned at 1011. Like before, it never exceeds 1011, and like before it would go down to about 985. Back and forth. There is zero performance impact. Min: 26 Avg: 36 Max 53.

Anyone else want to try this? I just used two videos. But I'd imagine we can use many more. Eventually performance will degrade but it didn't with only two on mine.

So, to be more specific, at idle and at my desktop with only eVGA precision open, I'm using 114MB of video memory. After opening two videos on you tube, usage went up to 224MB and hovered there. After starting BF3, usage went up to a min of 985 to max of 1011 fluctuating there back and forth.

Thoughts?

 

[3DVagabond]

To be clear I'm not accusing them of trolling as in baiting people into flaming. I mean they're trolling for readers by publishing a stupid article, because nothing in that article will be relevant for the shipping version of BF3. But you can bet your butt that will be one of the first Google results later this month when the game ships.

OK. I misunderstood your meaning, sorry. If I understand you correctly now you believe that they might be doing something that sets them apart. Being controversial to help promote themselves.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Ok, I just did a little experiment. I first started up two You tube videos, each using about 50 MB of video memory according to eVGA precision. I then started up BF3 Beta. Same settings as before. Zero impact on performance EVEN with 2 you tube videos running simultaneously and once again, the video memory usage never exceeded 1011. Mind you it doesn't stay pinned at 1011. Like before, it never exceeds 1011, and like before it would go down to about 985. Back and forth. There is zero performance impact. Min: 26 Avg: 36 Max 53.

Anyone else want to try this? I just used two videos. But I'd imagine we can use many more. Eventually performance will degrade but it didn't with only two on mine.

So, to be more specific, at idle and at my desktop with only eVGA precision open, I'm using 114MB of video memory. After opening two videos on you tube, usage went up to 224MB and hovered there. After starting BF3, usage went up to a min of 985 to max of 1011 fluctuating there back and forth.

Thoughts?

I think you need someone with the same card but with more GPU memory to compare your results with. Otherwise we can only conclude that it's utilizing almost all of the memory on the card you tested.

 

[Keysplayr]

I think you need someone with the same card but with more GPU memory to compare your results with. Otherwise we can only conclude that it's utilizing almost all of the memory on the card you tested.

While that would be great to try, don't ignore the point that my performance didn't budge with less available memory to BF3. A little over 100MB stolen from it running those videos did nothing. That is the important takeaway here. So, there is more to conclude.

 

[toyota]

Keysplayr, I will give it go later doing something similar. I can just open up a bunch of hi res pics and eat up some video memory then try and play the game. lol, please stop saying it never exceeded 1011mb though because I am sure you know by now that 1011mb is the max you can use with a 1gb video card. all we need to do is see how it impacts performance.

btw 1147mb was the max I saw on ultra at 1280x960 with 4x AA before but I am going to have at least 500 mb of vram used up before starting this time. if it really needed that much then I should hitch pretty badly.

 

[Keysplayr]

Keysplayr, I will give it go later doing something similar. I can just open up a bunch of hi res pics and eat up some video memory then try and play the game. lol, please stop saying it never exceeded 1011mb though because I am sure you know by now that 1011mb is the max you can use with a 1gb video card. all we need to do is see how it impacts performance.

btw 1147mb was the max I saw on ultra at 1280x960 with 4x AA before but I am going to have at least 500 mb of vram used up before starting this time. if it really needed that much then I should hitch pretty badly.

There isn't any reason why I need to stop saying it never goes over 1011MB if it doesn't. I also mentioned that it never stays pinned at 1011MB. It fluctuates as low as 985MB and anywhere in between. If the game was asking for 1.4GB of memory, I'd think it would stay pinned at 1011MB. IMHO.
If you ask me to stop saying it again, I will just pepper my posts with it. ()

Anyway, looking forward to your findings. Let us know.

Oh, one other thing. If you open too many videos, eventually it will steal Processing power from the shaders of the GPU. That in itself will damage performance. You need to find a way to use the most memory you can with the least amount of videos running. I think. But you see what I'm trying to say? If your performance is affected, I want it to be because of memory starvation and not GPU power being stolen.

To bad there isn't a way to limit how much video memory is available.

 

[toyota]

There isn't any reason why I need to stop saying it never goes over 1011MB if it doesn't. I also mentioned that it never stays pinned at 1011MB. It fluctuates as low as 985MB and anywhere in between. If the game was asking for 1.4GB of memory, I'd think it would stay pinned at 1011MB. IMHO.
If you ask me to stop saying it again, I will just pepper my posts with it.

Anyway, looking forward to your findings. Let us know.

okay I had 550mb of vram being use when I started the game. I hit 1253mb so every bit got used. i did not notice any hitching though I got some major flickering and I have never had that before. when i exited the game though my system must have had to free up some vram for the game because it was now at 461mb instead of 550mb. is that even possible or does some of the vram used for those pic just slowly get released anyway?

 

[ViRGE]

If the game was asking for 1.4GB of memory, I'd think it would stay pinned at 1011MB. IMHO.

From your description most likely they're doing dynamic LOD based on available memory. So high res textures are being evicted for lower resolution textures. Which would explain why it's bouncing around, since individual textures can be quite big.

 

[Keysplayr]

From your description most likely they're doing dynamic LOD based on available memory. So high res textures are being evicted for lower resolution textures. Which would explain why it's bouncing around, since individual textures can be quite big.

It is certainly possible. To really know this for sure, we'd have to have an intensive discussion with the dev. Something I could try to do. Also, the full retail version of BF3 would be helpful.

 

[ViRGE]

It is certainly possible. To really know this for sure, we'd have to have an intensive discussion with the dev. Something I could try to do. Also, the full retail version of BF3 would be helpful.

I don't suppose you've seen DICE's GDC DX11 presentation? It goes into some detail about how they're streaming resources, though it doesn't fully answer the question.