Updates to Play Battlefield 4

[stanley514]

I have a XFX Ati 7850 2GB video card in my gaming PC. BF4 needs 3GB video card. Should I just buy a second 7850 and crossfire them or just buy a single 79?? Ati card from XFX with 3GB. I realy dont like the idea of spending $400+ for a video card but $200 or less I can live with.
My PC AM3 MSI GD-70 MOBO AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz.
8gb of ram.

 

[raghu78]

sell the HD 7850 for 100 bucks. get a HD 7950 or R9 280X.

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=PC-7950_OC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131499

the asus r9 280x is the best reviewed and quietest r9 280x
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121803

btw overclock your cpu to 4 ghz.

 

[dominix1910]

2x2gb in cf/sli=2gb not 4 just remind.

 

[ShintaiDK]

BF4 dont need 3GB.

 

[Termie]

Your CPU will hold you back much more in this game than your video card. Do not upgrade the 7850.

You only need 3GB for ultra settings at 1440p and above, which requires at least an R9 290 anyway.

 

[Paul98]

Also when the mantle update comes out next month you will most likely use less vram while playing at the same settings. Though your 7850 will work just fine playing it right now only at ultra/high resolution does bf4 use more than 2gb.

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

Your CPU will hold you back much more in this game than your video card. Do not upgrade the 7850.

You only need 3GB for ultra settings at 1440p and above, which requires at least an R9 290 anyway.

Why would his CPU hold him back? Just curious because I was going to get an R9 of some sort and BF4 and my CPU is similar to his.

 

[Spidre]

Battlefield definetly does not need 3gb. I'm using a 2gb 770 and it's running on ultra 4x MSAA. I've heard of people running it well with 1gb of vram.

If you have the choice, take 3gb over 2, but don't make it a deciding factor because you won't need it as of now.

 

[Enigmoid]

Why would his CPU hold him back? Just curious because I was going to get an R9 of some sort and BF4 and my CPU is similar to his.

A stock P II x4 is going to hold back massively in MP with an higher end gpu.

 

[Termie]

Why would his CPU hold him back? Just curious because I was going to get an R9 of some sort and BF4 and my CPU is similar to his.

Here you go:

www.techbuyersguru.com/ochtgaming2.php

An i7-920@3.4GHz is about 20% slower than the 3770K tested at 3.3GHz, and the GTX780 is equivalent to an R9 290.

That being said, your CPU is much faster than a Deneb@3.4.

 

[rancherlee]

Trust me, your 7850 is about all a x4 Deneb can handle. Most games it was a good combo but other the x4 would hold my OC'ed 1200/1375 7850 back. Upgraded to a 7950 and my x4 held it back in almost every game I got. Heck my 7950 only ran at 60-70% in BF4, slapped an X6 thuban (core unlocked 960t) and still can't feed the 7950 100% all the time

 

[Capt Caveman]

I'm using a GTX 580 1.5gb and play BF4 with no issues.

 

[AlucardX]

No problems here with an oc'd 7850 and 2500k @ 4.5ghz. However, I only play at 1680x1050

 

[leeb2013]

I find that with a single 7950 o/c to 1030MHz, I can play BF4 on max settings, MSAA 2x, 1080p, 40-60fps. You can get these for around $200 in the US now. A single 7970 would be better, more likely to hit 60fps.

With 7950 crossfire, I get a constant 60fps.

The CPU may hold you back a bit, my 3570k o/c to 4.4GHz runs at 70-90% @ 60fps. With Vsync off, it hitting 70-80fps, but if I don't o/c the frame rate drops, so it's definitely CPU limited. Plus the 7950 crossfire are only at 50-70% usage @ 60fps.

At 1080p, it never takes more than 2GB Vram. Which is annoying as the recommended Vram is 3GB, which made me buy AMD instead of Nvidia, but I guess that was the idea. Unless they are saying typical gaming is at greater than 1080p, but that goes against 98% of games using 1080p.

There's a quick way to check greater than 1080p, just increase the rendered resolution (in options) to > 100%. eg setting it to 200% = 4k res or 4 x 1080p monitors. At this res, it still only uses 2.8GB Vram (MSAA x2).

Mind you, this is all pretty moot, as the game has so many bugs, you'll be lucky to play it without the server refusing connection, the game crashing half way through or failing to load the next map.

 

[Stuka87]

Speaking from experience with your same CPU, its your bottleneck.

Your GPU will keep up fine with the CPU that you have. I have mine at 4GHz and I run at 95% CPU all the time when playing multi-player. All my FPS drops coincide with the CPU pegging out. Not with the GPU pegging out. My GPU for the most part never hits 100% utilization unless its single player or nobody or its like a 16 player game.

 

[ozzy702]

Phenom is holding you back big time. My wife's box has an i5-750 @3.4ghz and it's a bottleneck for a 7950 plenty of the time and that's a lot faster CPU clock for clock than the Phenom II.

I noticed occasional CPU bottlenecking when I had my 2500k rig running at stock clocks. I'd look at finding a thuban cheap or picking up a new mobo and cpu before replacing your gpu.

 

[Nged72]

Battlefield definetly does not need 3gb. I'm using a 2gb 770 and it's running on ultra 4x MSAA. I've heard of people running it well with 1gb of vram.

If you have the choice, take 3gb over 2, but don't make it a deciding factor because you won't need it as of now.

Im playing it fine with a GTX 560Ti Hawk :d

Although Im going to upgrade whenever the damn 290 aftermarket coolers come out

 

[nenforcer]

Phenom is holding you back big time. My wife's box has an i5-750 @3.4ghz and it's a bottleneck for a 7950 plenty of the time and that's a lot faster CPU clock for clock than the Phenom II.

I noticed occasional CPU bottlenecking when I had my 2500k rig running at stock clocks. I'd look at finding a thuban cheap or picking up a new mobo and cpu before replacing your gpu.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/109?vs=102

The Core i5-750 is hardly a lot faster CPU clock for clock when gaming. It does win nearly every single benchmark but not by much. Far Cry 2 is the only clear gut gaming victory, as well.

He should really wait until the end of december for the AMD Mantle version of Battlefield 4 to be released as this could really schew performance towards something as lowly as a Radeon HD 7790 aka Radeon R7 260X.

 

[ozzy702]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/109?vs=102

The Core i5-750 is hardly a lot faster CPU clock for clock when gaming. It does win nearly every single benchmark but not by much. Far Cry 2 is the only clear gut gaming victory, as well.

He should really wait until the end of december for the AMD Mantle version of Battlefield 4 to be released as this could really schew performance towards something as lowly as a Radeon HD 7790 aka Radeon R7 260X.

You just proved my point. Increase the performance of the i5 by 30% and it's leaving the Phenom in the dust. Don't get me wrong, there's a much bigger delta clock for clock with Sandy Bridge and newer chips compared with the Phenom but still a decent amount when looking at first gen i series.

Mantle will only improve the GPU performance and since he already has a 7850 it's even more reason to look at replacing his CPU.

As I mentioned, even my i5-2500 machine was bottlenecking BF3 at times whereas when I upgraded to the 2600k that bottleneck was 99.9% removed and shifted over to my GPU.

My current bottleneck in BF4 is the game itself and drivers since neither my CPU or my GPU's are pushed over 60% and yet the game isn't 100% smooth.

The Cinebench multithread is telling since they are basically neck and neck despite the massive clock speed difference between the two CPUs.


Edit: Yes turbo plays a part but that is only in lightly threaded workloads.