Battlefield 3 End Game: PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

 

Genre:  Action (Shooter) / 3D / 1st Person
Released:  2013
Developer:  DICE
Publisher:  Electronic Arts
Publisher in Russia:  Electronic Arts

 

Battlefield 3: End Game is the most dynamic modern warfare on four huge maps. Rush through enemy lines on a new dirt bike that makes the game even faster and more agile, or respond to airstrikes with new lightweight anti-aircraft vehicles. Coordinate lightning attacks and defenders in the good old classic - Capture the Flag mode.

Take advantage of a new opportunity to turn the tide by dropping vehicles from the sky. Digging through cracks and crevices in the terrain, finding unexpected shelters and unconventional paths to the target. Additional support comes in the form of heavily modified heavy vehicles and civilian vehicles converted into killing machines.

THE GRAFICAL PART

In this subsection of our review, the main graphical aspects of this game are revealed. Particular attention is paid to the version of the graphics engine used, the version of the API used, graphics settings and the quality of the development of the main visual aspects.

Supported OS and graphics API

Battlefield 3 is supported on major Windows operating systems, including Vista and Windows 7, and soon Windows 8 . Other operating systems are currently not supported by developers and will not receive support. 

 

The priority and primary graphics API for the PC version is DirectX 11 . 

Game engine

The game is based on the Frostbite 2.0 game engine, which was developed by DICE almost from scratch. Recall that Frostbite 2.0 was originally designed to work with DirectX 11, but DirectX 10 is also supported. DirectX 9 is not supported, so the Windows XP operating system is not suitable for the game. Particular attention from the developers was paid to the effects of DirectX 11, improved character animation and advanced physical effects.

 

The game uses hardware-based terrain tessellation, which allows more rendered triangles to be rendered at a high level of detail entirely on the GPU. Thus, the memory is used little, and the GPU itself turns low-resolution data into detailed realistic images. In a regular BF3 scene, 923 thousand triangles of the environment are drawn in tessellation. Without tessellation, there are only 101 thousand of them. The LOD algorithm (Level of Detail in Tessellation) is adaptive in screen space. Therefore, consistently high detail geometry is constantly used in the scene.

 

The extra detail eliminates the obvious straight edges of the polygons, creating a more defined and natural scene, especially in the outlines against the sky. The detailing of landscape deformations, such as craters, is also improved. The LOD tessellation algorithm is continuous. Details change smoothly between levels as you move the viewpoint. Thus, there are no large jumps when switching between the levels of detail of the environment.

Advanced game settings

Battlefield 3 End Game has both basic and advanced graphics settings. As befits a game from the Battlefield 3 series, four quality levels are available for all types of settings: ultra, high, medium and low. You can also flexibly manipulate individual settings. All graphics settings are located on one tab of the game menu.

 

Below we have provided screenshots of the game at various graphics settings, where our readers can see the difference between the minimum, medium, high and maximum graphics quality settings. 

Low quality settings

Battlefield 3 looks pretty good even on low quality settings. The game uses the same real-time lighting engine for all graphics settings, so even on low quality settings, the game uses a ton of dynamic lighting, colors bounce and blend, and high dynamic range kicks in. But the picture, although realistic, is rather rough. There is a slight gradation of the shadows. Textures are blurry when not viewed up close (higher resolution is loaded when the picture becomes quite pale). And trees and grass look flat without the self-shadowing mechanism, which is implemented using the global occlusion mechanism. On low settings, the stair step of the fence can confuse. DICE and EA intentionally didn't remove the effects,

Medium quality settings

At medium settings, the accuracy and detail is much higher. The most important difference is that all the shadows are now softer and there are no jagged edges of the shadows due to the full shading of the pixels. Global occlusion is now used in the Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) form. This means that trees and grass cast shadows on themselves, so they look more juicy. "Post anti-aliasing", i.e. anti-aliasing applied in post-processing using shaders, is now set to Low. In most of the scene, the jagged edges are eliminated, which makes the picture smoother.

High quality settings

This is what Battlefield 3 is supposed to look like. Added an extra level of architectural detail for beautiful buildings. Windows and columns are now rendered with real geometry, and they cast shadows on themselves thanks to global shading. In general, objects and structures look more voluminous. Textures also look sharper thanks to 16x anisotropic filtering. The game just looks really nice.

Very high settings

In ultra high quality, everything looks better than in high quality, but soft, not hard. The most obvious advantage is the 4x MSAA setting. At lower settings, anti-aliasing was controlled by a post-processor shader (FXAA), which, despite its power, could miss some details. For example, at high quality settings, fences and thin lines draw a sliding pattern if you walk past them. In ultra high quality, adding 4x MSAA to the already effective FXAA eliminates most of these effects and moiré.

General visual design and game physics

So the final part of the add-ons for Battlefield 3 called End Game has been released, and further new content for this part of the game is unlikely to be developed. At the end of March, EA will announce a new part of Battlefield 4, which will quite possibly raise the graphics bar to a new level, because the game will be released not only on current hardware, but also on next-generation consoles.

 

Well, again, back to Battlefield 3 End Game - this addition, like all the others, brought only new gameplay, while the graphic part remained at the level of the previous parts. The level design is still not bad, but as many people know, the best and most successful were the cards that came out immediately with the release of the game.

 

 Well, then we will go directly to the gaming tests and determine what impact this game has on modern computer hardware.

TEST PART

GPU test

All video cards were tested at maximum graphics quality by MSI Afterburner . The purpose of the test is to determine how video cards from different manufacturers behave under the same conditions. The average FPS was taken as the performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment: 

 Our video cards were tested at 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 resolutions at high and maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Battlefield 3 End Game. Multi-chip configurations from NVIDIA and AMD are fully optimized and show excellent scalability. The test of video cards was carried out on the map "Ciasar Ways"  without rivals.

 

Testing at high quality settings 1920x1080 

 

At a resolution of 1920x1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 450  level again showed an acceptable FPS. Radeon HD 7750 or GEFORCE GTX 650  and higher solutions will be optimal video cards  .  

Testing at high quality settings 2560x1600 

 

At a resolution of 2560x1600 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 level showed an acceptable minimum FPS . Radeon HD 5870 or GeForce GTX 480  and higher solutions will be optimal video cards .

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

At a resolution of 1920x1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 6850 or GeForce GTX 460 level again showed an acceptable FPS.  Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce GTX 480  and higher solutions will be optimal video cards  .

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600 

 

At a resolution of 2560x1600 at maximum settings, testing on gig cards turned out to be simply impossible - the FPS was equal to a complete slide show, so it's simply impossible to get to the testing site. An acceptable minimum FPS was shown by video cards of the Radeon HD 6970 or GeForce GTX 480 level. The optimal video cards will be the Radeon HD 7970 or GEDORCE GTX 680 and higher solutions.

VRAM test

Testing of the video memory consumed by the game was carried out by the  MSI Afterburner program. The results on top video cards from AMD and NVIDIA at resolutions of  1680x1050, 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 were taken as the indicator.

Testing at various memory GPU quality settings 

 

The optimal amount of video memory usage for this game is its amount in the amount of 1200-1500 MB. for resolutions with high quality settings, and about 1500-2000 megabytes for ultra high quality.

CPU test

 

We tested processor dependence on 12 models of basic configurations that are relevant today. The test was carried out in those places where the value of the video card for the game is minimal and its load was less than 99%, this time at a resolution of 1920x1080 with maximum graphics quality settings. The test was conducted on a full card of 64 people and did not always pass the same way, so ideally the results are not accurate. Below is a video of the test segment:

Testing at maximum  quality settings 1920x1080 - map " Ciasar paths "  64 players

 

As we can see, the best choice for playing Battlefield 3 End Game is to have at least four processing cores in your PC. Intel processors showed the highest performance.

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 Intel %

Loading of processor cores at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 AMD %

As we can see, the Battlefield 3 End Game uses all the available streams, up to a maximum of eight. Well, in confirmation of the higher performance of Intel processors, it is clear that their optimization for multithreading is somewhat higher than that of AMD.
The game has a fairly "smart" system for distributing the load on the cores. So, for example, when using four Core i7 cores, all eight threads work - both the main cores and Hyper-threading. The game can process a maximum of eight threads, and when using a six-core Core i7 i7, the game uses 6 main cores and two hyper-threading, that is, preference is given to more powerful modules.

RAM test

Testing of the RAM consumed by the game was carried out by monitoring directly through the Windows Task Manager. The test was conducted on the base configuration Core i 7 3930K@4.8 GHz with 8GB DDR3 2400 MGz pre-installed memory.

Testing at various quality settings

 

As we can see, with different quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Battlefield 3 Aftermath is almost at the same level and amounts to 900 megabytes.