Battlefield: Hardline: PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

  

Year of release :2014
Genre : Action
Developer : Visceral Games
Publisher : Electronic Arts 

 

Battlefield Hardline is a game in the Battlefield series by Visceral Games, best known for the Dead Space series of games and also involved in the development of Battlefield 3: End Game and Battlefield 4, developed with the support of DICE and published by EA. The release of the finished game was scheduled for October 21, 2014, but was later postponed to the beginning of 2015.

It differs from previous games in the Battlefield Hardline series by another underlying reason: now, instead of the war of superpowers, the player plunges into the world of "crime and punishment", pursuing criminals for the police.

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 Hardline only runs on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Other operating systems are not currently supported and are unlikely to be supported.

 

The primary and primary graphics API for the Battlefield Hardline multiplayer game is DirectX 11. The game operates through the Origin digital game sales service.

Game engine

Battlefield Hardline  is based on Frostbite Engine 3. Frostbite Engine is a game engine developed by EA Digital Illusions CE; used both in their own developments and projects of other branches of Electronic Arts. The first game created using this engine was Battlefield: Bad Company in 2008. The engine was designed to replace the technically obsolete Refractor Engine technology used in the firm's previous games.

 

There are four versions of the engine - 1.0, 1.5, 2, 3, as well as a special version of the engine for mobile systems - Frostbite Go. The engine refers to a type of sub-software and is a bundle of several components, such as a graphics engine, a sound engine, etc. In the Microsoft Windows operating system, the game engine supports graphics display using DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 10.1, and starting from version 1.5 - and DirectX 11. One of the announced features is optimization for multi-core processors.

 

The technology is able to handle the destructibility of the landscape and environment. Supports dynamic lighting and shading with HBAO, procedural shading, various post-effects (such as HDR and depth of field), a particle system, and texturing techniques such as bump mapping. The maximum location size is limited to 32 × 32 kilometers of display area and 4 × 4 kilometers of play space.  

 

In addition, it is claimed that the maximum draw distance allows you to see the level up to the horizon. It also has its own sound engine, which does not require the use of specialized tools like EAX. 

 

Advanced game settings

 

Battlefield Hardline is based on the main developments of Battlefield 4 and has both basic and advanced graphics settings identical to it. As befits a game from the Battlefield series, four quality levels are available for all types of settings: ultra, high, medium and low. You can also flexibly manipulate individual settings. 

 

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

Various quality modes

 The difference between the different quality settings is not immediately noticeable and is only visible upon close examination.

Comparison of FullHD and 4K

In 4K, Battlefield Hardline looks pretty good.

Comparison of anti-aliasing modes

Activating anti-aliasing improves the distortion of surface irregularities, but "blurs" the picture a little.

 

Comparison of 100 and 200% resolution modes

 

By setting the resolution level to 200%, game textures become more detailed.

General visual design and game physics

Battlefield: Hardline looks quite decent. The transfer of the game apparently gave the developers the opportunity to improve the graphic component, so we are not looking at some second-rate project, but quite a good game with a very good visual stuffing. The only thing is that I would like to have a real open world in the game, then the feeling of the gameplay would be even higher.

 

  

Next, 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 and minimum FPS were taken as the performance indicator. Below is a video of the test segment:    

Our video cards were tested at resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600 and 3840x2160 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Battlefield Hardline. SLI and AMD CrossFireX work without any problems. Mantle has not been tested, because at the moment it behaves very incorrectly and sometimes goes into the negative - apparently you have to wait for the optimization of the software base...

Testing at 1920x1080 resolution

        

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

With these settings,  an acceptable FPS was shown by video cards like the Radeon R9 270 or GeForce GTX 750 Ti. 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 200%

 

With these settings, video cards of the Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 780 Ti level showed an acceptable FPS. The recommended level would be  ARES II or GeForce GTX 780 SLI.

Testing at 2560x1600 resolution

   

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon R9 270 or GeForce GTX 760 level showed an acceptable FPS.  The recommended level would be  Radeon R9 285 or GeForce GTX 770.

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600 150%

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon HD 7990 or GeForce GTX 780 SLI level showed an acceptable FPS. The recommended level would be  ARES II or GeForce GTX 780 SLI.

Testing at 3840x2160 resolution

  

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2560

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon R9 290X or GeForce GTX 980 level showed an acceptable FPS.  The recommended level is  Radeon HD 7990 or GeForce GTX 780 SLI  and higher.

Testing at maximum quality settings 3840x2560 120%

 

With these settings,  video cards of the Radeon R9 295X2 or GeForce GTX 970 SLI level showed an acceptable FPS. The recommended level would be  Radeon R9 295X2.

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 were taken as an indicator at resolutions of  1920x1080 and 2560x1600 with various anti-aliasing settings.

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings

 

Testing at maximum memory GPU quality settings % 

 

The recommended amount of video memory usage for a resolution of 1920x1080 will be 2048 MB of video memory, for a resolution of 2560x1600 - 3076 MB of video memory and for a resolution of 3840x2160 about 4096 MB of video memory. In high resolution modes, the game requires about 4 gigabytes of video memory.

CPU test

 

We tested processor dependence on 16 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. 

 Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080

 

The CPU performance in the game is not bad, all tested models coped with the game without any problems.

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

 

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

 

The game is capable of supporting up to 8 computational threads, but only 4 cores are fully utilized.

RAM test

The test was carried out on the base configuration Core i 7 5960X @ 4.6 GHz with 16GB DDR4 2400 MGz pre-installed memory. All used RAM was taken as an indicator. The RAM test on the entire system was carried out on various test benches without running extraneous applications (browsers, etc.).

Testing the game's RAM consumption at various quality settings 

 

As we can see, at various quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Battlefield Hardline is at the level of 1.6 gigabytes.

Testing system RAM consumption  

 

On a 6 GB system, the Battlefield Hardline consumes about 4 GB of RAM. In the presence of a system with 8 gigabytes, the RAM consumption of all RAM was 4.4 gigabytes. With a 16 GB system, total memory consumption was almost 5 GB. And with 32 gigabytes of RAM, the system consumes 5.9  gigabytes of RAM.