Battlefield 3 Close Quarters: PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

 

Genre:  Action (Shooter) / 3D / 1st Person
Released:  2012
Developer:  DICE
Publisher:  Electronic Arts
Publisher in Russia:  Electronic Arts

 

Battlefield 3: Close Quarters is a themed add-on pack that brings the action of Battlefield 3 team play into close quarters. The adrenaline of close-quarters combat is enhanced by unique high-definition destructibility, new combat methods, more weapons, and new targets.

HD Destructibility in "Melee" allows the player to riddle with bullets and destroy everything around. Everything, from furniture to plaster, can be blown to pieces and then all this garbage will lie under the player's feet. The cramped space design and multiple levels on the battlefield mean that players will have to go all out to survive in such conditions.

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 by major Windows operating systems, which include Vista and Windows 7. Other operating systems are not currently supported by the developers and are unlikely to 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 has both basic and advanced graphics settings. In total, 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, 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

Well what can we say, Battlefield 3 Close Quarter is Battlefield 3 - the game has the most advanced graphics engine to date, allowing you to display an amazing game picture on the monitor. As for the multiplayer part, the game has practically no equal.

 

Now, as for  Battlefield 3: Close Quarters - almost complete destruction allows the player to riddle with bullets and destroy everything around. Everything, from furniture to plaster, can be blown to pieces, and then all this garbage will lie under the player's feet. The effect of this kind of destruction is simply impressive.

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 resolutions of 1680x1050, 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 at the maximum graphics quality settings allowed by Battlefield 3. The test was conducted in modes with MSAA 4X enabled/disabled. Multi-GPU configurations from NVIDIA and AMD are fully optimized and show excellent scalability. The test was carried out on a map without rivals, since it is simply impossible to test Battlefield 3 in crowded multiplayer.

 

Testing at maximum quality settings 1680x1050 

 

At a resolution of 1680x1050 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 450 level showed an acceptable minimum FPS.  Radeon HD 7750 or GeForce GTX 560 Ti  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 5770 or GeForce GTS 450  level again showed an acceptable FPS. Radeon HD 5830 or GeForce GTX 460 SE  and higher solutions will be optimal video cards  .  

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600 

 

At a resolution of 2560x1600 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 560 level showed an acceptable minimum FPS . Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 560 Ti  and higher solutions will be optimal video cards .

Testing at maximum quality settings 1680x1050  MSAA 4X

 

At a resolution of 1680x1050 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5830 or GeForce GTX 460 SE level showed an acceptable minimum FPS . The optimal video cards will be solutions  Radeon HD 6870 or GeForce GTX 460  and higher.

Testing at maximum quality settings 1920x1080 MSAA 4X 

 

At a resolution of 1920x1080 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 5850 or GeForce GTX 460 level again showed an acceptable FPS.  Radeon HD 6950 or GeForce GTX 560  and higher solutions will be optimal video cards  .

Testing at maximum quality settings 2560x1600 MSAA 4X 

 

At a resolution of 2560x1600 at maximum settings, video cards of the Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 580 level showed an acceptable minimum FPS. Radeon HD 7950 or GeForce GTX 680 and higher solutions will be optimal video cards. 

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 maximum memory GPU quality settings 

Testing at maximum quality settings memory GPU  MSAA 4X

 

The optimal amount of video memory usage for this game is its amount in the amount of 1300-1500 MB. for resolutions with MSAA disabled, and about 1500-2000 megabytes for ultra-high resolutions. But oddly enough, the game with all settings works with video cards with 1 GB of video memory, but sometimes, when the video memory is full, sharp slowdowns can be observed.

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 1024x768 with the minimum graphics quality settings.  

Testing at minimum quality settings 1024x768

 

More or less sufficient performance was provided by all our test CPU models. In crowded multiplayer, FPS can be significantly lower. The game is more optimized for 4-core models. Somewhat unusually, AMD's FX series models are the most optimal solutions for the game.

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 the amount of pre-installed video memory 8GB DDR3 2400 MGz.

Testing at various quality settings

 

As we can see, with different quality settings, the amount of RAM consumed in Battlefield 3 Close Quarters is almost at the same level and amounts to 1300-1400 megabytes.