Battlefield 4 Beta Performance Preview @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Battlefield 4 Beta Performance Preview - Electronic Arts has opened a public beta of the upcoming Battlefield 4 game debuting the new Frostbite 3 game engine. Today we will preview some gameplay performance in BF4 Beta on an AMD Radeon R9 280X and GeForce GTX 770 and see how the game will challenge today's GPU's. The results are not quite what we expected.
 
Nice, your gameplay experience with the 770 mirrors exactly what I've been finding with my 690. Good to know I'm not going insane.
 
cesium666 said:
Nice, your gameplay experience with the 770 mirrors exactly what I've been finding with my 690. Good to know I'm not going insane.
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How much VRAM do you use on your 690 at what resolution and settings? Sorry I have one also wondering if I will need an upgrade for bf4
 
I can attest to the ram issues as well. I have 16gb and can play the game fine. A buddy has nearly the same system with 3gb of ram and it is nearly unplayable.
 
Good review. +1 on your findings with Nvidia as I've got 2 2GB 680's at 2560x1600 and am struggling. Could be a Vram issue, but it could be driver related as well. I had used the official drivers (320.49) which were unplayable. Then used 331.40 beta which allows me to play but not well. I only had a few hours with it and need to get in again to further get my video squared away. First time I had not been impressed with my video in a game so far. 4770k with 32GB RAM, no pagefile.
 
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Seeing as the CPU utilization is so High, why not bring in the FX-8350 and see how it's 8-Core 4.0Ghz+ does against the 2600k/3770k/4770k/3930k. I would love to see a CPU version of this article.
 
Hopefully new drivers will fix the issues, and maybe give a performance boost to the 280X.
 
Kyle, any chance that you guys will start using frame times (versus FPS) in your reviews? This has proven to be a better indicator of the "feel" of the gameplay versus the raw numbers of FPS.

This seems like a perfect example where frametimes would probably show the R9 280X to be better in the graphs.

Also - will you upgrade to Windows 8? I saw pretty significant gains by going to W8. DICE themselves recommend it because of:
- DirectX 11.1
- WDDM 1.2/1.3
Source
 
cesium666 said:
Nice, your gameplay experience with the 770 mirrors exactly what I've been finding with my 690. Good to know I'm not going insane.
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Seeing as the GTX690 has this issue, it would be safe to assume that my GTX670-SLI would have a similar fate....Looks like I'm playing this on my Radeon 7930 CFX machine....
 
sk3tch said:
Kyle, any chance that you guys will start using frame times (versus FPS) in your reviews? This has proven to be a better indicator of the "feel" of the gameplay versus the raw numbers of FPS.

Also - will you upgrade to Windows 8?
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No, we will not. Because FEEL gives a better indicator of feel rather than a number on a chart.

Yes, we are planning a Win8 vs Win7 article for this game.
 
Kyle, thanks for the great read. Exactly what i was looking for. Q: Will/when you be providing some gtx 780 benchmarks, or will you wait for the NDA for the 290x to be lifted so you can compare that price range?

Thanks.
 
Robertmarcus said:
Kyle, thanks for the great read. Exactly what i was looking for. Q: Will/when you be providing some gtx 780 benchmarks, or will you wait for the NDA for the 290x to be lifted so you can compare that price range?

Thanks.
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We will not do another BF4 article until the full retail product is released. We will cover the 290X hopefully before that.
 
Good article, as always. About the issues you were having on the 770 though. From what I've been seeing, most people are actually having better performance on 320.49 drivers rather than the 331.40 beta (that is, unless you're using windows 8). That was my experience as well, on my GTX 760.. But now I have to deal with the TDRs again :(
 
Would like to for sure see some testing with a SB-E/IVY-E 6 core chip compared to the quad cores in the retail version so we can for sure we what advantages there are when the game is more optimized.

And if you guys do have the time try testing with HT disabled on the 6 core chips compared to it enabled to see if this guys testing here for BF3 holds any truth or whether the Frostbite 3 engine better handles Hyper Threading under Windows 8:

http://chipreviews.com/main-feature...-limit-6-core-performance-in-battlefield-3/3/
 
trick0502 said:
I understand FEEL is a better indicator of feel rather than a chart, but a chart shows what you are FEELing. We can't FEEL what you are feeling, and the chart will show what you are feeling. All it would do is reinforce what you are saying.

FEEL me?
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Word. Frametimes FTW. Much more accurate. Keep FPS, as well...sure. But it would be really nice to get frametime info, as well. We all want more, more, more, Kyle. Nothing is ever [H] enough on [H], lol.
 
trick0502 said:
I understand FEEL is a better indicator of feel rather than a chart, but a chart shows what you are FEELing. We can't FEEL what you are feeling, and the chart will show what you are feeling. All it would do is reinforce what you are saying.

FEEL me?
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sk3tch said:
Word. Frametimes FTW. Much more accurate. Keep FPS, as well...sure. But it would be really nice to get frametime info, as well. We all want more, more, more, Kyle. Nothing is ever [H] enough on [H], lol.
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Considering that NVIDIA started its entire frame pacing / frametime investigation based on what HardOCP "said," I would suggest what we say is spot on. We are not going to invest the resources into our current review process as it is already tremendously resource consuming. This technology has been utilized and discussed at length internally starting well over a year ago and we have decided against including it. We do not feel as though 20 more sets of graphs will truly help us inform our readers about what real world gameplay experience they should expect from GPU hardware.

You will need to go to another website if that is the information you want.
 
I'm running SLI GTX670 FTW's, and have tried it with and with out SLI and the game plays very good, did not experience the same as the OP.
 
Rogue_Apprentice said:
Side note: New drivers and game update since this article was written as well but its good to see others are having the same experiences with the beta.
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NVIDIA's beta driver from 9/30/13 is still the most recent one available on their website and we used the 13.11 Beta from AMD (which appears to have finally gone public today). Not sure how there could be more current drivers since I just confirmed that they're the most recent right now. With regards to the game, most of the final data collection was done on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, so that should be hot off the presses...

MADOGRE said:
I'm running SLI GTX670 FTW's, and have tried it with and with out SLI and the game plays very good, did not experience the same as the OP.
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How much VRAM do you have on your cards? What resolution and settings are you playing at?
 
Rogue_Apprentice said:
Side note: New drivers and game update since this article was written as well but its good to see others are having the same experiences with the beta.
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We are using the latest drivers for this article: Catalyst 13.11 Beta and ForceWare 331.40 Beta, there are no newer. As David also posted, testing was day literally two days ago, so latest Beta version tested.
 
I had framerate issues up until I updated my drivers to 331.40. Smooth sailing from then on. I am running a 680 and windows 8.1. Everything was maxed out by default and I left it that way.

edit: 1920 x 1200.

Lowest FPS I have seen is 47 on a 64 man server.
 
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Great review Kyle and Brent !!

I have played the beta some and i know what your talking about with the AMD card having very playable feel at low fps as thats what i'm also seeing with my 7950.

My system is Intel x58 with i7-930 with HT at stock clocks and 6Gb of ram and 7950 at stock clocks with Cat 13.4 on Vista 64bit, this was around 30-35fps but it shows what your saying as when all the tanks start blasting it remained smooth.

no sound (headset) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGPrbKVvGII
 
Brent, David:

You may want to give testing another whirl on Windows 8 or 8.1 if you have a machine with it installed. I know you aren't doing another article on it (until release), but if you want to humor yourself - give it a try just for your personal satisfaction! I don't know how or why but BF4 performs *very much* better on windows 8. I don't know if that is related to DX11.1/DX11.2, but there is a night and day difference between Windows 7 x64 and Windows 8/8.1 in BF4 - with Windows 8.x being much better. Many folks have made note of this, I've seen the same thing mentioned several times on many websites - so I know i'm not crazy. There's something under the hood in Windows 8.x which makes the performance very much better for BF4.
 
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So.......

You think the AMD advantage here is video RAM?

or does system RAM also contribute?

This game sounds like a real challenge to even the most stout system.

Nice review, well worth reading, thanks. Not a BF player, but good preview of games to come, I hope, using the Frostbite engine.
 
Thanks for the article. All of the guys in my gaming clan play BF4 Beta and they all complain about the same inconsistent frame rate with Intel CPU's that was documented in the article. Going to link this to them so they can understand what's going on. So 16GB of ram is the new normal. Time to upgrade!

Thanks again. :)
 
Thank you very much for the great review!

Can hardly wait for SLI/CF & R9 290X results.


Regards,
 
burningrave101 said:
Would like to for sure see some testing with a SB-E/IVY-E 6 core chip compared to the quad cores in the retail version so we can for sure we what advantages there are when the game is more optimized.
And if you guys do have the time try testing with HT disabled on the 6 core chips compared to it enabled to see if this guys testing here for BF3 holds any truth or whether the Frostbite 3 engine better handles Hyper Threading under Windows 8:
http://chipreviews.com/main-feature...-limit-6-core-performance-in-battlefield-3/3/
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I'll second this for the retail review of Battlefield 4 when [H] does it. The above webpage imo is the best look at Intel 4 & 6 core scaling in Bf3 I've seen.
I haven't noticed in a long time but does [H] run their i7 game reviews with Hyper Threading on all the time? I've noticed it's made a large difference in performance having it on.
I do hope the Nvidia stuttering is fixed when it goes gold. Single and Sli for me still seems to have odd prolonged stuttering and dips into low 20's fps with the second patch.
Thanks for the review! Great to see your take on the beta. Hopefully performance issues right now won't stop the good players from staying away from the real deal.
 
As a last thought I had when I finished this article......

why pit two rebranded products against each other here? old 7970 versus the old GTX 680.

Is it that there currently is no top tier AMD GPU since the 7th?
Is it price matching?

I mean I'd have figured you would use a 7970 GHz (which I guess the 280X is) versus the GTX 780. They actually have the same amount of VRAM and are pretty close in hardware, obviously the 780 costs more??? (especially with the AMD deep price cut)

Just curious.
 
Brent_Justice said:
We are using the latest drivers for this article: Catalyst 13.11 Beta and ForceWare 331.40 Beta, there are no newer. As David also posted, testing was day literally two days ago, so latest Beta version tested.
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Sorry my bad on the drivers but there was a game update with performance enhancements. I just downloaded it today and saw a tweet about it this afternoon.
 
It is a Beta, and changes should be expected. We made full note that everything can completely change by the time this game hits Gold at the end of October, and it will, since all the graphics features will be there in the final game, and they aren't in the Beta.
 
magoo said:
As a last thought I had when I finished this article......

why pit two rebranded products against each other here? old 7970 versus the old GTX 680.

Is it that there currently is no top tier AMD GPU since the 7th?
Is it price matching?

I mean I'd have figured you would use a 7970 GHz (which I guess the 280X is) versus the GTX 780. They actually have the same amount of VRAM and are pretty close in hardware, obviously the 780 costs more??? (especially with the AMD deep price cut)

Just curious.
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You missed the point then, the point was to compare a 2GB card vs. a 3GB card, since that is one of the most important comparisons people want to know about with this game, if 2GB will be a limit, and if 3GB cards will show a benefit.

Also, 280X and 770 are the latest models of video cards right now from both camps, reviews will consist of these new models. Obviously if you look at 280X performance you will know 7970 GHz performance, and if you look at 770 performance, you will know 680 performance.

This was a preview, of a Beta game, we aren't going to invest the resources on evaluating every video card, we chose the two most competitive at a $300-399 price range. In other games, they are dead even on performance, but in this game, they are not, again, an interesting turn of events.

The full evaluation will be done when the game is released.
 
Brent_Justice said:
You missed the point then, the point was to compare a 2GB card vs. a 3GB card, since that is one of the most important comparisons people want to know about with this game, if 2GB will be a limit, and if 3GB cards will show a benefit.
Snip
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How are the amd 4gb cards looking?
 
It looks like people in here forgot what Beta stands for.

Due to the fact that BF4 is optimized for AMD GPU's you need to give Nvidia some time to do the coding to smooth things up, I mean the game runs at least 30% faster than AMD cards.

This is clearly a driver issue, no need to panic folks, the game is not even out yet.
 
Awesome article. Can't wait for the Win 7 vs 8 comparison.

In terms of performance for the full version of the game coming out in just under 3 weeks, it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

On one side, the beta is running from an older build of the final game and so obviously its not as optimized. On the other end, the graphics will be nicer due to the extra features... but perhaps not faster? So its a faster vs. better question that I'm very curious about.
 
There won't be any difference between the two versions of windows.
 
Gotta use windows 8 or 8.1 to get better frame rates. Windows 7 struggles a lot with the game from reading what other people got with it. 8 is most likely is better at multithreading than 7. I heard some people say they got better fps also by enabling only 4 or 3 cores on the cpu. Could be a bug in the beta. Some people got a big boost with that. I bet if it was done on windows 8 it will run much better. 30 minimum fps at least.
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Battlefield-4/BF4-Beta-Massive-lags-because-of-CPU-usage/td-p/1600543
 
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Conker said:
Gotta use windows 8 or 8.1 to get better frame rates. Windows 7 struggles a lot with the game from reading what other people got with it. 8 is most likely is better at multithreading than 7. I heard some people say they got better fps also by enabling only 4 or 3 cores on the cpu. Could be a bug in the beta. Some people got a big boost with that.
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Battlefield-4/BF4-Beta-Massive-lags-because-of-CPU-usage/td-p/1600543
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Yep. If this carries over I expect a lot of people will get Windows 8.1 for BF4. The performance jump going from Windows 7 x64 to Windows 8.1 is huge in BF4 beta. (this is using a GTX 780)
 
Since Hard OCP is usually very thorough, I'd hope you guys will also delve into the up/down sampling option in the video options menu. Ultra/4xMsaa & 200% easily made me hit the 2Gb cap on my cards, but dang did things ever look nice. Almost any setting over 100% will go over 2048Mb, though at that point even a 7970 runs out of raw power. I'd bet any single card will be unplayable with upscaling at full + Ultra.

Conker said:
8 is most likely is better at multithreading than 7. I heard some people say they got better fps also by enabling only 4 or 3 cores on the cpu. Could be a bug in the beta. Some people got a big boost with that.
http://answers.ea.com/t5/Battlefield-4/BF4-Beta-Massive-lags-because-of-CPU-usage/td-p/1600543
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Funny, I got lower fps in Bf3 with HT on. Bf4 beta is the opposite for me.
 
Lag and FPS spikes are a problem with Windows 7 , the beta is badly optimized for it .. moving on to windows 8 solves all problems on both NVIDIA and AMD hardware .. especially NVIDIA , I tried this myself with 660 Ti.
 
http://www.bf4blog.com/battlefield-4-on-windows-8-will-have-better-cpu-optimization/

Windows 8 has a hidden feature up its sleeve, DirectX 11.1. Windows 7 is said to use only certain portions of DirectX 11.1. DICE’s Technical Director, Johan Andersson, has said that the Frostbite engine will fully support the latest version of DirectX and that systems using this software will see better performance, more specifically, better CPU optimization:
“We use DX11.1, there are some optimizations in it (constant buffer offsets, dynamic buffers as SRVs) that we got in to the API that improves CPU performance in our rendering when one runs with DX11.1. This will be in BF4.” Johan Andersson stated.
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Its obvious windows 8/8.1 will run bf4 better. Night and day difference.
http://www.gamepur.com/news/12283-b...windows-7-performance-no-shuttering-incr.html
 
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