Graphics (VGA) performance demo and IQ settings
Graphics (VGA) performance Timedemo and IQ settings
Before we begin with the graphics performance tests a little explanation. We use a run that is located in the Operation Swordbreaker level, have a peek where we are recording:
Above the level we use to measure game performance. This is the operation SwordBreaker level
Guru3D Battlefield 3 DirectX 11 benchmark run -- here we are in DX11 mode with Ultra settings. This is the Operation Swordbreaker level where there is a good balance in-between graphics card GPU load and processor utilization, making this an excellent level to test GPU performance in. There will be levels a tiny bit more stringent, there will be levels and sections way more easy. We think this level is the best representation of the game engine though.
Mind you that we test single player mode on purpose as we test the graphics engine. Massive Online gaming has much more variables to deal with and a lot of random stuff that can have an effect on graphics performance. We did try it quickly and overall online gaming seems a tad faster actually.
For our graphics performance tests we apply 4xAA and have enabled Ultra quality mode. DX11 is activated and tessellating like a freakozoid. We disabled the variety of available edge AA enhancements though as we heard of little bugs. And since the playfield in-between AMD and NVIDIA should remains the same, that's off. It does give is a slightly better framerate at the cost of a tiny bit of additional eye-candy.
The graphics cards used are:
- Radeon 5870
- Radeon 6950
- Radeon 6970
- Radeon 6870
- Radeon 6850
- GeForce GTX 470
- GeForce GTX 560 Ti
- GeForce GTX 570
- GeForce GTX 580
- GeForce GTX 590
For those that wonder what about the Radeon HD 6990. We did install it and applied the new CAP4 patch for multi-GPU support. This however made the card crash at desktop, hence the results lacking. once the final driver is out we'll have another look.
Each card runs on the same PC with the same operating system clone. GeForce cards use the 285.62 WHQL 64-bit driver and for AMD Radeon we used the latest 11.10 Preview 3 driver with the Catalyst Application Profile 11.10 CAP4.
Our test setup is based on Intel X58 (MSI Big bang XPower) with 6 GB of DDR3 ( Corsair 1600 MHz) memory. The processor is a Core i7 965 clocked at 3750 MHz.
Let's head onwards to the next page where we'll look at the 1280x768 and 1600x1200 resolution performance first.
