DX11: Battlefield 3

DX11: Battlefield 3

One of the biggest game releases of 2011 was Battlefield 3, a combat immersive game that blew us from our socks. We'll take this title and have a look at DX11 performance with the newest graphics cards.

With the plot set in 2014, SSgt Blackburn leads a five-man squad on a mission to locate, find and safely return a US squad investigating a possible chemical weapons site, whose last known position was a market controlled by a hostile militia called the PLR. Blackburn and his squad is later sent to Tehran to apprehend a high-value target named Al-Bashir. While investigating an underground vault in a local bank, Blackburn and his team learn that the PLR had access to Russian portable nuclear devices, and that two of the devices are missing.

All test runs have enabled:

• DX11
• Ultra mode
• 4x MSAA enabled
• 16x AF enabled
• HBAO enabled
• Level: Operation Swordbreaker

As you can see, with a single GTX 680 we get 38 FPS (average) at 2560x1600. The GeForce GTX 690 manages to get that close to 70 FPS.

We test at Ultra quality mode, should your graphics card have sever issues running in this configuration, by all means select a lower quality level or disable MSAA, 4x MSAA will cost you almost a third to half your framerate. The chart above shows various cards in 1920x1200.

The GeForce GTX 690 even at 1920x1200 just blows away anything in its path. I just noticed that I still have to test the Radeon HD 6990, initially when we tested the title that card did not work with BF3.