TR Forums

DPete27 wrote:

CT_Messiah wrote:

I would like to play next-gen games like BF4 and whatnot on ultra settings, but from what my friends, who are self proclaimed "PC Gaming Gurus" tell me, that's really just not possible for below $2,000.00

The R9 290X churns out 67fps @ 1080p, Ultra Settings, 4x MSAA. I'd say that's silky smooth. I agree with others here that the R9 290 will be plenty and save you some $ to put into an Intel i5 / i7.

My dear naive friend, you should not believe any garbage benchmark that ANY commercial site may post, ESPECIALLY when it comes to a multiplayer-oriented game I just played for a little bit (not a full round) on a 64-person server, Hainan Resort map, and used the "benchmark" function of FRAPS. Here is what I got when running on Ultra settings at 1080p with my 290x, running the latest beta drivers:

2013-11-01 20:11:33 - bf4
Frames: 75946 - Time: 980047ms - Avg: 77.492 - Min: 31 - Max: 122

Notice the "Min" result Did the game had an overall "smooth" feel? Subjectively - "yes", it was perfectly "smooth", but that's not the point I am trying to make here

.

JohnC wrote:

DPete27 wrote:

CT_Messiah wrote:

I would like to play next-gen games like BF4 and whatnot on ultra settings, but from what my friends, who are self proclaimed "PC Gaming Gurus" tell me, that's really just not possible for below $2,000.00

The R9 290X churns out 67fps @ 1080p, Ultra Settings, 4x MSAA. I'd say that's silky smooth. I agree with others here that the R9 290 will be plenty and save you some $ to put into an Intel i5 / i7.

My dear naive friend, you should not believe any garbage benchmark that ANY commercial site may post, ESPECIALLY when it comes to a multiplayer-oriented game I just played for a little bit (not a full round) on a 64-person server, Hainan Resort map, and used the "benchmark" function of FRAPS. Here is what I got when running on Ultra settings at 1080p with my 290x, running the latest beta drivers...

1) I don't appreciate being called naïve just because I had to dig for one of the few BF4 benchmarks run on a 290x. Unfortunately I don't have a 290x, I was just trying to be helpful in the absence of any first-hand experience being offered at the time of my post.
2) I should have known better than to have used the word "smooth" in the TR forums when only referencing a benchmark with average FPS. My mistake.
3) Online gameplay is terribly inconsistent. There are so many outside factors that can mess with your gameplay experience / frame rates. On a 64 player map, your chances of getting one person that lags the whole thing up are tremendous. That, and those 64 player maps quickly become CPU-limited.

Near as I can tell, HardOCP does the 'best' job of comparing multi-player GPU performance, but as stated already, it's a haphazard process at best.

And yeah, CPU limitations are king- now that BF4 servers are getting populated and I've started digging into performance settings, I'm finding that my CPU just may not be up to the task. The GPU's can hit a solid 60 with settings on High or Ultra, 2xMSAA, but it looks like my 2GB/card of VRAM isn't enough, and I see strong 'pauses' when being shot at or dying. I'll keep pounding on it for sure, but until then, I have two recommendations:

1. Get GPUs with 3GB to 4GB of VRAM or more. More preferably, but such cards don't really exist for consumers yet.
2. Get an Intel K-series CPU with at least four cores and Hyper-Threading. As JohnC said, we're at that point where Hyper-Threading is actually worth the price; it's a performance multiplier.

DPete27 wrote:

1) I don't appreciate being called naïve just because I had to dig for one of the few BF4 benchmarks run on a 290x. Unfortunately I don't have a 290x, I was just trying to be helpful in the absence of any first-hand experience being offered at the time of my post.
2) I should have known better than to have used the word "smooth" in the TR forums when only referencing a benchmark with average FPS. My mistake.
3) Online gameplay is terribly inconsistent. There are so many outside factors that can mess with your gameplay experience / frame rates. On a 64 player map, your chances of getting one person that lags the whole thing up are tremendous. That, and those 64 player maps quickly become CPU-limited.

Oh, there are plenty of BF4 benchmarks including the ones using 290x - Guru3D, Gamegpu.ru, plus lots of them at Overclock.net forums Doesn't mean that people interested in BF4 should rely on ANY of them, though... Unless they are only interested in single-player, which would be a huge waste of money Like you yourself have said - online gameplay is inconsistent, different maps and game modes will show different performance, same goes for in-game settings. Not many people are even aware that "Ultra" is not the "highest" setting - there is also a way to use "Supersampling" by jacking up the "Resolution Scale" setting (it defaults at "100%"), and with this setting maxed out + "Ultra" setting = very, very low FPS during online play even at 1080p resolution and using cards like Titan or 290x... Though even without "Supersampling" and only using 4x MSAA the game looks good enough for majority of people.

I have split this discussion from a first-time forum participant's system build thread and I have moved it out of the System Builders Anonymous forum.

JustAnEngineer, SBA forum moderator