High End: Core i7-3960X Platform

Battlefield 4 (DirectX 11)


Battlefield 4 features an intense and character-driven single player campaign, fused with the strongest elements of multiplayer. Pilot vehicles, take advantage of the dynamic destructible environments and don't let your squad down.

Watch the new single player trailer above for a glimpse of the drama and perils Tombstone Squad has to face, trying to find its way back home.

Throw yourself into the all-out war of Battlefield 4's multiplayer. With support for 64 players and 7 unique game modes available on 10 vast maps, nothing compares to the scale and scope of Battlefield 4.

Frame Rating: Battlefield 4 Mantle CrossFire Early Performance with FCAT - Graphics Cards 13

Frame Rating: Battlefield 4 Mantle CrossFire Early Performance with FCAT - Graphics Cards 14

The first thing worth noticing is that the FRAPS-style and observed frame rates in Mantle are exactly the same – there are no dropped frames or runt frames showing up in our testing, which means that at the very least multi-GPU scaling at 1920×1080 is somewhat smooth and consistent. 

Single GPU performance scaling at 1920×1080 between the D3D11 and Mantle APIs, even with the high end Core i7-3960X powering it all, is about 5-6%. That might not change the gaming experience for users in a large way but this does at least prove that Mantle can benefit high end gamers.

Multi-GPU results are…different. The orange line representing dual R9 290X cards with Mantle on the Observed FPS graph is oddly flat and barely faster than the single GPU. The CrossFire D3D11 results are more or less what we have come to expect – 78% faster than the single card. A quick glance at the Frame Times graph shows the orange line of Mantle multi-GPU is nearly perfectly flat – the frame times are incredibly consistent even though they are not as fast as we'd expected.

At 2560×1440 things change a bit. Mantle CrossFire results are again very flat, but at least scale up within range of the DirectX 11 CrossFire scaling. Going from a single R9 290X to a pair with the Mantle API results in 56% average frame rate scaling. That is less than the performance advantage provided by CrossFire in DirectX but if you look at the Frame Times graph, you will again see that the Mantle implementation is incredibly smooth and consistent! 

Mantle multi-GPU scaling is much better and provides more tangible benefits with this platform at 2560×1440 than it does at 1920×1080, but the "flatness" of the frame times is a bit confusing. It almost appears that the Frostbite engine's implementation of frame pacing puts so much weight behind having a consistent frame rate that it is willing to sacrifice peak frame rates. In the case of our higher resolution results here, I think that trade off is worth making. The lack of ANY hitches or frame time spikes provides a spectacularly smooth gaming experience.

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