Master&Puppet
New member
So, the second game on my quest to find out how much CPU power you actually need to run modern games and it's BF3's turn.
From the testing so far it looks like you only need around a 2.5GHz clock on a 3570k to have enough power to support any single GPU rig. More can be found here: http://forum.overclo...eck-joke-title/
So, how does BF3 measure up?
Test Setup
The important bits of my rig are:
A 3570k which has the turbo disabled and is set at different multipliers for each test (this is the only thing I touched between tests).
2x 7950s set at stock which give me enough power to get some real clues about how much FPS the CPU limits us to.
I ran the first few minutes of the fourth level (Going Hunting). This is a popular level for reviewers to benchmark with because it is highly scripted and therefore easy to compare results. Whether or not it is the most demanding level of the game is different question but nevertheless this should give us a reliable standard for general gameplay.
Results
Amazingly the test produced over 100FPS on average with the CPU set at just 1.6GHz.
However at 1.6GHz there was a slight bottleneck in certain places which was relieved by the 2.5GHz clock.
As further evidence, in the 4GHz single GPU test, there is almost perfect 2 card scaling showing that even with FPS this high the game was actually still GPU limited.
Conclusion
At least in this level BF3 works the CPU significantly less than Shogun 2. Here a 2.5GHz clock is able to fully support 2 decent GPUs and whilst these 7950s remain at stock I'd be happy to suggest that at stock a 3570k isn't going to tie down any twin card rig currently in existence. Not that that even remotely matters given how high the FPS is anyway...but it is nice to know.
M&P
From the testing so far it looks like you only need around a 2.5GHz clock on a 3570k to have enough power to support any single GPU rig. More can be found here: http://forum.overclo...eck-joke-title/
So, how does BF3 measure up?
Test Setup
The important bits of my rig are:
A 3570k which has the turbo disabled and is set at different multipliers for each test (this is the only thing I touched between tests).
2x 7950s set at stock which give me enough power to get some real clues about how much FPS the CPU limits us to.
I ran the first few minutes of the fourth level (Going Hunting). This is a popular level for reviewers to benchmark with because it is highly scripted and therefore easy to compare results. Whether or not it is the most demanding level of the game is different question but nevertheless this should give us a reliable standard for general gameplay.
Results
Amazingly the test produced over 100FPS on average with the CPU set at just 1.6GHz.
However at 1.6GHz there was a slight bottleneck in certain places which was relieved by the 2.5GHz clock.
As further evidence, in the 4GHz single GPU test, there is almost perfect 2 card scaling showing that even with FPS this high the game was actually still GPU limited.
Conclusion
At least in this level BF3 works the CPU significantly less than Shogun 2. Here a 2.5GHz clock is able to fully support 2 decent GPUs and whilst these 7950s remain at stock I'd be happy to suggest that at stock a 3570k isn't going to tie down any twin card rig currently in existence. Not that that even remotely matters given how high the FPS is anyway...but it is nice to know.
M&P
