How can 200mhz in BF3 make a difference?

Relentless81 · 30 Apr 2012 at 12:39

I upped my CPU from 3.4 to 3.6 at the weekend, I was surprised by the difference in BF3

Anyone know why this might be, I wasnt expecting the difference to be that noticable but it seems a fair bit smoother

Its a Phenom 965 and the GPU is a 560 Ti

Phal · 30 Apr 2012 at 12:42

Did you check average fps before and after or are you just going on feel? Might be a combination of placebo+actual difference that you're noticing

Kosmiche · 30 Apr 2012 at 12:42

Did you mess with ram timings?

Your ram will have been overclocked a tad, just something to consider.

Relentless81 · 30 Apr 2012 at 12:45

I know what you mean about placebo but its definitely not that, I play it enough on this setup to notice any changes and theres a definite difference, unfortunately I didnt measure FPS, wish I did but I just decided to up the multiplier to see what happens

I didnt touch any ram settings, I manually set the CAS when I first built it but everything else is on auto

HeX · 30 Apr 2012 at 13:13

If you were CPU limited you might have just alleviated enough of the bottleneck to pass the smoothness threshold.

Relentless81 · 30 Apr 2012 at 13:37

I think your right HeX, maybe it was just below what it needed to be previously

InKursion · 30 Apr 2012 at 14:00

Processor can make quite a lot of difference in these newer-gen games, I find. Perhaps some sort of bottleneck. I generally advise overclocking as far as possible to play BF3- it seemed to improve my FPS a lot more than GPU overclocks.

Relentless81 · 30 Apr 2012 at 16:20

Yeah I remember going from a dual core to my current quad core in BC2 and the difference was night and day but this seems like such a small difference in comparison

HangTime · 1 May 2012 at 00:28

Worth bearing in mind that even if benchmark scores of average fps don't change much, a lot of the time minimum framerates (during massive fights) are dictated by cpu limitations.