Would an i3 stand up to BF3?

Purgatory · 24 Aug 2011 at 17:06

Zefan said:
I can also confirm that Frostbite doesn't like dual cores. My GTX 480 should rip it up, but I'm let down by my pants dual core

It doesn't just love cores the frostbite engine it loves high frequency running CPUs, more you overclock the more you benefit I noticed, not like some engines you overclock and may see 1 frame or 2 more this thing scales as you overclock.

Broken Hope · 24 Aug 2011 at 17:23

Purgatory said:
The 640 test is worthless, all it shows is the cpu can't feed the graphics card enough data to process. Real world testing will show at higher resolutions (what people play at) the frame rate is a lot higher and maybe acceptable..

That makes no sense at all, if the CPU can't feed the GPU properly then increasing the resolution will just put more strain on the GPU and if anything lower FPS, it won't result in a higher frame rate at all.

The engine just doesn't work well on Dual core CPU's, now the i3 with Hyper-threading may do a bit better, but I doubt it will be anywhere close to a real quad core CPU.

ScratchFive · 24 Aug 2011 at 22:22

Purgatory said:
It doesn't just love cores the frostbite engine it loves high frequency running CPUs, more you overclock the more you benefit I noticed, not like some engines you overclock and may see 1 frame or 2 more this thing scales as you overclock.

All this means is your CPU is bottle necking your system...

Purgatory · 25 Aug 2011 at 04:08

ScratchFive said:
All this means is your CPU is bottle necking your system...

Yup in situations when the game requires more cpu processing time than GPU time. Eg FSX is just totally CPU limited. End of the day every system has a bottleneck at some point or hits some form of wall where it can't give anymore, be it memory bandwidth, cpu limited, gpu limited etc. Just really have to find a good balance that is acceptable. My biggest bottleneck I find most annoying is hard drives and I would love to go SSD but they need to get cheaper and bigger before I will invest in them and more reliable which is the most important factor with any storage media for me.

Purgatory · 25 Aug 2011 at 04:15

The 640 test is worthless, all it shows is the cpu can't feed the graphics card enough data to process. Real world testing will show at higher resolutions (what people play at) the frame rate is a lot higher and maybe acceptable..

Broken Hope said:
That makes no sense at all, if the CPU can't feed the GPU properly then increasing the resolution will just put more strain on the GPU and if anything lower FPS, it won't result in a higher frame rate at all.

The engine just doesn't work well on Dual core CPU's, now the i3 with Hyper-threading may do a bit better, but I doubt it will be anywhere close to a real quad core CPU.

I mean does not mean it will achieve a lot higher frame rates at higher resolutions but maybe more playable by some people standards at real resolutions and not 640 and maybe acceptable..

was typing the previous reply with too many things on my mind.

Anyway looking forward to the game, it's been very slow recently with PC games releases, last big thing for me was Crysis 2 and need some new titles now.

ScratchFive · 25 Aug 2011 at 06:52

Purgatory said:
Yup in situations when the game requires more cpu processing time than GPU time. Eg FSX is just totally CPU limited. End of the day every system has a bottleneck at some point or hits some form of wall where it can't give anymore, be it memory bandwidth, cpu limited, gpu limited etc. Just really have to find a good balance that is acceptable. My biggest bottleneck I find most annoying is hard drives and I would love to go SSD but they need to get cheaper and bigger before I will invest in them and more reliable which is the most important factor with any storage media for me.

No, in all cases, if you frame rate scales linearly (what I assumed you meant by 'scales') with your CPU frequency, then your CPU is the bottleneck...

Final8y · 25 Aug 2011 at 06:59

Purgatory said:
The 640 test is worthless, all it shows is the cpu can't feed the graphics card enough data to process. Real world testing will show at higher resolutions (what people play at) the frame rate is a lot higher and maybe acceptable..

I mean does not mean it will achieve a lot higher frame rates at higher resolutions but maybe more playable by some people standards at real resolutions and not 640 and maybe acceptable..

was typing the previous reply with too many things on my mind.

Anyway looking forward to the game, it's been very slow recently with PC games releases, last big thing for me was Crysis 2 and need some new titles now.

Increasing the resolution will not make the frame rates go up for the dual cores , so if its unacceptable at 640 then its still going to be unacceptable at higher res & likely worse.

The argument for normal res is because the GPU is the bottleneck & you will not see a difference at those resolutions between them because the frame rates come down more in line with each other, but even at normal res the dual core will still be the bottleneck as the frame rates will not come down to that level on the other CPUs.

ATIorNvidia · 25 Aug 2011 at 11:19

The i3's have hyperthreading, so they will be sufficient for BF3.

TallPaul_S · 25 Aug 2011 at 11:43

ATIorNvidia said:
The i3's have hyperthrading, so they will be sufficient for BF3.

Frostbite 2.0 has support for up to 8 cpu cores, but from what I've read/seen it won't be able to use hyperthreading. Don't think many/any games can use hyperthreading atm.

Tomcat825 · 25 Aug 2011 at 11:47

I'll be somewhat peev'd if my i3 540 @ 4.2 can't play this very well... Medium settings should be perfectly doable

realscot · 25 Aug 2011 at 11:59

My old q6600 handled the alpha better than BC2 to be honest. I bet some of the E8500/E8600's running high clocks would probably still just manage, but really a well clocked quad even an old one will be enough. Find a nice partnership, no point in having a 580 and a q6600, pretty obvious bottleneck there. According to some places i've looked the difference between my old Q6600 @ 3.8 and a 2500k @ 4.8 can be as much as 30fps in some games, and as little as 3-5 in others. It depends on the game.

Broken Hope · 25 Aug 2011 at 13:46

Deus Ex seems to be another game where dual core CPU's won't do great at either.

FrancesoNoir · 25 Aug 2011 at 15:10

Um, no. That's an illogical conclusion to draw, bearing in mind a dual core chip is outperforming a hex in that test.

A more logical conclusion would be that Deus Ex is most sensitive to frequency.

hlxbravo · 25 Aug 2011 at 15:16

Surely they will optimize it to cover as many CPU's as possible, otherwise its a bad marketing idea to just release a title that will only play on high spec systems, as not everybody has one. At the end of the day they want to make as much money from this epic title as possible, so surely limiting their market audience goes against this corporate greed ?

ATIorNvidia · 25 Aug 2011 at 15:26

TallPaul_S said:
Frostbite 2.0 has support for up to 8 cpu cores, but from what I've read/seen it won't be able to use hyperthreading. Don't think many/any games can use hyperthreading atm.

If it can use extra threads/cores then it will use hyperthreading.

Broken Hope said:
Deus Ex seems to be another game where dual core CPU's won't do great at either.

How on earth did you come to that conclusion? The i3 is doing pretty well in that Deus Ex benchmark.

Broken Hope · 25 Aug 2011 at 15:33

FrancesoNoir said:
Um, no. That's an illogical conclusion to draw, bearing in mind a dual core chip is outperforming a hex in that test.

A more logical conclusion would be that Deus Ex is most sensitive to frequency.

Except if you actually read the chart you'll see all CPU's are running at 3GHz, just a dual core with hyper-threading on the Sandybridge architecture is faster than the hex because AMD are pretty poor on a clock for clock basis.

ATIorNvidia said:
How on earth did you come to that conclusion? The i3 is doing pretty well in that Deus Ex benchmark.

Again someone hasn't read the chart properly, the i3 has hyper-threading, so it's not just a normal dual core is it?

ATIorNvidia · 25 Aug 2011 at 15:38

Broken Hope said:
Except if you actually read the chart you'll see all CPU's are running at 3GHz, just a dual core with hyper-threading on the Sandybridge architecture is faster than the hex because AMD are pretty poor on a clock for clock basis.

Again someone hasn't read the chart properly, the i3 has hyper-threading, so it's not just a normal dual core is it?

What?

The addition of hyperthreading doesn't make it a normal dual core?

It has two traditional cores, so it's a "normal" dual core, SMT or no SMT.

Broken Hope · 25 Aug 2011 at 17:16

ATIorNvidia said:
What? The addition of hyperthreading doesn't make it a normal dual core?

It has two traditional cores, so it's a "normal" dual core, SMT or no SMT.

It can work on up to 4 threads, standard dual cores can't so no it's not a normal dual core.

max51 · 25 Aug 2011 at 17:24

http://www.techspot.com/review/418-amd-a8-3850-apu/page10.html
Here are some benches for bfbc2 with AMD and Intel

ATIorNvidia · 25 Aug 2011 at 18:02

Broken Hope said:
It can work on up to 4 threads, standard dual cores can't so no it's not a normal dual core.

No. Just because it utilizes SMT that doesn't mean it isn't a "normal" dual core.