Do i need quad core for Battlefield bc2 ??

Greebo · 12 Mar 2010 at 11:54

ashmanuk67 said:
Nice test buddy, i know there are so many varriables when carring out these test's but that has to prove somwhat Quad core is the way, though it's all about how much money it will cost for a 10-15% increase.

It's not so much the 20% increase in average framerates (although the test was not run at the same cpu speed so if you don't have a 4.2Ghz dual core then the difference will be greater, it's the 100% increase in minimum framerate you should be looking at.

For the money, there is little which would give you such a massive boost to a games framerate, even Fermi.

Although it is only one game, it does seem that there are more and more games really starting to benefit from having quads now.

gurusan · 12 Mar 2010 at 12:05

I'll try some testing this weekend with my Phenom @ 2 , 3, and 4 cores.

yslen · 12 Mar 2010 at 13:31

gurusan said:
I'll try some testing this weekend with my Phenom @ 2 , 3, and 4 cores.

I'll be very interested to read your results.

gurusan · 12 Mar 2010 at 20:07

Just did some testing. Each result is an average of 3 different runs...I just played between a single checkpoint on the 1st level. Graphical settings were identical on both resolutions, everything was maxed and had 2xAA 16xAF.

System specs are:

Phenom 2 @ 3.8GHz
4GB ddr3 @ 1622MHz, CL7
CPU-NB @ 2736MHz
GTX 260 216 @ 702/1458/1152 core/shade/mem
Win7 64bit

At 2048x1152 there's pretty much no gain whatsoever.....however this was a single player test and I reckon multiplayer sessions with buildings collapsing and such will put a greater strain on the CPU...but it still remains mainly GPU limited at this resolution.

but at 1680x1050 it's well worth having more than 2 cores, not much difference from tri to quad though. Bear in mind as there is no built in timedemo these are not 100% accurate. I would hazard a guess that there's around a 5% margin of error.

Cesar67 · 12 Mar 2010 at 22:07

d_brennen said:
Sliky smooth all high at 1920x1080, dx10, HBAO and VSYNC off, on my E8400 (at stock atm, had issues with with my OC after installing the retail game), 4GB DDR2 800 and an Asus EAH4890 mildly clocked.

Have had fraps running a few times and seems to hit 35/40 when a nade/ shell goes off. Otherwise 50+ which is fine for my eyes

Silky smooth ?

Spec in my sig averages just short of 70FPS (Online - All high, Bloom and Ambient occ - off 1920X1080), Most of the time the game still seems quite laggy and my soldier feels very clunky and unresponsive.

Thinking about going i5.

gurusan said:
Snipped

Surprised the difference in minimum FPS are so low. 25% maximum will hardly be noticeable. 20% average maybe ?

Maybe the overall feel of the game is better ? Smoother ?

gurusan · 12 Mar 2010 at 22:15

Cesar67 said:
Surprised the difference in minimum FPS are so low. 25% maximum will hardly be noticeable. 20% average maybe ?

Maybe the overall feel of the game is better ? Smoother ?

I was surprised at that too. And at 2048x1152 I can't really tell any difference between the 2,3,4 core, but at 1680x1050 I can.

d_brennen · 13 Mar 2010 at 09:52

Cesar67 said:
Silky smooth ?

Spec in my sig averages just short of 70FPS (Online - All high, Bloom and Ambient occ - off 1920X1080), Most of the time the game still seems quite laggy and my soldier feels very clunky and unresponsive.

Thinking about going i5.

Like I said it's fine to my eyes. I think some people have different reactions to framerates/input lag. I felt it was all a bit laggy and stiff until I read about turning HBAO off. Now it runs smooth as no matter what is happening. Was considering going i5 for this game before I'd played it, no I'm glad there is some life in my old E8400, seeing as there isn't any other games on the pipeline I'm excited about (until BF3

)

yslen · 13 Mar 2010 at 13:16

Cesar67 said:
Silky smooth ?

Spec in my sig averages just short of 70FPS (Online - All high, Bloom and Ambient occ - off 1920X1080), Most of the time the game still seems quite laggy and my soldier feels very clunky and unresponsive.

Thinking about going i5.

Potentially stupid question: surely if you're already getting 70fps, a CPU upgrade will make no difference? My monitor, for example, has a 60Hz refresh rate, so anything above 60fps will look and feel exactly the same, no?

Thanks,

Yslen

dmxdex2020 · 13 Mar 2010 at 13:22

if i get over 100fps online feels smoother on my lcd monitor which is 60hz.

V4nger · 13 Mar 2010 at 17:21

60hz can only display up to 60 frames per second

C64 · 13 Mar 2010 at 18:39

Still see no definitive conclusion ? all I see is quad comparisons where the quad is running at much higher clocks than the dual core.

Anyone found a conroe/wolfdale vs quad @ same clock comparison on same hardware ?

Big.Wayne · 13 Mar 2010 at 18:46

Interesting results gurusan! . . . thanks for the effort and for sharing!

C64 · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:04

Yea 0.2% min frames gain is very interesting I still need to see an actual comparison and not just disabling cores as that could be inaccurate.

For example if I ran a test on a q6600 and disabled 2 cores would it perform the same as a dual core at the same speed, the quad would probably be a bit slower than the core 2 duo with 2 cores disabled ?

gurusan · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:15

I'm not sure what you mean. When you disable cores it's still the same chip but you just have fewer cores :/

If you could disable 2 cores on a Q6600 it would perform exactly the same as an E6600. If I disable 1 core on my Phenom @ 3.8GHz it behaves exactly like a Phenom tricore @ 3.8GHz...if I disable 2 it behaves like a Phenom dual core @ 3.8GHz....

Big.Wayne · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:36

gurusan, I have a nOObzilla question . . . how did you disable the cores?

apologies to ashmanuk67 for this quick off topic question!

C64 · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:36

Yea I see I didn't know it was exactly the same thought it would slightly nerf the chip if you disabled some cores.

Set affinity in TM i think ^^

setter · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:39

Can you not disable cores in bios? Im sure ive seen this option om my i7 boards bios.

Big.Wayne · 13 Mar 2010 at 20:43

Would be great if any Core i5/i7 owners who also have Battlefield bc2 could disable some cores and do some testing!

. . . seems silly going to a 3rd party website for answers when we have everything we need right here! :cool:

gareth170 · 13 Mar 2010 at 21:09

Big.Wayne said:
how did you disable the cores?

theres a core control option in the bios.

if i disable 2 cores. i can get to 4ghz with 1.45v...

Big.Wayne · 13 Mar 2010 at 21:11

Ah guess it must be a "Black Edition" thing? . . . I don't see it, never mind but thanks anyway . . . .

So anyway . . . whats the consensus then? . . . does ashmanuk67 need a quad or?