Battlefield 1 Video Card Showdown - Surprisingly Compatible
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,540 words · ~7 min read
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So, it is near the end of the year, meaning that we have the next
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installment in the Battlefield franchise, namely Battlefield 1, which
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is actually the fifth g 8th, 12th, 240,
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I I don't know. Anyways, wacky naming convention aside, Battlefield 1 is a
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hyped enough game that it might actually get you thinking about upgrading your
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current system. It's absolutely beautiful. So, what hardware combo
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should you be looking at? Let's find out in our Battlefield 1 video card showdown
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featuring CPU cores and memory and like
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some other
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stuff. Tunnel Bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately
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and enjoy a more open internet. To try Tunnel Bear for free, check out the link
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in the video description. So, Battlefield 1, like I said, it's an
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undoubtedly beautiful game, but what do you need hardware-wise to run it well
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enough to make you feel like you're really in the thick of it, mustard, gas,
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and all? We not only answer this question by looking at how it performed
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on current GPUs like we normally do from AMD and NVIDIA, but also, like I said,
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we tried different CPU core configurations and RAM setups as well.
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And these benchmarks are what we'll be looking at first. For the CPU tests, we
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paired Intel Skylake CPUs with the new Pascalbased Titan X or Titan XP from
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NVIDIA, as well as 32 gigs of fast DDR4
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RAM to ensure we wouldn't have any other bottlenecks. At 4K and the ultra preset,
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pretty much every CPU from a 10 core with hyperthreading down to a four core
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without hyperthreading performed more or less the same with the same average
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frame rate hovering around 80 glorious
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frames per second. It's only when we drop down to a dual core with
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hyperthreading, something like a Core i3, that we start to see a noticeable
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drop off. And a dual core without hyperthreading cut our frames by over
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50%. So, the bottom line here is that any relatively decent and recent Core i5
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with four physical cores should be just fine. We also took a look at the effects
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of different amounts of system RAM. EA officially requires 8 GB and recommends
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16. But in our testing with the Titan X and stuff to remove bottlenecks, the
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game didn't seem to care whatsoever, even when we ran just 4 gigs of RAM. So
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yeah, don't sweat it. However, if you don't have a ton of memory, you may want
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to be careful about how many applications and browser tabs you have
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going on in the background. And on the subject of memory, should the pretty
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textures in Battlefield 1 compel you to go for a card with more than the
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standard ration of 4 GB? To find out, we took two RX 480s, one with 4 GB of VRAM
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and one with eight. Again, even on 4K Ultra, there wasn't any real difference
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between them, even when we disabled the in-game VRAM limiter. So, we can't
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imagine that 12 gigs of VRAM would be beneficial unless you're running
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multiple highresolution screens or EA pulls modding support out of their
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butts. We tested current GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA, but we also tested the
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older GTX 660. That's the minimum
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recommended card from EA. So, we'll see how well that works. Overall, the good
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news is that while Battlefield 1 is a greatl looking title, you don't need the
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best hardware on the market to run it. Out of all the cards that we tested, the
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only one that wasn't really capable of running Battlefield 1 at 4K was the $115
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Radeon RX 460. Everything else at least broke the 30 FPS threshold, though,
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you'll want a GTX 1080 or a Titan X if you want 4K at 60fps, however crazy that
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is. If you're more interested at hitting the 1440p sweet spot, your most
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cost-effective option here is the $200 RX470, which hits 60 FPS on ultra
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settings. And none of our cards really broke a sweat at 1080p, except the
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affforementioned RX 460, which still managed a solid 45 frames per second at
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ultra. If you want to break 60 FPS, you have to turn the settings down to about
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medium, which still isn't that bad. Though, we did get strange artifacting
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at medium and low settings on multiple resolution on multiple cards, both from
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AMD and NVIDIA. So, only really use those settings if you really need to,
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cuz I don't know what the heck's going on there. Speaking of 1080p, there's
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good news. As long as you're not expecting to play the game at anything
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higher than 1080p, the 660, which was a
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very popular card for years, is capable
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of running it, as EA claims, which is good. At ultra settings, we got 33 FPS,
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though with some noticeable slowdowns when lots of explosion and whatnot were
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happening on the screen. Bumping it down to high got us up to 40 FPS and made the
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experience a whole lot better, especially during intense cutscenes. So,
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that's where we'd probably recommend it if you're still using a GTX 660,
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especially as that way you'll avoid the weird artifacting we got at those lower
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presets. Anyways, moving on. If you've been waiting for a breakthrough DX12
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game that really shows off the performance benefits of the new API,
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you'll have to keep waiting. Our AMD cards performed virtually identical DX12
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and DX11, while our NVIDIA cards actually got noticeably worse. The
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silver lining here is that if you're not rocking DirectX12 compatible hardware,
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you're not missing anything. So, there you go. Overall, I think EA's done a
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pretty good job with Battlefield 1. All DX12 things considered, though, I wish I
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could say the same about their Origin DRM, which locked us out countless
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amounts of times from four different
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accounts, including one directly from EA with an EA.com email address. What the
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hell? This took us multiple days to benchmark compared to normally where it
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would just take one little section of time. I also spent multiple sessions of
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time working with EA support, hence the EA account that we had to test it with,
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and our keys came from EA, so that we
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could do this benchmarking. I like making these videos for you guys. I like
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the idea of knowing what hardware I will need for my games. And especially in one
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of these situations where it's coded apparently pretty damn well as it feels
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like at least for DirectX12 where you have a beautiful game and you don't need
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that much hardware for it. It would be nice knowing beforehand that you don't
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need to upgrade your graphics setup or whatever else, but then this happens and
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it's just
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like Anyways, similar to what happened with Star Wars Battlefront, the
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Frostbite 3 engine delivers impressive immersive visuals without really pushing
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your hardware. As I just mentioned, all you really need is any modern mid-range
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graphics card and a CPU that is has a
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few cores and you'll be fine. Battlefield will play the way it was
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meant to be. No SLI overclocking or bayonets required. Just hopefully you're
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even allowed to play. So, we'll see. I'm going to go be salty
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out. All right, guys. If you liked that video, hit the like button, get
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subscribed, and comment down below about how much you hate DRM. If you dislike
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that video, feel free to go ahead and hit the dislike button. If you want to
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buy something like Battlefield 1, you can check it out in the Amazon link in
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the description down below. You can also see shirts down there and some other
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cool stuff. If you want to talk on the forum about how DRM is annoying as all
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freaking heck, you can do that. That link is also in the description down
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below and watch this video, which is our GTA 5 comprehensive performance
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breakdown.