( Updated )Star Wars Battlefront Benchmarked On Nvidia And AMD, Runs Best On Radeon – Exceptionally Well Optimized Across The Board

[Mr_Troll]

 

Benchmarks for the Star Wars: Battlefront BETA are in, incredibly well optimized across the board but runs best on AMD Radeon. That’s what Star Wars: Battlefront has consistently shown in the latest benchmarks on both Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon hardware.

The game is absolutely beautiful and surprisingly well optimized for a BETA. In fact it’s one of the best performing titles we’ve seen for the incredible visual quality that the game delivers in return, running far better than a sizable number of triple A titles, even though it’s still in BETA.

 

The game is built with the versatile Frostbite 3 engine. The same engine that AMD and EA used to debut the first ever low-level API on PC, Mantle. Johann Andersson, Frosbite Technical Director at EA, was one of the very first to champion Mantle and the concept of low level APIs on the PC. He actually had a strong hand in creating Mantle and spearheading the push for Vulkan and DirectX12.

Considering the collaborative partnership history between himself and AMD on optimizing EA games, especially ones based on the Frostbite 3 engine, it didn’t come as a surprise that Star Wars: Battlefront would run best on Radeon GPUs. However what did come as a surprise is how well the game runs in general, accross the board on a variety of hardware and resolutions. So if you had any concerns about how well this game will run on your system you should rest assured, this is definitely no AC Unity.

So let’s dig into the numbers shall we, starting with 1920×1080, then moving on to 2560×1440 and finally 3840×2160. 

 

 

  

System Specifications

Our test system is based on the eight-core Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition with Haswell-E based setup on the X99 chipset platform. This setup is running 4.40 GHz on all cores. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). We use Windows 10 all patched up. Each card runs on the same PC with the same operating system clone.

– GeForce cards use the latest 358.50 driver. - Battlefront game ready. released 7/10/15
– AMD Radeon graphics cards we used the latest 15.9.1 Beta driver.

 

 

 

 

Star Wars: Battlefront 1920×1080 (1080p) 

At 1920×1080 you’ll want a r9 380 for a consistent 60 FPS experience. Unfortunately the price equivalent card on the Nvidia GeForce side, the GTX 960, is considerably slower at this resolution and only manages to achieve a 46 frames per second average, 15 behind that of the R9 380. Making this one of the bigger wins for AMD in the mainstream $200 segment. The good news is that a single $200 graphics card is all you’ll really need to enjoy Star Wars Battlefront at this resolution. So even if you have something like a 3 year old AMD Radeon HD 7950 you’ll be able to have a very enjoyable experience.

 

Moving up the GPU ladder we find a similar story at the ~$300 price point with the R9 290 edging out the GTX 970. Although I should point out that the R9 290 has been phased out and replaced with the slightly faster R9 390 which isn’t tested here widening the gap in favor of AMD.  Moving up again we find that both the ~$409 R9 390X and the $549 R9 Fury are ahead of the ~$479 Nvidia GeForce GTX 980. It’s not until we reach the very top-end that we find GeForce taking back some ground with the $649 GTX 980 Ti outperforming the $649 R9 Fury X with a 114 FPS average compared to the Fury X’s 109 FPS average
 

Star Wars: Battlefront 2560×1440 (1440p)

 

 

Kicking it up a notch by upping the resolution to 2560×1440 we see the gap between AMD and Nvidia widen accross the board in favor of the AMD graphics cards. For a 60 FPS average at this resolution you’ll want a Radeon R9 390 graphics card, mainly because the R9 290 has been phased out as mentioned earlier.

Surprisingly for the same sort of performance on the Nvidia GeForce side you’ll have to fork out a bit more for a GTX 980. Again we find that the ~$409 R9 390X is ahead of the GTX 980 while the $549 R9 Fury gets quite close to the $649 GTX 980 Ti and the R9 Fury X which are tied at 81 FPS.

 

Star Wars: Battlefront 3840×2160 (4K/UHD)

 

 

Finally moving over to 3840×2160 we find that the gap again, widens in favor of the AMD GPUs here. However the first thing we notice is that the 2GB cards from both AMD and Nvidia are just unable to handle this resolution, simply because they’ve run out of memory as 2GB is simply not enough for Star Wars Battlefront at 4K.

At this resolution, not even the very top end $649 graphics cards are capable of delivering a 60 FPS average. The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X edges out the GTX 980 Ti by 2 frames per second and the $549 R9 Fury matches the GTX 980 Ti at 43 FPS. Again the R9 390X edges out the GTX 980 and the R9 290 edges out the GTX 970.
For a 60 FPS average at 4K you’ll likely want to go up to Multi-GPU CrossfireX or SLI setups. Based on the performance we’re seeing, two R9 390 cards are likely going to provide the best FPS/$ solution here. Although without multi-GPU testing we can’t say that conclusively.

 

Source : http://wccftech.com/star-wars-battlefront-benchmarked/

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/star_wars_battlefront_beta_vga_graphics_performance_benchmarks,1.html

 

I wish developers would make more games like this that run great on everything.

 

 

Edit: Wccftech did its own testing.... they threw a low end processor x4 860 and a high end 5960x together with couple graphics... just to show how good the game runs on everything ..... 

 

5960x system:

 

 

X4 860k system : 

 

the x4 860 k system is only 5-10 fps behind the 5960x one. nice showing AMD .

Source : http://wccftech.com/wccftech-star-wars-battlefront-performance-analysis/

[CTR640]

Good, I really hope AMD will sell enough GPU's and get on the track. And I am a filthy GTX780 peasant.

[christianled59]

I assume this is at ultra? Yay looks like I'll be playing with Nvidia surround.

[Atmos]

@Mr_Troll Edit your post, ctrl+A, and select the eraser tool in the top left of the tool bar. It will fix the color on your text so those of us on night theme can view it.

 

Its a common problem if you copy/pasta any text from other sites.

[Praesi]

Im sure custom 980tis will lead the field.

[Fate]

Would it be wrong to assume nVidia will release better drivers once the game is released?

[Str_Mape]

I'm almost tempted to drop the settings and run at 7680x1440 for laughs, will probably just go ultra at 1440P with AA turned down a little.

[Prysin]

Im sure custom 980tis will lead the field.

i'm sure the R9 295x2, R9 390x2 and R9 Fury x2 will completely ignore the existence of the 980Tis

[Mr_Troll]

Would it be wrong to assume nVidia will release better drivers once the game is released?

nvidia released a game ready driver for batllefront today ..... just look it up on the nvidia  page.... a the game was benchmarked with the newest driver

[The Toaster]

I am guessing it is better optimised on AMD compared to Nvidia due to consoles. The game will have a lot more copies sold on ps4 than pc. Dice has managed to make the game look beautiful whilst playing on a low-spec systems. Props to them!

[DEDRICK]

780ti beating a 970 on all 3 tests, poor 970s.  I guess technically the 780ti is more powerful than a 970, I never knew the gap was so large

[Dr_Nooberious]

I don't see the Titan X on any of those graphs.

 

How is its performance?

[theereal]

Hoping my 4460 and 970 will be able to maintain a steady 60FPS.

[Bouzoo]

I don't see the Titan X on any of those graphs.

 

How is its performance?

Compared with benchmarks in other games, it should be around the 980Ti, with 1-2 FPS difference. If I'm wrong someone correct me.

 

I find this part particularly interesting:

 

We noticed that with a varyity of cards the behaviour per card is rather different. We have seen some scenes use a little more and others a little less, so please take a 20% deviation into account. Once you go to WHQD at 2560x1440 we'll pass 2GB and since card in that resolutions often have 3 to 4 GB graphics memory, that's good as well. In Ultra HD you'll need a lot more memory as we jump towards close to 4 GB of VRAM usage. But hey, that's Ultra HD. A GeForce GTX 780 Ti with its 3 GB of graphics memory normally should run into issues, but that's not the case in Ultra HD. So the game engine adapts and we think caches a little less to compensate. 

 

This game is a clever thing. But we see that the owners of cards like Fury X shouldn't worry about their 4GB of VRAM since the game doesn't use more than that (for full performance).

[MageTank]

I don't see the Titan X on any of those graphs.

 

How is its performance?

Give or take exactly like the 980 Ti, assuming none of these GPU's were OC'd. The 980 Ti tends to do better than the Titan X when its OC'd (due to much more aggressive custom cooling solutions). Either way, you can safely expect it to perform somewhere close to the 980 Ti.

[VagabondWraith]

I don't see the Titan X on any of those graphs.

How is its performance?

Titan X <-> 980 Ti.

[PlayStation 2]

how the hell is the 290x beating the 980 and the fury x is within 5 fps either way of the 980 ti

[Bouzoo]

how the hell is the 290x beating the 980 and the fury x is within 5 fps either way of the 980 ti

I'm guessing optimization/drivers as well as (finally) a proper utilization of full potential of AMD's cards. And those cards were always supposed to be competitors.

[Sir Asvald]

I hope my 7950 will be good enough.

 

BTW, thanks for the benchmarks OP.

[Praesi]

i'm sure the R9 295x2, R9 390x2 and R9 Fury x2 will completely ignore the existence of the 980Tis

dual gpu's...*yawn*

[vandanved]

nvidia released a game ready driver for batllefront today ..... just look it up on the nvidia  page.... a the game was benchmarked with the newest driver

The first link on the main post does not work. It gives Forbidden 403 error

[Praesi]

how the hell is the 290x beating the 980 and the fury x is within 5 fps either way of the 980 ti

Dont trust those benchmarks too much.

[PlayStation 2]

I'm guessing optimization/drivers as well as (finally) a proper utilization of full potential of AMD's cards. And those cards were always supposed to be competitors.

What surprised me the most was the 9 fps lead in 1440p with the 290 against the 970 (61fps vs. 52fps)

[Prysin]

which reminds me... ill revert my 295x2 to stock, and see how it performs tomorrow

[Prysin]

Dont trust those benchmarks too much.

lool fanboy much

 

Those benchmarks are probably pretty close to the truth... i bet Nvidias "game ready" drivers just werent ready at all this time

 

358.50 is "battlefront game ready"

http://anandtech.com/show/9698/nvidia-releases-35850-game-ready-drivers-for-star-wars-battlefront