Battlefield 4: Walkthrough, Gameplay / Benchmark Series.

Heya, I told ya that I'm gonna be benchmarking the game! So Next few posts including this morning's High End Testing will be part of what I call benchmarking for Playable settings. Been doing a lot of tweaks here and there. And getting all this set up isn't easy at all.

Now here's my 3 testing stations.

 

My 3 Testing Stations: Laptop - Aftershock X11 / Clevo W110ER, Medium End Core i5 2500K with Radeon 5850, Main rig at desk with i7 2600K and GTX 680

There's a random Compaq Presario there on the floor. I was on the middle of restoring it for my brother's office. 

Benchmarking this game will be a pain but it'll give you a rough idea what you'll expect for all my tests. How this testing methodology is that the series doubles as a Walkthrough Series.

RIG ONE:
'My Pride and Joy, my very first DIY computer'

Core i7 2600K OC 4.4 GHz,
16GB RAM Corsair Vengeance
Corsair H70
128GB SSD (OCZ Vertex 4)
1000W Corsair HX 1000
ASUS P8P67M PRO
Fractal Design Define R3

Testing Methodology: Mission 1 Operation Baku, at 1920 x 1080

Graphical Settings:
1920 x 1080, Maximum Possible settings.

All pretty high end stuff. GTX 680, Overclocked i7 2600K, 16GB RAM, what more you want. However, In the future, I'll do a testing for a GTX 780, which is the ZOTAC AMP! Edition with the revised Price Cuts. Now the ZOTAC AMP!'s incarnation compared to the reference GTX 780 is totally different. It carries the highest factory clocks of all GTX 780s available in the market. And having it price cut is just so nice right now. So currently I'm involved in this Limited Mass Order. As to SGD pricing, I can't break out the cost. But it's a tiny bit cheaper than the Reference GTX 780 at stock after price cuts.

Video of the testing: Operation Baku, Full Mission Playthrough

RIG TWO: Aftershock X11 - Laptop Seated on the Floor
'World's Smallest Gaming Laptop in existance'

Core i7 3630QM
8GB RAM
2GB DDR3 nVidia GeForce GT 650M / 2GB DDR3 GT 640 OC Desktop
Testing Methodology: Mission 2 Operation Shanghai, at 1366 x 768.
331.65 Driver

Graphical Settings
1366 x 768
Anti Aliasing Off, Post AA Off, Ambient Occlusion: Off
Everything else save Post Processing (Medium) and Texture Quality (Ultra) set at High.

Also known as another brand of Elric Phares' Ultraportable Laptop. The smallest laptop in the world with pretty beefy graphics that matches the GTX 560M. Can the smallest gaming laptop in the world play BF4? Yes it does, and at pretty decent Graphics Settings at that. You'll be happy that since the release, the performance on this game is WAY better now than back in BETA.

RIG THREE: My First decent Gaming PC, middle of the screen
'This rig has seen so many modifications'

Core i5 2500K
8GB RAM
1GB ATI Radeon 5850
Testing Methodology: Third Mission at 1680 x 1050 and 1440 x 900.
Beta Driver

The Rig that I first bought will probably lie in the middle in terms of performance. However bear in mind it does have the least video memory. Pushing to 1080p will be a bit too much even if it's operating on a 256-bit bus. However 1680 x 1050 and 1440 x 900 is still pretty darn decent. So nothing to complain at all if you tune your graphical settings to somewhere between Ultra and High at these Resolutions.

Battlefield 4: Benchmarking - High End, GTX 680

After months of waiting, Battlefield 4 has officially been released!

Next few days, I'll be bringing a series of videos which simultaneously benchmarks various Computer configurations as well as going through the game.


First off is the first mission: Operation Baku, where I take my GTX 680 through its paces. If you want to see the full specs. See the video directly on YouTube.

GPU WARZ: nVidia Cutting Prices for High End GTX 780 and 770! Bundles galore!

Hey there Tech Fans and Tech junkies! This article may be of no surprise since the R9 290X was released. The R9 290X came out with a great performing chip at a competitive pricing of US$549, SGD 818. It came outperforming stock nVidia GeForce GTX 780s and trading blows with the Double Priced Titan.

In direct response to the new GPU, nVidia has prepped and readied itself for the upcoming fights.

For one, the GTX 780 Ti's release is just around the corner. This one is pretty much a full unlock of the GTX Titan and the GTX 780, boasting the most cores among any single GPU that is available right now on the market. But this is when things get really nice for nVidia.

The GeForce GTX 780 has its prices slashed by up to a third to just shy of USD 500 which is 50 cheaper than the R9 290X. Now this will be of great news as the GTX 780 is now solidly priced that runs cooler and perhaps more reliably due to less heat and noise emitted than the R9 290X. The heat and the noise that sounds like a Jet Engine from the R9 290X are the key reasons why I'm holding it back in favour of the GTX 780. Even if you crank the clocks of the GTX 780, it'll still run cooler. Also, aftermarket versions are readily available so it'll be on par in pricing but with higher overclocking headroom / performance as a R9 290X.

Moving down the line is the GK 104 based 770 which also revised pricing of US$70 from 399 to 329. Now that's also solid considering it performs noticably better than the slightly cheaper Radeon 7970 GHz Edition and the Rebadged R9 280X.

Things get way crazier as The next bit will further please new purchases of the GTX 780, 770, 760 and 660. Also thrown into the cards are some really major games for free which in reality pushes the actual price of the individual GPUs after this pricing even lower.

For the GTX 760 and the GTX 680, 670 and 660, buying these GPUs will come bundled with Assassin's Creed IV and Splinter Cell Blacklist. And new buyers of the GTX 780 and the GTX 770 will also receive Batman Arkham Origins in addition to the bundle. With about 150 USD worth of Games thrown in for free, reality check will price the GTX 780 at an impressive 350 USD and the GTX 770 at a princely mere 180. Those who plan to get the nVidia Shield can get it for cheaper bundled with their cards too. Also the new GeForce experience releases Shadowplay, a free video ingame recording / capture utility that records up to 20 minutes of footage at a time without hurting performance much which is extremely reasonable being free and all.

At this point it's just so nice for newer nVidia users. The options are there now. I sense GPU wars coming up, especially with the upcoming release of the 780 Ti next week. And what makes Titan Users cry at this point, is that it's rumoured that the 780 Ti will perform on par or maybe more than the GeForce Titan and for $300 less. nVidia has been on the ball with this and especially drivers for Battlefield 4. More on that in another posting.

My New Tech Blog! - About my Mouse and Mousepads: And what I use it for.

Welcome to the new revised Tech Blog by yours truly, Paul Anthony. This will be a permanent feature following most of my Migration stuff. Most of my other posts will be migrated here from my older IT blog channel since I want to integrated pretty much everything in this GMail.

Now apart from my Music, I love my Gadgets. Now first topic of the day is one of the few major components that is essential to our needs in the IT environment. The mouse.

The mouse is pretty much staple for my general use. IMO My preference is a minimalist palm design and a smooth shape that fits comfortably to my palm when I glide around the place.

So far I've owned or at least used these, and I have one more mouse on the way from Mass Luminosity:

Some HP Optical Mouse
Razer Imperator Battlefield 3 2012 Mouse
Armaggeddon Aquila-X1 Mouse.
CM Storm Recon (Mass Luminosity Edition, Coming soon)

And I own the following Mousepads:

Armaggeddon Black and Green Mousepad (Came with the Aquila-X1)
SteelSeries QcK MINI Black
SteelSeries QcK MINI Asus / Diablo III Scheme
CM Storm Assassins Creed Mousepad

Save the HP Optical Mouse, the other couple of mice have 1 thing in common: a DPI adjusting switch to suit my pointing speed. Most gaming mice have it. But even in the office in Ministry of Manpower, I use the X1 as my work mouse. I'll explain why later. Do note, all these pads I use are all REALLY good pads and it's kinda hard to tell especially since my 2 SteelSeries Pads are both the same cloth material. But different desk and pad surfaces can however change the characteristics and accuracy of your mouse usage.

MOUSE TYPES

Now people in my workplace know that I use my own mouse and pad as my work mouse. I often generally favor favor using mice with my pads. I normally prefer an after market mouse rather than the ones that come with an entry level system for cheap or free. And when you glide it on a pad or desk, you can instantly tell a good mouse from a cheap old rubbish just by the gliding alone.

MACRO BUTTONS, DO YOU NEED IT?

Macros in gaming can potentially make a huge difference in creating shortcuts so you can rely less of your keyboard. However I find it too used to using a keyboard and my general mouse the X1 even though it has DPI adjusting buttons, it doesn't have any additional Macro Buttons. Moreover, if you use an after-market mouse like I do in an office environment, then the extra buttons are pretty much redundant. The big factor in the mouse is the surfaces.

BIG MOUSEPADS AND LARGE SURFACES? DO YOU NEED IT?

In reality, since mainstream mouse users have quite a small desk like mine at home, you don't really need it. At most if you have a super long a big mousepads, then you can fit your mouse AND your keyboard. However I imagine you gliding a mouse over a huge area of a jumbo pad end to end; that's pretty much overkill and unpractical in a normal scenario.

ADVISE WHEN YOU USE A MOUSE

1: Depending on which hand you use a mouse (Typically it's right; Even many lefties use their Mouse with the Right hand), keep any hand wear to a minimal. Avoid wearing large and heavy watches and bracelets and other items on your wrist where the weight can seriously slow you down. Even if you're just doing general work, wearing any of these will get in the way on your surface. Rings are fine but again not those big ones where it can affect your grip.

2: Keep your surface area (and your mouse) clean of mess. Any dust acculumation on your surface can affect the gliding performance of the padded feet of the mouse. And if you're still using the old mouse with a ball in its base, make sure you clean the internal rollers every now and again.

BATTLEFIELD 4 BETA: BENCHMARKING PREVIEW

Hey there all. Everybody's anticipating the launch of Battlefield 4. So I'm not sure whether NDA has allowed to post any benchmarks of Battlefield 4 yet. However what I'll do is my own benchmarking because when the requirements first came out, especially for the high Spec setting, it irks me a bit somehow. AMD's graphics will seem to work better since AMD and Frostbite worked together on the graphics Engine.

But then again though, nVidia just released the Beta 331.40 Driver just for this game.
OK. The basic system requirements are as follows:

Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit)
Intel Core 2 Duo or Athlon
4GB RAM
30GB Hard Disk Space
nVidia GeForce 8800GT or a ATI Radeon 3870 with 512 MB VRAM
DirectX 10 SoundCard
Broadband for Multiplayer


Now the Higher Recommended Specs irk me slightly which is why I want to do some benchmarking.

What it requires is:

Quad Core Intel CPU or Hex Core AMD CPU
8GB RAM
nVidia GeForce 660 or 7870 with 3GB of VRAM
Everything else is the same

The only thing which irked me is the 3GB requirement of Video Memory, which I don't deem really needed unless you're benchmarking in super high resolutions which I'm not. I'm just going standard HD Resolutions of 1920 x 1080 which I know and have tested and concluded in many various games that doesn't really require 3GB of Video Memory. Look, standard Geforce GTX 660s and up cards carry 2GB of RAM. My GTX 680 which I hope to replace with a GTX 780 also has 2 Gigs. So I'm gonna check whether 2GB RAM is deemed playable on a GTX 680 as well as you know, standard benchmarking with different class of systems.

Now this time I've 2 rigs as shown below.
For the Laptop I'll be testing in the native resolution of 1366 x 768 and then in Full HD. Whereas for the desktop I've a couple of GPUs to play around with. I'll test in 1680 x 1050 and Full HD. I'll just keep tweaking settings here and there to see what settings I need to keep the game playable.

AFTERSHOCK X11
Core i7 3630QM
8GB RAM
2GB DDR3 nVidia GeForce GT 650M.
DESKTOP
Core i5 2500K (which will be upgraded to Core i7 2600k soon)
16GB RAM
1GB ATI Radeon 5850
2GB PNY nVidia GeForce GTX 680

Now, I won't release any figures just yet but I'll show you what settings you need to maintain a minimum 30 FPS within a heavily Multiplayer game as well as some game play footage of generally me getting owned lol.