![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , October 11, 2011
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Google +1
AMD Bulldozer / FX-8150 Gameplay Performance Review
Today we will take a look at how the AMD FX-8150 stacks up in real gameplay versus an Intel Core i7 2500K and 2600K, at default settings and overclocked. Will any of these CPUs provide a better gameplay over the other in some current DX11 games? We show you Battlefield 3, F1 2011, and Civilization V.
Highest Playable Settings
Besides testing the different CPUs at apples-to-apples settings, where we want to keep the video card from bottlenecking the CPUs, now we want to see how high we can actually set graphics settings on each system. This will tell us if any CPU is holding us back in terms of actual gameplay experience. We used BF3 Beta and F1 2011 and found the highest settings we could enable with the AMD Radeon HD 6970 on each CPU.
Battlefield 3 Beta
We know that competitive BF3 multiplayer gamers like to maintain high levels of framerates in order to stay competitive. Therefore, our target framerates for playable in BF3 Multiplayer are going to be between 50-60 FPS from now on. We know you guys like those high framerates on multiplayer.
In order to maintain this level of performance on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 we found that 1920x1200 was preferred. Running at 2560x1600 meant we would have to disable several in-game features, and turn settings down. However, at 1920x1200 we were able to maintain all in-game settings at "Ultra." This provided the framerates we needed, and an excellent graphics experience to boot.
When it comes to AA settings, we opted to not use the deferred MSAA setting, which severely decreases performance, and makes the game laggy. Instead, we utilized Post AA, which uses NVIDIA's FXAA technology. As we've tested numerous times in the past now, FXAA provides exceptional AA quality (4X AA quality), at a minimal performance impact. Therefore, we were able to have High Post AA (High FXAA essentially), enabled at 1920x1200 which made the experience wonderful.
We noticed absolutely no difference between CPUs at these highest playable settings, there was no advantage toward any CPU that provided to us a better gameplay experience.
F1 2011
In F1 2011 we were easily able to play at 2560x1600 with this video card. We were also able to turn up the AA setting to the highest level of 8X MSAA with no regret. Beyond that, all in-game settings were at "Ultra" settings. In essence, this game was running with the highest possible settings it supports, it was maxed out. Even at this "maxed out" graphics setting, no CPU gave us any advantage to gameplay performance. We experienced the same performance on all three CPUs at the highest graphics settings.
Civilization V
In Civilization V it was clear to us that the AMD FX-8150 was lagging behind the Intel Core i7 2500K and 2600K in our apples-to-apples performance. That carried through, and directly affected, the gameplay experience with the AMD FX-8150. When we cranked up the resolution to 2560x1600 we found that 2X AA was the highest level we were able to play at. When we pushed the AA higher, to 4X AA or 8X AA, performance was well below 30 FPS. Right around 30 FPS is acceptable gameplay performance, for this style of game. When we dropped the resolution to 1920x1200, but enabled 8X AA, performance was averaging about 44 FPS which was very smooth. It seems 2560x1600 with 2X AA was the absolute maximum acceptable level of gameplay with the AMD FX-8150.
The Intel CPUs fared better in our apples-to-apples testing, and that resulted in a higher level of gameplay experience compared to the AMD FX-8150. With both the Intel Core i7 2500K and 2600K we were able to play at 2560x1600 with 4X AA. Even at this higher AA setting, performance was still technically faster than the AMD FX-8150. We noticed no difference in performance between the 2500K and 2600K themselves. Civilization V clearly exhibits a better gameplay experience on the Intel Core i7 versus the AMD FX-8150.
The Bottom Line
Please keep in mind our game sampling here is very small due to time limitations.
Our general take-away from our time with the AMD FX-8150 and gaming is that the game matters when it comes to performance deltas.
We played a lot of Battlefield 3 Beta Multiplayer this week, and not once did we feel that any CPU provided an advantage or disadvantage to our gameplay experience. Whether the CPU was running at stock settings, overclocked, or if it was AMD FX-8150 or Intel Core i7 2500K or 2600K, they all let us play BF3 with the same performance and image quality. We need to note some things about BF3 however, we do know that the Beta does not include all the features that the full version game will. BF3 is supposed to utilize DX11 driver multithreading, but it may not be implemented in the Beta version. At the time of testing the max server size was also only 32 player, we have not tested this on a 64 player server. It is entirely possible the full version game will behave differently, but we just don't know yet.
When it comes to F1 2011 we also experience absolutely no differences in gameplay experience. CPU frequency did not affect performance, nor did the number of cores. F1 2011 experiences running on the AMD FX-8150, Intel Core i7 2500K, or 2600K were indistinguishable.
The only game to show us a drastic difference was Civilization V, and currently we do not know exactly why. Please keep in mind that we finished gameplay testing less than 8 hours before this article was published and we are still looking for solid answers. Civilization V produced the best results when overclocking the CPUs, and overclocking significantly helped the AMD FX-8150 in this game. However, even with overclocking the 8150 was not able to come near to 2600K or 2500K stock performance in Civilization V. If you are a heavy Civilization V player you will simply have a better gameplay experience with Intel Core CPUs, versus the new AMD FX-8150, at this time. Stay tuned as we look further into gaming performance on the AMD FX-8150.