Battlefield 4 Video Card Performance and IQ Review

Battlefield 4 is this holiday season's blockbuster from the Battlefield series. It features the brand new Frostbite 3 game engine which provides a higher level of realism in the game. We strap 8 video cards to the test bench to see what kind of gameplay experience is delivered under Windows 8.1.

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Battlefield 4

In our apples-to-apples testing, we will run our high end cards at 2560x1600 with 4X MSAA and all in game options set to maximum values. For the midrange cards, we will use 1920x1080 with 4X MSAA and all in game options set to maximum values.


Apples to Apples – High End Cards

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The AMD Radeon R9 290X and the GeForce GTX TITAN turn in very similar average FPS performances and both could be considered playable at these settings if you have a tolerance for a lower overall frame rate. The TITAN felt a bit less playable at these settings due to the continued drops in frame rate when a lot of action was happening on the screen. The Radeon R9 290 and the GeForce GTX 780 also provided a near-playable experience at these settings, however, these do not have nearly as much headroom as the faster cards at these settings.

Highest Playable Settings – Midrange Cards

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The Radeon R9 280X was very playable at these settings and stayed ahead of all of the other mid-range cards that we evaluated. The other three cards were not playable at these settings. Although the GeForce GTX 760 turned in higher frame rate than the GeForce GTX 770, we believe this is due to the run through for the GTX 770 having significantly more explosions and tank action present during the data recording.