
Battlefield 4
Replacing its predecessor in our bench suite, Battlefield 4 also tends to be limited by the graphics subsystem. CPU performance can be a factor at high detail levels though, so it should be interesting to see how these benchmarks play out. For those of you who're long since done with this game's single-player campaign, it's also worth noting that big multi-player maps also tend to be quite processor-bound. In the real-world, you'll get even more benefit from a faster CPU than these tests would indicate.
At the Medium preset, our SLI-enabled build from last quarter enjoys an advantage over the newer machine and its single graphics card as we test Surround modes on three monitors. At the Ultra preset, however, the two GeForce GTX 770s only manage a slight win at 1920x1080 and below, as other limitations kick in at 4800x900 and up.


Arma 3
Arma 3 is limited by both the processor and graphics cards, depending on the situation. At the Medium-detail preset, our CPUs appear to be the critical component, handing the new build a win up through 5760x1080, where SLI yields notable gains. Under the influences of the Ultra setting, two GeForce GTX 770s in last quarter's configuration score meaningful victories in both triple-monitor tests.


- Taking The SBM Down A Different Road
- CPU, Motherboard, And Cooler
- Video Card, Power Supply, And Case
- Memory, Hard Drives, And Optical Storage
- System Assembly And Overclocking
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Results: Synthetics
- Results: Media Transcoding
- Results: Rendering And Productivity
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Compression Tools
- Results: Battlefield 4 And Arma 3
- Results: Grid 2 And Far Cry 3
- Power And Temperature
- A Core i7 And Flagship GPU Impress, Naturally
(1) You could include temperatures and acoustics performance in the overall assessment, given I think that is a big part of the case buying decision, and
(2) A way to factor in the intangibles (i.e. blu ray vs dvd, choice of SSD/HDD, etc), you could include a separate vote between this quarter's and last quarter's to see what the readers would choose for the best build given all the performance factors, aesthetics, and other components that do not contribute directly to performance. The reader's vote of this quarter vs. last quarter and/or an overall value winner for this quarter could be included in the final write-up.
I would also 2nd the vote for starting 4K testing. And also, why not 1440p? It seems those two resolutions are more relevant now in 2014 at the level of this competition than 1600x900 and 4800x900 resolutions.
Hmm.... What percentage of the performance measures in this article are for gaming?
I'm thinking a selection of CPUs as a fixed starting point, and GPU decisions based on remaining budget. Maybe an i7, i5, FX-8, and an APU.
Would be really interesting to see the performance differences across workloads by allocating budget between CPU and other components.
Already done for ITX. See here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-your-own-haswell-overclocking,3608.html
I'd second the uATX. In fact, I'd really like to see Crash attempt a uATX dual-gpu setup.
Frankly, it was the cheapest available card when the systems were ordered.
Nope.
The purpose is to have a resolution that the low-budget PC can operate at for the comparison article at the end of the week.