Results: Battlefield 4
We begin with Battlefield 4. The Radeon R7 265 can handle this game's Ultra preset, but we dialed MSAA back from 4x to 2x, set AA Post to Medium, and used SSAO instead of the more demanding HDAO setting.
For the record, we also ran a full set of numbers with Mantle enabled on the AMD cards. However, the numbers we are seeing from an overclocked Core i5-based platform weren't what we were expecting. For now, we'll set the very-beta API aside for a performance and image quality analysis at a later date.
The screenshot should be indicative of how good these settings look, even on mainstream hardware. AMD's new Radeon R7 265 performs well too, edging out Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660 and approaching the more expensive Radeon R9 270.
Unlike our average frame rate figures, when it comes to frame time variance, less is better. There are some spikes evident in our benchmark, though typically from lower-end boards.