Results: Battlefield 3 At 3840x2160
The R9 290X’s victory over Titan looks similar in Battlefield 3, though Uber mode doesn’t do anything for performance. Presumably, this is because Battlefield doesn’t tax Hawaii as much, so the chip doesn’t reach its target temperature. In Arma, the extra 15% fan headroom is necessary to prevent R9 290X from backing off of its peak clock rate, yielding higher frame rates.
We’re able to keep the fastest cards in excess of 30 FPS using Battlefield’s Ultra preset. Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan dips under, though.
Strangely, while AMD’s R9 290X achieves the highest frame rates, it also encounters the highest worst-case variance. We attempt to minimize statistical noise by taking 95th percentile measurements rather than 99th, but even still, the Uber firmware runs into big variance numbers up there.
