We’ve already got Nathan’s opinions on the actual content, but what about the game’s performance from a technical standpoint? Fortunately the internet is full of those too. And the best part? You don’t need to spend quite as many thousands of dollars to get 200 FPS as you’d think.
Usually 200 FPS town is the domain of people who don’t baulk at spending $1000+ on a new GPU the day it comes out. It’s the kind of place occupied by those who go to BYOC LANs with their own routers so they can have a network inside a network. The kinds of people who spend way more money than one should be spending.
As it turns out, however, Star Wars: Battlefront is incredibly well optimised. The game runs incredibly smoothly, even on consoles, although things are much more enjoyable on PC especially when hooked up to a 120hz/144hz gaming monitor.
GamersNexus, the Russian website GameGPU and Tom’s Hardware have posted their benchmarks, and it’s no surprise that DICE’s Frostbite engine is as well optimised as ever.
(The performance of the servers has been trouble free for me on PS4 and PC as well, which given the ignominy of the Battlefield 4 launch is nice. But moving on.)
Overall, the performance between AMD and NVIDIA cards is largely negligible. The 390X and GTX 980 are neck and neck in the GamersNexus benchmarks, with every card from a GTX 960 up getting a playable 60+ FPS at 1080p in Ultra settings.
At Medium settings the 270X achieves an average of 104 FPS, which is a pretty astounding result and something DICE should be relatively proud of. Even a GTX 750 Ti gets a playable average 66 FPS on 1080p/Medium settings.
The real feather in the cap, mind you, is the top end: two GTX 980 Ti’s hit an average of 186 FPS at 1080p, which is nearing Battlefront’s natural 200 FPS cap (although you can unlock that through a console setting). The lowest frame rate recorded was 124 FPS, which is nice if you’re trying to maintain a buttery smooth frame rate for monitors with high refresh rates.
GameGPU had similar results with the 980 Ti’s in SLI, hitting an average of 198 FPS at 1080p on Ultra with a i7-5960X (at 4.6ghz) rig. A Fury X Crossfire setup hit an average of 186 FPS as well, and in the Russian site’s tests a Fury X performed one frame better than the 980 Ti or a GTX 780 SLI setup.
You can fire up a rough translation of the Russian site’s benchmarks through Google Translate, which helps add a little context to the testing, although most will be satisfied just running over the figures.
They’re graphs that DICE and EA would undoubtedly be happy with, even if the end user experience is a little shallower than many Battlefront or Battlefield fans would like. The first DLC pack is due out in a fortnight and hopefully the release of The Force Awakens improves the player base a little — the Player Stats Network is putting the total player count at just over 300,000 across the major platforms, with a peak count on PC of less than 50,000.
That’s about the same as the player base for ARK: Survival Evolved or Garry’s Mod, which isn’t fantastic for a new Star Wars shooter with little single-player content less than a fortnight after release. Still, it wouldn’t be the first game to enjoy a second wind post-launch, as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive continues to show.
Comments
16 responses to “Want Almost 200 FPS In Star Wars: Battlefront? Then Get Two NVIDIA 980 Ti’s”
As someone that owns a 144Hz monitor, I don’t really see the point of going over that. Even approaching 144FPS you’re really getting into the realm of diminishing returns.
That being said, it’s nice to see such a graphically good looking game also be so well optimised. Makes a nice change from a lot of recent releases, MGS V excepted.
“…You don’t need to spend quite as many thousands of dollars to get 200 FPS as you’d think. Usually 200 FPS town is the domain of people who don’t baulk at spending $1000+ on a new GPU the day it comes out… As it turns out, however… ”
Goes on to show that the only way to get close to 200 FPS town is a 2x 980 ti SLI setup… and 980 tis cost $1000+ each. 😐
Well at least 980 tis are under $1000 now. I got a Strix for around $880
That’s a great price! Where where? I’m in the market for one right now actually. StaticIce doesn’t list any stores with them for less than $1068, but the best I can find for the STRIX is Newegg for $926 AUD.
My current GPU is on its last legs, and I’m not sure whether to persevere with it until Pascal hits next year or jump to a 980 ti now. Leaning towards jumping in now.
http://www.umart.com.au/umart1/pro/Products-details.phtml?id=10&id2=410&bid=5&sid=203952
that’s a 980 not a 980ti roughly $300 difference
Ah, got my hopes up! Unfortunately that’s only a 980, not a 980 ti. Here it is at $1099 🙁
http://www.umart.com.au/umart1/pro/Products-details.phtml?id=10&id2=521&bid=5&sid=250827
well, he was talking about a strix at that price, I figured he must have been talking about the 980 version for that price, hence my link. I’ve yet to see a 980ti for less than a grand, but then, I haven’t really been looking all that hard either.
I’d wait for pascal if you can. It’s going to be manufactured on a smaller node with hbm2 memory. Better efficiency, faster memory and overall better performance. It should be out mid year 2016 I think so not long to go if you can hold off.
Yeah, some of the potential numbers Pascal could theoretically push out seem too good to be true. But ff it’s only a 20% bump in performance I think I’d just jump in now…
…but if it’s 50%+ ? OR twice as fast??? OR TEN TIMES AS FAST? omg. I would have quite the buyers remorse 😀
I’ve got two 980tis and trust me, if you pull the trigger now there won’t be any buyers remorse! These things are off the hook! I think realistically it will be a 15 to 20 percent increase in performance but who knows? Exciting time to be a pc gamer!
“trust me, if you pull the trigger now there won’t be any buyers remorse!”………. Until pascal/arctic 😉
If your card can last out, wait. I sure wish I could have lol.
I got it off amazon last month when they had Amex 15% off. It was like 580 usd shipped so total up was roughly 850 -880 after convertion plus fees.
Was thinking of using this ti for now until pascal announces and sell it back on market for 800 ish for the new upgrade. The top end cards rarely drop price that much over a year
sparkely lava rocks
can you guys please report on australian and nz pc players being placed on USA and Japanese servers at 200+ ping 95% of the time, this is a widespread problem and no word from ea. go check battlefront official forums for more info. people are refunding this game in droves
Why bother.
The human eye can only properly see up to ~60fps