Battlefield 2142 Beta CPU Shootout September 11, 2006

Introduction

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Since Battlefield 2142 is based on the same game engine as its predecessor, Battlefield 2, BF2142 has not been programmed to take advantage of multi-threading. This means that the second core found in the latest dual-core CPUs sits unused in Battlefield 2142. In our series of game engine interviews last month, we asked DICE senior graphics programmer Marko Kylmamaa a couple of questions about this and other topics:

FiringSquad: First, Intel and AMD are pushing dual core processors and within the next year four core processors are due to be released. How will DICE support this kind of tech in the Battlefield 2/2142 engine and will there be any need for special programming to fully support multi core CPUs in PCs?

Marko Kylmamaa: While a program geared towards a single-core machine may run fine, with some exceptions, and perhaps even somewhat faster on a multi-core machine, in order to realize the real performance benefits a careful attention has to be paid into structuring the code for the correct granularity in mind, to make it suitable for multi-core execution. With the introduction of the next generation consoles and the PC hardware, the whole industry is in a learning phase for understanding the differences between the traditional multi-threading approaches, and multi-threading for multiple cores. DICE is working closely with hardware vendors in making sure that all of the future titles make the maximum use of the available multi-core architecture.

FiringSquad: The 64-bit CPU has taken longer to really appear in mainstream PCs than some people expected. Do you think 64-bit CPUs will become more popular and how does DICE support it in their Battlefield 2/2142 engine ?

Marko Kylmamaa:One of the problems with harnessing the full power of 64-bit CPU’s is the lack of adoption of 64-bit operating systems. Due to this it’s difficult for the game developers to make full use of the 64-bit execution potential without providing a separate set of executables compiled for the different operating systems. The current Battlefield 2 technology has been thoroughly tested on the 64-bit architecture for guaranteeing a solid performance, and optimizations have been made where possible with such architectures in mind.

Test Systems

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System Setup

Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400

ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+

ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe

2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4


NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
Driver version ForceWare 91.47

250GB Maxtor Hard Drive Maxline III SATA Hard Drive w/16MB Cache

Windows XP Professional SP2

DirectX 9.0c

Benchmarks

Battlefield 2142 Beta

L2 Cache Performance Impact

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Battlefield 2142 – Direct3D

Notes

To see how much of an impact L2 cache size has on performance, we’re pitting a Core 2 Extreme CPU that’s been underclocked to the Core 2 Duo E6400’s stock speed of 2.13GHz, as well as the X2 5200+ against the 5000+. At 800x600, the underclocked 4MB cache Core 2 Extreme chip ran 6% faster than the 2MB Core 2 Duo running at the same speed, so the extra cache definitely gives the Extreme a nice boost in Battlefield 2142, we saw the same occur for the Athlon 64 X2s, with the 5200+ running 5% faster thanks to its larger 1MB L2 cache.

BF 2142

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Battlefield 2142 – Direct3D

Battlefield 2142 Performance 800x600
Card	Min FPS	Max FPS
Core 2 Extreme X6800	182	257
Core 2 Duo E6700	180	242
Core 2 Duo E6600	178	221
Core 2 Duo E6400	140	174
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62	138	180
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+	133	178
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+	126	165
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+	119	152
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+	109	143

Conclusion

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We also found that having a larger L2 cache benefits frame rate by up to six percent for Core 2 CPUs, and five percent for Athlon 64 X2. At higher clock speeds (read: overclocking) the differences would probably be even greater.

Of course, these numbers come at 800x600 with no AA and AF disabled. Once you’ve got the screen resolution cranked up to 1600x1200 the graphics card begins to bottleneck performance and performance across the various systems is nearly even. The Core 2 CPUs still came out ahead but the margin separating the two is less than 2%. Once you turn on the AA/AF, the demands on the GPU are even greater and the CPU plays less of a role in performance, although interestingly enough the Core 2 CPUs managed to pull a little further away from the AMD CPUs, finishing up to 5% faster in some cases.

What lessons can be learned from this? Well, if you’ve already got a pretty good CPU, you shouldn’t be in a rush to upgrade your processor just for Battlefield 2142. If you’ve got other uses in mind then by all means proceed with your upgrade, but otherwise you’d probably be better off spending that money elsewhere, such as your graphics card. Since it’s basically built on the same engine as Battlefield 2, BF2142 doesn’t take advantage of the latest features found in today’s high-end and mainstream CPUs such as dual-core, so most single-core CPUs should suffice just fine for this game, especially if you plan on playing with AA and AF turned on, which you’re going to want to do, as BF 2142 has a fair amount of tall grass/trees and other types of foliage and the jaggies on trees/branches, etc can get pretty irritating if you like crisp visuals. So basically, while the CPU does play an important role in performance, your most important upgrade will be your GPU.

With this in mind, in our next article we’ll be taking a look at how Battlefield 2142 performs with various mainstream graphics cards. Stay tuned!