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Written by Steven Iglesias-Hearst   
Monday, 23 May 2011
Table of Contents: Page Index
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition OC
Closer Look: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Details
Features and Specifications
VGA Testing Methodology
DX10: 3DMark Vantage
DX10: Street Fighter IV
DX11: Aliens vs Predator
DX11: Battlefield Bad Company 2
DX11: BattleForge
DX11: Lost Planet 2
DX11: Tom Clancy's HAWX 2
DX11: Metro 2033
DX11: Unigine Heaven 2.1
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Temperatures
VGA Power Consumption
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III PE/OC Overclocking
Final Thoughts and Conclusion

DX11: Battlefield Bad Company 2

The Battlefield franchise has been known to demand a lot from PC graphics hardware. DICE (Digital Illusions CE) has incorporated their Frostbite-1.5 game engine with Destruction-2.0 feature set with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 features destructible environments using Frostbit Destruction-2.0, and adds gravitational bullet drop effects for projectiles shot from weapons at a long distance. The Frostbite-1.5 game engine used on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 consists of DirectX-10 primary graphics, with improved performance and softened dynamic shadows added for DirectX-11 users.

At the time Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was published, DICE was also working on the Frostbite-2.0 game engine. This upcoming engine will include native support for DirectX-10.1 and DirectX-11, as well as parallelized processing support for 2-8 parallel threads. This will improve performance for users with an Intel Core-i7 processor. Unfortunately, the Extreme Edition Intel Core i7-980X six-core CPU with twelve threads will not see full utilization.

In our benchmark tests of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the first three minutes of action in the single-player raft night scene are captured with FRAPS. Relative to the online multiplayer action, these frame rate results are nearly identical to daytime maps with the same video settings. The Frostbite-1.5 game engine in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 appears to equalize our test set of video cards, and despite AMD's sponsorship of the game it still plays well using any brand of graphics card.

  • BattleField: Bad Company 2
    • Extreme Settings: (Highest Quality, HBAO, 8x AA, 16x AF, 180s Fraps Single-Player Intro Scene)

Battlefield_BC2.jpg

Cost Analysis: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (1680x1050)

  • $154.99 MSI GeForce GTX550-Ti costs $2.95 per FPS
  • $169.99 Radeon HD6850 costs $2.95 per FPS
  • $185.99 GeForce GTX 460 costs $3.35 per FPS
  • $199.99 Radeon HD6870 costs $3.09 per FPS
  • $249.99 GeForce GTX 560Ti costs $3.05 per FPS
  • $249.99 Radeon HD6950 costs $3.40 per FPS
  • $264.99 MSI GeForce GTX 560Ti Hawk costs $2.88 per FPS
  • $299.99 MSI HD6950 TwinFrozr III PE/OC costs $3.92 per FPS
  • Test Summary: As DirectX 11 titles go, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is not the most demanding. Even the low end GTX 550Ti can deliver above standard frame rates. The good news is that you can rest assured that your video card won't be the cause of your lag in BF: BC2.

    Graphics Card GeForce
    GTX550-Ti (OC)
    Radeon
    HD6850
    GeForce
    GTX460 (OC)
    Radeon
    HD6870
    GeForce
    GTX 560Ti
    Radeon
    HD6950
    MSI GeForce
    GTX 560Ti Hawk
    MSI Radeon
    HD6950 TF III
    GPU Cores 192 960 336 1120 384 1408 384 1408
    Core Clock (MHz) 950 775 715 900 822 800 950 850
    Shader Clock (MHz) 1900 N/A 1430 N/A 1645 N/A 1900 N/A
    Memory Clock (MHz) 1075 1000 900 1050 1002 1250 1050 1300
    Memory Amount 1024MB GDDR5 1024MB GDDR5 1024MB GDDR5 1024MB GDDR5 1024MB GDDR5 2048MB GDDR5 1024MB GDDR5 2048MB GDDR5
    Memory Interface 192-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit



     

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