Hardware Bioshock Infinite Performance Analysis

Bioshock Infinite is awesome, but how does it push the current crop of graphics cards?
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/04/23/bioshock-infinite-performance/1

 

I like these Performance Analyses. Awesome article.

 

It's nice to see Ed and the team doing their best to return Bit to their former glory

Just some little notes and observations:

1. The 7950 has 3GB not 2GB as in the performance graphs.
2. If you can overclock your 7950 by 40 to 50% (as many can), it will never dip below 70fps on the 1080p graph, using the same settings
3. I also wonder whether the 670/680 might have fared better in the multi screen table if you had tested the 4GB versions?
4. The 7870LE should neatly fill the gap between the 7870 and 7950, and would trouble the 660Ti for the price of a vanilla 660.
5. I wish you'd tested Eyefinity on the 7950, judging by it's bigger sibling's performance it would have done well there.

Do you sense that I might be a 7950 fanboy? I'm not, but it was £100 cheaper than my 670 and I love it!



FINAL EDIT: Let's see a review of a 7870 LE (aka 7930) soon lads.

 

I will admit that I nerdgasmed a little bit when I saw this article, and then I got all weepy and sentimental about the good old days of game reviews. Afterwards I told those damned kids to get off my lawn.

Like any PC enthusiast (or "elitist" if you want) I blame consoles and their deleterious effect on game system requirements. It has been a while since I have needed to ask myself "Will Game X play on my system?". Now I ask myself "Will Game X play on my MITX system or will I need my main system?" and game reviews won't tell me any more. This article answers my question about Bioshock Infinite, and I will need to play it on my main system.

I haven't been visiting as much lately, so good work Bit-Tech/Harry, and I will visit more often if this is the future.

 

Bioshock Infinite is the worst performing game on my PC. The fps drops sometimes and it stutters. Any other game I can run maxed out (except crysis 3). I have an overclocked 680, 16gb ram and i5 2500k @ 4.9ghz. All games on SSD. Bioshock is the only one with performance issues.

 

I completed BioShock Infinite in about 15 hours at 1920x1200, Ultra settings with Alternate DOF enabled but it was a very jarringly stuttery experience on my Core i7-920 (@ 3.7 GHz), 12 GB, GTX 680 SLI, Windows 8 Pro PC. I suspect the stuttering was caused by excessive VRAM usage as it occurred when MSI Afterburner's on-screen display showed 1.9 GB or more being used and went away when entering a new area or when the VRAM usage dropped to 1.5 GB or thereabouts. Using the default DOF setting, which I personally don't like as much because it is too 'bloomy', does reduce the stuttering significantly but doesn't get rid of it completely, alas. Why this game uses 2 GB of VRAM is not really clear as it certainly doesn't look that great technically; most of its good-looks come from the art design itself not the modelling or textures.

A good game, perhaps the combat was a bit repetitive by the end, but it was made up for by a good story. Shame about the performance issues really. The developers are apparently away of this issue but have not yet released a patch to fix the issue.

 

Could you add benchmarks for previous-gen cards (at least one generation back would be fine). It's hard to tell whether my 560 Ti would be fine (it probably will be if it's not maxed out I'm guessing) or whether I'd gain some tangible advantage by upgrading.

 

r3loaded, I noticed very little stuttering running at 1920x1200 @ High detail on my little Geforce 250GTS, and framerates were very playable.

 

Something's not working well there then, your card should eat the game on a single screen.

 

But other games work fine... BF3 is maxed out. Dishonored. Dirt 3 etc.

Only thing I can think is that the SSD it's on is nearly full (just 12gb free). It's not a constant low fps chugging sort of problem but an occassional stutter but it's noticeable. Latest nvid drivers.

 

I too have stuttering and fps dips into the 30's and it's not just when the next area is loading in, not sure if it's my computer. I play the game at ultra with everything enabled in-game and my drivers set to use application settings with v-sync on. It's really not enough to bother me and make me want to stop playing, I feel like it's just something that's going to be ironed over with a patch from either nvidia or 2k soon enough?

 

I played the game on Ultra (albeit with no AA as usual) and it played very smooth on my 670 at 1440p. The vsync option of the game was terrible though and caused a lot of stuttering. Turning off vsync ingame and forcing it via D3DOverrider from the old Rivatuner package removed all stuttering though.

 

Sounds like vsync dropping the game to 30fps to me. The switch between 60 and 30 is noticeable.

 

I have my V-sync set to both on in-game and on in the driver package. I didn't think I had it set to adaptive v-sync but if the in-game v-sync is wonky then I will try tonight with that disabled and see if it helps. It's never seemed to have been an issue in any game before this, I've always played every game with v-sync on in-game and in the drivers. Have I been doing it wrong all along?!@#$% D:

 

If you have a 6-series card, adaptive v-sync is your friend, use it!

 

Awwwww thanks

The plan's to do this for as many big-ticket releases as possible tbh, as it works out to nicely integrate them into our benchmark suite.

1. whoops, will fix; brain melted by graph overload
2. People say you can OC 7950's by a lot, but i've killed three running at just the Boost clocks. We try to stick to official SKUs, otherwise we'd be testing forever!
3. Everytime i've tested a GPU with more than stock memory, it's been pointless; i'd put my money on it being the same here except for maybe at 5760.
4. We got a 7870 LE in, but it broke. I imagine AMD will legitimise the SKU shortly though...
5. I've just gotten a fixed 7950 (our last remaining model's DisplayPorts were dead, hence its omission) so i'll add it in soon

Glad you like your 7950; they're good cards, and tidy bit-coin miners to boot.

 

I guess it's the luck of the draw how far you can OC, and understand why you didn't want/have time to overclock all the cards on test. I agree the 4GB SKUs wouldn't touch the single screen results, but I was surprised how far the 2GB 680 dropped off across 3 screens versus the 7970. It'd be great to see how AMD's number two card handles Eyefinity.

I loved my old 670 equally as much, but largely the same performance for two thirds the cash was hard to ignore after a minor financial crisis saw me selling off the green card and replacing it with a red one a few weeks later.

Either the 670 should be £50 cheaper or the 7950 more expensive (now that AMD have finally sorted the drivers out).

 

Okay wow, so I turned off v-sync in-game and left it to on in my drivers (not adaptive or anything else, just on) and now I'm getting a solid 60 fps with no dips for two whole sections of the game. Thanks for the suggestion guys! I can't believe this is what was giving me trouble after three playthroughs.

 

For future reference your other option is to use software such as Afterburner to cap your framerate to 60 (or whatever your monitor's refresh rate is). Then you can switch off vsync altogether.

 

I have a GTX 470 and an i7 950. Need I apply?