Benchmarked - Civilization: Beyond Earth
by Jarred Walton on October 23, 2014 8:00 AM ESTAMD CrossFire Performance
Update, 10/24: Turns out there's a "hidden" setting in the configuration file that needs to be manually enabled for Mantle SFR rendering on CrossFire setups to work. Go to your configuration file (%homepath%\Documents\my games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\GraphicsSettings.ini) and change the one line to say "Enable MGPU=1". This will allow Mantle SFR to work properly. I had to retest CrossFire performance, and the updated results are below, with a more detailed explanation posted in a separate article.
Last but not least we have some early results for CrossFire performance. With the appropriate tweak to the configuration file, Mantle CrossFire support adds an interesting wrinkle to the mix. Regular CrossFire still works as usual, but minimum frame rates take a hit relative to single GPUs even while average framerates improve. Here are a couple graphs showing scaling of performance as we move through the various settings. I've included both single GPU and CrossFire results for the R9 280 and R9 290X, both with and without Mantle:
CrossFire 290X ends up pushing past the 60FPS barrier, even at 4K with 4xMSAA, so that's quite a feat. Except, minimum frame rates take a hit and go from 32FPS with a single 290X to 20FPS with CrossFire 290X. Enabling Mantle changes the story quite a bit; the CrossFire Mantle configuration can't quite push past 60FPS, but at 56FPS it's at least close and the minimum frame rate of 37FPS is better than both the single GPU and single GPU with Mantle figures.
We can also see quite nicely in this graph that the CPU bottleneck at High and Ultra settings is around 110-120FPS, even with a 4.1GHz Core i7-4770K, while our minimum FPS bottleneck is even lower: 65FPS for CrossFire Mantle and 49FPS with a single 290X (without Mantle).
As for the R9 280 CF configuration, the two Tahiti GPUs (without Mantle) come just short of matching the performance of a single R9 290X Hawaii card. Mantle again improves minimum frame rates, but the gap between R9 290X Mantle and R9 280 CF Mantle grows. This is one more reason why we generally prefer single GPU configurations, at least up to the point where you have the fastest GPU you can buy.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Keep in mind that the computer turns are not really doing anything with graphics, so basically Mantle would have little to no impact on speeding up the AI.Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
The built in "lategameview" benchmark does not test turn times. It's entirely a rendering benchmark.ToTTenTranz - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Has AMD ever presented Mantle as a big boost for systems with an overclocked $350 CPU?I thought Mantle was supposed to be a performance enabler for low-power and/or cheaper CPUs...
For your viewers' sake, please repeat the Mantle benchmarks using low-end and midrange CPUs.
ajlueke - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
I think the this part of the review captures the intended message."There are definitely quieter Radeon R9 GPUs, but even then I don't think they're going to be hard pressed to match the GTX 970 or 980". So you believe they are going to match the GTX 970 and 980 with ease?
I believe dropping the "don't" will get across the point you wanted to make. But of course, unless you are testing a MSI R9 290X lightning or Sapphire Vapor-X, perhaps you can leave out speculation in a data driven review entirely.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Yeah, the "don't" was a mistake. Basically, a GPU drawing 250W is going to be hard pressed to match the noise profile of a GPU drawing 160W. That's all I'm saying.BreezeDM - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
is there a Civ: BE computational benchmark like there was for Civ V?TelstarTOS - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Nice article, thanks :)Happy to read that my 970 is more than capable at 1440p.
siriq - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Well it is not just your 970, my GTX 570 do avg 25 fps in 2560x1440 ultra 4xmsaa. Still ok for strategy. However in 1920x1080 same settings the game fly! Got 45-50 fps. Even in 2048x1080 same settings almost the same result. Like the new nvidia driver. Nice smooth in the game.zeock9 - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Considering most people won't be buying reference model of either brands, and especially so since GTX970 doesn't even have one, we'd very much like to see benchmark done with AIB partner boards with custom coolers that are overcloked right out of the box, because that is, ironically, a much more realistic portrayal of what consumers will be basing their decisions upon.JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
I have three reference designs (GTX 980, GTX 770, and R9 280X); everything else is a card purchased at retail. I'm a little leery of overclocking too much, but I know the R9 280 cards in particular can easily hit 950/5600 clocks. I suppose I should also note that all of the cards had their power limits increased, where applicable. (The 280/280X/290X were set to +20%, the GTX 780/970 are +6%, and the GTX 980 is +25%. I didn't actually overclock the cores or RAM, however.)Anyway, I generally disagree with testing heavily overclocked cards, as it can give false impressions, and even mild overclocks aren't always guaranteed. The results I'm showing should be achievable with every GPU tested. If you have a card that's overclocked, it should perform better than what we're showing, but as not all cards overclock to the same level that can be a slippery slope. :-)