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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
72 Comments
View All Comments
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
It's a $330 CPU running up to what was once $1100 worth of GPU (2 x R9 290X). It's more CPU than a lot of people have, but OC i7-4770K isn't much faster than an overclocked i5-4670K that only costs $220. Most gamers have something roughly at the level of the i5-4670K is my feeling; if they don't, then they probably don't have an R9 or GTX graphics card either. :-)(And yes, there are always exceptions, but we're talking big picture here.)
Kalelovil - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
That assumes that people are building their PCs today.There a plenty of people still with i7-2500k/FX-8320 era CPUs and mid-high end GPUs who are interested in effects of Mantle on game performance.
Artuk - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
That would be me. I am running on an FX-4100 OC to 4Ghz. My R9 280X is my "tock". I will tick again when windows 10 comes out and get a new CPU etc.I think a lot of us with 1 GB video cards found ourselves upgrading with the latest set of games hungry for more texture memory even if everything else was "acceptable".
My hope is that mantle will mitigate the sub-par processor a bit.
Artuk - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
My informal benchmark with the FX-4100 and the R9 280X was that mantle provided a significant benefit on the part of the bench at the end where it pans out. The scrolling was smoother and I was seeing 30 fps with mantle. With DX11 the scrolling struggled and I was in the teens a few times. Generally Mantle was showing a 25% increase in the extreme cases.In the earlier part of the bench where it is a little more zoomed in I saw the same moderate 5fps or so difference that others are seeing.
YMMV
limitedaccess - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Is it possible to test the performance and playability with IGPs, particularly at 1080p (but lower settings)?If Beyond Earth retains the touch controls from Civ 5, then it would be a rather suitable game for hybrids/convertibles (eg. Surface Pro).
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
I can add a bit of testing today on IGP and see how that goes... stay tuned.garbagedisposal - Friday, October 24, 2014 - link
Also interested in this, thanks for testing.Stuka87 - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Mantle needs to be tested with a slower GPU to really shine. Testing it with one of the fastest CPU's out is not really the best test for Mantle.Running the same test with a slower CPU (say 2-3 years old) should show a bigger jump.
limitedaccess - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Did you (and is it possible) to test whether or not Mantle has an impact on turn times (for AI calculations) if it does reduce CPU overhead for rendering?SviGG - Thursday, October 23, 2014 - link
Exactly what I'd like to see! Civ has always been a cpu bound game, especially toward the endgame. Try playing a large map with 8-12 civs in the modern age. You can go make a coffee between each turn, makes it nearly unplayable. With mantle's biggest benefit being cpu limited scenarios, which so far has meant pairing a highend gpu with a low end cpu, I'd like to see what kind of impact it has on turn times. I've been waiting to see those kinds of test since they announced Beyond earth would be supporting mantle. I'd be interesting to see what it can do with some high end cpu's when the game can actually push them.