Star Wars Battlefront Beta Notebook and PC Benchmarks

As our benchmark sequence, we used the only single-player mission available in beta. The survival mission on Tatooine sends us in waves against the Imperial stormtroopers. We used Fraps to record the average frame rate during at least one wave of attack. In our tests, these results were very comparable to the average performance results in multiplayer duels on the two Beta maps. However, because the test sequence can't be perfectly standardized, there is a certain degree of imprecision inherent in comparing graphics cards. Nevertheless, over the course of several test runs, most graphics cards achieved relatively consistent results (only diverging by 1 fps or less).

Star Wars Battlefront is reasonable with its hardware demands. Even the Intel HD Graphics 5500 in the Broadwell Core i3-5010U (Intel NUC 5i3RYK) is able to render the game fluidly at the lowest graphics settings. The AMD FX-7500 with an integrated Radeon R7, which is faster on average, is the only card that dropped frames. The Intel Iris Pro 5200 (in the Schenker S413) ran at a similar speed at medium settings and played smoothly in single-player mode. For multiplayer battles, on the other hand, 40 fps should be the absolute minimum, otherwise there won't be enough performance reserves for the more hectic scenes. That means only stronger dedicated notebook graphics cards are on the table here - like the Radeon R9 M280X for medium detail settings. Current Nvidia GTX graphics cards, like the GTX 960M and above, are able to provide more performance (as they just proved in our Battlefield tests). These potent cards should offer sufficient computational power for the high detail preset.

In order to play Battlefront at the highest detail setting - "Ultra" - you’ll need at least a GeForce GTX 970M or Radeon R7 370 desktop graphics card. The latter reached about 48 frames per second in Full HD (1920x1080). For 4K, only a high-end desktop graphics card will make the cut. Our Radeon R9 290X rendered a playable 36.4 fps on average, delineating the lower performance limit for this high resolution. The GeForce GTX 980Ti or Radeon R9 Fury X, on the other hand, should provide plenty of computational oomph for this game.