Performance Testing: Surprising Results for Older Processors
Spain continues to discuss the technical aspects of the new shooter Battlefield 6. Special attention has been drawn to tests run on the AMD FX 9590 processor, which was released back in 2013. Despite its age, this chip managed to deliver playable performance in the game, which came as a surprise to many gamers and hardware experts.
The AMD FX 9590 belongs to the Piledriver processor lineup, an improved version of the Bulldozer architecture. At the time, this chip stood out for its high clock speed—up to 5 GHz in turbo mode—and its eight computing cores. However, each pair of cores shared cache blocks and floating-point units, which affected performance in certain tasks. When launched, the processor competed with the Intel Core i7-4770 but lagged behind it in most gaming scenarios.
Test System Configuration and Experiment Conditions
To test Battlefield 6, an ASUS motherboard based on the FX990 chipset was used, with 16 GB of DDR3 RAM at 1866 MHz and a Radeon RX 5700 graphics card. By today’s standards, this setup is considered outdated, but it still allowed the game to run smoothly at 1080p resolution.
During testing on large maps with 64 players, the average frame rate ranged from 30 to 35 FPS. Reducing the number of players to 24 increased this to 35–40 FPS. At the same time, CPU load stayed at its maximum almost constantly, causing periodic drops and brief input lags. Still, the very fact that such a demanding game could run on a 2013 platform sparked interest in the community.
Impact of Optimization and Expert Opinions
Experts point out that these results were made possible thanks to the developers’ extensive optimization work. Battlefield 6 can even run on systems with just two cores and four threads, which speaks to its high level of adaptability to different setups. However, for smooth gameplay on older processors, users will still have to tolerate certain limitations — notably, occasional freezes and unstable frame rates during dynamic scenes.
Overall, testing showed that modern games can reach a broader audience if developers focus on optimization. For owners of older PCs, this opens up new possibilities, though it doesn’t guarantee a perfect experience. In Spain, such experiments are generating strong interest, especially among those reluctant to upgrade their hardware.
