CPU Scaling and Performance
Overclocking your Core i7 processor is not going to help deliver more performance in Battlefield 3 according to our test using a single GeForce GTX 580 card. We observed that a 49% increase in clock speed for the Core i7 allowed for a mere 6% increase in frame rates.
Processors that only support 2 threads will take a hit as our Phenom II X2 560 delivered 42fps, almost 20% slower than a similarly clocked Phenom II X4 processor. However we were surprised by how well dual-cores performed when compared to other recently tested games.
Games such as Hard Rest, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and Crysis 2 saw a massive difference in performance between dual and quad-core processors. For example, in Deus Ex dual-cores were 43% slower than their quad-core counterparts.
For the most part Battlefield 3 doesn't appear to be all that CPU demanding, at least this is what we can tell from testing the multiplayer portion that the beta allows us to test. We'll be keen to revisit these results once the full version of the game is released.