Battlefield articles

Battlefield Hardline showed superb graphics and smooth gameplay when we benchmarked it during last month's week-long public beta, and while the good news was that the game could be played on fairly modest hardware, it didn't quite display Battlefield 4's wow-factor. Developed by Visceral Games, the retail version Hardline is now available and we are back to rerun all the beta tests along with others to see how the frame rates have changed from beta to retail.

Battlefield Hardline is scheduled to arrive on March 17 but starting this week you can get your frag on for free during EA's open beta phase. While the Battlefield Hardline beta will be available to gamers on all platforms folks playing on PC can use this performance preview to determine what kind of fps your graphics card will deliver.

The biggest news for Mantle since being announced as a method of improving performance in games by allowing them to use your CPU and GPU more efficiently, has been support from DICE's Frostbite 3 engine (and by extension, Battlefield 4). Recently that support expanded to Eidos' Thief, while Crytek revealed at GDC 2014 that CryEngine will support it too. AMD says its latest update is of "tremendous benefit to a large cross-section of the gaming public" so we are keen to check it out.