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I think you are missing a decimal point in that. I see single digit percentage increases.

http://battlelog.battlefield.c...

Test case 3: High-end single-player with multiple GPUs
CPU: Intel Core i7-3970x Extreme, 12 logical cores @ 3.5 GHz
GPU: 2x AMD Radeon R9 290x 4 GB
Settings: 1080p ULTRA 4x MSAA
OS: Windows 8 64-bit
Level: South China Sea “Broken Flight Deck”
This single-player scene is heavy on both the CPU and GPU with lots of action going on. Test was done on the highest end Intel CPU on Windows 8, which is the fastest option before Mantle thanks to DirectX 11.1. Still this CPU is not fast enough to keep the 2 290x GPUs fed at 1080p on Ultra settings so we get a significant CPU performance bottleneck which results in major performance improvement when enabling Mantle.
Result: 13.24 ms/f -> = 8.38 ms/f = 58% faster

Yes, because we certainly don't have games targeting adolescent male power fantasies anymore.

That's totally the underrepresented demographic here.

Recently http://battlelog.battlefield.com/ (Battle Field 3 web interface)
stopped supporting IE 8.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/news/view/2832654782553529670/

A clan member asked what they could do about it, I told her to use a different browser.
they came back: I suppose you expect everybody to have two browsers installed.

Actually I did, the only browser they used was an out of date IE. Playing games on-line,
having a functioning chat system installed; one would think they'd have an above average
knowledge of Internet security (#1 being not to use IE).

I'm sure many are being hit by malware and exploits that have been know for years.

Recently http://battlelog.battlefield.com/ (Battle Field 3 web interface)
stopped supporting IE 8.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/news/view/2832654782553529670/

A clan member asked what they could do about it, I told her to use a different browser.
they came back: I suppose you expect everybody to have two browsers installed.

Actually I did, the only browser they used was an out of date IE. Playing games on-line,
having a functioning chat system installed; one would think they'd have an above average
knowledge of Internet security (#1 being not to use IE).

I'm sure many are being hit by malware and exploits that have been know for years.

You have a good point, but I think you're jumping too quickly to a solution in the wrong direction, IMHO. You want servers filtered and segregated by skill level. I don't think this will work. Here's why:

Intermediate-to-advanced players will surely occasionally hop onto a n00b server to shoot some fish in a barrel, take out some frustration, test a new tecchnique, or whatever. This will annoy and discourage players who are "expecting" to do well because of server skill settings.

Some new players may even incorrectly assume that they don't have to bother with the (relatively high) learning curve of the controls and coordination required for most FPS games.

A sort of Peter principle kicks in: as soon as you have one or a few games where you start to do much better than the preset skill level for that server, you have to move on. It would be hard to tune the system to choose the "break-point" at a proper time for everyone. If I get lucky and a wild grenade kills 10 enemies, am I ready to move on? A tough AI problem, for sure.

The idea of filtering by skill quickly gets reduced to filtering by score, or at best aggregate average scores. This can work if you have a game with uniqie id's and centralized tracking. But then you'll need to account for multiple player for the same game CD, which allows for "cheating" the system by creating new "n00b" accounts.

Even if you work around the problems above, note that score is really not strongly related to player skill. Scores are more a combination of relative player skills, the maps, and playing styles used in each game. Bad players can get high scores and good players can gwet low scores, especially in team games, depending on the class and role they are playing.

In fact, some team-based mods are now actually not tracking individual player scores, but only team scores. This is to encourage more teamwork and less Rambo-style play. Some players get very high scores by baseraping with planes or whatever, yet still play poorly (by definition) because their team loses, and they don't help. If team victory is the goal, individual scores don't do well to promote it.

The above emphasise the problems with determining "skill" in terms of segregating servers and enforcing the segregation, and it also leads into my suggestion.

With class-based games, you have the option of focusing on 5 or 6 different skill sets / strategies. If you're not the best/fastest twitch finger in the West, consider playing classes other than assault/soldier and choosing not to run head-first into the front lines. Maybe you would be better playing medic, or engineer, or artillery support. I play a variety of classes (mostly in BF1942), and each one is a very different experience requiring totally different skills and play styles. Please consider trying them all a little and see what you may have a natural knack for, and enjoy.