Partial BF3 Crossfire GPU usage/Black screen fix

V

Vega

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 12, 2004
Messages
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I've found a partial fix for those of us getting black screen in BF3 and limited crossfire GPU usage. I say partial because you cannot run full resolution, but still a decent eyefinity resolution and have all GPUs working. All 4 of my GPUs are working now.

Steps:

C:\Users\your user name\Documents\Battlefield 3\settings
PROF_SAVE_profile > open in wordpad
Edit to read: GstRender.FullscreenEnabled 0
Edit to read: GstRender.FullscreenScreen 1
Save and set file as read only
Start BF3, should start in windowed mode
Go to options > video > change undefined monitor number to "1"
Adjust screen resolution to a resolution LOWER than your default Eyefinity resolution (The one that works for me is 2760x1600) [default is 3308x1920]
Select full screen
Hit apply
BF3 should now be in full-screen eyefinity (albeit a lower resolution) and all crossfire GPUs should be working

Falling through the world and mortar game, err I mean BF3 is now working very smooth! I get over 120FPS in portrait Eyefinity and no micro-stutter nor rubber-banding. I am using driver 11.12 (8.92 new preview).

Although it does look a bit uglier running at non-native resolution of course, the performance and game-play is there for Eyefinity until they get their shit straight and fix this.

This took me about 20-hours of trial and error so I hope it can work for some of you out there... Maybe even some SLI guys can get similar results.
 
I owe you a great big hug or something. I've been having this issue for a while and haven't read anything about it. I tried dropping my resolution 1 notch and it didn't work, so I didn't bother to try further. I tried, after reading this, to go down to the next resolution (2680x something) and it WORKED. YAY!.

WTH, I wonder why that is. the newest games lately just don't work well :(

1st RAGE, now this.. saddens me.

EDIT: Jesus, its still finicky as hell. alt-tabbing breaks it and I have to fiddle with it again. modern games are making my PC worthless, and not because it doesn't have enough power to run, but because of poor programming

EDIT 2: Actually, I was able to get it to do full resolution fullscreen with Crossfire working. All I had to do was change "GstRender.FullscreenScreen" from 0 to 1. and FullscreenEnabled to 1 as well.
 
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It will be a little different on everyone's system. You cannot alt-tab or it will break it. On my system I cannot get full screen resolution no matter what I do. Atleast with this temp fix I can get Eyefinity working with all four GPUs.
 
Just joined in on the mortar err.. Battlefield 3 action and unfortunately I can't get the game to launch properly. I'm troubleshooting at the moment. I did the steps in the OP and can now get a screen, I get a screen with tanks and a animated wave effect but that's about it. No options or anything. I'll admit I bought the russian version and switched the language over to english but I'm getting closer. Before I applied this update I was only getting a black screen. I'm sure I'll figure this out soon. Specs are in sig

Running 3. 23.6 inch eyefinity @120hz 3240x1920 (not bezel compensated)

Browser is Mozilla firefox 7.0.1

EDIT: Issue was resolved. It was poor instructions on the russian side's english language tutorial. I guess things were lost in translation :p

Game is working at 2700x1600 or something like that at 120hz. If I enable my native resolution of 3240x1920 @ 120hz I actually get a blank screen in the menu and can't save the settings unless I hit the windows key to minimize the window. Didn't have this problem in the beta as my native resolution actually worked, except I had a shitty hud or no hud at all in better words.
 
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Vega said:
I've found a partial fix for those of us getting black screen in BF3 and limited crossfire GPU usage. I say partial because you cannot run full resolution, but still a decent eyefinity resolution and have all GPUs working. All 4 of my GPUs are working now.

Steps:

C:\Users\your user name\Documents\Battlefield 3\settings
PROF_SAVE_profile > open in wordpad
Edit to read: GstRender.FullscreenEnabled 0
Edit to read: GstRender.FullscreenScreen 1
Save and set file as read only
Start BF3, should start in windowed mode
Go to options > video > change undefined monitor number to "1"
Adjust screen resolution to a resolution LOWER than your default Eyefinity resolution (The one that works for me is 2760x1600) [default is 3308x1920]
Select full screen
Hit apply
BF3 should now be in full-screen eyefinity (albeit a lower resolution) and all crossfire GPUs should be working

Falling through the world and mortar game, err I mean BF3 is now working very smooth! I get over 120FPS in portrait Eyefinity and no micro-stutter nor rubber-banding. I am using driver 11.12 (8.92 new preview).

Although it does look a bit uglier running at non-native resolution of course, the performance and game-play is there for Eyefinity until they get their shit straight and fix this.

This took me about 20-hours of trial and error so I hope it can work for some of you out there... Maybe even some SLI guys can get similar results.
Click to expand...

thx worked just fine ;)
 
Yea good stuff. I'm running your old monitor setup, triple 30's in portrait mode and the game wouldn't start correctly at the native resolution. All I get is a screen with no hud. Have to alt tab a bunch of times to get the game going. But I lowered the resolution down to 3600x1920 from the default 4800x2560 so that the aspect ratio can stay the same. Don't even notice a difference either and I can run the settings on Ultra except AA and still be up in the 60 fps range. Thanks!
 
I'm using surround in portrait mode and I followed the steps he provided at the top. It works 60% of the time for me. Sometimes it'll go full screen but I can't click on any of the options since it's blank. I just get the background and the ambient noise that goes along with it. You can try hitting escape or Alt + Enter and see if that works. Its the best option right now until nvidia releases another driver update to fix this issue. I had this problem back in Bad Company 2 and they fixed it with a driver update so, have patience and I'm sure it'll get there soon enough.
 
Rev3rEND said:
EDIT 2: Actually, I was able to get it to do full resolution fullscreen with Crossfire working. All I had to do was change "GstRender.FullscreenScreen" from 0 to 1. and FullscreenEnabled to 1 as well.
Click to expand...

Changing FullscreenScreen from 0 to 1 solved my quadfire issues running 5x1 eyefinity, now it runs smooth everytime instead of randomly being fine then a stuttery mess. Thanks a lot. I think with more than 3 screen eyefinity the game must get confused or something with the preferred monitor setting. Now that I have the settings as per your above settings the resolution and monitor is listed as "undefined" in video options and it works well everytime. Playing the game at 5250x1680 is great (one notch below native so I can see team mate tags).
 
Blah, I had it working where it would just load the game fullscreen and all my menu's come up. I saw that the latest patch fixed the surround problem so I went in the game and changed the resolution to my native windows resolution and now its back to the same problem with no menu's or hud. I shouldn't have changed the resolution before I tested the latest patch. I also notice that now, the bushes sprite on the ground are flickering like crazy. Anyone experiencing that issue also?
 
All issues have been resolved for me after the patch. I'm now able to run portrait eyefinity with native res and everything works as it should. 0 problems anymore, except the excessive performance hit when enabling deferred AA. That may be a AMD issue or Dice issue but is the last issue left.

Currently running 11.11 WHQL

I will try 11.12a performance driver that just released (or whatever it's called.)
 
According to users from other sites, AMD's eyefinity looks resolved, but Nvidia's surround is still not working. Back to the waiting line I go :(
 
redmasc said:
According to users from other sites, AMD's eyefinity looks resolved, but Nvidia's surround is still not working. Back to the waiting line I go :(
Click to expand...

Damn that sucks, what exactly is going on with nvidia surround atm?
 
Ya, all four of my GPUs are working now and no more black screens. Although, with native resolution it tries to squish the entire HUD on just my center screen which ends up being pretty funky in portrait. At the step down resolution it treated my portrait Eyefinity as one large monitor which I much preferred. For some reason native just doesn't feel quite as "smooth", still working on that one.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Damn that sucks, what exactly is going on with nvidia surround atm?
Click to expand...

No hud, no menu, no basic information on the screen. Basically, it looks like real life. Can't tell the friendly's from the enemies from a distance since there's no blue triangle indicator to tell me. I can't even check the score or select who to spawn on since all those menu's don't show up. Hell I can't even tell if I killed a guy since it doesn't give me a kill confirmed report unless I physically see him go down. So far, I just keep hitting enter and hope that I spawn on someone close to an objective haha. I can alt enter out and go into windowed mode and all the menu's come back up and alt enter back to full screen. But that's just crazy talk.
 
redmasc said:
No hud, no menu, no basic information on the screen. Basically, it looks like real life. Can't tell the friendly's from the enemies from a distance since there's no blue triangle indicator to tell me. I can't even check the score or select who to spawn on since all those menu's don't show up. Hell I can't even tell if I killed a guy since it doesn't give me a kill confirmed report unless I physically see him go down. So far, I just keep hitting enter and hope that I spawn on someone close to an objective haha. I can alt enter out and go into windowed mode and all the menu's come back up and alt enter back to full screen. But that's just crazy talk.
Click to expand...

If you drop your nv surround resolution one notch does it fix all the problems like it did for my eyefinity setup prior to the patch? If so I would do that for now. Geez, hopefully they iron out all these issues. Still they took a huge step in the right direction and I am eager to see more.
 
My native resolution is 4800x2560 and before the patch, I dropped it down to 3600x1920 and it worked. With this new patch, even dropping it down to 3600x1920 doesn't work. I believe Dice ironed out the surround problem and now it sounds more like a driver problem. Hopefully the next release from nvidia will fix it because the same thing happened in bad company 2, and an Nvidia driver release solved the problem.
 
Just had to say thanks for this being here. Since I was moving up res from 19x12 to 58x10 the game was not happy displaying at first, but this fix let me get into the game to make the adjustments and now... wow.

Two 7970s seem up to the task of delivering on 120Hz magic with Ultra... and it looks impressive.
 
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