Battlefield 3 General Discussion Thread

trxjw said:
I don't have as much of an issue avoiding them when I'm in the air, it's when I'm taking off and the AA is hitting me from across the map that I start to get frustrated. BF2 had a limited range on the AA, it seems that they've increased that range exponentially in BF3.
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Maps are much smaller in BF3.
 
I'm seeing a bunch of posts regarding overall settings vs performance, so I thought I'd post the results of the time I spent yesterday playing with settings to find the right balance.

I did experience "rubber-banding" playing MP Monday night, but I don't think that's the "micro-stutter" people were talking about. In that regard, the game ran fine for me. Despite this, I tried disabling hyperthreading since there's been so much talk about this, and I didn't notice any difference in framerate, so I re-enabled it. I used both Fraps & Render.DrawFps – unsurprisingly, they yielded the same numbers.

A couple of random notes:
  • Can't fire in SP if your joystick is plugged in. I went in and cleared all the joystick bindings except for jet & helicopter, and I suspect that will allow me to play with the joystick plugged in, but I haven't tested that yet.
  • Contrary to what one of the DICE devs stated regarding "Ultra" settings, I noticed a negligible framerate drop between "High" and "Ultra", we're talking ~3-4 FPS here. MSAA is the killer. There are very distinct framerate differences between off, 2x, and 4x.
  • Enabling VSync in game does not affect the framerate as measured by the console or Fraps. I would expect it to lock it to 30 or 60. I originally thought VSync was broken, but if you look at the ground while running, there is noticeable tearing w/o VSync, and it appears not to happen with VSync turned on. My imagination? Magical VSync? Not sure.

In the end, I settled with these settings (system specs in sig):

All settings @ Ultra preset except 2xMSAA instead of 4x, 1920x1200. My FPS stays right around 50, give or take 5FPS. Sometimes the FPS will go into the 60s, and it dips into the high 30s worst case. This is a perfect balance for me, but I know that anything below 60 is a dealbreaker for some of you.

Overall, the graphics are amazing – I'd definitely call this the next leap forward. This reminds me of the transition from all the games powered by the Q3 engine, like Soldier of Fortune 2 (great game BTW!), and then we suddenly had Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. The fluid animations, super high-res textures, all the lighting effects make this game super immersive. And to think, BF3 is cross platform. Yet they pulled it off, there's hope yet! Remember that time that John Carmack said you can't have it look good on consoles AND PC?
 
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Where are the tank's weak spots, anyone know? in bf2 I would aim for the tracks straight on.
 
chinesepiratefood said:
Maps are much smaller in BF3.
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The area that can be covered and not be out of bounds while flying is vastly bigger than the area that you can be inbounds while on the ground. I routinely fly behind mountains that are probably miles from out of bounds while on the ground to get away from missiles. If I bail out in that area, it shows me as out of bounds. Use that to your advantage.
 
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You were kicked from the server by an administrator.
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ALLL morning!!! At least 6x!! i havnt completed a map yet!!! arg im so mad!! it's almost as if the game is crashing.

EDIT: at least you keep your points, you don't have to finish a map.
 
Killa|3yte said:
No. The two types of AA affect different parts of the image. There is an earlier post in this thread linking to a post by a DICE dev saying that a combination of the two yields the best results. I use High Post + 2x MSAA and I get an amazing result.
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You need to read the Hard gameplay article.
Brent addresses this issue and discusses just that theory.....He recommends.....

(to paraphrase) if you want the best FPS and smoothest gameplay, one AA type is all you should do, regardless of the theory. That and FXAA (post processing) seems to take the least toll.:D

Quote: " Battlefield 3 uses the Frostbite 2 gaming engine and throws in all the DX11 bells and whistles you'd expect in a 2011 game. We will go into depth on these features in the full version evaluation. For now, know this, the game supports two types of antialiasing, traditional MSAA and shader based FXAA. For the best performance and image quality, use "Antialiasing Post" which is FXAA in-game. "
 
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Killa|3yte said:
I'm seeing a bunch of posts regarding overall settings vs performance, so I thought I'd post the results of the time I spent yesterday playing with settings to find the right balance. ...
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Kudos to you Killa|3yte - thanks for the performance summary. Hopefully Nvidia will have a performance tweaking guide similar to the one they did for BC2 that show how each graphic setting affects frame rates.
 
How do you adjust individual settings?

For some reason, all I can do is choose the setting and everything is applied, but greyed-out so I cant adjust things individually.

I haven't had any problems running on Ultra though, with an i7 950, a single GTX 580 and 6GB Dominator @ 1920x1200, and that's with everything set by the game... everything on Ultra, and the rest @ Deferred AA: 4x MSAA, AA Post: High, AF 16x, Ambient Occlusion: HBAO.

I cant find a way to adjust the settings, but with everything set to as above and on Ultra, I usually get a solid 50fps+ (vsync on) which looks/runs smooth as butter, and the game looks astounding. No lag or microstutter.

But, either way, I'd like to be able to adjust individual settings.
 
Xathlien said:
How do you adjust individual settings?

For some reason, all I can do is choose the setting and everything is applied, but greyed-out so I cant adjust things individually.

I haven't had any problems running on Ultra though, with an i7 950, a single GTX 580 and 6GB Dominator @ 1920x1200, and that's with everything set by the game... everything on Ultra, and the rest @ Deferred AA: 4x MSAA, AA Post: High, AF 16x, Ambient Occlusion: HBAO.

I cant find a way to adjust the settings, but with everything set to as above and on Ultra, I usually get a solid 50fps+ (vsync on) which looks/runs smooth as butter, and the game looks astounding. No lag or microstutter.

But, either way, I'd like to be able to adjust individual settings.
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Choose custom.
 
wow, this game pegs my VRAM... thats the only thing thats preventing me from going further in settings...
 
Gotta say. I am loving this game. I had a blast last night playing for only a couple hours. My GTX285 is feeling the pain though.

Is there an official [H] server? Been looking around in the threads and havn't come accross a posting of it. Thanks in advance!
 
Warrior said:
wow, this game pegs my VRAM... thats the only thing thats preventing me from going further in settings...
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BF3 pegs your VRAM as much as it can for extras, but swaps out as needed, sorta like Windows 7 ;). I found that I could push after showing as capped, and it still ran perfectly. At a certain point though you WILL be out of VRAM for essentials and start seeing massive stuttering as the game tries to load the required items in/out detail-wise. Just keep putting the settings up until that happens or your performance is unsatisfactory.
 
Anyone running X-fire 6870 1gbs, and if so, what kind of performance are you getting? I think the case for needing massive video at 1080 was overstated, but a second 6870 would probably let me max it.
 
You're not going to get performance much below dual 6970's there, and I can tell you I'm running balls out @ 1920 x 1080 in the rig sig with Ultra on. Its smooth as butter, and beautiful on top of that. The game is easily a GOTY contender.
 
magoo said:
You need to read the Hard gameplay article.
Brent addresses this issue and discusses just that theory.....He recommends.....

(to paraphrase) if you want the best FPS and smoothest gameplay, one AA type is all you should do, regardless of the theory. That and FXAA (post processing) seems to take the least toll.:D

Quote: " Battlefield 3 uses the Frostbite 2 gaming engine and throws in all the DX11 bells and whistles you'd expect in a 2011 game. We will go into depth on these features in the full version evaluation. For now, know this, the game supports two types of antialiasing, traditional MSAA and shader based FXAA. For the best performance and image quality, use "Antialiasing Post" which is FXAA in-game. "
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thanks for this. i turned MSAA off and set FXAA to high and the game looks good and runs great. since i'm no longer taking a hit from MSAA i was able to turn HBAO back on.
 
I actually prefer to run the game without MSAA or FXAA. Running all settings on ULTRA with about 25% motion blur -- keeps 60fps solid. Great looking and performing engine, I'm impressed.
 
anyone with a single 560ti (oc'd or non oc'd) care to share their visual settings or tweaks?
trying to find a good balance of graphics/performance, or turning off/down stuff that i wont notice.
 
I must be the only one getting some kind of "Hitching". My settings are

Texture: Ultra
Shadows: High
Effects: High
Mesh: High
Terrain: High
Decoration: High
Deferred AA: None
Post AA: High
Motion Blur: On
AF: 8X
AO: SSAO

With Vsync off I get around 55-80 fps

The only time it dips to 45 fps is some areas of caspian border. Everytime my fps drops from 60 to 56 or something like that, it REALLY shows. Like it lags/hitches really noticeably. WTF is the deal with that? I am also using the 11.10 V 3 drivers.


I have heard about disabling HT and or HPET in the bios, will this work or will it have any kinds of negative effects on anything else?
 
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Krieger91 said:
I must be the only one getting some kind of "Hitching". My settings are

Texture: Ultra
Shadows: High
Effects: High
Mesh: High
Terrain: High
Decoration: High
Deferred AA: None
Post AA: High
Motion Blur: On
AF: 8X
AO: SSAO

With Vsync off I get around 55-80 fps

The only time it dips to 45 fps is some areas of caspian border. Everytime my fps drops from 60 to 56 or something like that, it REALLY shows. Like it lags/hitches really noticeably. WTF is the deal with that? I am also using the 11.10 V 3 drivers.


I have heard about disabling HT and or HPET in the bios, will this work or will it have any kinds of negative effects on anything else?
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Disable HT and go back to 11.10cap2 or 11.9 drivers. Both have been mentioned a few times in this thread as well as here.;)
Make sure and uninstall your video card drivers before installing new ones. Don't just install over them. If you uninstall the others first, it will help remove any settings stored in the registry.


And no, disabling HT won't hurt anything. About the only thing it will do is slow down performance in heavily multithreaded apps that use more than 4 threads such as video encoding or rendering. This game probably doesn't use more than 4 threads heavily anyways. It won't slow down your gaming, in fact it might speed it up.
 
So im playing at 5990x1080 on all HIGH settings with the pc in my sig.

I have HBAO off / motion blur off / AA set to nothing / AF 16x / vsync off.


I cant figure this one thing out. I cant tell who is on my team and who is an enemy. Im saying this beside the fact that spotting isnt working.

It just doesnt show me markers above my team to show me friendlies and it doesnt show me markers above enemies who are in front of me either. I dont get it. This is happening on every server I have joined until now.


Anyone ??? Im on the NVIDIA 285.38 drivers.
 
In case you are interested.

Ati Drivers: 11.10 Preview 2

I spent hours tweaking my card to find the sweet spot for BF3.

I was able to recreate the stuttering others are experiencing and was able to resolve it by simply tweaking the video card on CCC and doing some adjustments in BF3 settings.

I'm running butterly smooth on Ultra settings with my 5850 and never drop below 58 FPS

Here are my settings to run BF3 like butter:

aweak1.jpg


bf3videosetttings.jpg
 
bizzmeister said:
So im playing at 5990x1080 on all HIGH settings with the pc in my sig.
I have HBAO off / motion blur off / AA set to nothing / AF 16x / vsync off.

I cant figure this one thing out. I cant tell who is on my team and who is an enemy. Im saying this beside the fact that spotting isnt working.
It just doesnt show me markers above my team to show me friendlies and it doesnt show me markers above enemies who are in front of me either. I dont get it. This is happening on every server I have joined until now.

Anyone ??? Im on the NVIDIA 285.38 drivers.
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There are known issues with the HUD and overlays for multi-monitor setups - not sure if that is the cause of your problems though.
 
going home in 20min, gonna turn off HT and see if it makes it run smoother. work went by so fast today!!!!!!!!
 
Blubikins said:
going home in 20min, gonna turn off HT and see if it makes it run smoother. work went by so fast today!!!!!!!!
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Runs fine for me with HT on (2600K), no issues whatsoever. If I alt-tab in/out a ton of times it starts to have the issue that people describe however.
 
xXxDieselxXx said:
In case you are interested.

Ati Drivers: 11.10 Preview 2

I spent hours tweaking my card to find the sweet spot for BF3.

I was able to recreate the stuttering others are experiencing and was able to resolve it by simply tweaking the video card on CCC and doing some adjustments in BF3 settings.

I'm running butterly smooth on Ultra settings with my 5850 and never drop below 58 FPS

Here are my settings to run BF3 like butter:
Click to expand...

Dunno how, but it made my system come to a crawl.. 20fps.. Think its time to dump this mobo and cpu and head to intel.. Kinda weird hearing that come from mouth.. Intel.. Feel like i need a shower after that..
 
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