You did not mention what settings you are using. I believe it's probably MSAA (Aliasing Deferred) that causes problems.
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Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Performance and IQ Review @ [H]
- Thread starter FrgMstr
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You did not mention what settings you are using. I believe it's probably MSAA (Aliasing Deferred) that causes problems.
All ultra, 4x MSAA and high FXAA.
If MSAA is the problem that means it's my vram issue? 570s only have 1.2gb and I know bf3 eats all the vram that you throw at it so I'm guessing the stuttering is my gpus hitting a wall if it is indeed a MSAA issue?
If MSAA is the problem that means it's my vram issue? 570s only have 1.2gb and I know bf3 eats all the vram that you throw at it so I'm guessing the stuttering is my gpus hitting a wall if it is indeed a MSAA issue?
yeah its VRAM. my setup does the same thing you describe but i run out of VRAM sooner than you do because im running 2x 560 Ti's (1GB). CPU induced bottlenecking is doesn't just happen out of nowhere but outdoor maps/areas and lots of destruction does on most systems lead to a CPU bottleneck if you are running an SLI setup but the frame rates are already well over 60 FPS so it has little impact on the smoothness as long as its a fast CPU.
the settings i found yesterday to run for my 2x 560 Ti's are
single player
ultra everything
MSAA 2x
FXAA off or low (hate the blurryness)
AF 16x
ambient occ. SSAO
i can run HBAO if i shut off MSAA completely, both take
VRAM and with these settings it keeps single player just under 1GB of VRAM
Multiplayer VRAM usage can go higher and in general is harder on the system esp with the large conquest maps in 64 player servers so settings i run are tweaked accordingly.
this is a new ultra setting i came up with last night, so far so good, before this i just ran high across the board pretty much.
ultra everything
MSAA off
FXAA off
AF 16x
ambient occ. SSAO - if i run into VRAM issues again this will be the first thing i shut off.
with these settings my frame rate is 70-100 FPS, as your 570's can afford a bit more VRAM usage i would suggest trying my settings and then one at a time upping the settings that are not maxed out, when you run into a huge lag spike in frame rate then you know the setting you last upped needs to go back down a notch. people have been running into VRAM limits on this game in multiplayer pretty quickly, maxed out settings will easily take 1.5 GB of VRAM and IIRC there was someone who had 2 580's in SLI and still had problems with running out of VRAM from time to time with max settings.
So I'm getting ready to order an i7 2600k setup but I'm debating between the price/performance of SLI 570s and SLI 580s. I really don't want to push for the 580s based on the price but I also don't want to spend 1200$ on a CPU and 570s only to find out that I still can't play ultra smoothly. I would be fine if it could run ultra textures and just lower or no MSAA. What type of settings do you think the an i7 2600k and 2 570s (the 2.5gb option from evga?) can do at 2560x1600 resolution?
buy 2x 560 Ti 2GB cards and run SLI. 560 Ti's in SLI have the horsepower to run ultra maxed out smoothly, the problem is VRAM so getting 2GB versions will solve that problem. if i could trade my 1GB cards in and pay even 200 dollars to get 2GB cards i would. the performance is outstanding until you hit the VRAM wall in games like BF3.
I was going to track down two of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130687 which are 2.56gb for vram?
yep, those would work very well as well for a long time.
hmm seem to be hard to fine these days for some reason, amazon says in stock but sold by circuit city
http://www.amazon.com/025-P3-1579-AR-GeForce-GTX-Graphics-Card/dp/B005AY5N9O
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
oh i see 2560 res. its going to be tough but 2x 570 2GB should be plenty of power, you might have to lower AA to 2x but your def going to need 2GB cards to do what your trying to do.
Nice. I considered those cards but the price of two of those was almost $500 more than the price of the two MSI 6970 lightnings I bought. I couldn't justify the extra cost.
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Yeah the price is a bit tough to deal with for these cards. My problem was that I originally had ordered 2 HIS 6950 cards for crossfire and both of them left my display flashing black when loaded at all in crossfire or individually. I returned them and ordered two MSI 6950 Frozr III cards and really they have been great temperature wise and for the most part I think the performance has been fine aside from the issues I mentioned a few posts back. They just weren't enough to push my 2560x1600 resolution display the way I wanted. The fps drops and stuttering got to be a bit too annoying so I figured I'd give nvidia cards a try. At this point I'm kind of tired of buying and returning cards though so I figured I'd just go for the 580s and a new processor to try to eliminate all of the possibilities.
While I thought the game is fun and looks awesome, playing it was discouraging when half the other players had an unfair advantage, and I agree mostly with what you're saying.
If you think about it logically, "unlock" is really BACKWARDs for multi-player! Give the better/more practiced players better weapons? Really? That simply blows for a new player. What's next when BF4 comes out? Pay cash for special gear like Zygna's shitty pay-to-cheat games?
lol @ you guys complaining about unlocks. i agree that jets/heli's should have flairs from the start but honestly it does not take much to level up to the best gun/accessory combo for each class, for the most part the guns in each class are all equal in damage
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...1E0bjBueWVSQjc0V0E&f=true&noheader=true&gid=0
its a bit of a grind to get the best setups on each gun in each class but it keeps you interested beyond just playing normally.
there definitely are some balance issues DICE needs to address, mobile AA is definitely one of them. imo they screwed up big time when they buffed its damage to ground targets in the patch, they can now take out tanks as well as tanks can take them out and that is pretty retarded to say the least. all in all though it is a great game and much more fun if you play with friends. its not a console port but some console elements have definitely made their way into the PC version as a result of it being developed for both. they got the mouse control for infantry down right for the most part but jet control with analog joystick/throttle is broken because of consoles, they dumbed down throttle control so its done by buttons rather than being able to control it with a full analog control like you can on the helicopters and this is annoying to me. the other issues with flight controls and joysticks are button maps, certain button numbers register as the start button for example on a gamepad and even though you can assign them you will end up going to the escape menu when you press them etc. those things can of course be overcome by button remapping in the controllers software to either another button or a key on the keyboard instead as a fix but these things are what are the most obvious problems that have bled over from consoles directly.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...1E0bjBueWVSQjc0V0E&f=true&noheader=true&gid=0
its a bit of a grind to get the best setups on each gun in each class but it keeps you interested beyond just playing normally.
there definitely are some balance issues DICE needs to address, mobile AA is definitely one of them. imo they screwed up big time when they buffed its damage to ground targets in the patch, they can now take out tanks as well as tanks can take them out and that is pretty retarded to say the least. all in all though it is a great game and much more fun if you play with friends. its not a console port but some console elements have definitely made their way into the PC version as a result of it being developed for both. they got the mouse control for infantry down right for the most part but jet control with analog joystick/throttle is broken because of consoles, they dumbed down throttle control so its done by buttons rather than being able to control it with a full analog control like you can on the helicopters and this is annoying to me. the other issues with flight controls and joysticks are button maps, certain button numbers register as the start button for example on a gamepad and even though you can assign them you will end up going to the escape menu when you press them etc. those things can of course be overcome by button remapping in the controllers software to either another button or a key on the keyboard instead as a fix but these things are what are the most obvious problems that have bled over from consoles directly.
So I got the new i7 2600k and the two MSI GTX 580 Lightning Xtreme 3gb cards all setup and installed. The performance is better than the 6950s (thankfully for the price), but I still don't get the performance I was expecting especially considering the review article here. I've tested the i7 at both stock and 4.2 ghz and all of the performance pictures below are at 4.2ghz. All settings are the same as the review article for the 580s with MSAA and motion blur off. I also have hyper threading disabled.
I do have vsync on because it seems to have quite a bit more stuttering and a lot of tearing at 2560x1600 resolution for me. But with it off I do manage to hit the same 75fps average as the review. My problem is more with the minimums and drops.
I've resized all the pictures but enlarged the performance charts on each to be more visible.
This is normal play and for the most part how things look the majority of the time. In a normal firefight there might be some extra blips but it still keeps a solid 60fps without any issues.
This is looking over a large scene of action. It doesn't seem to happen in every situation and I have trouble replicating it all the time, but for the most part looking from hilltop on caspian to a large fight at checkpoint or from the antenna to a large scene of action over the entire map seems to bring a drop down to the low 50's. Its not terrible but I can feel it pretty obviously without any fps indicators.
The worst drops happen in tanks or other vehicles and when being attacked by tanks/vehicles. I see drops in the 40's and on one occasion the upper 30's when being attacked by a helicopter. The picture there is just in a tank with a few explosions on hilltop. Most of the time all a tank has to do is fire its canon and the smoke from the firing seems to drop me from 60 to about 55 fps when using either the CITV or the gunner positions looking straight ahead with it.
Is this type of experience normal or should I be expecting better results? The review minimums were 54 fps but I've had fairly regular drops into the upper 40's ignoring the one occurrence of 38 fps.
I do have vsync on because it seems to have quite a bit more stuttering and a lot of tearing at 2560x1600 resolution for me. But with it off I do manage to hit the same 75fps average as the review. My problem is more with the minimums and drops.
I've resized all the pictures but enlarged the performance charts on each to be more visible.
This is normal play and for the most part how things look the majority of the time. In a normal firefight there might be some extra blips but it still keeps a solid 60fps without any issues.
This is looking over a large scene of action. It doesn't seem to happen in every situation and I have trouble replicating it all the time, but for the most part looking from hilltop on caspian to a large fight at checkpoint or from the antenna to a large scene of action over the entire map seems to bring a drop down to the low 50's. Its not terrible but I can feel it pretty obviously without any fps indicators.
The worst drops happen in tanks or other vehicles and when being attacked by tanks/vehicles. I see drops in the 40's and on one occasion the upper 30's when being attacked by a helicopter. The picture there is just in a tank with a few explosions on hilltop. Most of the time all a tank has to do is fire its canon and the smoke from the firing seems to drop me from 60 to about 55 fps when using either the CITV or the gunner positions looking straight ahead with it.
Is this type of experience normal or should I be expecting better results? The review minimums were 54 fps but I've had fairly regular drops into the upper 40's ignoring the one occurrence of 38 fps.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
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Sounds like you're more CPU limited. That 2600k has plenty more juice in it.
yeah it looks like MSAA is on in those graphs. i experience the same performance hits on my system in situations like you described but only if i have MSAA on or other too high of settings for my graphics cards to handle due to lack of VRAM
here is one i made happen tonight for another thread where we are discussing VRAM issues with SLI in this game and what happens when you run out of it (might be the same thing your seeing there though with 3gb cards i doubt that!)
also try disabling hyperthreading and see how it performs, many i7 owners have reported studdering issues with HT on.
here is one i made happen tonight for another thread where we are discussing VRAM issues with SLI in this game and what happens when you run out of it (might be the same thing your seeing there though with 3gb cards i doubt that!)
also try disabling hyperthreading and see how it performs, many i7 owners have reported studdering issues with HT on.
I already have hyperthreading disabled. I'm up to 4.5ghz now but I haven't really noticed much of a difference. I double checked and MSAA was off. I enabled it at 4x just to test and the performance was quite a bit worse.
Heres a few shots with MSAA 4x - vram maxed at about 1863mb during this
With very little action I could still get it to hover around 60 fps but it would regularly drop to 50-55 fps with very little happening.
Things got worse in the tank especially with thermal imaging
The fps seemed to stay decent here but the Anti Air sure caused the graphs to go insane
Heres a few shots with MSAA 4x - vram maxed at about 1863mb during this
With very little action I could still get it to hover around 60 fps but it would regularly drop to 50-55 fps with very little happening.
Things got worse in the tank especially with thermal imaging
The fps seemed to stay decent here but the Anti Air sure caused the graphs to go insane
Evil Scooter
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That in game resource monitor seems pretty useless to me. It often shows very little CPU and GPU usage as demonstrated in the screencap above that shows the average for both under 20% when both are obviously under very high loads. Or am I just reading it wrong? 
That in game resource monitor seems pretty useless to me. It often shows very little CPU and GPU usage as demonstrated in the screencap above that shows the average for both under 20% when both are obviously under very high loads. Or am I just reading it wrong?
It doesn't show usage, it shows time. As in how much time is spent by the CPU and the GPU to render the frame. Whatever one is on top indicates what is taking the most time to render and is your PCs "weak spot".
That in game resource monitor seems pretty useless to me. It often shows very little CPU and GPU usage as demonstrated in the screencap above that shows the average for both under 20% when both are obviously under very high loads. Or am I just reading it wrong?
your reading it wrong. numbers represent how long its taking for each subsystem to render frames measured in milliseconds. because of this fact LOWER is FASTER. cpu/gpu utilization isn't a perfect indicator of how things are performing and with this game the higher both of those get the worse the game performs esp on the CPU side of things. it likes lots of headroom in the CPU department. this method of showing performance is much like showing frame rates because it directly translates into the frame rates. if your gpu is taking 5ms to render a frame on average and your cpu is taking 16ms your cpu limited in your frame rates at 62 fps (1000 / 16 = 62.5) but your graphics card could be outputting 200 FPS (1000 / 5) but its spending alot of time waiting on the CPU to finish its work so your only getting 62 FPS
make sense?
Evil Scooter
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Much more now... thanks for taking the time to dumb it down for me.
I was using it when I was trying to isolate my BF3 stuttering issue and thought I was going crazy. Numbers so low (rig in siggy) on Caspian and such I was like... WTF??!! I feel for the guys trying to run this game at high resolution. My feeling is that the current hardware just can't cut it. I am hopeful that the next gen gpus will be a better fit. I am struggling at 1600x1200 on all low with a 480gtx ffs. By struggling i mean average of 100 fps but with huge swings from 60 to 200 fps? Wild.
TwistedAegis
[H]F Junkie
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Shouldn't have any need to disable hyperthreading with a 2600k; I believe only the last gen processors had issues with that.
I'll test it out enabled again then and see what happens. Its mainly because of the effects quality. I don't know what gets taxed the most with the smoke/explosions/etc but if I change from ultra to high it plays a bit smoother in tank battles. The easiest way for me to test this was just getting into a tank with thermal imaging on and then shooting a rock. With effects set to ultra I'd easily drop into the low 40s every time. With it set to high I'd drop into the low 50's maybe upper 40's. Similarly with it set all the way to low there was almost no drop at all. Anyone else with SLI 580s at 2560x1600 resolution will to try that themselves and see what happens?
Edit - I still get a lot of cpu spikes and stuttering with hyperthreading enabled. I'll be leaving that off for this game.
Edit - I still get a lot of cpu spikes and stuttering with hyperthreading enabled. I'll be leaving that off for this game.
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Well, I am glad I'm not the only one. I'm only playing on 1920x1080 with an i5 2500k @ 4.5 and SLI GTX 570s and I get huge drops of FPS just as you described. I go from 80 down to 30 and it stays there for a couple seconds. My 570s are only 1.28GB vram compared to your 3GBs which you said BF3 only eats up to 1.8GB meaning it's probably not limited by vram, while mine might or might not be. I need to drop MSAA down to 2x to smooth it out.
samuelmorris
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Depends on the res. At 1920x1080 I'd say all ultra, but with AO disabled and AA set to postprocess only (not deferred) - doing this at 2560x1600 is enough for me with two 6970s, so that should translate well to 1920x1080 with one HD6970 - it's half the graphics power, and half the pixel count.
Nvidia_ATI
Limp Gawd
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How do you turn on the in game resource monitor? Thanks.
i did some testing on my 2500k rig with various clock settings/core counts
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1654043
the conclusion i came to is as long as you got the GPU power the CPU is often the bottleneck except if you run AA and other settings that put a major taxing on the video card.
linuxfueled
Weaksauce
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If your considering buying this game you might want to look around the net. If you have a fast connection and decent PC your gonna die behind objects. Get one shotted or simply killed buy a hacker. The new expansion is visually stunning but the maps play like crap.
The problem is the client side hit detection. Why client side? Because it's a console port to PC. 122 hrs played and it never gets better just worse. Save your money. You won't read this in any reviews for fear of never getting product to review again.
The problem is the client side hit detection. Why client side? Because it's a console port to PC. 122 hrs played and it never gets better just worse. Save your money. You won't read this in any reviews for fear of never getting product to review again.
I have noticed this. I've run behind objects and still get shot two or three times when I'm already well behind cover. Freaking annoying.
Client side hit detection? Unbelievable.
To those who don't know what that means - if someone is shooting at you and has a 1000ms ping, they can kill you before you even know they were shooting at you. No chance to take cover after the first few shots.
Fuck it, I am going to starting playing on servers with a high ping intentionally, since it gives you an advantage.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
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This has been an issue with MP games for decades- and it's not going to go away. It's also not that bad. Nothing to see here, move along.