NVIDIA cards - Battlefield 3 microstutter FIX

hardc0re

Gawd
Joined
Sep 19, 2006
Messages
869
do you have acceptable framrates? 30FPS+ and experience millisecond long "hickups" or stutter without losing and frames? Is your gaming experience ruined and left you with no choice but to pull your hair out?

I found out how to fix this at the driver config level. Change the following settings via Nvidia control panel and try your game:

Triple buffering: ON
Vsync: ON
Threaded optimization: ON
Power management: Maximum performance
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 0
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp
 
Would be more helpful if you narrowed it down a bit... Triple buffering doesn't even apply to DirectX, and I'd be very surprised if LOD bias had anything at all to do with this. My money's on vsync and/or pre-rendered frames.
 
Prerendered frames is known to cause microstuttering in some games if it's set too high and did cause microstuttering in BC2. I think I also remember a dice developer on twitter telling everyone to set pre-rendered frames to 0 if they were experiencing microstuttering.
 
threaded optimization is an openGL setting
max frames to render ahead applies only to DX9 games
vsync sucks balls
/thread

:p
 
Triple buffering doesn't even apply to DirectX

threaded optimization is an openGL setting

Feel free to correct me with evidence, but I'm pretty sure both of these statements are false.

Triple buffering:

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_10.html

Threaded optimzation:

http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_6.html (scroll down a ways)

max frames to render ahead applies only to DX9 games

Pretty sure that's also false.
 
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triple buffering from the cards control panel has NO impact on DX games. you would have to use a third party app to force triple buffering on for DX games. of course some games have triple buffering built right in and will apply it when using vsync.
 
BF3 has a built in triple buffer setting, it does it by default I think
 
Tried the settings but the game is still hitching occasionally.

I was told to try turning off Hyper Threading in BIOS and that didn't fix it either.

Starting to think the problem could be hard drive hitching maybe?
 
The game can go over 4gb ram usage. System memory goes above 4 and then the hd starts to be utilized hardcore. That caused me lag at high settings.
 
Shouldn't really be a problem with 8gb of RAM. I don't know, maybe some assets are not preloaded into memory and the hitching occurs when they are streamed in.

Would be great to get a genuine fix for the hitching since it can happen in the midst of a fire fight and can mean the difference between life & death.

EDIT: Just tried putting all graphics settings on low and hitching still occurs.
 
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I was really getting peeved at the microstutter and tried these settings and it worked. So the Vsynch has no effect actually the other poster was correct. Vsynch OFF works fine too. The microstutter wasnt a one off thing... it kept happening so now its fixed. If it fixes it for you too im glad.
 
I get awful artifacting making BF3 unplayable. None of your suggestions helped my issues at all. BF3 is the only game I have issues with. This seems to be an issue with many 460s and 560s according to all the threads on Nvidia's forums complaining about it.

My specs:

Nvidia 460 gtx 768mb stock speeds (35C idle - 59C load)
i7 920 + Corsair H50 Hydro @3.2ghz
Gigabyte X58-ud3r
6BG ram
1680 x 1050
 
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