Battlefield 3 - HD5970 Poor Performance...???

[hexstatic]

Hi all,

I have started playing Battlefield 3 and I think I am getting poor performance from my ASUS HD5970.

Fristly the PC spec...

i7 920 @ Stock 2.67 Ghz
Corsair Dominator GT 6 GB 2000mhz 8-8-8-24
ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer motherboard
Patriot WildFire 240 GB Sata III SSD (boot drive) via Sata III PCIe controller card
Corsair P128 128GB Sata II SSD (secondary drive)
Multiple WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD's (storage drives)
LG E2770V-PF 27" LED Monitor 1920x1080


I can run the game on Medium settings OK, with only a little bit of graphics lag. But when I do High or Ultra the computer just cant handle it and I get major lagg.

I am thinking about buying a 2nd HD5970 to use in Crossfire (quad GPU setup) to resolve the problems, as I really want to run BF3 with Maxxed out Ultra settings !

Can anyone please help me to resolve this? Will buying a 2nd HD5970 resolve the issue, or is there something else that could be bottlenecking the performance??


Many thanks

Hexstatic

 

[gnomio]

That cpu running at stock is bottlenecking that card. What resolution are you playing at?

 

[hexstatic]

Hi mate,

running at 1920 x 1080.

I have tried over clocking before, I followed a guide on a well known forum, I got to 2.8 ghz, and then to 4.0 ghz at what I thought was stable. BUt after an hour or so of Prime95 testing, the computer crashed and restarted itself. Then i took it back down to 3.8ghz, ran prime95 again and the same thing happens. I increased the voltage etc but nothing seemed to make it stable.

Also, one thing I noticed, in CPU-Z, my RAM speed is showing as 533 Mhz, so DDR makes that 1066Mhz... but the RAM should be running at 2000Mhz using the XMP ??

 

[gnomio]

Use this guide
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2008/11/06/overclocking-intel-core-i7-920/1

Remember your daily usage will never reach the same level as like with prime.

 

[hexstatic]

thanks for the recommendation. I'll have a look at the guide.

What about the CPU usage when running BF3 with Ultra settings? Would this be anywhere near the usage with Prime95?

 

[holdingholder]

BF3 is much more gpu bound than most games, any decent dual core can run it at max settings, and your quad core is more than enough so there really no such thing as a bottleneck with that game. Your 5970 should also breeze through the game at 1080p, buying a second 5970 would be overkill. You must have some other underlying problem, or what you perceive to be lagging may just be microstuttering.

 

[hexstatic]

BF3 is much more gpu bound than most games, any decent dual core can run it at max settings, and your quad core is more than enough so there really no such thing as a bottleneck with that game. Your 5970 should also breeze through the game at 1080p, buying a second 5970 would be overkill. You must have some other underlying problem, or what you perceive to be lagging may just be microstuttering.

hi, thanks for your post.


i dont quite know what microstuttering is... but the problem is that when on high or ultra settings the FPS drops dramatically, so much so that the game is unplayable. Medium setting works fine, but high or ultra I have no chance.

I will try overclocking the cpu as a test to see if it makes any improvements, if it does not, ill return it back to standard.

I notice in CPUZ my memory is only running at half speed. Its running at 534 mhz, so 1068 DDR speed. My RAM is supposed to be at 1000mhz (2000 DDR speed).

Any ideas what I can do to get the memory running at the correct speed? I have XMP enabled in BIOS but it seems to do nothing...

 

[Hammeruk]

the problem u have got is on ultra settings deferrered AA is activated u need to disable this to get smoth performance

it is either set to 4x , 2x or off set to off but make sure all other options are set to on as ur game wil still be AA filtered just it will be iin a different way to deffered. so no jaggies but smooth plaback

i have a 5970 too and with an core i7 @ 3.8ghz so no chance of cpu bottle neck and mine strugles with ultra on 1920 res only when deffered AA is activated turn it off but crank everything else to maxx and it wil lay as smooth as butter

hope this helps

 

[hexstatic]

the problem u have got is on ultra settings deferrered AA is activated u need to disable this to get smoth performance

it is either set to 4x , 2x or off set to off but make sure all other options are set to on as ur game wil still be AA filtered just it will be iin a different way to deffered. so no jaggies but smooth plaback

i have a 5970 too and with an core i7 @ 3.8ghz so no chance of cpu bottle neck and mine strugles with ultra on 1920 res only when deffered AA is activated turn it off but crank everything else to maxx and it wil lay as smooth as butter

hope this helps

hi mate,

yes this help, thank you

i have also overclocked both GPU's on my HD5970, this has also helped a lot! With the overclock it is "almost" playable in ultra settings, definitely a big improvement of definitely not playable in either ultra or high settings!

Standard clocks are 750 mhz GPU and 4000 mhz memory, i have managed to get a stable overclock to 900 mhz GPU, and 4200 mhz memory @ 1.35 volts.

I will now try using the Custom setttings on BF3, and setting everything to max, apart from AA which will be OFF. I will try use the AA settins in CCC and see if this has any effect....

 

[TheFlea]

the problem u have got is on ultra settings deferrered AA is activated u need to disable this to get smoth performance

it is either set to 4x , 2x or off set to off but make sure all other options are set to on as ur game wil still be AA filtered just it will be iin a different way to deffered. so no jaggies but smooth plaback

i have a 5970 too and with an core i7 @ 3.8ghz so no chance of cpu bottle neck and mine strugles with ultra on 1920 res only when deffered AA is activated turn it off but crank everything else to maxx and it wil lay as smooth as butter

hope this helps

I have the exact same specs which you just mentioned.. Yes the game runs smooth when the deferred AA is off, but no matter on which graphic setting i choose, there comes a moment where my cards GPU usage jumps to below 30% and i get MAJOR lag. This happens throughout the game.. Any ideas?

 

[hexstatic]

I have the exact same specs which you just mentioned.. Yes the game runs smooth when the deferred AA is off, but no matter on which graphic setting i choose, there comes a moment where my cards GPU usage jumps to below 30% and i get MAJOR lag. This happens throughout the game.. Any ideas?

yes, this is when the 5970 drops a GPU. in other words one GPU stops working and leaves the one remaining GPU to do all the work.

its happened loads of times for me, but most of the times it happens is after i change some graphics settings in BF3. It doesnt happen all the time when i change the settings, maybe 25% of the time. but almost every occurance of the GPU dropping is just after i change the settings. its a common problem and should be resolved with an up and coming driver revision...

only thing you need to do is end BF3 and restart the game. for me its easy to notice (apart from my FPS goes to 35 from 70/80) as i have a zalman mfc3 which has a power consumption display, when all is working consumption is around 600 Watts, but when a GPU drops the consumption drops to 450 watts!

but yeah a simple restart of BF3 will get the 2nd GPU up and running again !!

 

[TheFlea]

Thanks for the reply .. i guess ill just restart the game when it happens then and wait for a new display driver to come out. Thanks again.

 

[gnomio]

thanks for the recommendation. I'll have a look at the guide.

What about the CPU usage when running BF3 with Ultra settings? Would this be anywhere near the usage with Prime95?

No. Its a gpu intensive game.
Look at this chart

See the 5850. Now add 50 to 60 percent performance to that number. Remember thats on high settings.

 

[Reaver192]

One other thing to remember is that battlefield 3 on multiplayer is actually very CPU limited. I read an article in German that shows on medium with 64 players on caspien borders you will use almost a full gig of video ram, high and ultra can go up to 1400 mb. I have a set of 5870's crossfired and have the same limitation as you do although I have an AMD 965 @3.4 and I think that is my bottleneck. The article in German showed that an i7 2600k raised the minimum fps at 1080 resolution by about 15%. The article also went on to show that single player didn't really matter what cpu you used.