BF3 Performance / System Lag / Stuttering

[JesseMoody]

Hey guys, new to the forum and wanted to share up my issues.

So I'm getting some weird issues. Here is my pc specs.

AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition 3.4ghz
16 Gigs DDR3 G Skill SDRAM
EVGA GTX 570 (latest drivers 285.62)
OCZ Solid 3 SSD 120gig (have my os installed on this and currently bf3) (incorrectly labled it agility earlier)
Sound Blaster XFI Fatality (older one with front panel for pc with inputs on it)
(Onboard sound controller has been disabled)

Thermaltake TR2 RX 750 Bronze

Now I can get anywhere from 60-85fps constant on servers but every so often I get major spikes. First I thought it was lag until i kept up task manager and my fps displayed in bf3 and saw that the CPU was spiking like mad and as a result the frame rate dropped drastically.

There is no way my system should be dropping like this. Anyone else having these issues? I was playing on ultra (everything) ran fine but with these issues. So I dropped down to full on medium and it still had it. So I don't think it's the game but I could be mistaken.

Any clues?

Also note it is doing this on low settings across the board too.

FPS will drop from 80-12 in seconds then back up

This is beyond frustrating. Never had these issues.

Any ideas? Maybe a memory leak? Bad CPU management in BF3 code?

Just get's bad when flying and people getting mad because I fly right into a tree or some other obstacle that normally I would have avoided.

 

[fe_]

Just to let you guys know, I'm still with the problem. I've tried so many many things that it came to a point where I can confidently say "I've tried every ******* single possibility".
Absolutely nothing made even a slight difference, except turning the crossfire off, which did help just a little bit, but the game was still completely unplayable.
So that's it, I'm giving bf3 up. And I will never ever even consider buying anything from ea/dice again.

 

[mrmaffen]

the new beta driver didnt solve any of my problems with the game ...

nevertheless i finally found the ultimate solution for all of my problems ... i downgraded my nvidia graphics driver to version 275.33... i totally got rid of the framedropping and im playing on ultra with 2x aa now .. absolutely awesome

finally i got it! hope that helps guys .. try it out ... 275.33 is the key (at least for me)

my system spec:

win 7 64 bit
4gb ram
intel core 2 duo e8500 @ 3,9ghz
gigabyte gtx 560ti 1024mb OCed to 950/2240 @1,112V (latest bios)
asus xonar d1 audio card (latest bios and drivers)
asus p5k se / epu motherboard (latest bios and drivers)

 

[aktareth]

Hello All

I had this stuttering/ lag random freeze problem aswell.I ve tried almost every available fix from disabling onboard sound card to various graphics card drivers and X-fire CAPS.However i could not fix this problem until today !.First of all here is my rig ;

Phenom II x6 3.7
12 gig ddr 3 Kingston 1733 mhz ram
HD 6870 x2 crossfire stock clocks
Silverstone Strider plus 750w 80+plus silver
Asus M4A88TD-V EVO mobo

Until today i had 4 gig ram.Under this post i saw someone fixing his/her problem by upgrading from 4 gig ram to 8 gig.And than i said *** it why not try this and i went ahead bought 4x4 2pcs 8 gig of ram and now the game runs perfect.I tested it on 64/64 Large Conquest maps where i had most of my problem.Game settings are all on Ultra except i lowered the AA and changed HBAO to SBAO.But as i said i havent had a single fps drop for almost an hour of playing on a large , open map.

Im not sure why increasing my ram solved the problem since 4 gig of ram should be more than enough for this game.But anyways im glad that this game is playable for me now.And that was my experience , hope this helps the ones that having problems.

 

[Capt Darling]

Hi all

Had the same issue...drove me spare !!! Did everything with no joy until I set the affinity (right click bf3.exe in task manager) to 1 cpu

Bingo !...issue fixed at last !!! I can play the game again

 

[cbrunnem]

Hi all

Had the same issue...drove me spare !!! Did everything with no joy until I set the affinity (right click bf3.exe in task manager) to 1 cpu

Bingo !...issue fixed at last !!! I can play the game again

it might have fixed the problem for you but it was actually maybe a band aide. you just limited your performance by limiting the game to 1 core to use. not ideal

 

[Capt Darling]

it might have fixed the problem for you but it was actually maybe a band aide. you just limited your performance by limiting the game to 1 core to use. not ideal

I agree it's a work around but after successive patches that broke the game am happy to at least be playing the game again til EA fix properly

I assume this is the dual core equivalent of disabling hyperthreading ?

Isn't the fact that large numbers of folks with top drawer cpu's are having to reduce the capability of their hardware in order to play a game supposedly developed for pc a little shameful on EA/Dices part ?

 

[cbrunnem]

I agree it's a work around but after successive patches that broke the game am happy to at least be playing the game again til EA fix properly

I assume this is the dual core equivalent of disabling hyperthreading ?

Isn't the fact that large numbers of folks with top drawer cpu's are having to reduce the capability of their hardware in order to play a game supposedly developed for pc a little shameful on EA/Dices part ?

i havent had an once of problems with the game. not a drop of game related studdering. the only studdering i have encountered were because my wireless wasnt getting a good signal. try improving that if you have a wireless card or even take it out and hard line it.


what you are doing by setting the affinity down to 1 is you are telling the program it can only use 1 core at a time. that will be the fastest core most likely and not a hyperthreaded core either.

idk why people have problems with the game but mine is up to date and havent had a problem

 

[Capt Darling]

idk why people have problems with the game but mine is up to date and havent had a problem

I'm pleased for you...doesn't mean the problem doesn't exsist for a significant number of people with bigger rigs than mine

look through the forums and you'll find lots of people with stuttering issues of various degrees..plenty like me who have seen performance drop off after each patch

bottom line is it seems to be poorly optimised...like I said...seems a significant number with very good CPU's and GPU's encountered this...similar to RO2

I understand that pc development is a minefield given the myriad of configurations they have to accomodate so I'm prepared to be patient. What irritates is that with hundreds of forum threads EA/Dice haven't given the community any indication it's being looked at

Tripwire at least acknowledged they screwed up and we're attempting to fix

 

[cbrunnem]

I encountered a problem that many people were having and just stated a way i fixed it.

 

[ncaross]

the new beta driver didnt solve any of my problems with the game ...

nevertheless i finally found the ultimate solution for all of my problems ... i downgraded my nvidia graphics driver to version 275.33... i totally got rid of the framedropping and im playing on ultra with 2x aa now .. absolutely awesome

Spent ages cleaning off the old drivers and installing these. Same problem for me. Every 4-8 steps forward I take I stutter.

 

[ncaross]

the new beta driver didnt solve any of my problems with the game ...

nevertheless i finally found the ultimate solution for all of my problems ... i downgraded my nvidia graphics driver to version 275.33... i totally got rid of the framedropping and im playing on ultra with 2x aa now .. absolutely awesome

Just tried the latest 290.53 driver. Same thing. Running everything on medium with 2 x 560s and getting over 100fs most of the time. It's NOT video drivers. Last crash say CPU (i7 920) and RAM drop in task manager when freeze happened.

I suspect there's a bottleneck somewhere. On a Velociraptor HDD though? It's SO annoying.

 

[cbrunnem]

Just tried the latest 290.53 driver. Same thing. Running everything on medium with 2 x 560s and getting over 100fs most of the time. It's NOT video drivers. Last crash say CPU (i7 920) and RAM drop in task manager when freeze happened.

I suspect there's a bottleneck somewhere. On a Velociraptor HDD though? It's SO annoying.

is this online or online and campaign? i had a problem similar to you and it turned out that my internet connection was bad(weak signal for me) i fixed that and problem solved.

ill tell you one thing, its not your hard drive. that is for sure.

 

[ncaross]

is this online or online and campaign? i had a problem similar to you and it turned out that my internet connection was bad(weak signal for me) i fixed that and problem solved.

ill tell you one thing, its not your hard drive. that is for sure.

Will check. Strongly doubt its my connection. That's very fast and secure.

 

[cbrunnem]

just saying that mine was causing major problems. id walk ten feet foward and get yanked back or would bounce off and imaginary wall or just plain studdering.

 

[ncaross]

I can't actually run single player without it crashing - wish I could check file integrity like steam - really don't want to have to reinstall. Seemed fine in COOP though, which is weird.

I'll upgrade the firmware in my router and check that too.

 

[ncaross]

Latest firmware (Billion 7800N) updadted. Interestingly, it's the same thing when in Jets - the whole screen judders every couple of seconds like there's a slight-rubber band lag spike. Next stop is checking my ADSL2+ profile. It's currently set for very high speed. Will try a more reliable one and see if that helps.

 

[ncaross]

OK just changed my ISP's ADSL2+ profile from VERY FAST to RELIABLE VIDEO. Ping dropped from av. 32 to 22. But juddering STILL there. PC crashed completely after a while. Will update BIOS and ALL component drivers and see if that helps - I get the impression the system has never had to work so hard in its life.

 

[ncaross]

ZOMG it WORKED!!!11!!!!

Updated all the drivers to my X58-UD4P Gigabyte motherboard and the stuttering is all gone.

Helluva long shot but makes sense - it's a punishing game and any outdated driver is going to screw with performance. Let me know if this fixes things for anyone else.

 

[jaxx0rr]

Hi all

Had the same issue...drove me spare !!! Did everything with no joy until I set the affinity (right click bf3.exe in task manager) to 1 cpu

Bingo !...issue fixed at last !!! I can play the game again

THANK YOU !!!

setting affinity to 1 cpu worked for me too!

My Specs:
AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250 Proc @ 3.00 GHz
6GB DDR3
Nvidia Geforce GTX 550 Ti
Win 7 x64

 

[ncaross]

Right. So updating drivers worked for a while but it quickly came back. Next stop was upgrading BIOS. Did so from version 5 to version 13. It's gone away again. Great. If it comes back then it's got to be a background app. Will keep informed.

 

[swolenator]

I don't know why but I get lots of freezes when flying. And also whenever i spawn in a hornet on firestorm at the start it is a guaranteed freeze. I will be going around fine no stuttering or lag then bam it just freezes like a screenshot and gives me my mouse arrow key over it but is frozen. Then stays there so I have to alt f4 or ctrl alt delete which takes me to a desktop that has a black background and frozen. Then after a minute or 2 it sluggishly begins to work again and then you can slowly relaunch battlelogs since it closed too in the firefox browser. This issue only seems to happen to me when in a jet or helicopter for the most part and is particularly bad on firestorm to the point it is hard to finish a round on it lately when flying. It has happened on foot but seems very common when flying.

B2k maps feel a little more sluggish then the others. I run mostly everything on medium fps according to the render.fps command seems to go between 30 and 60fps while playing i think didn't pay much attention.(not sure before/during freezes) But when it happens my whole computer locks up a bit and sometimes says something about desktop window manager maybe. It also seems to load levels extremely slow the first round but if it does the round again same map it loads really fast. It seems to laod way slower then before like at times half the map will be capped before I load. Btw all multiplayer. I know other people have had where the crash when flying too but not sure of a solution. Should I change any of the nvidia control panel settings?

i7940,gtx 280, 6gbddr3, vista 64, x-fi titanium
I have tried 285.62, 285.79 drivers and the ones before those so far. I can't remember if the earlier driver had same issue or not.
Side note currently have 123gb of 463gb free would freeing up space improve anything?

 

[sonicden]

I had problems where i would be running 70fps then seem to throttle and go to 1 fps for 2 seconds. Was annoying as heck, finally discovered my pc had a rootkit virus. Also noticed that bf3 is harsh on video cards, you must turn gpu fans to 100% or underclock them so you dont crash or get throttled.

 

[Auraxis]

My friend was having troubles, tried everything. Ramped his Vram up and it solved the frame drop issue. been playing all night without a single frame drop, putting settings up each game and its still fine.

Seems to work for him don't know if this will help any of you?

 

[njones23]

I had the same issues on an AMD system. I was testing crossfire with 2 HD 6970's on an ASUS M4A79T deluxe motherboard with an AMD Phenom II X2 555, with all 4 cores unlocked, so it' essentially a X4 955 3.2Ghz. This testing was done at 1920x1080 with all settings on high, MSAA disabled. It turned out to be a CPU bottleneck. I was omitting that at first because of all the benchmarks online and everyone saying how this game is not really cpu dependant. This may be true for single player campaign mode but is definitely not the case in multiplayer. As soon as I put these cards in my core i7 860 system, all the bad frame drops, sporadic low FPS, and cpu/gpu spikes while using the games render.perfoverlayvisible 1 console setting were gone. The game in multiplayer is much smoother on the intel system. All graphic drivers the same, AMD Catalyst 11.12 CAP2. I had to stick to this version because performance wise it seems to be as good as the newer 12.1, however if I go to 12.1 I lose the ability to control fan speeds and power settings on the second GPU.

There is another issue called microstutter, not just low FPS, but actual microstutter at high FPS that is detectible with crossfire. The term microstutter is being misused in this forum to describe low frames per second incorrectly. I have since added a 3rd 6970, because if you read articles on microstutter, a 3rd card eliminates this, and I can say that is entirely true, at least testing with this game. I used to notice stutter as soon as frame rates would drop around 90 - 100 FPS, which should be real smooth right? On a 120hz monitor I could really see the stutter, looked more like 60FPS than 100. 120 FPS would be completely smooth and fluid with 2 cards. Even now with 3 cards, certain instances can drop my frame rates down in the 90 - 100 range, but motion stays fluid unlike with 2 cards when framerates are in that range. Microstutter is real and only evident on multi-GPU systems. People with a single GPU card will not have a real "Microstutter" issue, other than just low FPS.

 

[cbrunnem]

I had the same issues on an AMD system. I was testing crossfire with 2 HD 6970's on an ASUS M4A79T deluxe motherboard with an AMD Phenom II X2 555, with all 4 cores unlocked, so it' essentially a X4 955 3.2Ghz. This testing was done at 1920x1080 with all settings on high, MSAA disabled. It turned out to be a CPU bottleneck. I was omitting that at first because of all the benchmarks online and everyone saying how this game is not really cpu dependant. This may be true for single player campaign mode but is definitely not the case in multiplayer. As soon as I put these cards in my core i7 860 system, all the bad frame drops, sporadic low FPS, and cpu/gpu spikes while using the games render.perfoverlayvisible 1 console setting were gone. The game in multiplayer is much smoother on the intel system. All graphic drivers the same, AMD Catalyst 11.12 CAP2. I had to stick to this version because performance wise it seems to be as good as the newer 12.1, however if I go to 12.1 I lose the ability to control fan speeds and power settings on the second GPU.

There is another issue called microstutter, not just low FPS, but actual microstutter at high FPS that is detectible with crossfire. The term microstutter is being misused in this forum to describe low frames per second incorrectly. I have since added a 3rd 6970, because if you read articles on microstutter, a 3rd card eliminates this, and I can say that is entirely true, at least testing with this game. I used to notice stutter as soon as frame rates would drop around 90 - 100 FPS, which should be real smooth right? On a 120hz monitor I could really see the stutter, looked more like 60FPS than 100. 120 FPS would be completely smooth and fluid with 2 cards. Even now with 3 cards, certain instances can drop my frame rates down in the 90 - 100 range, but motion stays fluid unlike with 2 cards when framerates are in that range. Microstutter is real and only evident on multi-GPU systems. People with a single GPU card will not have a real "Microstutter" issue, other than just low FPS.

everyone should read this then come back and say that a phenom x4 is good enough for high end gaming in BF3.