Brand new PC Build, COD Advanced Warfare Lags on High

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magepker

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Oct 2, 2012
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Heres my current rig:

CPU: i5 - 4690k
GPU: GTX 970
Ram: 16GB (4 x 4 1333mhz)
Mobo: MSI z97 gaming 5

I have to play advanced warfare on medium settings and it STILL lags during loading screens... any suggestions? Is it the game or is my rig really unable to run COD AW?
 
Solution
Frag Maniac
It's definitely not your spec, it's the game, but make sure you use the latest Nvidia drivers, and try betas too. Also make sure your audio driver is updated too.

First off, the game is a RAM hog, so disable any background programs you can and reboot before playing to free up RAM. Also disable desktop composition and themes via the game's shortcut (right click shortcut, properties, compatibility).

Try running in Windowed Borderless mode vs Fullscreen, and try it with and without VSync. For some this has greatly decreased or eliminated cutscene stutter. It may only stop or minimize the audio part of it though, as the out of sync video on load scenes seems to be specifically a memory leak problem with the game.

If you continue to get...
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Having checked actual proper benchmarks, it uses 3.5gb of vram at 4k resolution. I also stated it was a decent port for once this year, so all of my "misleading" assumptions are quite correct. CoD will not under any circumstance use up 4gb of vram even at 4k resolution.

Is it misleading that Call of duty has had significant PC problems at launch before? definitely not. It's been plagued with issues in its various incarnations. It would be misleading to pretend call of duty has had a solid and smooth launch on PC every year. So this sounds like, despite the far better than normal port it got this year thanks to its longer development cycle and new developers there is an issue that affects OP that needs to be patched.

If you check any benchmark of Call of duty, Linus tech tips even has a video on it, you can see OP's setup should be killing it with big frame rates even on max settings. Please show me where i'm misleading or incorrect


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJoVjOk1SVY#t=91

There you go, i'll even link it for you
 
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I don't know what you're checking however I have the game and play it @ 1440p and the game uses close to 4 GB of VRAM after disabling Cache spot shadow maps and Cache sun shadow maps...

One of my friends also has the game and at 1080p the game uses about 2.8 GB of Ram with his GTX 780's in SLI.

Call of duty Advance Warfare is a good game and it's is very smooth on my rig however the point of this thread is to address the challenges of the OP.


Linus and his colleague are amateurs, the benchmarks they showed were at the beginning of the campaign where the FPS is unlocked.

The game is locked at 90 fps for the Multiplayer and parts of the campaign however the guy on tech tips showed the least demanding part of the game with where the fps is unlocked.

I speaking from hands on experience with more than one PC, I monitored VRAM usage with afterburner and GPU Z on both PC's...

below recommended requirements for COD Advanced Warfare.
Recommended:
OS: Windows 7 64-Bit / Windows 8 64-Bit / Windows 8.1 64-Bit

Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30GHz

Memory: 8 GB RAM

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 @ 4GB

DirectX: Version 11

A video card with 4 GB is recommend - where did you hear that the games uses 1.5 GB of VRAM at 1080p and 3.5 at 4k?



 
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Maxwell is really good and Pascal is probably 2 or more years away.

Kepler cards are also pretty good!
 
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So i've tried everything that was suggested and nothing helped so i'm chalking it up to a issue with the game and hope they can fix it.

The issue's i'm having are all during load screens or cut scenes, actual gameplay is smooth. (more or less)

edit: the only thing i don't understand is why my CPU is pushed to 100% during cut scenes.... that seems to be linked somehow.

Listening for the stutter and watch CPU usage, it seems to only get really bad when it hits 100%.... how would i be able to fix that? OC'ing?
 
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I think that updated drivers & game patches will improve your challenges during cut screens and load screens...

My friend is having similar issues, his CPU usage is up to 100% and he has some problems with the cut scenes and loading screens.
He overclocked his CPU to 4.5 on the clock and 4.0 on the cache...

My friend has a i5 4670k...

If you overclock make sure you have a good cooler.

Keep us update...

 
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I had originally planned for a high end Maxwell. My 7970 was going to be a get me by 2 yr GPU, which I've had for about that long now. I can't disagree the 970 is very tempting. It's refreshing to see Nvidia finally putting out a high end card that is very good bang for buck.

The problem is, a lot of PC games now are not coded very well and HUGE in texture files. The speed of that card and it's 4GB VRAM certainly help, but Pascal will take it a step further with unified memory, stacked DRAM, and NVLink. It will basically be a supercomputer capable GPU on a PCB the length of an ink pen.

And Pascal comes out 2016. I'll have had my 7970 a little over 3 yrs by then, which is a perfectly acceptable upgrade cycle for me. Also, my 7970 will be able to support Dx12, which is going to start appearing in games end of next year. That should help my 7970 hold on a bit longer.

A low level API and unified memory are the two main things PS has over PC.

 
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A GTX 970 with a decent overclock will give you similar performance to 2x 7970's in cross fire + more memory + The benefits of buying an NVidia card. @ $329 - 100 if you sell your 7970. This is very enticing isn't it?

Pascal sounds great however if it does come out in 2016 it will be in the 3rd or 4th quarter in my opinion & it might be expensive...

I upgraded from the 780 reference to the 780 ti and finally to the gtx 980 in the last 18 months and I've been happy with each upgrade...

" I'm gaming @ 1440p however if I was gaming at 1080p 60 hz then I don't think I would upgrade as often"

The games in the next 2 years will certainly benefit from the using the latest hardware in most cases.

The 7970 is still a decent graphics...

The games will still look better and play better on PC than console.

Consoles in many cases turn down visuals, resolution & fps because they are less powerful then a high end pc...

 
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That's the bottom line for me currently. I've only had it two years and getting rid of a card that cost me over $300 after only two years is not my usual way of doing things. Plus the Pascal will be much more future ready than these 900s, which work OK for now, but already are showing a lack of overhead and a few problems here and there depending on the game and settings.

When I heard unified memory I was determined to go Pascal. The stacked DRAM and NVLink are just icing on the cake. And by 2016 I'll be ready for a whole platform change. Even if it takes as long as you estimate, it will be just under 2 yrs, not more than 2. I'm fine with that as long as my 7970 holds out, and like I said, when games start getting made with Dx12 end of next year, the low level API should hopefully slow down the impact future graphics advances will have on my GPU.

 
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Firstly - devs lie about system requirements, there are many documented cases of that. Even after that consideration OP's rig is significantly better than the requirements you posted.
secondly - i did address OP's problem: its an issue that needs to be patched because his rig is fine and i gave evidence that his rig is fine
thirdly - The only reason multiplayer is capped is because its a terrible engine that gives you benefits if you get above certain FPS levels, this is documented and you can find anyone talking about it. He should be getting Linus' level of FPS in the campaign and the FPS cap in the multiplayer.

You need to stop fanboying over call of duty lol. OP's rig is fine, CoD is the problem here

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/call_of_duty_advanced_warfare_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,6.html Here's another benchmark from another source. Funnily enough they get similiar values to Linus and his "amateurs" lol.

Want me to find you more that have very similiar results? or is everyone on the internet an amateur except you?
 
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We're aware that the OP's rig is significantly more powerful than recommended requirements...

We're aware that games get patched and drivers get better...

I already read the 3D Guru review, 3D guru is a good...

Frag Maniac was the first to mention this and that' why his answer was selected...

I'm not a fanboy...
 
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Did you read the disclaimer from the Guru3d website?

Wrapping things up

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare will NOT make it into our regular benchmark suite for videocards. As stated in the intro, there are many things odd and off. As such we recommend you to look at the performance benchmarks you've just read with a grain of salt as I have been at the verge and threshold of asking myself the question whether or not to post these results. One test run will result on 50 FPS, the second 46 FPS and another 56 FPS. This means that the results shown today are indicative, not a precise measurement. Another problem was that some levels average out at say 40 FPS, yet there are a handful of scenes where the framerate will crumble down to say 25 FPS or where running a luxurious 60 FPS all of the sudden. But hey, 80% of the game plays with excellent framerates, even with a mainstream card. Overall the game feels smooth in game-play, nothing negative to mention there. In fact dare I say this; the gameplay and rendering overall seems to be much smoother opposed to the previous COD Ghosts.

Now, my motto here was, it's better to show you an indication opposed to nothing. We do hope you like this little test as it will be an indicator of overall performance. Make no mistake, COD AW is one of the better looking games within this series. Sometimes textures look crap though. While in other scenes they look beautiful. Flick on HBAO+ - 2x Super Sampling and 2x SMAA for a nice mixture of quality and decent performance. Leave the caches disabled as this had a small effect on better image quality. All modern graphics cards will run the game at Full HD without any issue. There is just no need to drop down in images quality modes too massively and heck, that's where we as PC gamers needs to be. We do not like to forfeit in quality. As always, we hope you enjoyed this selection of measurements. Let me just state that the story line of the single player campaign is actually fairly nice.

Last words, if you can't run this game fast enough then you REALLY need to upgrade as the games can be played decently on pretty much anything at Full HD really. Small advice, play around with Super Sampling a little, you are really gonna like it. Today (Tuesday the 4th 2014) you can expect the new 344.60 driver released from NVIDIA. AMD has not yet confirmed a new driver update for this title, we asked yesterday and an answer is still pending.
 
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Guru3d said "we recommend you to look at the performance benchmarks you've just read with a grain of salt"

The reviewer wasn't sure if he should post his results...
Bu the reviewer was professional and disclosed this...
 
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Yes, because the game is inconsistent, not his testing. Moreover he clearly states it has to do with a fringe amount of time during strange drops which is the game's fault. he states its an indicator of the overall performance

now read his last words "Last words, if you can't run this game fast enough then you REALLY need to upgrade as the games can be played decently on pretty much anything at Full HD really"

now do you want me to go find you a dozen more benchmarks that reveal the exact same thing or are you going to keep grasping for straws and making false statements?

EDIT:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1522671/gamegpu-call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-gpu-test have some more benchmarks that prove you're completely missing the point and that backs up Linus and Guru's results. There's even SSAA benchmarks on that one that still have playable frame rates
 
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1080p

Most AAA titles, except for RTS, fantasy RPGs, Fighter games and MMOs.

It doesn't have to be Pascal, but Nvidia were the first to mention the main things I want, unified memory, faster architecture for GPU to CPU communication (NVLink), and stacked DRAM.

I also think Shadowplay is miles ahead of Raptr Game DVR.

Even if AMD comes out with unified memory and equivalents of those other two, their drivers are once again falling behind in updates due to trying to catch up on multi GPU performance, which I have no interest in, and APU performance, which I DEF have no interest in.

 
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There is no point to continue, I don't think you understand me or the reviews...

 
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Cool - Do you find the 7970 is struggling in some AAA titles or is it good enough?

I'm looking forward to the next generation of cards however so far I'm satisfied with Maxwell...


 
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I would describe it as being plenty capable on all the titles I've been really looking forward to. The only exception capability wise is on a few titles that use extreme Ultra textures (SoM), or are poorly optimized and/or not patched well, or patched at all (TEW, AW).

SoM though plays extremely well on High textures and everything else max, and looks very good, and from what I've seen, there's not much difference with Ultra textures anyway.

TEW is just a technical mess, has crappy graphics, and I don't even like the gameplay, so despite it's first patch not really doing anything for performance, the game itself is a letdown to me anyway. Alien Isolation IMO is the FAR better game, and plays very well maxed, including with VSync.

It remains to be seen how well Advanced Warfare will play, because they've not patched it yet and AMD hasn't made any driver improvements for it. Currently I can play it fine on the "Optimal" setting where it auto adjusts texture related features, but it DOES exhibit slight hitching as my session goes on. This has been reported by people with 8GB RAM even on higher end GPUs though, so I'm pretty sure it's a memory leak issue. I've seen people with slightly better CPUs but lesser GPUs than mine using 16GB RAM say they have no issues other than out of sync load screens, but removing 8GB RAM causes noticeable stutter.

As I've said before though, I can't see selecting components based on a few poorly coded games. When I look at it that way, this 7970 is doing well and should hold it's value at least another year, and I'm hoping as I said that by then the Dx12 games will give it a bit of a performance boost with the new low level API MS are talking about.

With Dx11 it took a while before most devs used it, but there I think it was mostly due to the added development time not being worth it when most games were suffering performance impacts from it. With Dx12 it should be quite different because 1) devs are now used to using advanced Dx so implementing it should go quicker, and 2) this version of it should improve performance.

Oh, and btw, I don't plan on selling my 7970. I'm going to use it as my backup card instead.

 
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One of my friends bought TEW and he is having problems with an I7 4970k and 780 ti.
"TEW will probably get fixed in the future"

My understanding is That SOM needs 6 GB of VRAM with ultra texture however I agree the game looks good with high quality textures
I've seen the game on my friends rig...

I've got 16 GB of Ram and Advanced warfare is very smooth during gaming and cut scenes @ 1440p maxed out except Cache spot shadow maps and Cache sun shadow maps and super sampling... Hopefully they will fix this game for people with last generation I5's and I7's with under 16 gb of Ram...
Ghosts was giving me problems with the cut scenes and occasional hitches during gameplay with the 780 ti however this was not completely eliminated until I upgraded my platform and double my ram...

If you're satisfied that's all that matters, I know the 7970 is a decent card because a couple of my friends have it and I've tried BF4 and Bioshock infinite and the performance was pretty good...

Hopefully dx 12 will give us improvements, I'm look forward to Windows 10...





 
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Don't know if they'll ever fix TEW properly. They soon after release acknowledged that many on PC were upset about the 30 FPS cap, forced 21:9 AR, and lack of optimization for high end PCs, but the patch they released shortly thereafter only addressed the FPS cap and AR. The performance still sucks, it hitches. I think the problem is a lot of devs only check frame rates when they do optimization, but a lot of games anymore have what should be playable and smooth frame rates, but you get hitching.

The reqs for SoM are only a generalization based on hardware pre Nvidia 900 series. A lot of people say they can play with the Ultra HD pack on a 4GB 970. Then again, a lot of people say that when they first become elated at what they see in the first half of the game, then in the more lush map in the second half, they start noticing frame dips when big battles break out. I think it also depends how much stealth you use in general.

I bet if you pulled 8GB of your RAM out, AW would play noticeably less smooth. I've also noticed if I disable my HyperThreading, even intro logos and load screens will stutter audibly and hitch. The game clearly has memory leaks, but it also seems to have a problem with poor CPU optimization.

So far my 7970 has been a great bang for buck card like my last one, which was a GTS 250 I got for only $70. Eventually it hit the wall big time though and couldn't play the games that were coming out. I don't know why but it played GTA IV fine with reasonable settings, I could even run max textures. With the TBoGT and TLaD expansions though, it was creeping along at single digits. Same engine too.
 
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I heard about that 60 fps patch and my friends computer was crashing after it was released...

I tried to enable the ultra textures for SOM on my friends computer and I got a message saying that 6 GB is required for Ultra textures...
My friends monitor is at 1080p.

The extra ram plus the very high single threaded performance combined with HT is in my opinion the reason for the flawless gameplay...
If the OP upgraded to a I7 4790k, I think his cut screen issue would improve. It seems like HT is valuable in this title...

I think CPU power is also important in GTA IV, in my opinion the next GTA will have ridicules requirements like FAR CRY 4.



 
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