Low FPS in BF4 with high end PC

[jkteddy77]

I've been troubleshooting for 2 months now, and no one's been able to help, so short, sweet, and to the point:

8350 stock speed, R9 290 Tri-X 1000/1300, 850w Corsair, 8gb @ 1866mhz 9-10-9-28, Win 8.1 64bit

I'm getting 40-75 on DX11 on ultra preset, and like 50-100 with Mantle on. In both cases, my average framerate is generally around 55-75... should I not be running smoother and faster?
I want to eliminate my dips below 60, but there just doesn't seem to be a way...

When I say dips, I mean it will drop and MAINTAIN around 49-67fps in heavy maps...

What worries me the most, is that even when I turn down settings, only my Max FPS increases... I still get the same Min FPS as I did on Ultra... Yes, I resarted the game too, it just won't run smooth.
This happens most maps, but of course Altai Range, Guillen Peaks, Hainan Resort, Paracel Storm, and Shanghi all run the slowest.

I run all other games as fast as expected, and match most benchmarks of games. I'm not interested in OCing my 8350 that much, as even at 4.4ghz, I gained 2-3fps...

MY CPU is always about 60% and never over 53C on core
My GPU is always 90-100% usage, and its clocks never drop, never over 73C

I have so far:

-Clean installed drivers 13.12 through 14.3, all using DDU latest version.
-Installed latest Chipset drivers from AMD's site, 13-12 chipset, and my MOBO's latest chipset drivers.
-Unparked cores, did nothing for me as Windows 8.1 is already unparking my cores when I start the game...
-custom cfg settings change nothing
-perfoverlay.drawgraph shows my CPU usage slightly above my GPU, but not alarmingly higher... It spikes, but could it really be bottlenecking my 290? Already tried OC, didn't help.
-repaired BF4 and reinstalled PB
-Many other things I can't think of, to no gain or loss in FPS...
-and lastly, yes, I've gone as far as completely reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 again...

After OCing my CPU and seeing little difference, I don't know what else to do. OCing GPU helps a bit, but only like 5 fps and I want my card at its stock OC

Please, I've spent hundreds of hours just troubleshooting this game... I built this PC with the games AMD optimization in mind...

Any Ideas? What is there left to do?

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

omg this has to be destiny or something i was comming back to say EXACTLY the same thing i've read on another forum that power savings feature would throttle down the CPU very early and makes it underperforming...it was said also to activate ''HPC'' or ''high performance computing'', personaly this one is set do disabled but i also disabled cool and quiet and ALL the other stuff that relied to power saving from the CPU...also i have windows enable to performance mode...

Haha that's awesome! Let's hope this makes a difference!

It appears a ton of FX 83x0 users are having a similar problem, but there doesn't seem to be a single fix that works. I haven't found anything conclusive. I don't personally own the game or an 8 core AMD CPU, so I can't help much beyond what I've been reading.

I'm just going to spam resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GUf0RCbcN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgtJv1-8ZvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DkWFafZsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqt1W8v5ibs > Play in windowed?

No guarantees that any of these will be useful, but just thought I'd give you a wide range of options in case you hadn't tried something yet. It looks like you've done most of this already though.

 

[jkteddy77]

omg this has to be destiny or something i was comming back to say EXACTLY the same thing i've read on another forum that power savings feature would throttle down the CPU very early and makes it underperforming...it was said also to activate ''HPC'' or ''high performance computing'', personaly this one is set do disabled but i also disabled cool and quiet and ALL the other stuff that relied to power saving from the CPU...also i have windows enable to performance mode...

Haha that's awesome! Let's hope this makes a difference!

It appears a ton of FX 83x0 users are having a similar problem, but there doesn't seem to be a single fix that works. I haven't found anything conclusive. I don't personally own the game or an 8 core AMD CPU, so I can't help much beyond what I've been reading.

I'm just going to spam resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GUf0RCbcN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgtJv1-8ZvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DkWFafZsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqt1W8v5ibs > Play in windowed?

No guarantees that any of these will be useful, but just thought I'd give you a wide range of options in case you hadn't tried something yet. It looks like you've done most of this already though.

So you guys, I have those enabled now cause they turn my power-hungry 125w 8350 into an efficient 30w. They don't cause issues in any other games I've played.

I'll have you guys know that I've disabled all of these before and OC'd the CPU to 4.4ghz, and I saw no difference in my performance. Later tonight, I'll look into putting the PC into a performance power profile, turn off a BIOS powersaving settings, and look into my Mobo's HPC mode.

I've tried playing in windowed and borderless mode, to not much avail though. I actually got less fps in windowed...

I know its been a waste of time on this thread, and it looks like I've hit a brick wall again. If these don't work, I'll play with some CCC settings a bit, but I already have those all set to use application settings already. Thanks for all that you guys have done. I seriously think I've tried everything I can to get this game to run like it should, so I guess I'll wait for the next Mantle driver, or look into some extreme OCing (Which only seems to give me like 4 fps more anyway)... Maybe I'll unplug my other 2 monitors if I can't find any other solution (easily another 3-4fps). Thanks again guys.

 

[Kekoh]

omg this has to be destiny or something i was comming back to say EXACTLY the same thing i've read on another forum that power savings feature would throttle down the CPU very early and makes it underperforming...it was said also to activate ''HPC'' or ''high performance computing'', personaly this one is set do disabled but i also disabled cool and quiet and ALL the other stuff that relied to power saving from the CPU...also i have windows enable to performance mode...

Haha that's awesome! Let's hope this makes a difference!

It appears a ton of FX 83x0 users are having a similar problem, but there doesn't seem to be a single fix that works. I haven't found anything conclusive. I don't personally own the game or an 8 core AMD CPU, so I can't help much beyond what I've been reading.

I'm just going to spam resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GUf0RCbcN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgtJv1-8ZvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DkWFafZsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqt1W8v5ibs > Play in windowed?

No guarantees that any of these will be useful, but just thought I'd give you a wide range of options in case you hadn't tried something yet. It looks like you've done most of this already though.

So you guys, I have those enabled now cause they turn my power-hungry 125w 8350 into an efficient 30w. They don't cause issues in any other games I've played.

I'll have you guys know that I've disabled all of these before and OC'd the CPU to 4.4ghz, and I saw no difference in my performance. Later tonight, I'll look into putting the PC into a performance power profile, turn off a BIOS powersaving settings, and look into my Mobo's HPC mode.

I've tried playing in windowed and borderless mode, to not much avail though. I actually got less fps in windowed...

I know its been a waste of time on this thread, and it looks like I've hit a brick wall again. If these don't work, I'll play with some CCC settings a bit, but I already have those all set to use application settings already. Thanks for all that you guys have done. I seriously think I've tried everything I can to get this game to run like it should, so I guess I'll wait for the next Mantle driver, or look into some extreme OCing (Which only seems to give me like 4 fps more anyway)... Maybe I'll unplug my other 2 monitors if I can't find any other solution (easily another 3-4fps). Thanks again guys.

Try updating mobo BIOS as well, I have seen gaming improvements, and even crash fixes. It's relatively harmless, I haven't heard of a BIOS flash going wrong in awhile. They update them for a reason.

 

[jkteddy77]

omg this has to be destiny or something i was comming back to say EXACTLY the same thing i've read on another forum that power savings feature would throttle down the CPU very early and makes it underperforming...it was said also to activate ''HPC'' or ''high performance computing'', personaly this one is set do disabled but i also disabled cool and quiet and ALL the other stuff that relied to power saving from the CPU...also i have windows enable to performance mode...

Haha that's awesome! Let's hope this makes a difference!

It appears a ton of FX 83x0 users are having a similar problem, but there doesn't seem to be a single fix that works. I haven't found anything conclusive. I don't personally own the game or an 8 core AMD CPU, so I can't help much beyond what I've been reading.

I'm just going to spam resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GUf0RCbcN4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgtJv1-8ZvA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DkWFafZsk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqt1W8v5ibs > Play in windowed?

No guarantees that any of these will be useful, but just thought I'd give you a wide range of options in case you hadn't tried something yet. It looks like you've done most of this already though.

So you guys, I have those enabled now cause they turn my power-hungry 125w 8350 into an efficient 30w. They don't cause issues in any other games I've played.

I'll have you guys know that I've disabled all of these before and OC'd the CPU to 4.4ghz, and I saw no difference in my performance. Later tonight, I'll look into putting the PC into a performance power profile, turn off a BIOS powersaving settings, and look into my Mobo's HPC mode.

I've tried playing in windowed and borderless mode, to not much avail though. I actually got less fps in windowed...

I know its been a waste of time on this thread, and it looks like I've hit a brick wall again. If these don't work, I'll play with some CCC settings a bit, but I already have those all set to use application settings already. Thanks for all that you guys have done. I seriously think I've tried everything I can to get this game to run like it should, so I guess I'll wait for the next Mantle driver, or look into some extreme OCing (Which only seems to give me like 4 fps more anyway)... Maybe I'll unplug my other 2 monitors if I can't find any other solution (easily another 3-4fps). Thanks again guys.

Try updating mobo BIOS as well, I have seen gaming improvements, and even crash fixes. It's relatively harmless, I haven't heard of a BIOS flash going wrong in awhile. They update them for a reason.

I updated to BIOS 2301 a few days ago. The BIOS was released 3-27-14... If those aren't fresh BIOS, I don't know what is. I gained about half an FPS in benchmarks, but I still get FPS drops in BF4. I then completely wiped my chipset and graphics drivers and clean installed AMD chipset 13.12, my Asus mobo's Latest chipset, and Graphics Driver 14.3 beta.... problem still remains.

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

So you guys, I have those enabled now cause they turn my power-hungry 125w 8350 into an efficient 30w. They don't cause issues in any other games I've played.

BF4 isn't just "any other game" 😛
Have you at least tried it with those options disabled? The 8320 is a 125W CPU for a reason.

I know its been a waste of time on this thread, and it looks like I've hit a brick wall again. If these don't work, I'll play with some CCC settings a bit, but I already have those all set to use application settings already. Thanks for all that you guys have done. I seriously think I've tried everything I can to get this game to run like it should, so I guess I'll wait for the next Mantle driver, or look into some extreme OCing (Which only seems to give me like 4 fps more anyway)... Maybe I'll unplug my other 2 monitors if I can't find any other solution (easily another 3-4fps). Thanks again guys.

If none of this works, here's my suggestion:

Step 1: Turn off FRAPS or any other FPS monitoring software.
Step 2: Start the game.
Step 3: Do not enable in-game performance graphs.
Step 4: Set everything to Ultra.
Step 5: Play the game and stop worrying. 😀

I don't know what to say other than that. It's what I would do. Then again, I usually play games at 10-20 fps so maybe I'm biased 😛

 

[Kekoh]

So you guys, I have those enabled now cause they turn my power-hungry 125w 8350 into an efficient 30w. They don't cause issues in any other games I've played.

BF4 isn't just "any other game" 😛
Have you at least tried it with those options disabled? The 8320 is a 125W CPU for a reason.

I know its been a waste of time on this thread, and it looks like I've hit a brick wall again. If these don't work, I'll play with some CCC settings a bit, but I already have those all set to use application settings already. Thanks for all that you guys have done. I seriously think I've tried everything I can to get this game to run like it should, so I guess I'll wait for the next Mantle driver, or look into some extreme OCing (Which only seems to give me like 4 fps more anyway)... Maybe I'll unplug my other 2 monitors if I can't find any other solution (easily another 3-4fps). Thanks again guys.

If none of this works, here's my suggestion:

Step 1: Turn off FRAPS or any other FPS monitoring software.
Step 2: Start the game.
Step 3: Do not enable in-game performance graphs.
Step 4: Set everything to Ultra.
Step 5: Play the game and stop worrying. 😀

I don't know what to say other than that. It's what I would do. Then again, I usually play games at 10-20 fps so maybe I'm biased 😛

10-20 fps... seriously? I find that hard to believe. I'd rather do nothing than play BF4 at 15fps

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

10-20 fps... seriously? I find that hard to believe. I'd rather do nothing than play BF4 at 15fps

Oh, I don't own BF4 for a reason. I'd get like... 5 FPS. I did however build a new PC a few weeks ago, I just haven't had the chance or the time to use it. 😛

 

[Anime Freak]

Hey guys, just found this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3yB7gtRV7E
He has a umm... R9 270x(not much compared to the r9 290) and gets well above 40 fps.
By the way, tons of people have above 60 fps on a r9 290 and a fx 8320.
Just check if your rig is alright(you know, see if the cables etc are well fitted).
And if possible, upload a video on youtube and give the link. Will make it more easy for me to figure out your problem.
And btw if oc'ing doesn't fix your problem, your cpu isn't the bottleneck.

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

We don't know what his "overclocks" even are. If they're stable or not. Especially if he has cool and quiet enabled, his OCing performance will suffer.

 

[jkteddy77]

We don't know what his "overclocks" even are. If they're stable or not. Especially if he has cool and quiet enabled, his OCing performance will suffer.

Well guys, I tried a multiplier OC, and set all things auto to manual, and turned off all power saving options. That is an OC is it not? I also tried using an FSB clock of 220 and a multi of 20 for 4.4ghz. Both of these gave me like 1-2 fps in benchmarks, but it was almost unnoticeable in BF4...

 

[anthony8989]

Online experience will vary. Poor internet connections will impact performance. Poor data transfer rates from BF4 servers will impact performance. The game is still in a perpetual state of ''broken'' until further notice. R9 290/ 290x are notorious for having huge gaps in performance from unit to unit. If you're unhappy with your hardware, return it under warranty.

My personal bias : Next time buy Intel and GeForce.

 

[paitjsu sadff]

Online experience will vary. Poor internet connections will impact performance. Poor data transfer rates from BF4 servers will impact performance. The game is still in a perpetual state of ''broken'' until further notice. R9 290/ 290x are notorious for having huge gaps in performance from unit to unit. If you're unhappy with your hardware, return it under warranty.

My personal bias : Next time buy Intel and GeForce.

well..everything you say makes sence, only i'm glad i went with that AMD Cpu i paid 285$ for the 8320 CPU/high quality gigabyte MOTHERBOARD with 8+2 digital power phase AND 8gb of high performance DDR3 (no intel setup beat that at that price range) and there is NO game my rig can't max out at 60fps+...and i had radeons cards in the past and they where just plain GREAT...

i wasn't aware that some 290 where performing better than others tho...but i looked at some benchmarks and even tho BF4 is supposedly an AMD optimised game, it does seem to run better on geforce GPU...the GTX780 gets better results in BF4 than even a r9 290x...
Last night a new update for the game came along with an early access to naval maps i can't wait to get back home to try it out and hopefuly maybe the patch will improve performances for the OP as well...

 

[jkteddy77]

Online experience will vary. Poor internet connections will impact performance. Poor data transfer rates from BF4 servers will impact performance. The game is still in a perpetual state of ''broken'' until further notice. R9 290/ 290x are notorious for having huge gaps in performance from unit to unit. If you're unhappy with your hardware, return it under warranty.

My personal bias : Next time buy Intel and GeForce.

well..everything you say makes sence, only i'm glad i went with that AMD Cpu i paid 285$ for the 8320 CPU/high quality gigabyte MOTHERBOARD with 8+2 digital power phase AND 8gb of high performance DDR3 (no intel setup beat that at that price range) and there is NO game my rig can't max out at 60fps+...and i had radeons cards in the past and they where just plain GREAT...

i wasn't aware that some 290 where performing better than others tho...but i looked at some benchmarks and even tho BF4 is supposedly an AMD optimised game, it does seem to run better on geforce GPU...the GTX780 gets better results in BF4 than even a r9 290x...
Last night a new update for the game came along with an early access to naval maps i can't wait to get back home to try it out and hopefuly maybe the patch will improve performances for the OP as well...

I played the new maps and new patch. Got like 55fps drops on the new maps still, but 90-100 indoors. Yes, I think its driver optimization still, as 780 runs far faster...

I Uninstall all my drivers with Catalyst installer, in attempt to reinstall all of my drivers cleanly... Now my PC is incredibly artifacted and I an't even see whats on my screen... unless I boot to safe mode. I'll try to use DDU in safe mode, but it looks like I might have to Fresh install my entire PC with 1.5TB of data on it...

I have another thread open for that, so for now, I'm out of commission on BF4 🙁
Those notorious AMD drivers...

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

Rollback the drivers?

i.e. boot into safe mode, uninstall device drivers for your R9 290, the reinstall then drivers that worked.

That sucks that happened though. :/

 

[jkteddy77]

Rollback the drivers?

i.e. boot into safe mode, uninstall device drivers for your R9 290, the reinstall then drivers that worked.

That sucks that happened though. :/

Just finally got the drivers clean, after spending like 2 hours forcing the HDD back into safe mode multiple times... I'm scared to install that beta driver again, but I can't find 14.2 beta driver anywhere and I NEED it for BF4 so.... godammit

I had to boot into safe mode with networking, like 6 times because even safe mode started artifacting, and Uninstalling the drivers in device manager and CCC wouldn't help. I had to actually isntall DDU again, to wipe EVERYTHING, eradicate it, and even now, I don't know how things will function :/

the thing is... I had those beta drivers running BF4 for the past 3 weeks fine, no issues... its UNINSTALLING the drivers that messed it up... Kinda want drivers 14.2 back now, but they took them off their website...

 

[paitjsu sadff]

Did you used a tool like Driver Sweeper in safe mode to completely get rid of all your drivers related files before installing the new drivers?

 

[anthony8989]

Lol you are going to corrupt the Windows Registry if you keep this up. This endeavor is turning into an act of OCD. Cut your losses before you brick your hard drive :\

 

[jkteddy77]

Lol you are going to corrupt the Windows Registry if you keep this up. This endeavor is turning into an act of OCD. Cut your losses before you brick your hard drive :\

Well, uninstalling drivers really is a harmless process, and I've done it many times before. The issue is that this driver is still beta, and did not like my system for whatever reason. I Usually do use DDU, but I could only use it through Safe Mode thanks to the weird artifacting glitch. DDU fixed all the registry errors the poorly coded driver created, and I have the rig up and running with fresh drivers again... really only took 20 minutes to fix.

Through the whole endeavor, I still didn't gain any fps though :/ and I'll have a fun time uninstalling these again when a stable AMD 14.x driver comes out... I think it didn't like being uninstalled in multiple monitor mode, that's my only guess. Guess I'll cross that wall when I reach it.

Wonder how all the other thousands of people will be able to get this driver uninstalled when the next comes out? All in the fun of owning an AMD product... I love it, I do, but I hate its pickiness with games, like BF4.

 

[anthony8989]

I think it didn't like being uninstalled in multiple monitor mode, that's my only guess.

Have you been experiencing this low FPS in multi-monitor mode ? Or is it happening on a single 1080p monitor?

 

[DonQuixoteMC]

I think it didn't like being uninstalled in multiple monitor mode, that's my only guess.

Have you been experiencing this low FPS in multi-monitor mode ? Or is it happening on a single 1080p monitor?

Multiplayer.

 

[anthony8989]

? Multi-monitor as in 5760x1080p. That would drastically reduce performance. And that is the first time the OP actually mentioned he's running multiple monitors.

 

[paitjsu sadff]

? Multi-monitor as in 5760x1080p. That would drastically reduce performance. And that is the first time the OP actually mentioned he's running multiple monitors.

yes the OP is actually troubleshooting this issue with a multi-monitor setup, but while gaming on only one of them...
but still this can get harder to troubleshoot a trouble related to driver like that having multiple displays plugged into the same graphics card...getting only one monitor connected to the PC to begin with would be a great idea...

 

[jkteddy77]

? Multi-monitor as in 5760x1080p. That would drastically reduce performance. And that is the first time the OP actually mentioned he's running multiple monitors.

yes the OP is actually troubleshooting this issue with a multi-monitor setup, but while gaming on only one of them...
but still this can get harder to troubleshoot a trouble related to driver like that having multiple displays plugged into the same graphics card...getting only one monitor connected to the PC to begin with would be a great idea...

Guys, I got one 23" asus 1080p I game on, 20" 900p, and 39" 1080p TV in. If I unplug and just play on single, I gain about 2-3fps... there has to be a bigger issue... I've tried fullscreen, borderless, windowed, all same low fps drops

 

[gandharvmohan]

I've been troubleshooting for 2 months now, and no one's been able to help, so short, sweet, and to the point:

8350 stock speed, R9 290 Tri-X 1000/1300, 850w Corsair, 8gb @ 1866mhz 9-10-9-28, Win 8.1 64bit

I'm getting 40-75 on DX11 on ultra preset, and like 50-100 with Mantle on. In both cases, my average framerate is generally around 55-75... should I not be running smoother and faster?
I want to eliminate my dips below 60, but there just doesn't seem to be a way...

When I say dips, I mean it will drop and MAINTAIN around 49-67fps in heavy maps...

What worries me the most, is that even when I turn down settings, only my Max FPS increases... I still get the same Min FPS as I did on Ultra... Yes, I resarted the game too, it just won't run smooth.
This happens most maps, but of course Altai Range, Guillen Peaks, Hainan Resort, Paracel Storm, and Shanghi all run the slowest.

I run all other games as fast as expected, and match most benchmarks of games. I'm not interested in OCing my 8350 that much, as even at 4.4ghz, I gained 2-3fps...

MY CPU is always about 60% and never over 53C on core
My GPU is always 90-100% usage, and its clocks never drop, never over 73C

I have so far:

-Clean installed drivers 13.12 through 14.3, all using DDU latest version.
-Installed latest Chipset drivers from AMD's site, 13-12 chipset, and my MOBO's latest chipset drivers.
-Unparked cores, did nothing for me as Windows 8.1 is already unparking my cores when I start the game...
-custom cfg settings change nothing
-perfoverlay.drawgraph shows my CPU usage slightly above my GPU, but not alarmingly higher... It spikes, but could it really be bottlenecking my 290? Already tried OC, didn't help.
-repaired BF4 and reinstalled PB
-Many other things I can't think of, to no gain or loss in FPS...
-and lastly, yes, I've gone as far as completely reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 again...

After OCing my CPU and seeing little difference, I don't know what else to do. OCing GPU helps a bit, but only like 5 fps and I want my card at its stock OC

Please, I've spent hundreds of hours just troubleshooting this game... I built this PC with the games AMD optimization in mind...

Any Ideas? What is there left to do?

Hi jk !
This is common problem with BF4. I think it is due to core parking.
Your cpu cores are not fully utilised for game. Your GPU is working as it should work.
Disable core parking and it will make a difference IMO.
Here is the link -
http://bitsum.com/about_cpu_core_parking.php

 

[Naxirian]

I've been troubleshooting for 2 months now, and no one's been able to help, so short, sweet, and to the point:

8350 stock speed, R9 290 Tri-X 1000/1300, 850w Corsair, 8gb @ 1866mhz 9-10-9-28, Win 8.1 64bit

I'm getting 40-75 on DX11 on ultra preset, and like 50-100 with Mantle on. In both cases, my average framerate is generally around 55-75... should I not be running smoother and faster?
I want to eliminate my dips below 60, but there just doesn't seem to be a way...

When I say dips, I mean it will drop and MAINTAIN around 49-67fps in heavy maps...

What worries me the most, is that even when I turn down settings, only my Max FPS increases... I still get the same Min FPS as I did on Ultra... Yes, I resarted the game too, it just won't run smooth.
This happens most maps, but of course Altai Range, Guillen Peaks, Hainan Resort, Paracel Storm, and Shanghi all run the slowest.

I run all other games as fast as expected, and match most benchmarks of games. I'm not interested in OCing my 8350 that much, as even at 4.4ghz, I gained 2-3fps...

MY CPU is always about 60% and never over 53C on core
My GPU is always 90-100% usage, and its clocks never drop, never over 73C

I have so far:

-Clean installed drivers 13.12 through 14.3, all using DDU latest version.
-Installed latest Chipset drivers from AMD's site, 13-12 chipset, and my MOBO's latest chipset drivers.
-Unparked cores, did nothing for me as Windows 8.1 is already unparking my cores when I start the game...
-custom cfg settings change nothing
-perfoverlay.drawgraph shows my CPU usage slightly above my GPU, but not alarmingly higher... It spikes, but could it really be bottlenecking my 290? Already tried OC, didn't help.
-repaired BF4 and reinstalled PB
-Many other things I can't think of, to no gain or loss in FPS...
-and lastly, yes, I've gone as far as completely reinstalling a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 again...

After OCing my CPU and seeing little difference, I don't know what else to do. OCing GPU helps a bit, but only like 5 fps and I want my card at its stock OC

Please, I've spent hundreds of hours just troubleshooting this game... I built this PC with the games AMD optimization in mind...

Any Ideas? What is there left to do?

ok, firstly, it is definitely your CPU. FX-8350's aren't as good as i5's for gaming. Mantle helps with CPU performance, so your only real options are to overclock the CPU to at least 4.5GHz (make stheure you have good aftermarket CPU cooling) and run the game in mantle mode. Short of that, there isn't really anything you can do. AMD CPUs have poor single thread performance, and games, especially CPU heavy ones like BF4, rely heavily on strong single thread performance.

Also make sure you have the very latest drivers, Mantle won't function correctly without them since the last release.