Battlefield 3 RETAIL Performance Thread

[elrasho]

Thats with Windows Vista. On Windows 7 I've disabled all page file on my SSD boot drive, and moved it to my Raid 0 HDDs with system managed size. I've never had any problems with this, though 1 Gb page file wont hurt on the SSD.

I just couldnt have 24 Gb reserved on my 64 Gb SSD for Page File :x

You should leave the pagefile on your SSD - if there's one file that benefits most from being on the SSD it's the pagefile.

Noob guides get on my nerves dishing out bad information.

Is this right?



EDIT: I exited BF3 and my PC crashed and restarted!! Have I messed up the PageFile?

 

[elrasho]

What does it say one window before that under 'total paging file size for all drives', how much system ram do you have, and did you restart your PC after changing the settings?

Total paging file size = 5024MB, I have 4GB of RAM. I did restart my machine after saving settings. In that picture have I moved the page file to the H:\ drive?

 

[elrasho]

Try manually increasing it up to the recommended amount of 6141 mb. If that doesnt fix it, then put 1 Gb back onto your SSD.

I find that really weird that a PC would become unstable from moving page file to another drive :x

You mean change the page file on my H:\ drive to 6141MB? At the moment its set to system managed on the H:\ drive and the other drives have no page file like in the picture above.

 

[elrasho]

Yea thats what I meant, because I think before you had 1 Gb on the SSD, and 5 Gb on the HDD?

Yes thats what I had before, now I have system managed on the H:\ drive HDD. It seems OK now... oh and I also moved Firefoxes temp internet files to another drive

Cant believe you have to do all these things to keep your SSD healthy, they are like a damn Alfa Romeo!

 

[elrasho]

The write speed on my SSD has already been completely butchered by the page file. I had it running almost completely full for too long not knowing what to do to free up space until I posted in the hard drive section, then I figured out it was page file.

The read speeds are fine, but write speeds dropped to around 25-30 mb/s. Page file is simply bad for SSDs.

Ouch! Feel for ya bud. Am I OK with my current setup?

 

[elrasho]

If its not crashing anymore then its fine.

Haha that's always a good way to check So I take it BF3 was using more than 4GB of ram but as I had no page file Windows 7 crashed?.... think it might be time to upgrade. £40 for 8GB 1600Mhz is cheap as chips.

 

[elrasho]

Im confused, is this OK for my page file setup?

 

[elrasho]

yes C:\ drive is my SSD but I've been told to move it to a mechanical drive (the first partition on the next drive) as the constant read/write will mess up my SSD.

 

[elrasho]

This true so far as SSDs lifespan is determined by the number of writes. When SSDs first came out, TRIM didn't work, so people moved their page file to reduce the number of writes.

Assuming your SSD is configured properly and TRIM works...

It's no longer a problem - so putting your pagefile on your mechanical drive is simply slowing your system down unnecessarily.

I have TRIM working I checked it by typing that thing in CMD. What else do I need to configure? . I'll move it back to my C:\ drive but what size should I set it to? I have 4GB of ram. Or should I leave it to system managed?

 

[elrasho]

You should leave it to system managed.

The option to set it to a fixed size is for mechanical drives where it's better to have a defragmented page file. Defragmentation is unnecessary for SSDs because there are no moving parts - you should actually have defragmentation turned off because it causes writes for absolutely no benefit.

Yes I disabled the defrag service and windows serach service (indexing) through services.msc. Should I turn off super fetch aswell?

 

[elrasho]

All these people playing the game with the FOV set to 70 tut tut... change it to 85+ and then post your results. FOV of 70 is what the consoles are set to, were PC Gamers Grrrrr

 

[elrasho]

70 is fine for me really only cos i have never tried anything different so cant really compare lol i guess raising it comes at a cost of performance tho and i need to try and restrict to many high settings for my 5850

Get another 5850 dude I have 5850 CF using 11.10 Prev3 drivers and the game runs like a dream. Not even overclocked them and I'm averaging 70fps on Caspian Border with 64 players.

Got myself a Crucial M4 64GB SSD and 8GB ram and now I loaded up BF3 and noticed I'm only using 1600MB of VRAM where as before the RAM upgrade it was 1950MB. So I increased some settings to Ultra and the FPS has stayed the same more or else. But the best thing is the stuttering has gone! The game looks so much better on Ultra.

The only think I can think of is the extra RAM has allowed the game to buffer the textures and so I no longer run out of VRAM

 

[elrasho]

Does anyone else get this problem........
When I go to Video settings and adjust the settings I save it which then puts up a banner asking "Do you want to save these settings" but the screen freezes and I have to Conrol,Alt Delete ?

So far with this game I've had 1 BSOD 4 in game crash back to desktop and 3 freezing uo when changing video settings

Yep I've got that too. Running 11.10 Pre3 with no CAP. 11.10WHQL got released today I'm going to try them with CAP4.

 

[elrasho]

I have been thinking of getting another 5850 but my board only has 1 pcie slot so it would mean getting a new board think i would look to intel rather than amd this time round. Also it would mean new ram and a new cpu as i currently only have a ddr2 setup with my am2+ board

Could be a costly upgrade and 5850's seem to be rare or still go for quite a bit of £. I must admit my current setup runs the game very well imo and im always wary of changing something that works if you see what i mean

I know wat your saying regarding an ssd as well, i have been thinking of getting one of the M4's just to install my games to and keep windows running on my old sata II drive. Would you see an improvment in game loading speed if windows is still using an older mechnical drive?

Thaks again matey

Have Windows 7 on the SSD with a select number of games you play regularly. I wouldn't replace your mobo just to get another 5850, currently the best single card is the GTX580. Get a 3GB version if you plan to play on multiple monitors or play at very high resolutions, if your playing at 1080P or below the 1.5GB cards will be enough. Just to be on the safe side get 8GB of ram just in case you start running out of VRAM.

The rest of your spec seems fine.

 

[elrasho]

Thanks mate i was thinking of throwing in another 2gb of good old ddr2 ram I only have access to 3 slots due to my large cooler so at least that would boost me up to 6gb. When the vram on the card is full does it then utilize the RAM on the board? If so i never new that lol learn something new everyday.

I have a dual monitor setup but i only game on one the other is there just to view open programs and web browser etc. The res i use is 1600x900 so im thinking cross fire might be overkill, had a look at the card you mentioned looks fab but a bit pricy for me at the mo was thinking of maybe looking at a 2gb 69xx series card or may even wait for the new 7 gen ones

In that case get a 2GB 6950, will do you fine at your resolution and if you ever do get a crossfire/sli motherboard having two 6950s is probably the best value/performance option availsble at the moment. I was in fact thinking of selling my 5850s and getting two 2GB 6950s.

Ideally you want 8GB of ram too. DDR2 ram is more expensive than DDR3 ram though.

 

[elrasho]

Anyone tried the WHQL 11.10 drivers? With or without CAP 4? I have 11.10 Pre3 with no CAP and running the game fine, I'm reluctant to try these in case they make things worse.

 

[elrasho]

This is strange, everyone seems to be getting different results with similar hardware setups but different drivers. I'm running the game fine using 11.10 preview 3 drives but others with CF 5850 get stuttering and so go back to 11.9 to fix this. This inconsistency is getting me worried about ATI drivers.

 

[elrasho]

Running 5870 CF @ 1920x1200 (tried full Ultra and Ultra - MSAA) and getting epic stutter - game practically freezes and frame rate goes down to about 5.. rest of the time it's 60+

Tried 11.9, 11.10, 11.10 + CAT4..

Never had problems before I crossfired. Now even with crossfire disabled I get microstutter every 200 frames or so. GR

Anyone experiencing the same?

Have your tried the non-preview 11.10 without CAP4?

 

[elrasho]

For everybody playing BF3

TURN OFF HYPERTHREADING

Amazingly smooth and for me I can now run my 6970 overclocked where with hyperthreading turned on had to run my core on GPU underclocked.

As well as much smoother game BIG increase in FPS allowing all settings on ultra except mesh detail and motion blur.

If anyone can explain why this game behaves like this could they please explain.

CPU i7 2600k

I haven't disabled Hyperthreading and the game runs fine for me. This doesn't apply to everyone.

 

[elrasho]

I've not used the preview drivers and I don't think the i5-750 has hyperthreading?

oh yeah lol... been a loong day and I should go to bed... but BF3 beckons