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The dreaded microstutter

shawsy109

shawsy109

shawsy109

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11 Feb 2012
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Up north.
So I have had my crossfire set up for a week now, today is the first time i have had it, noticed it during a really long session of bf3, about 4 hours play (sad i know lol)

Never happened before until now, i have 12.6 installed. You think it might be a one off? its funny, it was only on Caspian border, Firestorm was fine.

Felt really down hearted as I have only had xfire for a week, this was supposed to do me for about a year. Cant live with the stutter i just had, done my head, and eyes in.
 
I think the whole microstutter thing is just down to low FPS. When you say 58 that's 29fps per GPU roughly and at that framerate I would count a game to be unplayable.

CF/SLI is mainly about pumping out as many FPS as possible im my opinion so i'd say lower something to make it smoother.
 
MichaelM said:
I think the whole microstutter thing is just down to low FPS. When you say 58 that's 29fps per GPU roughly and at that framerate I would count a game to be unplayable.

CF/SLI is mainly about pumping out as many FPS as possible im my opinion so i'd say lower something to make it smoother.
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I literally just read a thread on here from way back, it said the same thing, the cards maybe showing 58 fps but like you say a single card is on 29, which is pretty rubbish, hence the stutter.
 
You shouldn't be getting that bad stutter in proper operation that its doing your eyes in unless your framerate is <30fps. But I've not tried BF3.

As mentioned tho multi GPU works best when your using it to try and maintain as high a framerate as possible i.e. minimum FPS matches vsync - its not very useful when you need it just to get 30fps.
 
From elsewhere with some settings you might want to have a play with:

To change triple buffering and pre-rendered frames, you can either type the console commands into your game every time you load up, or create a user.cfg file. To create a user.cfg file, simply go to the \Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 3\ directory, and right click to create a new txt document titled "user.cfg" (do not make a user.cfg.txt). After you've created your user.cfg, put the following commands in it (on seperate lines), RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0 (default 1), and RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 0 (default -1 which uses the GPU default of 3). So your user.cfg should look exactly like this....

RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 0

(don’t forget to save the changes)

As you can see these commands disable triple buffering and set you pre-render ahead limit to 0. If you come into frame problems or other issues you can try changing RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit to 1, 2 or 3, or you can delete the user.cfg, and the game will restore the default values the next time you open it.
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And remove/change that sig please.

It looks like 67.51kB and an animated gif.

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+1 for Surveyors advice regarding the user config. I was getting some really bad stuttering in bf3 with my old gtx 470's in sli. Tried the user.cfg fix and it worked a treat.
 
It worked! just jumped back in, tried with the config file, no stutter, removed the file to check, had stutter.

Surveyor, id kiss you if you were sat with me.
 
MichaelM said:
I think the whole microstutter thing is just down to low FPS. When you say 58 that's 29fps per GPU roughly and at that framerate I would count a game to be unplayable.
Click to expand...

No mate it's 58fps, if any multi gpu setup gave you stutter equal to the lowest framerate of one of the single GPUs they would be useless.
 
shawsy109 said:
So I have had my crossfire set up for a week now, today is the first time i have had it, noticed it during a really long session of bf3, about 4 hours play (sad i know lol)

Never happened before until now, i have 12.6 installed. You think it might be a one off? its funny, it was only on Caspian border, Firestorm was fine.

Felt really down hearted as I have only had xfire for a week, this was supposed to do me for about a year. Cant live with the stutter i just had, done my head, and eyes in.
Click to expand...

The only way to get rid of it is to switch to team green I'm afraid... their multi-gpu implementation is noticeably better for stutter.

It's still not as good as a single card, but it's close now at least :)

ATi still have a way to catch up in this department :(
 
I would like to offer some alternative advice based on what ive found with crossfire.

Vsync removed microstutter for me. If i turn vsycn off, i get stutter.

I also tested all the render ahead settings when using crossfire using the PerfOverlayVisible 1 command in game.

The best render ahead setting in crossfire that keeps fps spikes to a minimum is 1. So create a user.cfg file and place it in the bf3 folder. You want this in the file

RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 1
Render.DeviceVSyncEnable 1
GameTime.MaxVariableFps 59
renderdevice.forcerenderaheadlimit 1

The fps limit is 1 below 60, this removes any mouse lag. Try my settings and see what you think. I've tested all the methods, this is the best for my crossfire setup.

Good luck soldier.

EDIT

I just see you said surveyors advice worked. I emplore you to try my settings for even better performance. :)
 
LtMatt said:
I would like to offer some alternative advice based on what ive found with crossfire.

Vsync removed microstutter for me. If i turn vsycn off, i get stutter.

I also tested all the render ahead settings when using crossfire using the PerfOverlayVisible 1 command in game.

The best render ahead setting in crossfire that keeps fps spikes to a minimum is 1. So create a user.cfg file and place it in the bf3 folder. You want this in the file

RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 1
Render.DeviceVSyncEnable 1
GameTime.MaxVariableFps 59
renderdevice.forcerenderaheadlimit 1

The fps limit is 1 below 60, this removes any mouse lag. Try my settings and see what you think. I've tested all the methods, this is the best for my crossfire setup.

Good luck soldier.

EDIT

I just see you said surveyors advice worked. I emplore you to try my settings for even better performance. :)
Click to expand...

Il try it now mate, always looking for better performance. Had a game before with the stutter and got killed a few times due to stutter making me aim like a drunken one eyed hooked handed gypsy
 
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