M14x Battlefield 3 Perfomance & Discussion Thread

I cant stand to play games under 1080p res since I have gamed with 1200p for so long. Anyway I was able to run the game at 1080p exported to my desktop monitor from the M14x. It was at 1080p Ultra settings with 30-45fps. I will post some screenshots later.

 

I ended up turning anti aliasing up and anisotropic filter up and it didn't make much difference in my FPS. I had a OC of 740/1482/1031, Turned turbo mode off.

 

Also. Does anyone know the difference antialiasing deferred makes? I have turned it on and off to different settings and haven't noticed the change visually or for my FPS. Thanks

 

Interesting. I swear I noticed a slight FPS increase dropping from 1600x900 to 1366x768, with a mix of medium - ultra settings (using the beta nvidia drivers they dropped for bf3).

Whats the bottleneck on the M14x for this game in your opinion? I'm running the stock clocks, with the i7-2630QM.

 

I made a video of the game running on High settings, at 1600x900.
Here is my configuration : i7 2630QM, 4Go de RAM, HDD 750Go, Bluetooth
nVidia GT 555m 1,5Go
Oh, and it's RED

Battlefield 3 BETA on the Alienware M14x - YouTube

 

Running at 1080p is alot different than the other 2 m14x screen's. It takes alot more.

And the GPU is the bottleneck. But if you don't game at 1080p on an external monitor/TV etc.. then you can run the game at high no problems

 

running with everything at the highest settings and overclocked at 830-850mhz and it plays very nice and smooth

 

are those safe overclock settings?? what program do u use?

 

evga precision and you must have the custom unlocked bios with the gt555 voltage increased, it runs quite stable

 

You're welcome, glad I could help anyway, I think that is the only site where they offer a modded .inf file for the false system check. however as for those that's release on the 285.xx Series will might not be needed the modded .inf anymore. Take those Betas version for e.g

I'm not sure with Evga precision, but for MSI Afterburner, you dont need to unlocked the BIOS or whatsoever to OC the GT555M, because I did it with MSI Afterburner OC it from the stock to 720/1440/1100 (Core/Shader/Mem) got around between 50C ~ 65C, and with MSI Afterburner, it is even easier to OC because all you need to do is to slide the slider on the GUI, and click on Apply and it's done.

 

yes but with the modded bios you can overclock much further then before and unlock more potential from this card

 

So is it safe? Because according to Dell, they said using custom BIOS is not cover in the standard warranty nor the accidental warranty.

 

id say its safe, it runs stable, just dont let it get too hot, ive seen my card hit 85 degrees Celsius, but it was sitting on the couch and the fan was blocked, my fault, and it still ran without errors, it usually sits at 77 or less in a game but as always use at your own risk, it works for me as long as you dont block the fan

 

please tell me where did u get the custom bios. and if u overclock gpu that much, will the cpu still maintain a safe temp? thx

 

So, I just got my m14x a week ago and I have not been experiencing those high temperatures. After 5 hours of game play i max at 56 c. I do keep my laptop lifted at the back by a wallet and my room temp is 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm just wondering if this is what you all experienced when you first got it and it degraded over time.

 

56 is absolutely fine, hell mine hits 77 in game, all is well

as for the custom bios go here [Mod] Voltage increase Nvidia GT 555M
Thank the people who modded this bios, not me, and use at your own risk although its pretty safe

 

I think they have made some hardware changes as well as software changes to the m14x recently. Mine is also a week old and even with overclocking mine runs much cooler than most are reporting.

 

How did you get it to run like this? I've seen videos with ppl running it at 900p with a slightly higher clocked video card that could barely reach 30 fps at times and the settings were only set to high. It was mostly between 20-25 fps:S

If you can get 30-40 @ 1080p on Ultra thats impressive.

Even with a 580 GTX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56yuFXdYtNU&feature=related it can struggle at times to low 40s. And this is a card that is 5 times to 10 times stronger:S

 

i pre-installed Battlefield 3, and created a desktop shortcut. but whenever i press on it, the "Do you want to allow the following program to make changed to you computer?" thing pops up. im guessing everytime i play this game i have to press okay, which is really annoying. i STILL WANT TO enable User Account Control for other programs, but i just want to disable it for BF3. any ideas how? thanks

 

BTW, just because im so smart, pressing left control, left alt, and S at the same time brings up a box that shows ur FPS and settings. no more fraps and stuff

 

So, i dont wanna bother or anything im just somewhat bad with all this..

im planning to get a m14x in the next couple of weeks but not sure if this is good enough to run bf3

PROCESSOR : Intel® Core™ i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM : Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English
WIRELESS CARDS : Intel® Wireless-N WiFi Link 1000 a/g/n 1x2
MEMORY : 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz
VIDEO CARD : 3.0GB DDR3 NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M using NVIDIA Optimus™ technology
HARD DRIVE : 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
LCD PANEL : 14.0" High Def+ (900p/1600x900) with WLED backlight
WIRELESSHD OR MOBILE BROADBAND : None
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE : 8x SuperMulti DVD±R/RW Slot Load Optical Drive
SOUND OPTIONS : Internal High-Definition 5.1 Surround Sound Audio

if anyone could let me know it'd be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

all the m14x laptops are nearly the same you dont need to break down the stats but yes it will run the game just fine

 

But it would be better if you post your actual game setting, with average framerate. However in the beta, my M14x run it at Auto, which I think it is somewhere between High and Ultra which give me about 25fps ~ 40fps. and the GPU clock is 750/1500/1100 (Core/Shader/Mem) and got around 70C ~ 75C (I got a cooler).

The beta version I use MSI Afterburner, while for the retail I will use EVGA Precision. I will post the setting, fps and the GPU setting again when I got the game on the 27th which is the AU/NZ release.

 

Don't waste $100 on the 3gb GT 555. The 1.5GB version will give you the same performance.

 

BF3 Performance:
M14x I7-2630qm (turbo disabled)
Nvidia 555mGT 1.5 @ 750/1000
1366x768 native
SSD
4gb ram

Game
Set game to custum.
Set global preset to ultra ((all items))
Disable AF/AA
Disable SSAO/HBAO
Turn shadows to medium

FPS 40+ on Caspian Border with full 64 players
Looks amazing

Not posting screenshots so dont ask. Just try it for yourself.

Driver is 285.62 whql

 

2630QM (Throttlestop running, TB disabled), 6GB RAM, 1.5GB GT555M (OC to 750/1500/1080) w/ 285.62, 1600x900 screen res

All settings high, SSAO, 1600x900 native, 40-45 FPS in SP. Will try MP later in the day.

Overall I'm pretty amazed at what this 14 incher is capable of.

 

Help! Played the game a little yesterday and everything was fine and today I tried to play again and I have a problem with the floor texture. It's all transparent!
What might be going wrong?

 

Do you have the newest nvidia driver? That was my problem. I installed 285.62 and now I'm good to go

 

For sure thanks, and thanks to everyone else for helping me out, i'll be ordering my m14x later on this week, can't wait

 

Question. Did you overclock your GPU at all? I usually overclock when playing graphic intensive games.

 

ok so basically yesterday i tested out fps with different settings. i will do my best to post off the top of my head.

766P- All medium with ultra textures and everything else diasbled 45-65 fps.
766p- All high with hbao on and AF 16X. (HBAO makes this game look awesome) 35-45 fps
900p- All medium with ultra textures and everything else disabled 35-50 fps
900p- All ultra and everything on 25-40 fps.

too lazy and cant remember all the other things ive tried.

right now im playing on 766p at High textures and medium everything else. with hbao, 16x AF at 35-55 fps

btw im clocked at 770/1540? or something like that

 

i cant believe i cant even get a solid fps with everything turned down
its embarissing, the 555m is a horrid card

 

Heads-up!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...na-bf3-dogtag-hurry-limited-availability.html

 

Hey guys my roommate has an M14x and it randomly freezes during gameplay. Any thoughts? No overclock.

 

no it doesnt freeze for me.
i change my resolution down to 766p and it makes the game look 10x worse. oh well id rather have fps increase until i get a desktop

 

tried activating those dogtags, but Origin just flashes up with a "invalid cache folder" error. cant find a fix yet. although, i dont currently have any games installed.

 

When ever I go and load and join a multiplayer match, it takes a good 20-30 seconds before I can deploy in the match. The client starts up fine, but the loading screen TAKES FOREVER to finish loading and deploy. Is anyone else having this problem, or am I just expecting to much?

 

By freeze, do you mean that it show you just a black screen but still can hear the sound? Because I got this random black screen with sound too, but it is fix by restarting the game and re-join the server again.

 

My specs;
2820qm
3.0 555m
8gb ram

OC = 750, 1500, 1080

Everything low, 720p = 70-90 fps
Everything ultra, 720p = 40-50 fps

Everything low, 900p = 50-60 fps
Everything ultra (no AA), 900p = 40-50 fps
Everything ultra, 900p = 26-38 fps

i play Low, 720p becuase i prefer fps over quality

By the way i am experiencing something really strange, sometimes when i play high demand games, it goos well for 10-15 min. then i suddenly get an fps drop which lasts about 2 seconds and then it good back up. and that will come back every 15 seconds.... somebody might know what this causes?
My processor sits at 40-50%
When this happens i see my GPU go from 100% to 60%

 

hey nickkky.. how are u getting 40-50 fps while on ultra bro? I have the dell xps 17 ( i noe this is alienware thread) with the same gfx card like u do. Do u play fullscreen? cos i found when i play windowed in high settings at 900p resolution i get pretty stable FPS. however i also have those weird spikes, when my GPU is not at 100%

by pretty stable i mean 38-59 something like that

 

bigbattle89,

is your gpu overclocked? becuase i oc'ed it pretty high.
and im also playing in windowed mode, it seems more stable
but the lag spikes are a serious issue for me. can somebody help us with that?
i just want my gpu to be 100% all the time during bf3...

 

hey yea mine is overclocked as followes: 760/1520/975. how bout u try this... do a clean instal of the latest driver, that seemed to help me out. btw what settings n resolution u playin at (windowed mode) i am playing 900P and everything high with AA off and at medium with HBAO or SSAO i cant remmber which. let me noe how that goes for u.

 

also my turbo boost if off. btw what settings are u other guys playing at? im still looking for the perfect mix of beautifull GFX and good performance..

 

With a clean install u mean clean windows 7?
I'm on 285.62 atm.
i like everything normal with 2x AA
that gives me the best performance/quality
i cant get over 750 1500 becuase my driver will crash.
I am playing at 720p windowed.
I cant play 900p windowed because thats my native res.
Btw, does it help when u have turbo boost off? it sound like the opposite

 

Updated the drivers and it work like a charm, thanks!

FYI was looking for a ~20" 1600X900 good quality monitor to play BF3 on and I found the Samsung Synchmaster B2030 for $99 at Office Max.
Very pleased with it. Game look gorgeous on it and have everything on high and couple things on ultra (at 1600x900).
Definitely recommend getting one if you can.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

So wait, is it better to play with TurboBoost off, or on?

 

I suggest you turn it off, because it would reduce the heat that pump up by the i7 CPU. And it doesnt affect the game either, because I have test it, no performance gain instead it is just make the CPU run hotter.

 

Hey……I noticed that u know these things pretty well……so would u mind tell me if my 14x could run BF3(of course online) well?

 

yeah……with my 2720qm Thank U! LOL

 

Yeah, sure you can run it very well, at 900p on Auto setting you'll get around between 25 ~ 45 fps, but as for me I disable the AA, so I can more fps which is around 30 ~ 45 fps average on the multiplayer, but for some unknown reason the campaign seem to give me less fps than the Online :/

Oh I also overclock my GPU to 800/1600/1080 (Core/Shader/Mem) I use EVGA Precision with unlock GPU BIOS.

The GPU BIOS unlock is not necessary but it will allow you to OC more which is without the unlock BIOS you will be able to OC up to 750/1500, but if with the unlock BIOS you can get up to 945/1890 but beware the more you OC the more heat your GPU will produce so always monitor your GPU Temp when you try a new OC setting. You can also use MSI Afterburner to OC the GPU, but I found out the EVGA is more effective and not giving much trouble as the MSI Afterburner though.

Oh and another thing, I notice that If I OC the GPU to around 850/1700 - 900/1800, BF3 tend to crash at launch. One solution that seem to fix this problem though is to downclock to around between 750/1500 - 800/1600 or just dont overclock at all.