[Guide - M17x R1,R2,R3]BF3 Optimization - Diagnosis [ATI, / NVIDIA]

Hi guys!
As i said, i was supposed to post up an Bf3 optimization guide, which shows the tricks that i've tried, at least the ones which i feel that has worked for me.
Unfortunately, just like in MW3, DICE has blocked out a shat-load of commands to make the game more fair. As many may know, in Bf2, you could even config your hit marker etc. which made the game really unbalanced.

Anyhow, "let's get this show on the road".
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DISCLAIMER; I DO NOT TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE TIPS / TRICKS THAT I PROVIDE IN THIS THREAD. IT IS, AND WILL ALWAYS BE YOUR OWN RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU DO USE ANY OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THE GUIDE.

Part 1 - Diagnosis of BF3 / checking your hardware performancce​

OK, so the first thing that we're going to go check, is if the processor OR graphics card(s) in your system is an bottleneck for the game, and from there, we're going to try to solve the different performance-issues as good as possible. But, at the same time, remember that the game actually DOES require a good performance-PC, you can't make jewels out of gravel.

So, first of all, we're going to check to see how your CPU and GPU actually is doing, and by that, luckily, DICE has given BF3 an in-game monitoring tool that shows us how the hardware in our PC is performing, in real-time.
We're going to get up an FPS-monitor that will tell us what FPS we're currently having, and which can be used to see if any of the tips in this guide has helped, and we're going to bring up an performance-graph that will tell us how our PC is performing.

To enable this, follow these steps;


1.Start up Bf3, preferrably in Multiplayer. Join an server, preferably an 64 server with lots of players and vehicles, as this requires more from your system.
2.Once joined the game, spawn and then open up your console.
3.In console, write the following two lines of code. Hit enter after each line, and open up console again. Do not include the () or whats written in them!

Code:

render.drawfps 1 (this will bring up the FPS-monitor)
render.perfoverlayenable 1 (This will enable the graph-monitor)
render.perfoverlayvisible 1 (this will make the graph-monitor VISIBLE)

4.Now, what should happen after those three codes, is that there should be displayed an graph in the lower left corner of your screen, aswell as an counter in your top-right corner.

5.Now, to describe this graph;

The ORANGE line writes for your CPU (Processor)'s performance.
The GREEN line writes for your GPU (Graphical processing unit aka graphics card)' peformance.
Now, the way that you "understand" this graph, is by this;
The lines tell you about the "load" that is put to both of the components. The HIGHER the graph is, the LOWER the performance is your component putting out, the LOWER the graph is for one of the lines, the HIGHER performance is your component putting out.
Now, moving on from there, below the graphs, it also tells you the frames per second that both your components are putting out.

Now, from this knowledge, you might already understand that this graph will tell you what component that is causing an possible bottle-neck, and that you want both your graphs to be as LOW as possible. Also, the graphs should be FLUID, by this, i mean that there should be no "sudden" bumps up to max here and there in the graph, that could indicate an hardware problem.

Anyhow, for an example;
if your ORANGE line is way above your GREEN line, that means that your CPU is having the "hardest time keeping up", and that it might be the reason why your FPS isn't higher.
Now, if your GREEN line is above your ORANGE line, that would mean that your GPU is having the "hardest time keeping up", which then again means that the GPU is most likely to be the component which is not allowing your FPS to be higher.



OK, so, just to sum it up, what is it that you would like to see?
well, depending on your hardware, the general "height" of both the graphs could vary, but you would like to see that both the lines should be just about the same height, without any repeated peaks blowing out of the graph now and then. This means that your GPU is just as "good" as your CPU and vice versa, and that they give out the equal amount of performance, which again tells you that none of them is an actually being an bottleneck in your system. By bottleneck, i mean that one of the components are putting out too little performance which will cause the rest of your hardware not to perform optimally. Try to imagine an guy who has an world-champion upper-body, but still has chicken legs.. The chicken-legs will definitely give him trouble sometime.

Okay, so we've now diagnosed our hardware. From here on, we're going to look at the possible options, tweaks and tips that can be applied to give an better performance for that component.
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Part 2 - Upgrading, optimizing & tweaking - GPU​

Obviously, this guide has to be splitted, seeing as we have two major GPU architecture producers / designers in this world. We'll start off with ATI as this is the spot where i have the most knowledge, and then move on to NVIDIA.
Again, keep in mind, there is limitations for all hardware. Don't expect 25 years old whiskey out of muddy water in your garden

[Section 1 - FOR ATI USERS]​

OK - So, there is a couple of things that you SHOULD do to make sure that "all hope is on your side".

1. NEWEST DRIVERS Available
- Yes, that's right, get the newest drivers available from ATI for your card. Newer drivers usually include fixes, patches, etc. which will give you an better performance. Right now, i would suggest 11.10, seeing as 11.11 preview has reported loads of BSOD's. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

2. CATALYST CONTROL CENTER - SETUP

- For some reason, i actually found that i have the best FPS-rate if i leave my Catalyst Control Center at standard. By this, i mean that i edit no parameters in the Catalyst Control Center under the 3D-application tab. (Tesselation, Catalyst A.I etc, leave it at stock.)
the only thing i would suggest you to actually deactivate, is "Tripple buffering". (THIS IS ONLY IF YOU'RE NOT USING VERTICAL SYNC IN-GAME!!!!).

- Another thing thing to make sure about in the Control Center when you're already there, is the "Power Play" function, and that this is set to Maximum Performance while Plugged in.

- And of course, if you're running Crossfire, make sure to have Crossfire-Enabled!



3. HEAT / THERMAL - ISSUES?
Ok, so the last thing that i would advice you to do, is to monitor the heat that is put out by your graphics cards. Make sure that they are not running over 80c*, as this has sometimes given me worse performance. I'm not saying that 80C* is the deadzone for you card(s), but my 5870's are definitely dropping in performance when reaching 80+c*.



4. OVERCLOCKING - THOUGHTS?
Ok, so, now that you've "done" and applied all the tips that I've given until now in this guide, and still aren't getting enough juice out of your cards, then you COULD possibly think about doing an overclock. If you're new to the laptop-overclocking scene, the strongest advice i could give you is that its pretty much same as the desktop-version, although, using GUI-software will usually just give you an mild-overclock. (Because the voltages of the card is actually programmed in its vBIOS which needs to be flashed with the new voltage preference. I am making an guide for this in about an week).
Right, so, by using an overclocking-software, like Sapphire TriXX (That's the software i used to apply the mild OC to my 5870's), you could get yourself some few % of more performance out of your cards. But please, again, keep in mind what i wrote about heat and performance earlier in the guide. Personally, overclocking my cards just gave me an worse performance in BF3, but i think that's something related to only MY cards.





Aftermath;
Right-y, not much to say, but still a few tips that the average PC-user might not have thought about. So, to sum it all up;

1. update your drivers

2. leave catalyst control center at stock with some exceptions

3. check the heat / thermal condition of your card. Is it running too hot?

4. consider an overclock? Don't forget that it will void the warranty of your card. (But in the case that it needs warranty-work, you could just reverse the overclock and nobody would ever know that you clocked it )

[Section 2 - FOR NVIDIA USERS]​

Ok, so, moving on.. Nvidia. Ahh, my favorite GPU architecture designer, sadly i don't own one right now, and even worse that it is, i can't give TOO much help for BF3 with those cards.





1. UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS

- Yes, that's right, get the newest drivers available from NVIDIA for your card(s). Newer drivers usually include fixes, patches, etc. which will give you better performance.




2. NVIDIA DRIVERS - SETUP
- Right, now, i don't remember the exact names here, so we're going to have to go on a guessing road together. But it will be fun, right?
When i had an GTX260m earlier, in BF3 beta, i noticed an better performance after messing around with the parameters in the Nvidia drivers. Go to the page / tab which shows you the spinning Nvidia logo, and make sure that everything is pointing towards "performance" and not "high quality", also, let Nvidia drivers control as many as possible of the parameters given for you to change.
I'm sorry that i can't be any more specific than this. When i find any tweaks / tips for Nvidia that is more recent then mine, i'll make sure to update this thread!



3. HEAT / THERMAL - ISSUES?
Ok, so the next thing that i would advice you to do, is to monitor the heat that is put out by your graphics cards. The song goes a bit different for Nvidia, as i noticed that my GTX260m could gladly go up to 85-90c*, without noticing any difference in performance. Of course, that high of temps are potentially slowly damaging your cards, and cutting their operating-time, but it still works..so.. we're happy, right?



4. OVERCLOCKING - THOUGHTS?
Ok, so, now that you've "done" and applied all the tips that i've given until now in this guide, and still aren't getting enough juice out of your cards, then you COULD possibly think about doing an overclock. If you're new to the laptop-overclocking scene, the strongest advice i could give you is that its pretty much same as the desktop-version, although, using GUI-software will usually just give you an mild-overclock. (Because the voltages of the card is actually programmed in its vBIOS which needs to be flashed with the new voltage preference. I am making an guide for this in about an week).
Right, so, by using an overclocking-software, like MSI Afterburner (An software that I've heard that a lot of people are using to OC their mobile Nvidia cards), you could get yourself some few % of more performance out of your cards. But please, again, keep in mind what i wrote about heat and performance earlier in the guide. Personally, i never OCed my GTX260m, so i can't give any personal opinion about that.



5. Nvidia OPTIMUS - Get RID of that crap!
Ok, so the last thing i would advice you to do, is to get rid of Nvidia's optimus technology that is applied to the newest Nvidia cards. (Not exactly sure which ones, know that the 5m-series has it.) What this software does, is that it "automatically" senses what you, as an user, needs from your PC. Whether it should be performance or battery-life, and from there, configures your graphics card afterwards. What though is the problem with this software, is that it is not intelligent at all, and actually gives you BAD performance.

I'm not sure on how to get rid of it, but i know there is some guides out there. I will try to update with an link if i find it!







Aftermath;
OK, so, just to sum this up as well;

1. Drivers - Old drivers, the usual suspect.. UPDATE, for christ sake, UPDATE!!!!

2. mess around in the Nvidia Driver control-panel. Personally i've noticed an performance boost with settings set to "high performance", instead of the standard option in the middle of "high performance" and "high quality".

3.Check your temps. Is your card running hot? Even though i mentioned that my personal experience with Nvidia cards and them about performing better under hot environment compared to ATI, i strongly advice you to try to keep them as cool as possible! (In theory, it should give you an better performance..)

4. consider an overclock? Don't forget that it will void the warranty of your card. (But in the case that it needs warranty-work, you could just reverse the overclock and nobody would ever know that you clocked it ). Keep in mind what i said about heat!

5. Blah! Get rid of Optimus, humans don't want dog-food!

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Right, so, if none of these "hints" or "tips" are doing it for you, you could possibly think of doing an GPU upgrade. The best possible compatible hardware for your system without any major hardware-mods would be the following (these set-ups are confirmed WORKING!);

Alienware M17x R1: ATI Radeon HD5870m (Single or Crossfire. - No hardware modification needed. NOT supported by DELL)

Alienware M17x R2: ATI Radeon HD6990m (Single or Crossfire. - No major hardware modification needed. NOT supported by DELL (unsure))

Alienware M17x R3: Nvidia GTX580m (Single - No hardware modification needed. Officially supported by DELL.)



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Part 3 - Upgrading, optimizing & tweaking - CPU​

Ok, so this part of the guide is not going to be splitted, seeing as it usually goes the same for both AMD and Intel.




Moving on, there is not too much you can do to your CPU, besides overclocking it. Your CPU is what it is, and there is no "drivers" that will let you configure your CPU in the same way as with an GPU. But then again, the same things apply for the CPU as for the GPU, regarding heat and overclocking.




1.Make sure that your CPU is not running hot! On max load, it should never reach past 75-80c*, this could potentially lower your performance as well as the lifetime of you processor. If your CPU has a turbo-option, make sure that this is available and make sure your CPU is NOT THROTTLING! Throttling means that it will lower its core-clocks to cool down. To remove this, also consult the software "ThrottleStop". (Also, if your CPU has an turbo-option, don't worry about temperatures up to 85C*)



2. If the CPU is still not giving out enough power, you could consider doing an overclock. This can in most cases be done through your BIOS, as well as an GUI-software. Software-wise, i recommend ThrottleStop.
To find throttle stop, as well as an guide on how to use it, please use Google for now. I will update with links later! But, please, keep in mind what i said about heat!



3. If you're still not satisfied, or still seeing / noticing that the CPU is your bottleneck, please consider an upgrade. I do not know what the best upgrade is for each of the Revisions of the M17x, i will update the post later if i find out.



Aftermath;

1.Check the temp of your CPU

2.Temps OK? Consider an overclock!

3. Still not satisfied after an overclock? Consider an upgrade!








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Part 4 - General optimizing for BF3​

Right, so, finally, we've gotten to the meat of this guide. As mentioned before, there is not much of console-commands or else that you can do to achieve an better FPS, but we're going to go over it anyway.



1.Turning down your graphics levels
- The options menu in Battlefield 3 will give you the ability to adjust the graphical quality of the game. Lower settings will give you better performance (as in higher frame rate). Obviously, turning everything to "minimum", or the lowest option available, will give you the highest FPS possible. I strongly recommend you to turn off Anti-aliasing and MSAA if you're hungry for higher FPS's.



2. Allocating more "virtual memory" on your hard drive - Applies for people with less than 4GB of RAM.
Virtual memory is as it sais, "virtual" memory that is allocated on your hard drive. Of course, it will not nearly be as fast as your ram, but it still helps!

Its been reported that people with less than 4GBs of ram, are noticing better performance by allocating more virtual memory from their hard-drive. Follow the steps below;


[WIN7 - 64BIT]
[1.] Open up Control-Panel.

[2.] Choose the "System" option.

[3.] From the menu-bar on the left side, select "Advanced System Settings".

[4.]From the box that just popped up, select "Settings" under the performance-section, in the "Advanced" tab.

[5.]In the box that popped up, choose the "Advanced" tab.

[6.]In the tab, select "change" under the Virtual Memory-section.

[7.]Now, to edit, UN-check the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives".

[8.]In the lower-part of your box, you will see the following values;
Minimum Allowed: XXXXMB
Recommended: XXXXXMB
Currently Allocated: XXXXXMB
Now, the editing you would like to do, is to increase the ammount of allocated memory. Keep in mind that this will take space on your harddrive!
Usually, i like to set it to the recommended amount if it currently has allocated less memory than that. If it has already allocated more memory than what's recommended, just increase it by another 4-8Gbs, and you should be good to go.
To edit this, you will have to check the box called "Custom Size". Just let the Initial Size be as much as the maximum size, and don't forget to select which drive you wish to allocate this virtual memory on!

[9.]After applying this, you will be asked to reboot. Do so!



3. Console commands - applies for everyone!
OK, so, there is a few commands that can be applied. There is no fluid amount of people who has reported that this has boosted their performance, but a lot of people are reporting back that it works for them. For an example, it hasn't worked out for me, but i still strongly advice you to try them!

Enter one line of command into the console at the time, hitting enter when written. DO NOT include the content in the ()'s.

Code:

RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0 (IF NOT USING VERTICAL SYNC!)
RenderDevice.ForceRenderAheadLimit 0 (If powerful CPU, it can be set to 1,2 or 3, but this will also DECREASE responsiveness, though give you an better FPS.)

Ok, so that is the commands that can be applied to "see an boost in performance". Now, we're going to go over a couple of fixes of bugs, etc.



4. sloppy mouse performance / responsiveness
In game - Battlefield 3 - Try to set your mouse settings to "raw input". At least for me, that gave me an more responsive mouse! Also, maxing the "soldier sensitivity" option gave me more responsiveness.


Out of game; ORIGIN:
Remove the Origin "in-game" option. (So that you cannot access Origin when playing BF3 in full screen mode.)




5. Game crashing / freeze
Right, here, I've read and personally experience a load of stuff. Nothing has seemed to work for me, but people have reported that the following thing, work;

1. Right click Origin.exe as well as BF3.exe and run both as administrators.



6. Getting kicked / game connection closed

1. Update punkbuster!
Do so by following theese steps;

[1.]Go to Evenbalance's webpage!

[2.] Download the newest version of PBSETUP - An Punkbuster updater tool that can update all games which are utilizing PunkBuster. (this could potentially fix kick / etc. in other games aswell )

[3.]Once downloaded, install and let the updater update itself.

[4.]When updated, open up the software.

[5.]Use the GUI to add Battlefield 3 to the update list. I'm not going to go in-depth on this, its pretty self-explanatory.

[6.]Hit "Check for Updates", and let it update.

[7.]When finished updating, enjoy.


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Part 5 - General Aftermath​

Right, so now that you've tried everything, and you still aren't satisfied with your performance, i advice you to think of buying / updating your whole system. As i mentioned earlier, you can't make jewels out of gravel..


I will try to frequently update this guide / article as often as possible when i stumble across new tweaks, tips, fixes, etc., hopefully it will help a few people with their problems..

If there is any questions, comments, etc. to the guide, please feel free to tell me, and i will update it!

Edit: CptXabaras;
Thank you for the heads-up! Guide updated.

Best of luck guys,
- Scott.

 

wow...

+rep

one small thing: Alienware M17x R3: Nvidia GTX580m (Single or SLI - No hardware modifcation needed. Oficially supported by DELL.) <---- R3 is a single card sistem only

 

Great work and Awesome guide, Scott!

+rep

 

That's an awesome guide Scott! Very comprehensive and easy to follow.

Great work and +rep.

 

Awesome guide man!

+1

 

Thanks for the reps!
By the way, while we're at it, why doesent the forum allow for larger font-sizes? Really messes up the structure..

- Scott.

 

You're crazy! But the guide is good edition to the forum! +

 

It does, but the style you have doesn't. If you want that choose "NotebookReview Style" at the bottom left of your window. It's a small little "Quick Style Chooser" drop down menu. Your probably on the default "New NBR Style" Thats why I never cared for that style. Once you choose "NotebookReview Style" You'll see my sig the way it was intended. It's not supposed to be huge and obnoxious. It's supposed to be a lot smaller.

In your "User CP" You can also set it to default to "NoteBookReview Style" so anytime you log in under another computer, it will default to the chosen style.

Spoiler

 

Ohh z.. i see!

Thank you DR650, the Disclaimer just became as "clear" as i wanted it to be

- Scott.

 

this option in CCC is for OpenGL applications and has no effect for DirectX ones (e.g., Battlefield 3). fyi, if you want DirectX triple-buffering, you could use D3DOverrider to enforce it in games that don't support it internally; Battlefield 3 does have triple-buffering enabled by default, so you don't need D3DOverrider for that anyway.

 

I just HAD to sign up to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH for your hard work in posting and sharing your optimization guide for BF3. ***WOW*** I found this in a google search.

T H A N K - Y O U