M17x - Battlefield 3 Discussion Thread

Hm, new problem. Something on my computer seems to be throttling. Usually the game runs above 50fps, as high as 70. Then for absolutely no good reason ( could be lying on the ground staring at bushes) the Frames drop to 30 and stay there for bit. Today it even dropped to 16/17 (this was after a restart so it cant' be stealth mode)

 

Anyone want to play BF3 tonight in the NBR BF3 server?

NBR BF3 Server

Talk to your NBR buddies in game using the mumble serverhere.

 

what time man?

 

Probably starting around 6-7pm Pacific and going till everyone goes to bed.

 

@jubbing

im having a similiar problem
everytime a new map loads my game hang and crashes
i get a "game disconnected. there was an error" which is super not helpful
using console command "render.perfoverlayvisible 1" i can see my cpu usage spike well beyond how tall my screen would be. then it crashes.

 

well, I am in but not for long, must finish reviewing some stuff but I will check the server from time to time and join you guys

 

I found this on the Dell website. See if it helps. Will try myself.
For NVIDIA - Battlefield 3 crashes when using an overclocked Nvidia Video Card | Dell

For AMD/ATI - BF3 & Rage: Textures issues and Low FPS with AMD / ATI Cards with latest drivers | Dell

BTW I removed the black screen issue by Port Forwarding BF3. Seems to work, now need to work on slower than usual performance (problem is no other games do this).

 

Hi im using 11.12 with 11.11 cap2 bf3 is seriously running flat out awesome now. Was playing the expansion yesterday and didn't drop under 60fps regardless of situation! I have a m17x r2 5870s xfire 740qm. Playing bf @ 1920 x 1200 most settings high no AA on my 27" lcd

 

By the way stay away from the 11.11 whql drivers they caused me horrible blue screens of death.

And i'd just like to add the new guns and maps in Back to Kharkand rule. Once I get my hands on the pancor jackhammer I'm going to upset a lot of people

 

All m17x R3 owners with the 6990m what are your settings for BF3?

If you've tried 11.12 did u see any improvements?

 

Some good settings are all on ultra, AA off or 2x and post AA on Medium (this is a must for good picture). Putting blur on full also helps smooth out the frames. These are good for my 580m and should fine for your 6990m

 

I can confirm the new beta drivers worked awesome for BF3. I am also running xfire 5870 (soon to be updated to 6990's on friday), and the game runs better, and was able to up a few settings and still maintain high frame rate. I can also confirm the new drivers are runing XFIRE mode. Its odd how the 2 prevrious OFFICIAL drivers gave me BSOD's and this one being BETA works wonders!!!! so far

 

Hey guys,

Done downloading the new dlc for BF3 in a few minutes.
Anyone who wants to play on NBR BF3 server right now to check the new dlc out and stuff?

[NBR] Mixed mode | 1p start | forum.notebookreview.com - Server Browser - Battlelog / Battlefield 3

 

Hi All,

Did/is anyone else experiencing worse FPS with crossfire mode enable within BF3? I have tried updating to different drivers but I still have about 30-40 FPS on a single card (low settings) and only 11-22 FPS on crossfire (low settings).

Other people I have talked to say their crossfire setup gives them better boosts in FPS than without, but they have desktop cards so I can't say it is a true apples-to-apples comparison.

I was thinking on trying to update my bios/drivers on the cards according to this procedure: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...5870-gpus-5870-vbios-discussion-non-beta.html but I dont want to make things worse if the problem is not just my system.

I purchase the system new from Dell about 1.5 years ago and the only game I really have any issues with is BF3. Anybody have some thoughts on this?

TIA!

 

You should post in detail your full computer specs.

I am running BF3 single player on the machine in the sig. And at 2560x1600p at ultra setting without MSAA, I can get it barely playable. It is playable for sure, but barely if you know what I mean.

My 5870s are 20% oced and cpu at 3.2 ghz.

Did you flash the vbios and all? my drivers are latest. I did that and oced through the vbios. The dell stock drives are really bad for BF3. I tried before with it and it was just terrifying..

Hope this helps.

 

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, you're correct, I should have posted specs. Sorry!

I'm using the 620 i7, 8GB 1333 RAM, a 60GB SSD and 200GB HDD, and the two 5870s. I run everything at 1920x1200 (native resolution) for the 17" LED. I am not OC'ing anything currently (I've pondered this but have concerns about heat). Windows 7 pro 64bit.

Since my post, I have taken the system apart, pulled the heatsinks off the GPUs and swapped the cards. My system hung at startup (no video output, no LED error lights) -- I had to pull the plug and remove battery for it to shutdown even. I took it back apart and swapped the cards back to their normal positions and everything boots as normal. My conclusion is that my secondary card may be bad.

Any thoughts?

 

Dellienware,

How are you running the game in 2560x1600? The game allows you to go pass your native resolution?

 

have you tried using cap 11.9 CAP 4? if crossfire is still not working, press alt+ enter while in game to enter windowed mode and then alt+ enter again to full screen, you will notice a significant boost in fps. Well at least that method worked for me.

 

I am using external display. Dell U3011, 30 inch IPS 1600p beast. It looks.... FANTASTIC.. Screen costed more than the laptop itself.

Anyways, getting CAPs is recommended.

To to OP:

You should seriously flash the vbios then get the latest drivers to install. That should pretty guarantee 1200p ultra smooth run without oc. Try then and tell us whats up.

Your secondary card might have different vbios version than your primary one perhaps? either way, you should flash to get the latest bios. I am sure the scaling using the stock driver is horrible..

 

I don't know, I'm kinda done playing around with it, I got it to work decent on my R2 at a 1600 resolution. Now I think my system is capable at the full resolution and I can fight and tinker with it to get it to work properly however I think sniping at that resolution is unrealistic as I prefer sniping at the 1600 resolution anyways. I'm debating about either upgrading my CPu to a XM series or to go with a 6990 GPU.

 

quick question:

do you see your 720qm as a bottlneck for BF3? do you see too high spikes on any of your threads while gaming? My friend has a similar machine and is trying to figure out with getting an xm is a good idea.. thanks.

 

Getting an XM was like getting a new computer. lol I went from a 720qm to the 920xm I currently have.

 

The costs of going to an XM will be about the same as going with the 6990s. I know what you're thinking* NO way 2 GPU's is going to cost was more then a CPU. However, the resell ability of the 5870 is still existent and I should be able to sell both cards for 400 thus cutting down significantly on the costs of the 6990's. Re-selling my 720qm now that's pretty much not going to happen if not only for a few dollars. I don't believe my game is bottle-necking on my CPU I think the 5870's are not excellent at rendering dx 11/10 games as they've been very much run-of-the-mill On top of that ATI crossfire just has not and will not be implemented all that well and a single 6990 is going to be LOADS better then a single 5870. When it comes down to it you're banking on Crossfire working well and the 5870's being optimal in crossfire mode. THat's just not realistic anymore, just look at the drivers we got coming in.

I was debating about even going to a single 580m but I'll give ATI another shot at this because their pricing is quite nice as it's about the same to go from crossfire 6990 to single 580m. (when buying the cards independently not though alienware)

 

I will give it a try. I really dislike flashing any bios due to the risk of "bricking". Any chance of something going wrong with this in which that could happen?

So I went and installed the bios found on that page, but now I'm having problems updating to the latest drivers. I tried Batboy's instructions here http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...vbios-discussion-non-beta-66.html#post8161766 but for some reason it doesn't seem to detect or find the drivers after the CCC is installed.

I'm currently running the Dell A018.763 drivers. My framerate seemed to improve a little on crossfire, but it is not nearly playable yet. My framerate on one card seems more so.

Thanks for all the kind ideas so far. Any other suggestions people?

 

You will need to update/verify you are on the current VBIOS before looking at drivers.

 

assuming that you have successfully flashed the bios, you will have to use revo uninstaller pro to get rid of CCC completely aand use driver sweeper to get rid of OEM driver completely. Try 12.1 preview driver. It is working fine for me. DO NOT USE any of the 11.11 series. It will BSOD on you.

 

Dellienware,

;_; I have two 3007wfp and can't use them, no ports.

 

I attached a SS of GPUz's detection. I believe it upgraded fine.

I attempted 11.9, 11.11, and 11.12 but none of those seemed to actually contain a driver for me to use. When I manually search for a driver, the last one I seen listed as for 4870m -- none for 5870, therefore I was stuck at the Windows standard drivers until I installed the Dell version again. I tried both custom install and express installs on each and it didn't seem to matter.

 

it may be hijacking of thread, but I will answer the question anyways...

As far as I know, HDMI supports up to 1600p, but when it comes down to IPS monitor, only goes up to 1200p. I think that is why Dell implemented the whole display port on every one of its computers since Dell sells 1600p IPS screens.

Yes my friend tried to hook two up but couldnt. I think you should check out Vidock, but that wont be that good for gaming..

 

Weird....

I've noticed that this is the only game that uses all of my 8 threads......... No bottleneck for the 2630qm whatsoever!

I guess going with the basline cpu wasn't too bad this time around.

Huh, unless your bottlenecking (which is unlikely because even the 2630qm doesn't bottleneck), the cpu wouldn't affect gameplay much would it?

 

the entry sandybridge i7 quads are very good in performance. its playing games anyways.. 90% of the time graphics is the bottleneck

 

I was wondering whats the best for my system
Ultra 1920x1080
Gtx 580m
Core i7 2820qm 8 gb ram
Basically top of the line everything

 

nvm, misread.

 

umm, no idea what you mean by set to 60+fps contantly, i am talking about the field of view settings lol

 

Well I have the 1080p screen and I'm ok with the max of 90.

 

what your avg fps and is it maxed out?

 

I have over 40fps. My settings are all on Ultra, AF 16x. AA deferred on 2x and AA post one medium. These are the best settings. Deferred 4x is no better than 2x but there is a performance hit. Medium post AA is just the right amount of smoothing without over smoothing. I suggest tweaking the Motion Blur to your liking. I have it on full as it helps smooth the framerate.

 

I can't play BF:BC2 or BF3. It lags like hell. I installed latest 12.1 AMD drivers without a issue. What is wrong with my system?

 

Hey guys, what kind of framerate can I expect on an M17x-R1 with a Q9000 and a single 260m? I don't mind playing at low settings if I get decent framerate.

 

I need to get back to get playing BF3. Been several weeks.

 

Hey everyone. I just got my Alienware M17X R3 and my sepcs are:
Intel® Core™ i7 2670QM 2.2GHz (3.1GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (4DIMMS)
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M
I could go a full game on auto settings in Battlfield 3 Multiplayer without a single lag. Then I will go into a game where I will play for a few minutes and there will be a lag spike where the game is almost not playable. I heard people with my same configuration playing on High Settings (not Ultra obviously) and not have any lag. What is going on? It is really fustrating me as to my laptop should have plenty of power to run this game on AUTO settings. Anybody have any ideas or suggestions on what to do? Thanks

 

maybe you have throttling problem with your gtx580m
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ttling-m17x-r3-580m-without-120hz-screen.html
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=210198

but don't take my word for it wait for another member with gtx580m he may know better

 

That sounds like the resolution to the problem, but you might also wanna install the latest Nvidia drivers which can be found here: NVIDIA DRIVERS 290.53 BETA

 

How come resolution would be the problem?

 

he didn't mean your display resolution he was referring to the two links that i have posted

 

lmao oooo my bad haha.... now what I am explaining is happening in BF3 (lag spikes) that is throttling though right?

 

wait for widezu69 to look at your thread or pm him he wrote the guide how to fix gtx580m throttling he also owns an m17x r3 with gtx580m so he have some experience with it.i don't know if its throttling it may be driver problem or overheating problem by the way did you monitor your temps while playing.

 

Hehe I got mentioned again Check sig

 

lol what do you mean check sig?

 

okay nevermind i see what you're saying... now i am pretty decent with computers but never did any overclocking... is it safe to overclock? I do not want to go crazy overclocking but would like a decent performance increase and get the best out of what i have... if it is safe how do I go about overclocking my 2670qm and my gtx580m... i am going to do the throttle fix right now hopefully if i can understand how to do it first lol thanks

oh and also how do i know if my cpu goes into turboboost 3.1ghz? does it do it automatically?