[Battlefield 3] M11x Video/Gameplay/Benchmark (All inclusive) Thread

Completely understandable.

 

Well it looks like I join the league of R2ers for which this is unplayable

Everything on low and it is still far from playable. Seeing what these newer, more demanding games (BF3, Witcher 2) are doing to my R2, is pushing me towards the purchase of an M14x...

 

Deevu,

What all have you done to your R3? It looks, based on your 3dMark06 info, to be the exact model I am getting (with the exception I am getting 8GB RAM). Anything overclocked? What programs do you have disabled/enabled while running BF3?

I want to be able to play smoothly on MP, preferably in the 40-60FPS range. Will have to lower everything to medium to accomplish this?

 

My settings are at medium. So you wont be able to play at 40-60 at medium practically. Textures barely drops FPS by 2 fps.

You will have to be at low to stay above 40fps. I dont close much of anything. I have my GPU overclocked by 100mhz and thats it.

 

Ok, so you don't bother with Gamebooster 3?

 

It will add maybe 1fps at most.

 

So Witcher 2 doesn't run well with the R2 either? Should of gotten the R3 or M14x if I have known.

 

My R2 seems to be doing well. I am actually very surprised by how playable the game is.

 

Same. I've played around 20 matches now and it's playing great. Lag is more of a problem than actual framerate. Little M11x is holding up well.

 

What settings are you guys playing with? I have a hard time getting over 20fps with the lowest settings.

 

Details to consider (and some some things to help others)
1. What graphics settings are you using (be sure to enable FPS in game as shown on previous page)
2. What size maps are you playing on? The lower the number of players the smoother the game on the 4 thread cpu.
3. Optimizations such as networkthrottlingindex in the registry to increase the network throughput.

I know i dont have the m11x but its such a cool little notebook i just have to try and help a bit.

 

I have only just received the game in the post (ordered from Play.com), and have work today so will update later on this evening (UK time) with my findings.

I am expecting similarities to BF:BC2 - totally unplayable without a pinmod but *playable* with the CPU @ ~1.9GHz.

If it isn't playable I have a real reason to "upgrade" my R1*, OR use the funds and go eyefinity on my desktop (LG IPS231P FTW).


*Somewhat annoying as EVERY other game I actually want to play is perfectly playable (with Pinmod of course).

 

These are exactly my feelings as well. My R2 handles nearly everything I throw at it like a boss but a couple of games that I really want to play, like BF3, I just can't make playable. Annoying is definitely the right word!

 

My R2 is great also.. happy with my settings and such. last night when i was playing my computer was reaching 81 degress.. what temps are you guys getting???

 

Just d/l the 472MB patch now and then I'll be playing!!!

Out of interest how is your RAM usage when in-game? I only have a 4GB i7 640 R2.


As an FYI I've clocked over 90degrees on the gpu during some gaming sessions, so not at all surprised with those temps.

Cheers, Paul.

 

When did the patch come out? I downloaded mine (Origin) yesterday and had a quick match this morning but I didn't have a prompt for any updates?

 

thanks for quick reply

 

It was a bit unplayable for me as well on my R2 i7, but then i did next things:
1) installed newest nvidia drivers (285.62)
2) set max prerendered frames to 0
3) set graphics settings to low (I don't care, really)
4) (!) went to game folder, found folder _installer and installed latest directX (it actually installed quite a lot of updates) and installed visual studio 2008 sp1 (removed it few weeks before).
It all worked like a charm. No mp perfomance lags, smooth as silk, totally playable and enjoyable.
For SP, however, it required additional tweaking, as it was still not smooth enough:
5) running TS (helps a bit, i guess)
6) setting bf3.exe priority to HIGH
7) little GPU overclock (I use MSI Afterburner, 520-1248, memory speed is default - 790)
That got SP working quite nice and smooth as well (though I really didn't enjoy it much, but hey, it's MP game anyway).

My temps were around 68-72, according to MSI Afterburner and TS (I changed thermal compound few months ago and now I really feel difference it temps).

 

Hmmmm with my pin mod and GPU OC @ 550/1320/1760 I was netting around 20-24fps depending on location and what was happening on screen.

This was with native resolution and either a mixture of low/medium or just straight up medium.

I will need to do some more tweaking as I reckon I can squeeze a little more performance out of it but I think I can stop thinking 30fps+ right now.

I did for a few seconds put it on "Ultra" and it looked stunning (11fps FTW) but imo at the lower end of the scale it doesn't seem to scale down too well. The visuals don't quite match up with the performance, unlike say Crysis 2, which looks decent but runs very well on my R1.

 

My first impressions are a little eh.

Getting between 12-25fps with graphics set to auto. This running with a cpu oc @ 162 with TS on. GPU set to 520/1248 (r2 i7-640). Plays better on some maps rather than others, unsurprisingly. As a test I launched BC2, and that also seems to play worse than I recall?!? Hmmmmmm.

I wonder of the 285.62 drivers aren't as optimised for this chipset as earlier ones.

Cheers, Paul.

 

Textures: High
Terrain Detail: Medium
Terrain Decoration: Medium
AF: x8
AA Post: Low

Everything else low or off. I can bump up some settings on smaller maps, but I've found these to work well for the bigger maps as well, and it still looks pretty, so I'm happy.

 

I installed via the actual disk/s. I'll presume there was some patching post them going gold. Well 472MB worth of it at least

 

Hmmm. I must be doing something wrong... I used those settings at 1360x768 60.2Hz on ext monitor and I still get around 18 fps in single player. I've tried all the suggestions in this thread to optimize but my performance remains annoyingly low.

Is it possible that my GPU OC is actually TOO high? I have it set at 575 core/1415 shader/840 memory.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but apparently SP uses more resources than MP. So that would explain the difference.

 

Absolutely true. Something about all the AI and whatnot taxes the CPU more heavily, probably creating a bottleneck which doesn't occur in MP.

 

I didn't get any notifications when I tried to update the game either but when I clicked Repair Install I had a 50MB patch to download. Give it a try.

I seem to be getting much higher FPS than before, in campaign around 30fps with medium settings @ native rez. On the other hand, I'm suffering from a huge stuttering problem now. So very frustrating...

 

Ok I think I am getting somewhere now.

I have switched back to the 275.27 driver which has netted me an extra couple of FPS in all scenarios which is nice.

What I have noticed is that my GPU is basically pegged at 99% load which indicates the GPU is holding me back - despite being clocked at 575/1380/1760 (my highest stable OC). This also goes someway into explaining why the R2 (based on responses in this thread) is barely quicker than my pin modded R1 in the single player portion.

Further testing since yesterday has highlighted that there is no real performance difference between Medium and low as long as AA & SSAO (HBAO) are all off.

To make it playable; by playable I mean a minimum of 25fps with an average holding around 30fps, I will have to push the GPU even harder.

The 540m obviously has an advantage in this game over the 335m which would explain why a R3 can attain playable frame rates whilst and R2 with TS OC can't.

As an aside my desktop plays it lovely at 1080p with every setting either on Ultra or maxed out.

 

hmm so r1 is out of game here?

 

And the R2 from the looks of things.

(If you are running a R1 without a pin mod / SLG hard mod and no GPU OC you can basically forget about the single player portion).

I have only tried Single Player though so it sounds promising for the slightly less demanding Multiplayer.

I reckon with a GPU clocked at around 625-650mhz the single player might become playable on the R1 but TBH that is a bit of an ask even with the 0.95v GPU bios.

 

:c im searching for a desktop now, or playing it on xbox 360 sadly, gotta stick with games that run on m11x

 

All,

I have been messing around with this game since the Alpha and I can tell you that I am getting 35-50 FPS (depending on action on the screen) with the following setup.

R2 | I-5 | 4GB of Ram | SSD Drive (Samsung, default Alienware, not a self install)
BIOS Overclock 166
WHQL 285.62 Drivers
MSI Overclock 510 / 1224 / 948
Throttlestop

I wonder as I look through the comments if the SSD drive is helping me with performance. I know loading it will, but in the past games have loaded most all of thier resource requirments to memory. Could be anything from code design to a bug. Of course I am speculating...

Bottomline, its playable for me. Try and defrag if you have not already, and of course you could always consider the complete reload of the OS.

Regards

 

no, the R2 is not out of the game.

 

CPU is bottlenecking the R1, or so it seems. R2 improves a little on that with i5/i7, but get's held back by its GPU (or so it seems). I'd say it's playable on the R2, though (and tons of fun!).

 

I'm gonna try rolling back my drivers as well.

I played a few other games yesterday (Just Cause 2, GTA4) and it seemed as if framerate actually decreased with the new 285.38 drivers.

 

It is quite interesting as I seeing both my CPU pegging out at 99% load AND my GPU pegging out at 99% load as well.

I can only assume the R2 has just that little extra on the CPU side to push the frame rate up into playable territory(or at least more playable than the R1).

 

Hmmm, this is just weird. I've bumped up all the settings, except shadows, to high and am getting around 24fps in most full on areas in Single Player. The weird thing is, this feels so much smoother than when it goes to 30fps+ which just becomes a massive stutter fest. I'm using the built-in FPS indicator (render.DrawFPS true) which is giving me the same results as FRAPS.

My temps max out at 71C for the CPU and 67C for the GPU so I don't think that any throttling is occuring. What sort of temps are you guys seeing?

I'm really not sure what's going on here?! Lets just hope that a patch can fix this mess...

 

I am on an R2 i7 and today tried just putting the game on medium settings to see how it played. the single player played beautifully and so did the multi-player.

 

Just wanted to say that I am on and playing with low settings on my stock r1. Video is pretty good, but the sound cuts out sometimes. Kinda annoying, but I can live with it.

 

This is certainly interesting.

I can only assume that during 24fps areas you are staying at a relatively consistent frame rate, whereas when it goes to 30fps+ the actual frame rate is dipping and diving.

ejohnson - the sound is skipping as there are no cpu cycles available for the sound at all. I am surprised you are finding it playable on a stock R1.

I am going to have to do some further testing I think.

 

so the setting "set max prerendered frames to 0" what does that do exactly?? I'm running everything at Low but anything to help it make better would be great.

is there anything else I could change in those settings area to make it faster?

cheers

 

Exactly what I was thinking. A constant 25fps isn't bad if it stays at 25. If it is an average 25 with frame rate reaching 20 and going to 35, then it looks a lot worse.

 

Pre-rendered frames means the cpu is prepping the frames before processing. In an online fps you want everything to be processed as close to real time as possible. If you have any buffering or pre-rendering it means someone has already shot you and by the time you think you see them and are about to shoot you are DEAD.

 

I can happily report that I've been playing the campaign for the last couple of hours. All I have changed is the resolution down to 720p and using the Auto settings. It is perfectly playable now staying around 30fps in fire fights and only dropping down to 25fps when big explosions go off. I don't know why it is suddenly playable but I'm not complaining!

I'm finding the campaign alot better than some of the reviews I've seen have made it out to be. Sure it's linear, but it is fun. Especially that jet mission, that was awesome!

 

Great to hear that it's working well for you now! I agree with your assessment of the campaign. It's definitely not terrible (definitely better than the 75 that Destructoid gave it), though some random deaths are annoying.

 

Thanks man, hours of frustration have paid off. I have no idea what did it but the only thing I can think of was setting it to Auto in the video settings. I know what you're saying about the cheap deaths... at least they aren't too common.

 

So how are the r3 guys handling the game?

My r1 can play it, but the sound cuts out when alot of things are going on.

Also, just wanted to share a funny moment.
I got sniped by some guy on a rock, while I was dead and the camera was on my killer, someone from my team walked up behind him and stabbed him in the neck

 

don't think i could live with 25fps....if it dips below 30 it's not playable to me!

 

Ah, that's sad to hear. if you ever change your mind and want to give it a shot, the R2's are really running the game surprisingly well.

 

It is very smooth. Especially at medium. I get about 40fps in Operation Firestorm Map (with SSAO on) at 1280x768

 

Have you had the problem with sound cutting out when lots of things are going on?

I have been reading around and it seems to be happening to lots of people with much better computers than mine.