Lenovo y50 BF4 problem

Hello guys,

i ordered Lenovo y50 few months ago and i wanted to play games on it. CS:GO, Dota 2, Left 4 Dead 2.. everything run well, problems come when i play BF4(BF3)

I have version with i5 4200H @ 2.80 GHz and 2GB GTX 860m because i7 would be useless for my needs.

So back to problem, whenever I play BF4 i cant hardly reach 60-70 fps on low(everything disabled) which is kinda bad.. i have seen benchmarks for GTX 860m and they say i should be able to run medium at cca 100 fps but i am not getting those numbers, I also saw this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8WR9Duzk1U he also said: my settings: everything on low, except texture quality, texture filtering and mesh quality, those are on high settings around 120 fps.If you tweak it right (how should i tweak it right? what to do?)

I got latest nvidia drivers (344.75) and i am running BF4 on GPU not intel craphic and power managment mode is set to high performance.

I really dont know what should i do so i am writing this here with hope that somebody will help me.

PS: Dont mind my english its not my main language-

 

Then why you play BF3/BF4? They need quad-core CPU to run well as you've discovered.

 

Well I meant programming and stuff like that where i7 shine but for games i5 is powerful enough to play these.

 

Not mobile i5, which is dual-core. BF3/BF4 recommend quad-core.

Spoiler

Minimum System Requirements
OS: Windows Vista SP2 32-bit
Processor (AMD): Athlon X2 2.8 GHz
Processor (Intel): Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz
Memory: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 30 GB
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon HD 3870
Graphics card (NVIDIA): Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
Graphics memory: 512 MB

Recommended System Requirements
OS: Windows 8 64-bit
Processor (AMD): Six-core CPU
Processor (Intel): Quad-core CPU
Memory: 8 GB
Hard Drive: 30 GB
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon HD 7870
Graphics card (Nvidia): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660
Graphics memory: 3 GB

 

Okay so basically i5 is mediocore and i am done with BF, or is there some magic solution?

 

But even though there is like 50 fps difference beetween his i7 and my i5 when playing so thats pretty weird.

 

It isn't mediocre, you just can't expect 120 FPS out of it in a CPU-heavy game like BF4, even if you lower graphics all the way. That's not how it works when CPU is the limiting factor. Is there a reason you need more than 60 FPS?

Since you are limited by your CPU, you can increase graphics a bit without affecting performance much, if at all. So bump it up to High and enjoy your (perfectly playable IMO) 50-60 FPS. That's the solution.

Edit: Here are some things you can do to reduce CPU usage.

Audio:

1. Speaker Type: Hi-Fi or Headphones instead of Home Cinema (higher CPU cost) or War Tapes (highest CPU cost)
2. Speaker Configuration: Stereo instead of Surround

Video:

1. Lower Mesh Quality
2. Lower Terrain Decoration

 

If you want, for BF4, I suggest leaving "texture quality", "texture filtering", "Mesh quality" and "Terrain Quality" on high or ultra (always texture filtering on ultra, that's basically anisotropic filtering which has little performance effects) and EVERYTHING ELSE on "low" or "off". It uses a decent bit less CPU at that config and still looks pretty good overall. You'll also see better when playing, as grenade effects etc won't block your vision as much with effects and lighting turned down. Motion Blur is bundled into post process quality and it's a bit jarring in the game, and it puts extra load on your system that you really don't need as much at 60fps etc.

I hope those settings work for you; it's what I use for the game in general.

 

Mesh Quality and, to a lesser extent, Terrain Decoration, are the only graphical settings which affect the CPU to any meaningful extent since they control draw distance, object count, and LODs. Which is why I suggested that the OP lower them.

Audio settings also have a measurable impact on CPU usage since Frostbite has a dedicated audio thread. War Tapes is the most CPU-heavy, plus it has the lowest dynamic range, so it's really bad if you want accurate sound positioning. And unless you have surround sound speakers or headphones (virtual or physical), reducing the number of audio channels by selecting Stereo instead of Surround will also free up some CPU cycles without affecting sound quality in any meaningful way.

 

Yeah, I noticed you had suggested mesh quality, but with mesh quality on low, you have some problems with how you see some things in the game. I also said terrain quality, not decoration, to raise.

But nice to know about that war tapes thing. My friend said War Tapes was what he used, and I've been using that to some good effect. Which one is best to use?

 

Yeah Terrain Quality is fine, all it does is control geometric complexity (number of polygons) and pop-in of terrain and whether or not tessellation is used. Has no effect on CPU.

This is a loaded question and I can't really answer for anyone else as it highly depends on your audio equipment and setup.

However, I can say for certain that if you want accurate positional audio, for the love of god, do not use War Tapes. It's completely over the top, which some people might enjoy, but you can't tell where anything is coming from, at all, because it's processed and compressed the most (which also increase CPU cost) and has the lowest dynamic range. All War Tapes is, to me, is LOUD, echo-y, harsh, and muddy.

TV is less compressed and has higher dynamic range than War Tapes, but still not recommended unless you have trash speakers (built-in ones) or very low quality headphones that distort easily.

Hi-Fi, Home Cinema, and Headphones are what most people are gonna want to use. They have the highest dynamic range and minimal/no compression. The three are pretty much identical in terms of dynamic range, the main differences are in EQ, so pick whichever sounds best to you.

I personally prefer Home Cinema as it has the quietest weapon firing sound, which I feel is pretty important as it means I can hear other things over the sound of my own shooting. And even though it's supposed to be for multi-channel setups, I feel like it has the best sound positioning on my stereo headphones, with or without virtual surround.

I don't like Headphones because it has stereo crosstalk, meaning some of the left side gets sent to the right side and vice-versa to mimic what happens with stereo speakers. This raises minimum volume a bit and hurts accurate sound positioning. It also has pretty loud gun noise.

Hi-Fi is somewhere between Home Cinema and Headphones in terms of preference.

In BF3, Enhanced Stereo Mode is turned off because it increases my gun noise and should only be used with a stereo config like Hi-Fi or Headpones, not with Home Cinema. BF4 is set to Surround instead of Stereo, same idea.

TL;DR These are the audio settings I personally use:

BF3
Your Speaker System: Home Cinema
Enhanced Stereo Mode: Off

BF4
Speaker Type: Home Cinema
Speaker Configuration: Surround

Keep in mind I'm using a very inexpensive set of cans (Monoprice 108323) plugged directly into my laptop's headphone jack, integrated audio, and Razer Surround (which I may or may enable depending on mood, but my BF3/BF4 audio settings stay the same).

 

High Mesh is critical for multiplayer if you care to ever see them coming before they see you. Otherwise everything else set to low.

You can also fuss around with Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) if it lets you overclock (Maybe the i5 will go +200MHz) and increase TDP, etc unless it's locked down. But I still wouldn't expect miracles. BF4 is very CPU speed and thread heavy.

 

Well i hardly reach 40-50 fps on high, but i was thinking of the thorttlestop(i have cooling pad just for sure) maybe that can keep my CPU running at cca 3GHz maybe more.
Okay gonna try XTU also and audio settings. Are audio settings found only in-game or i can change them somewhere in system

 

Use throttlestop.. That will be your saviour!! Also look the turbo on as high as it can.go...

 

Well considering I've been accurately positioning people on War Tapes with my Vengeance 1500 V2 headset (7.1 simulated, 50mm drivers), I'll try Home Cinema first. Will see if the quieter own-gun-sounds help, and if I'm still able to hear others' sounds from far (especially their silenced guns). If that fails, I'll try Hi-Fi. I never use "headphones" in any game because it appeared to screw with the audio slightly. It sounds like it forces everything to stereo channels only, and the other channels get muffled. Anyway, thanks for the info

 

Sarcasm, right?

 

What do you mean? Mesh Quality affects polygonal complexity of geometry and draw distance of minor detail on world objects. It does not affect render distance of players and vehicles or remove entire buildings from the distance for obvious fairness/competitive reasons. Lowering Mesh Quality makes the game world a bit more flat and plain, but it doesn't put you at a fundamental disadvantage to other players running higher Mesh Quality settings.

Mesh Quality Ultra vs. Low

 

Nope, dead serious. The Lenovo Y500, Y510p, and Y50 all have a problem where Turbo Boost is automatically disabled during gaming and any other simultaneous CPU and GPU load, since apparently the EC is programmed to shut off Turbo Boost as soon as the GPU reaches 65C. This means your i5-4200H will be running at 2.8 GHz instead of 3.3 GHz while gaming. XTU won't help you solve this, only ThrottleStop can. Download the latest version of ThrottleStop, check Set Multiplier, and adjust it as high as it goes, which for you should be 34T.

An additional 500 MHz won't make a massive difference in BF4, certainly not as much as having a quad-core CPU, but it's better than nothing.

 

Okay now i was playing with your settings, results: nothing changed 20-40 fps on shangai and other maps that are a bit less demanding its like 10 fps more, it was played. Tried Low everything no boost maybe 5 fps.Is i7 that much better? Guy's fps 120 avg and mine 30-40 fps avg. That is damn big difference.

 

Don't use Hi-Fi or Headphones if you have surround (virtual or physical); they're designed for stereo. Use Home Cinema. War Tapes = Michael Bay.

 

Just a question which temperatures are risky? I am getting 50-70C now i am testing it out which is weird with cooling pad, lol.

 

Anything below 100C (throttling temperature) is fine.

 

Damn double post, sorry.

 

Well i am amazed, Throttle boosted my fps by a big chunk, (maybe because in nvidia control panel i disabled everything and set to max performance) in big gunfights, explosions and fire, drop below 40 fps other than that solid 60-50 fps avg maximum 80 fps. (I am using low quality but game still looks decent, maybe I will try to raise things a bit) The only thing that happened that my game crashed (I think its because of BF4) Anyways thank all of you that helped me, mainly octiceps, I now can play game normally without lagging. If something change I might post something here. Thanks

BTW: one more question: How to turn off the throttle stop?

 

On/off button is in the bottom-right corner of the main ThrottleStop window.

And please, for the love of god, stop playing on Low. Bump it up to Medium-High at least. You'll get the same FPS.

 

"texture quality", "texture filtering", "Mesh quality" and "Terrain Quality" on high ------ You mean these settings? I am not sure about it, 50-60 fps on low, thats gonna be like 30-50 fps on high, or not? I will check it tomorrow i have no time today, then i will post results.

 

No idea about the Y50s with i5 but the ones with i7 throttle at 65C which obviously has huge impact on CPU-heavy games like BF4.

 

Speaking of CPU i also saw video about enabling multithreading in bios. Is it possible to do that?

 

Every Y500, Y400, Y510p, Y410p, Y50, and Y40 has this problem. Thank goodness for ThrottleStop.

 

In my experience, fps change is basically negligible.

 

BTW: D2 Ultima how much fps do you get when playing with these settings?

 

Texture Quality and Texture Filtering have almost no effect on performance, but if you max out Texture Quality, it stutters occasionally for whatever reason (it's not related to VRAM) and looks identical to High. Mesh Quality has a big effect on performance, VRAM usage, and CPU usage. Terrain Quality enables terrain tessellation at High and Ultra, not a big performance hog but also not a a huge visual difference either.

Try these:

Motion Blur Amount: 0%
Weapon DOF: Off

Graphics Quality: Custom
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filtering: Ultra
Lighting Quality: Low
Effects Quality: Medium
Post Process Quality: Medium
Mesh Quality: Medium
Terrain Quality: Medium
Terrain Decoration: Medium
AA Deferred: Off
AA Post: Off (enable FXAA in Nvidia Control Panel instead, it's much less blurry)
Ambient Occlusion: Off

Hyper-Threading is already enabled by default. You need a modded BIOS if you want to disable it.

 

Okay thanks for mini tweak guide, i like to have lightning, shadow and terain decoration set to low, idk why but íts some habbit from bf3 where games run much more smoothly

 

Shadows have a big impact on performance. Shadow Quality in BF3 = Lighting Quality in BF4.

Also, before I forget, type WorldRender.LightTileCsPathEnable 0 into the console (~) for an instant 10-15% FPS boost with no visual difference.

If you want this command to run automatically every time, create a new text file named user, paste the command in, and save it. Then, rename the file and change its extension from .txt to .cfg. Move this user.cfg file to your BF4 directory.

 

You don't want to know. But my PC is a lot stronger than yours, so it's not a valid comparison.

 

Hehe, I was just curious.

 

I limit my FPS to 125 and usually get around that

 

Okay, so results with WorldRender.LightTileCsPathEnable 0 are that game doesnt drop under 50 fps that much. I just gotta keep an eye on CPU temperatures and everything will be fine(hopefully). Thank you for helping me out. I really appreciate it. :thumbsup:

 

So what settings are you using in the end? Medium/High?

 

Mix of both. Low on unnecessary things for me as shadows, lightning and terain decoration, high on texture filtering and texture quality and mesh with terrain quality medium. That kinda works for me and game still keep its look.

 

I tried some settings like Mesh, Texture qual, Texture filtering on ultra and other options to low and to user.cfg gametime.maxvariablefps 60 and run just run super great. From time to time there is like 0,5 sec drop 34-44 fps but then it goes back to 60. Throttlestop boosted my fps greatly.

 

Just curious, how much of an FPS boost does WorldRender.LightTileCsPathEnable 0 give you? Unlock the frame rate ( GameTime.MaxVariableFps 0) if you need to.

 

Not much it mainly stabilized fps drops, gametime work good for me i dont need 80 fps i just want to hit that stable 60

 

Okay, little problem here, throttlestop beta has expired.. What shall i do? Need help

Nvm, just downloaded 6.00 version, hope that helps..(Everybody says its free software, idk what happened)

Btw: BF4 Is working perfectly.

 

TS' beta for 7.00 was designed to only last till the end of this year. Unclewebb is working on a new one that might be out soon.

 

So, I can download 7.00 version again?

 

Yes once new beta 4 version is out.. I don't understand why Unclewebb had to put a time limit to the beta...