Need your technical Advice on Battlefield 3

Hi,

I am an old BF series player and I am not here to complain about the netcode of Battlefield 3 or server lag.

I have a problem and I need your professional view on the possible root causes. Is it my CPU? my GPU? or my connection?

On the same laptop (CPU: i7 2.0GHz, 8GB RAM, AMD 6770M) I started playing bad company 2 around 4 years ago on a 4mbps DSL connection and it was smooth on max settings 720p resolution with little server lag. I was a top scorer and my K/D was around 2.6 over the course of a year.

Time passed, my DSL dropped down to 1mbps and I couldn't afford running dust cleaning maintenance to my laptop anymore; dust has piled up on my GPU and CPU fans and the frame rate has dropped on all the games i used to play on the same machine. When I used to clean the dust and replace the thermal paste the performance would kick back up like a brand new unit.

Now bad company 2 stutters even on 1078x760 resolution, all settings low.

If i reduce the room temperature to 16 degrees Celsius it becomes playable again but I still have one VERY annoying problem which extends to battlefield 3 as well.

I am always 1 or 2 seconds ahead of what I see in front of me on the screen. All players, and I mean all of them top to bottom on the scoring list, see me first and kill me first in close encounters. Their bodies and bullets appear at the same time in front of me on the screen. I don't see them rubber banding or lagging they are running smooth but they instantly kill me as soon as they appear. It skips the whole aiming and gun fight bits. I didn't have this problem before in bad company 2. Now I have it in Bad company 2 and BF3.

i activated render.drawfps 1 in BF3 and, on all settings low and a 800x600 resolution, my FPS keeps playing by the second from 19 to 40. My ping is avg 105 on BF3 servers, most players have less than 70 ping but I also have the same problem with players having a higher 120 ping.

So I am not sure anymore what is causing me to lag behind like that? Is it my CPU, my AMD 6770M GPU? or my 1mbps DSL with 105 ping? (maybe i have high jitter?)

I need to know what to improve on first when upgrading.

Thanks.

 

Cleaning dust and repasting is probably the cheapest thing you can do with a laptop. $10 for a tube of thermal paste, $4 for compressed air, and use paper towel and isopropyl alcohol... that should last for a half dozen or more repastes at least.

I would do that first.

 

Thanks HTWingNut.

I dont have the technically competency to do it myself, i tried. I usually take it to a PC shop and they do it for me for $40.

I only have this lag/sudden death problem in close encounters and when the enemy is aiming at me. I just freeze in my place and cant react until I am dead.

Is this a hardware issue due to overheating CPU/GPU? or is there something other than ping in my connection which is causing it? My K/D has droped from 2.6 down to 0.5 maybe less.

When I snipe from a long range or use mortar everything is smooth and i have none of these issues.

 

alright i will make it easy for you and would appreciate those who play BF3 can run this small test.

press the tilde key (~) and type down render.drawfps 1

This will show you your frame rate per second as you play. Can you report your results during 5mins of gameplay? I want to know if it keeps on varying across a wide range or just hovers around the average.

My own observation is that it varies from 19 to 40 all the time. The frame rate is not stable at all. Maybe this is causing my in-game lag when other players appear in front of me.

Is your frame rate stable especially when you are in a close encounter with an enemy? does it plummet?

 

Why don't you track your temperatures using HWInfo64 or GPU-z or use MSI Afterburner to see GPU utilization and temperatures during gaming. FPS will vary throughout the game. I don't play BF3 any more but BF4, and it can drop in FPS if there's a lot of action. But it sounds like throttling is going on and the only way to remedy that is to clean your laptop internally and repaste. You said yourself cleaning and repasting made it respond like a new machine. It's not that hard to do, really. Empower yourself...

 

Hi. There is a problem with Battlefield 3's netcode, and consequently with Battlefield 4's. The game does not work very well above ~60 ping, and the game also lies about your in-game ping a lot. I will say that you usually have approximately +25 ping to whatever the game states you do. So for example, if you have "70" ping in game, your ping is actually approximately 95. So that may be your issue. With a high ping in the game you either need to use a lot of cover mechanics/enemy prediction (basically get the drop on them) and your skill needs to be through the roof compared to the rest of the enemies in order to combat things well. The fps isn't too much of an issue. It makes things feel better and of course dropping under 30fps is a huge detriment, but the game updates so slowly you wouldn't even notice. The game updates on a 100ms latency, which means it's just laggy for everyone. The reason you feel you're being shot instantly is because they shoot at you and kill you and THEN the server updates and applies all the damage instantly. When you kill people in 4-5 bullets, they feel the same.

 

1. Drop everything to low in BF3 in game setting, close game.

2. Create a CFG file in BF3 folder, named user.cfg

Code:

WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 256
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 0
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurForceOn 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurFixedShutterTime 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurMax 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurQuality 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurFrameAverageCount 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurMaxSampleCount 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurNoiseScale 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurMaxSampleCount 0
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapEnable 0
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 0
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 0
RenderDevice.Dx11Dot1Enable 0
RenderDevice.Dx11Dot1RuntimeEnable 0
renderdevice.renderaheadlimit 1
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 0
PostProcess.DynamicAOEnable 0
WorldRender.TransparencyShadowmapsEnable 0
WorldRender.MotionBlurEnable 0
Worldrender.fxaaenabled 0
render.drawfps 1
Postprocess.dynamicAOEnable 0
gametime.maxvariablefps 59

maxvariablefps 119 if playing on 120hz (or system supports 120hz+)


Lock this file. (read only)



3. Locate bf3/setting/profsave_profile in user documents

make sure that a part of your profsave_profile has these options

Code:

GstRender.AmbientOcclusion 0
GstRender.AnisotropicFilter 0
GstRender.AntiAliasingDeferred 0
GstRender.AntiAliasingPost 0
GstRender.Brightness 0.400000
GstRender.ColorblindSupport 1
GstRender.ConsoleAntiAlias 1
GstRender.Contrast 0.500000
GstRender.EffectsQuality 0
GstRender.Enlighten 0
GstRender.FieldOfView 90.000000
GstRender.FullscreenScreen 0
GstRender.MeshQuality 0
GstRender.MeshQualityOld 0.000000
GstRender.MotionBlur 0.000000
GstRender.MotionBlurEnabled 0
GstRender.OverallGraphicsQuality 5
GstRender.ResolutionHeight 720
GstRender.ResolutionHertz 0
GstRender.ResolutionWidth 1280
GstRender.ScreenSafeAreaHeight 0.950000
GstRender.ScreenSafeAreaWidth 0.950000
GstRender.ShaderQuality 0.000000
GstRender.ShadowQuality 0
GstRender.StereoConvergence 1.000000
GstRender.Stereoscopy 0
GstRender.TerrainQuality 0
GstRender.TextureQuality 0
GstRender.TransparentShadows 0
GstRender.UndergrowthQuality 0
GstRender.VSync 0
GstRender.VSyncEnabled 0
GstInput.Deadzone 0.300000
GstInput.HoldButtonToZoom 1
GstInput.HoldForBreathControl 1
GstInput.MouseRawInput 1

4. In amd control panel, turn off any VSYNC option, and turn off any antialiasing options. Flip queque size [1].



This option make bf3 run at it's lowest graphics setting, even lower than possible compared to in game option.

 

BF3's netcode is way snappier than BF4's. A lot of people like LevelCapGaming have reported on this. It's pretty obscene. Maybe I'm of the minority, but I've never had serious netcode issues in BF3 despite playing over WiFi whenever I'm on my laptop. Even during the week when BF3 was free and the servers were packed with noob laggers from China with upwards of 200ms ping, I had no problem pulling off 4-5:1 kdr rounds with interpolation set to 0, which made the higher pingers skip across my screen. BF3 isn't CS or arena shooters in terms of netcode for sure, but it's definitely not the worst I've ever experienced. P2P in MW3 and S4 League was much worse for example.

 

BF4 feels better w/ 30hz

 

I would cap at 60FPS. I doubt a system with i7 2.0GHz and 6770m would have a 120Hz screen.

 

I will agree that it is not the worst I've ever used, and MW3 is indeed a worse deal. It is possible to do very well in the game, but as I had said either you have very good map knowledge and can surprise people, or you simply have THAT much more skill than everyone else. Some people don't have that skill and just do mediocrely. And yes, BF4 after a couple patches was WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY worse. No contest. BF4's beta (and apparently their new 30 tick servers), however, was a significant enough improvement over BF3 that I was actually excited for the game from playing said beta. Of course the game came out, was worse than its "beta" (same story with Titanfall too) and we never heard good things from it again.

 

I will represent the case in a more logical and to-the-point manner.

(Thanks Mobius 1 for the manual configuration instructions, i will try them out out of curiosity)

Please let us not blame netcode of BF3 in this particular case. It is not the reason behind my problem described above. This is why:

1- Bad Company 2 was all fine and then the problem of unplayable close encounters appeared on the same laptop. Of course no netcode was changed by DICE for bad company 2. I have been playing the latest version ever since.

Possible causes: 1- Overheating due to dust accumulation. 2- My slower DSL (4mbps to 1mbps) connection and moving to a different country.

In fact the problem is when I am aimed at, i am instantly dead. I cannot react and the aiming animation of my enemy is instantly accompanied with his bullets and me dying, regardless of his skills or ping. Noobs with very low KDR and pros with high KDRs behave the same when this happens.

2- The second reason I dont believe it is netcode is that the Exact same problem is replicated in BF3 ( I am not denying the existing netcode problems but i have a bigger issue here)

I am here trying to investigate is this due to overheating OR due to some latency factor in my new DSL connection? That's what i want to narrow down.

Observations so far:

1- Players with higher ping than mine (and low skill) beat me in close encounters because i lag when they aim at me. Same story with lower ping players. Close encounters are unplayable anymore on my machine, i always end up dead and things happen much faster than a person can react. I am not talking about being trapped but face to face encounters.

2- When I am not touching the keyboard and mouse and leave my soldier looking straight ahead at the open space of the battlefield, my frame rate varies by the second from 19 to 40. This is strange to me as there is no real action going on in my direct vicinity.

From these 2 observations, do u think it is because of a connection issue? (high jitter even if the ping is relatively low) or is it a GPU/CPU overheating issue ?

 

Sounds most likely like CPU overheating. I would clean your vents out.

 

Try set network interpolation to 0 (network smoothing)
For BC2, try this injector tool to eliminate any mouse accel in game (BC2, no raw input) - as a warning, you cannot click on anything in game, only when shooting can: FNATIC.com: Downloads: RInput - Win Vista/7 Acceleration removal

Combine these 2 fixes for possible netcode issues
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0O-NoQcmFk
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ggrbBeTAPg


Mouse optimization guide
1. Don't use USB3
2. Use ports that are connected to mobo, not daughterboard (for example, my N43 has 2 PCB, 1 extra for USB3/2 port on rightside - do not connect to the USB that is located in the extra PCB)
3. Do not use any mouse that has a
-Green lens
-Advertised max DPi of 5700/5600 or 8200 (16400DCPI)
-Anything that says "laser"
-Anything that says "twin sensor" "double sensor" "twin eye"
4. Use cloth mouse pad with black uniform color. For example, steelseries QCK, artisan hien/hayate.
5. Make sure mouse feet not worn out.
6. Read: Gaming and mouse response BIOS optimization guide for modern PC hardware - 2013 r0ach edition
7. UNINSTALL any software that you do not need - using "revo uninstaller pro"
8. Set mouse polling rate in software then use this tool to ensure extra stability (apply 1x for 1 mouse in same USB port, changing USB port or mouse model will require to run setup.exe again): Changing USB Polling Rate to 1000hz (or lower)

Yeah, I would advise on using canned air to blow the dust from the heat sink fins.

ANY fps is affected by game frame-per-second fluctuation, you skip frames = miss out on events that occurs inbetween like damage indicator, etc.

1. Inherent netcode issue
2. CPU overheat, GPU throttle


Download throttlestop and untick

-BD prochot
-Power save
-Disable turbo
-EIST
-Log file
-More data

Set multiplier to as high as it allows

Click option
-Turn off battery monitoring
-Uncheck show cpu/gpu - cpu mhz
-Check do not reset fiv/vid on exit
Start minimized