Pretty interesting Battlefield 3 preparation article, Sager up to the task?

I gave the game another chance and turned AA off too and the game is very playable now. It doesn't look very good at medium, but it'll do till the next gen GPUs comes out. Being able to pronate brings back the fun. 64 player servers? The way multiplayer games are meant to be played.

 

i have the ph151m1 with the gtx 560m and at 1080 low i get 45 never drops from 35 fps

 

On Single Player I'm getting 45-60 FPS with GTX 580M OC'd at 640/1280/1520 @ 80 degrees Celcius. I suppose I can crank out some more.

Playing on 1080p with Medium-High, Textures on Ultra, 2x AA and SSAO, Motion Blur turned off.

 

I have a 6990M and The game doesnt launch!. Keeps Crashing to DEsktop at the Intro. Funny thing is when im at 150/300 ( 2d mode and i Lock it there it doesnt crash) ??

Its only when im at my Stock Speeds / OC when I crash..

EDIT : Found the problem Seems that ATITrayTools Wont Work with BF3

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/7665659.page

 

Yeah i'm getting around the same frames as I did in the BETA however now have all the texture settings to ultra.

Caspian Border only did only run at 35-40 however so now have turned off AA all together and lowered AF to 8x. Now the game looks great and runs between 45-60 even on CB. Also looks great.

That is multiplayer 64player.

 

AA Deferred - Off
AA Post - Medium

What do these do?

I'm surprised how playable this game is around 45 fps. I mean 45 fps in Crysis 2 is very annoying, at the point of unplayable for me (I'm pretty picky) when it comes to mouse movement and fluidity of actions.

 

so with latest driver, and my specs all at stock I'm getting ~30 FPS on everything Custom set to Ultra and Max @1080p. My GPU temp maxes out at 84C.

 

That's pretty good Terminus, i'm hearing great things about the new Nvidia drivers, i don't think i've ever seen such a large advertising campaign JUST for drivers for a specific game. Every site i go to Nvidia/BF3 drivers is present in the ads program, i think it's great.

 

Turn off AA (Deferred and Post) and you'll see your fps jump to ~50 if not more.

Seeing as your running at 1080 you don't really need AA. The visual benefit vs frames is not worth it.

 

You guys using the GTX580M, are you on the 285.62 WHQL drivers?

 

Crap, I was so much into BF3, that I forgot to check for new drivers. Occurred to me just now. What did i miss ppl?

I have a 23 inch monitor and it look horrid with both AA options off. I guess its a question of the monitor and how far away it is. I get about 40-50 FPS with the 285.38 set with the two AA options off.

Anyone notice how FOV also influences the Framerates? I set it at 90 and noticed a small drop in FPS.

 

My game is set on Auto (mix between ultra and high settings) on the laptop in my sig. Game looks and runs great. What are people using to find their fps?

After about 3 hours of gaming my processor temp was in the high 70s and my GPUs were in the low 80s. Only using a single power supply.

 

@ ikethegreat

You can either use FRAPS or bring down console and type "render .DrawFps 1" without the "bunnyears".

 

I've been playing around with different settings and OC's with my 485m since release and I'm a little confused.. I'm running @1080p, all settings High except for Texture quality at Ultra, AA deferred off, AA post medium, motion blur off and vsync on, oh and HBAO on as well, think that's all the important ones...

Anyway, with the new drivers at stock speeds I was getting 30-35 fps, sometimes a little higher, never noticed a drop under 30 though. Then at 700/1400/1800 it was rocking 50fps, again sometimes higher but almost never lower. However after a few rounds the memory clock proved too high (and apparantly wasn't doing much anyway) and I incrementally backed down to 1600, fps stayed the same but the temps came down a few degrees, not sure why.

Now I'm having a different problem though, after several hours of playing at 700/1400/1600 the gpu temp got up to about 80-81C (using FN+1 and a laptop cooler) and the game crashed, no error messages, just got kicked out to the desktop. Actually the game was still running and didn't say "not responding" but it wouldn't come back up, and MSI afterburner had reset my clocks to default.

I know it wasn't overheating, as it's gotten up to 90C at stock speeds before (wasn't paying attention lol) and been fine, never even slowed down. I went down to 680/1360/1600 and it was getting up around 79-80C but never actually crashed by the time I was done playing so I'm not sure if it was actually stable, but I'm only getting 40-45fps (usually closer to 40) now.

So, (and sorry for the long post) two questions, is that overclock just not stable even though it isn't overheating? Or is there something else I haven't considered? And, why did going from 575-700mhz net me about a 15fps increase, but dropping just 20mhz cost me 8-10? That seems like a lot for that small a decrease..

Fake edit: I lied one more question lol, if the overclock IS just unstable but works for a few hours at a time, would it be dangerous/stupid to just run it that high until it crashes and then just do it again?

 

Lol. Good catch.

 

I get crashes even at 670/1340/1600, the highest and most stable OC i've found is 650/1300/1600, use that. I've never had a crash so far with it.

 

Yes, it's normal.

I usually test for stability with OCCTP, best tool around. Best way is to go as high as you can until artifacts appear, sometimes artifacts won't appear at 80-85C but if you let it go higher like 95C they will start to pop up.

In this case, even if when you game you will never reach +90C, you will sometimes get unexplained crashes, because the clocks are unstable.

One you've reached the limit when you no longer get artifacts regardless of temps, go 5Mhz bellow that and your set.

That's how I found my clocks . They are rock solid and I've been running them for 1.5 years without a hitch. Temps are below 90C unless I play while in bed.

 

Yep my temps were below 90 degrees at 670/1340/1600 but i was still getting full system crashes, so i lowered it down and haven't had a problem since.

 

So when I get random shutdowns, it's because of weird clocks and not because of the game?

I mean I haven't even clocked 10% yet, everything under 80 degrees, and crash to desktop is like once every few hours.

 

Thanks, I'll play around with OCCTP later tonight and see what I can get.

Is there any difference between the full system crashes and just (not sure what to call it) a gpu/game crash? I'm not getting any kind of lockup other than the game itself, system's fine immediately after, and no driver error messages either.

 

Yes there is a difference. Modern drivers and GPUs don't get your system to completely crash unless the GPU is seriously overheating or you have some serious overclocking or undervolting.

The only time my GPU got my system to crash completely was when I undervolted its 2D clocks by too much.

90% of the time your game would just either crash to desktop or simply minimize without any explanation or you will get driver has stopped working. All of these can be symptoms of overclocking or undervolting.

@philiphan What do you mean random shut downs?

 

im getting 75 at cpu ( i7-2630QM ) and 72 on the gpu 560M, (oc 900 core mem in 1400) everithing low at 1080p

 

@Blacky

Like game just quits. No kick message or server disconnect just an instant ALT+F4 like shutdown of the game.

 

And you are not overclocking or undervolting?

 

I am overclocking. It happened once though when I forgot to overclock. Temperatures are at 80 degrees MAX, usually between 76-78 on full load.

 

Have you guys noticed any visual differences between high and ultra settings? Besides -5 fps, ultra doesn't look any better than high to me.

 

That is strange. Are you sure you weren't overclocking?

How do you monitor your temps, do you leave HWMonitor to work in the background and alt+tab from time to time?

 

After trying OCCTP the highest stable clock I found was 665mhz for the core, and running BF3 at 660 for several hours went very well, no crashes and temps stayed under 80C. FPS is just a bit under what I'd like it be though, does anyone know if Texture Quality or HBAO has more of an effect on fps?

Also, as far as stability goes, would overvolting a little let me run those higher clocks stable if the temps were ok? I tried to do some research but I'm not really getting the link there, I thought it was more about temps initally but all those random crashes I had were at normal enough temps, so is it just the power or can the card not run higher regardless?

Last question, does upping the memory clock only matter if you're using 100% vram or something? I had been running at 1600 for no particular reason other than everyone else seemed to be, but 1700 was stable in OCCTP and in game. However i'm not noticing any difference in fps or benchmark scores with various memory clocks between 1500 and 1700. And at 1800 my 3dmark11 score actually dropped so i'm even more confused..

 

I will get to you later...

But a quick note: The vRAM is the most sensible part of your video card and most prone to failure, it is best to keep the vRAM frequencies on the safe side if you want to have your laptop last for more than 2 years.

It's normal to notice performance drops if you overclock too much, I will explain later why.

 

Sounds good, thanks. Is there any range for what's considered the "safe side"? I'm assuming that 1800 isn't safe, not sure about 1700 but like I said I didn't notice much/any difference from 1600 anyway so i'll probably leave it there.

 

I constantly tab out and check HWMonitor and Afterburner. I'm 100% sure i wasn't clocked then because I remember thinking "Oh well, got kicked might as well turn down the clock... it wasn't on?"

Also, when saying vRAM is the most sensitive part, is that the same thing as Memory Clock?

 

Yup, v(Video)RAM

Memory speeds never really do much, GPU/CPU will always do more than memory, and they are right, ram is more iffy on temps.

 

Excellent, then you found your max stable overclock for the core. If I am correct, you can set your shader frequencies separately. What were the stock frequencies for your card when you got the laptop?

Theoretically it is possible, but unlikely. Overclocking a card makes it more power-hungry while reducing voltages would cut some of its power, thus making it unstable. I know some people manage to do this, but this really depends a lot on the card. Personally I wouldn't do it, if your card is below 80C you really won't increase its lifespan by undervolting, if anything you might reduce it (unless you are also downclocking).

There is indeed a maximum safe clock but in order to find it you have to open your laptop: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...369470-how-find-your-real-gddr-frequency.html

My guess is that safe clock is 1500 Mhz, but it's just a guess.

In a simplistic way:
The reason why you get lower performance when overclocking is because all modern processors including GPUs have built-in functions which are designed for error correction. Generally the error correction functions don't use much of the GPU at normal clocks and temps, in fact they should use very little resources. When you overclock the number of errors the GPU and vRAM make increases and keeps increasing the higher you go, the GPU will struggle to correct those errors and thus allocate more resources to error correction instead of drawing your graphics eventually leading to worse performance.

The vRAM is very sensitive because not only it is one of the main reasons for GPU failure, but also you can't monitor its temperature. And trust me, vRAM can get pretty hot! When you overclock your vRAM, you will rarely notice the damage, it appears in time, more and more errors, crashes, you will keep reducing the clocks to reduce the number of crashes up until when you get crashes and lines even at stock settings. It's not really failure the word, I think the correct word is degradation.

I'm not telling you what to do with your card, I'm just giving you some info. Most of this stuff I've learnt with the help of other members here on the forum and from personal experience. Shame that some of our most knowledgeable members are no longer active.

 

Currently, My vRAM is 1580 (Stock is 1500MHz, so not even a 10% increase), I suppose I'm on the "safer" side?

Edit: Temps usually around 77-81, never above 83 degrees. Haven't noticed any errors/crashing yet. Just a once every other game green flashy thing. I suppose that could be a bad sign though.

 

You can't be sure unless you open your GPU and take a look at what it writes on the memories themselves.

 

On a separate note, I noticed today that on of my cores (2920XM Core #1) went up to 92 degrees while the rest were around 85-89. This was for about 5 minutes. Should I be worried?

 

Those temps are high, though maybe not unusual for the 2920XM. However, differences in temps between cores is not at all unusual. If you're seeing a massive (10-20C) difference on multithreaded applications, then I'd worry. But 3C is nothing to worry about

 

I get the same green flash randomly too. My temp never goes above 85C.

 

I've left my laptop idle for about 5 mins now. Temperature difference is about 7-8C between the different cores (39-46ish range).

What could that high temperature be the cause of? BF3?

Fake Edit: So I've looked around reading some articles and it seems that the GTX 580M really pushes the 2920XM to its thermal limits compared to their Radeon 6990M counterparts (difference is about 2-3C for the single GPU and about 6-7C between Crossfire/SLI).

My temps were very slightly more than their test showed (2-3C) so I suppose it's normal in my case.

Thank you all for your insight (calming my mind).

 

Battlefield 3 PC Performance Analysis w/ GTX 460M - YouTube

 

Can't wait for the 660M to come out so i can go full ultra +60 fps @ 1080p

 

Just tried it with all settings on ultra, 1080p, no AA, and Vsync ON (i hate screen tearing!) with my gtx 485m overclocked to 660/1320/1600.

Got anywhere between 35-48 fps, temps stayed between 77-84 degrees.

Also took a video at 1080p, and although with Fraps recording slows my fps down, i still got a solid 30 fps while recording!

 

For what its worth..

Sager NP5790 modded up (so roughyl a 5793.)

ie: X9000 cpu (currently running I think 2.8ghz, could go higher but runs hot
8800M GTX gpu, current drivers

I've got the 1920x1200 rez, but on Low it is too low on the framerate; I dropped down to 13xx*whatever and she runs pretty well (quite playable) for multiplayer. Scaling up such a low res image on high res display with a bit of AA doesn't do justice to it, but its _playable_, if jaggy (Still, a lot of people play at that native resolution just fine.. but I like high high rez

So yeah, even a 4 year old machine can do okay with BF3

jeff

 

why is everybody using fraps for viewing FPS?
you can do that with a simple inbuilt command by the game and not loose system resources.

render.drawfps 1

 

Fraps only uses resources while recording.

Anyways here's the video i made of Ultra Settings at 1080p

Battlefield 3 - Ultra settings and 1080p on GTX 485m - Thunder Run - YouTube

 

which software u used to record the video??thx!!

 

Fraps, the video shows i'm getting 30 fps solid, but without fraps it runs anywhere between 35-48 fps.