Why 7970m usage in BF3 is 60%

You're cpu limited.





Type "render.perfoverlayvisible 1" into the console. Pics were from a Sager NP9150 with an i7-3610qm and 7970m.

edit: forgot to mention-- the numbers on the bottom left is latency, not fps. Lower latency = better.

 

That's odd. Never thought an i7-3610QM would bottleneck the system.

 

I didn't either, I was surprised. My friend's got his new Sager today and I was helping him set it up and I noticed that BF3 was stuttering for some reason. I thought it was just because of the AMD drivers at first but I guess now. Anybody else want to test it out? This was on a 64 man map.

 

Its just an isolated problem caused by 7970m. Nothing to do with the CPU.

 

Guys look closely at the bottom left side of the overlay....pretty obvious its been photoshopped. There is enough juice in the i7-3160qm to at least be on par with the 7970m, so I think it's just bad drivers by AMD.

 

The 3610QM isn't far off from an i7-2600 DESKTOP. The thing is extremely powerful.

HARDOCP - Battlefield 3 Open Beta - AMD Bulldozer / FX-8150 Gameplay Performance Review

The 3610QM has a similar passmark rating to the FX-8150. The HD 7970m is more powerful than the tested HD 6970. If Battlefield was designed to run perfectly under a certain processor group, it would be for the i7 line. I still believe this is the 7970m. Even mythlogic said their new "secret" driver sets are pushing 45FPS+ average on Ultra.

 

There is absolutely no way that a powerful 3610QM can bottleneck any mobile GPU or SLI or CF setup for that matter.

 

people think 3610qm is weak just because it is lowest quad core. lowest=weak.

 

Dunno, try it out yourself. Evidence indicates otherwise. Though I was playing on low to maintain 60fps (still stuttered into the 30s though). I'll try to get some more info with MSI afterburner tomorrow.

Metro rush in beta was 32 players. I was playing on a 64 player map. Dunno how the 7970m would affect the CPU speed, but it'd be nice if somebody with a 680m would chime in.

 

I am using a 680m and no problems with bf3, 50-70fps on high preset. 99% gpu utilisation.

 

no problem with 680m means 3610qm is limited by 7970m

 

Exactly what I was going to ask.

If the 3610QM isn't bottlenecking a 680M, it has no reason to bottleneck a 7970M. I'm no expert, but it looks to me as though Enduro switches to the Intel HD 4000 mid-game, which causes the CPU performance chart to take a dive.

Nice try, though


Edit: oops, jumped the gun yet again, sorry littlecx..

 

check your cpu clock, this happened to me a while back and for some reason my cpu was stuck at 800 mhz, so i was getting crap performance. then if it is stuck, power down, and uplug the battery then power up and plug the battery back in.

 

7970m limits 3610qm, what problem here?

 

This Enduro thing is holding the GPU back, AMD needs to fix it asap. Also 99% usage with GTX680M here when I was testing, CPU doesn't bottleneck, it's the Enduro.

 

No way it's bottlenecking by the CPU. It's much more powerfull than you need. I played on a two three generation older i7-740qm which is much slower and that wasnt' botlenecking the game. It's a problem caused by enduro and this happens in a few other games as well.

 

Is v-sync on? try turning it off, sometimes this limits gpu usage since it caps the fps limit to 60 or whatever Hz you are running at.

 

On what map with how many players? Go to a 64 man map and take a screenshot of the perf overlay.

Hm, that might be it. I don't think it was running in the high performance preset.

Look at the screenies, problem was that the CPU was limiting the GPU. The GPU will never cause the CPU to run slower, only the overall performance. So unless your GPU is bottlenecking you to <30fps you're still going to have dips into the 30s when the CPU is stressed.

No vsync.

I think the problem may have been the CPU clocks/power mode, I'll try again today.

 

well i use the ultra preset without AA and i pretty much get the same fps as you on certain maps. gpu utilization is around 70%, but i use the trottlestop trick, so after every session i have to go into sleep mode to turn the cpu fans off. turning gpu fans off isnt a problem, ah well you cant have everything...

 

unless I am missing something i dont see how your screenies show that CPU is bottlenecking GPU performance. Also, as its been mentioned before - 680m runs at 99% GPU utilization with 3610qm, so does 7970m with Enduro disabled, so I really dont think that performance drops have anything to do with CPU.

 

Enduro I guess : Enduro only power save to intel hd4000 , at a same time power save to cpu . It make performance drop . Wish new driver can solve this . Aug pls ........

 

Look at the bottom left of the screenshots. The yellow spikes are when the framerate dips, and the CPU consistently takes more time to process than the GPU, indicating a CPU bottleneck. This link explains it pretty well.

 

the link explains hyperthreading not 3610qm

 

what exactly do those spikes show? they seem to corelate with GPU spikes as well... even if it did how high CPU thrashing it still does not explain how exact same card with the exact same CPU can be producing much better fps in a system with no Enduro.

 

If you read beyond the first paragraph it explains how to interpret the results of the graph.

The link explains the spikes pretty well. CPU load depends on the map being played and other settings. It's very possible for one person to have everything turned up (or on a 16/32/etc. player map) and have a GPU bottleneck and never run into stuttering. I like to have 60fps+ at all times so I turned the settings low but I was still noticing framerate drops (hence why I tried the console command in the first place).

Don't take my word for it, you can see for yourself if you have BF3.

 

i've read the link, but you're missing my point - those spikes dont really mean much when gpu utilization problem is related to enduro. Its also debatable that your graphs show CPU bottleneck anyway as spikes for both CPU and GPU seem to be nearly the same. It also does not explain why other games or benchmarks that have very little dependence on CPU show low GPU utilization with 7970m.

 

That's a good point. I'll try to get some GPU utilization numbers on different maps today. As for the spikes matching, the CPU spikes are much higher than the GPU ones.

 

I have a 2.0 Ghz 2630qm Quad and the GTX 680M and don't experience any such slow downs in BF3. Default settings were Ultra but I have it on High at the moment and get around 50 - 70 fps depending on area.

 

no problem here 7970 BF3 muli

my videos

stock divers Battlefield 3 Multiplayer on Clevo 170EM ATI 7970 - YouTube

12.7 drivers BF3 Multi Clevo 170EM ATI 7970 drivers 12.7 - YouTube

 

fansomasz can you try operation firestorm map, especially in the centre of it? I've tried Caspian Border and I can also get 99% for some portions of that map, but then in other scenarios it can drop as low as 60%.

 

Well something to keep in mind about GPU usage in BF3 is that it is going to vary. I just tested it on my desktop which is an i7-2600k @ 4Ghz and a GTX680. On a 32-player Canals map usage bounced around between about 70-98% according to Precision. Generally it was mid-high 90s, but it dipped down to 80s and 70s reasonably often. I wasn't watching it every second since I was trying to play the game too but it was varied.

No Enduro/iGPU issues here, of course, this is a desktop system.

So if you are looking for "99% all the time" I don't think you'll ever get it, at least not in that game. That isn't to say Enduro isn't causing other issues, but less than 99% GPU usage isn't indicative of a problem, it seems to be normal for BF3.

 

Sycraft, is this with vsynch off?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

In the second half of this video he plays caspian border with 64p online. hes ussage is 99% even betveen explosions(somethimes wown to 95%) and he's getting two times better frames with no dips than on clevos/sagers. this is with enduro off-which you can trigger on alienware with 7970m.
Alienware M17x-R4 Battlefield 3 BF3 SP & MP Gameplay 7970m OSD 1920x1080 OC 950x1550 - YouTube

 

Yes, of course. Running pretty fast, 100fps+ usually. I tend to favour excess speed over highest detail for online shooties and having overhead for when things get more intense is how I like it. Still everything is on at least high, and some things on ultra. Then again the real desktop 680 is more than a little overpowered.

mahalsk:

I'm just telling you the results of my desktop. I'm not trying to claim there aren't Enduro issues, I'm trying to show that expecting 100% 100% of the time isn't realistic, particularly if I don't get it on a high end desktop.


Comparing framerate ranges and so on is useful, obsessing over utilization is not.

For that matter I've still never gotten a technical answer as to what utilization measures. GPUs aren't monolithic, they have a number of different subsystems. I'd like to know which one utilization is measuring (and if different programs measure a different one).

 

Hm, yeah I tried a 16 player map yesterday and the GPU use was still 60-70%. I guess it really is because of Enduro.

 

same here i am using 12.7 drivers and got no issues . people try install 12.7 drivers and see any chnage

 

The overclock surely helped performance too.

 

Yes for sure I also play at those clock but I have a weird felling that the higher I overclock the lower ussage I get.. but still play at 950/1400- not by much better perfromance increase as in that vid but a little bit better

 

that is amazing , how the hell you managed to get gpu utilization to 98-99%?

 

would this driver AMD Catalyst work with 7970m ? also is the installation of this driver is as simple as uninstalling the stock driver then restarting then installing this one?

 

It would work, but doing it that way would screw up your system. Simply download the driver installer program, run it, do a custom installation, and make sure that the only thing you select to install is the display driver. So leave everything else unchecked.

 

i did that but now only intel gpu is working and the ccc disappeared from the right click menu on the desktop , am i supposed to install the 12.7 ccc as well?

 

This might not really help but some interesting data anyway. During testing in Vantage we have found that the faster the CPU is, the better the graphics card performs also. So not only does the CPU score increase, the GPU score also increase.

However, overclocking the 7970m results in a much higher GPU score and overall score but the CPU score actually drops.

I'm wondering if CPU does ever so slightly hold the 7970 back and the higher stock clocks of each CPU help. The extra power draw of the overclocked 7970m could mean the CPU can't hold its turbo speeds and gets a lower score.

Thoughts?

 

I finally got around to getting BF3 installed last night and played a bit. Had no issues with my 7970. MSI afterburner stated my GPU usage was always at 99% during gameplay with settings on ultra. I'm running an NP9170, the drivers on the 7970 are stock, but the clocks have been changed (xoticpc redline boost - not sure of the clock speeds without looking at it).

I had been reading through these forums for weeks seeing this issue, and wanted to test for myself. Not sure how so many people are still having issues.

 

Issue only appears in multiplayer and only on some maps. Try operation firestorm, I bet you will see utilization drop when looking at the centre of the map.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

Luckily I still get steady above 40FPS +, so the GPU usage drop doesn't bother me in BF3

 

If that's the case then why are you worrying about it? An across the board under-utilization would indicate a problem, either that the CPU isn't fast enough or that there are serious driver issues. Spots on one map that have problems? Not a huge deal but that aside, it could be a BF3 issue. Perhaps for whatever reason the engine is choking on the map geometry there and not getting data to the GPU efficiently.

Across the board problems are something to worry about/investigate. Random spot problems are not.

 

Fwiw, I only get utilization problems on settings other than ultra. Ultra, for me leads to 95-99 % utilization, but when going to high or medium it doesn't scale at all. Utilization drops to 40-60%and fps are the same as ultra.

 

Unfortunately, the utilization drops seem initially unpredictable yet reproducible. If similar problems in ~10 tested games does not constitute an "across the board problem," it is at least a consistent indicator of an issue.

 

because my 6970m gave me higher fps in those parts than my 7970m? and its not BF3 only, i've yet to try a game where I dont have this issue. And yes, it seems that there are certain rendering elements that trigger the issue, but thats besides the point - alienware 7970m or p170hm 7970m users do not have this problem.
I bought the card expecting it to give me smoother fps than my previous laptop or my desktop gtx 480 and so far its been outperformed pretty badly there.