Microstuttering / stuttering (win8, AMD 6870) - BF3 - have I tried everything?
I'm having microstuttering / stuttering in Battlefield 3. Please help me, I fear the EA experts will never answer me. This is a BF3 specific problem, other games like Planetside 2, Far Cry 3 etc. works no problem and BF3 worked fine in Win7 before I switched to Win8.
The game is running a stable FPS of 50-60 with few spikes down to 40 there's a large amount of explotions, the stuttering can be felt even though it can't be seen on average FPS.
If I go the the edge of a map, like Caspian Border and look away from the map into the emptyness there's no spikes.
If I limit the FPS to 30 via the "gametime.maxvariablefps 30" command, I get no spikes, but are also forced to play at 30 FPS. If I raise it to 50 the game will spike if there's a spike and the FPS is below 50.
How it looks:
Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1FFRzbNuFk
Pictures of stuttering and system status while happening:
My rig:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT-UD3H 790GX CFireX
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black 3.2GHz 125W Box AM3 currently overclocked to 3.6GHz
RAM: Mushkin DDR3 PC3-1333 4GB CL9 kit Stiletto x 2 = 8GB
GFX: Club 3D Radeon PCI-E HD6870 OC 1GB DDR5 HDMI
PSU: Cooler Master GX 750W PSU - 750 Watt
Stats:
Both CPU and GPU is stable below 80 degrees celcius
Soundcard: Creative Recon3d PCI-E
Windows 8 Pro - 64 bit - fully updated
GFX driver: Currently 12.11 beta 11 with 12.11 CAP 2 but 12.10 doesn't work either
Always 3GB memory / RAM availible
What I have tried and didn't work(that I can remember):
- Updated all drivers possible
- Closing Windows defender + all background programs
- Clean uninstall of catalyst
- OC'ing CPU to 3.6GHz quadcore for moar power
- Removing OC
- Not upgrading to Windows 7 (don't be a douce and suggest it)
- Disabling of Realtek soundcard in Bios.
- Running game in all the variations of settings I could think of
- Tried making a user.cfg with variations of the following:
GameTime.MaxVariableFps 60.000000 (also 59 / 59.95 / 60 / 61 / 62 / 58)
Render.DrawFps 0
Render.DrawScreenInfo
Render.PerfOverlayEnable 1
Render.PerfOverlayVisible 1
RenderDevice.Dx11Enable 1
RenderDevice.TripleBufferingEnable 1 (or disabled)
Renderdevice.forcerenderaheadlimit 1 (or disabled)
Screenshot.Format png
UI.DrawEnable 1
WorldRender.DxDeferredCsPathEnable 1
WorldRender.SpotLightShadowmapResolution 1024 (also tried lowering to 512)
- Not having a browser open
- Updated Punkbuster
- Running BF3 in Win7 compability mode
- Removed and reinstalling punkbuster
- Checking that punkbuster passes it's selftest/**-
- Testing on different servers, maps and gamemodes.
- Opening the window lowering the computer temperatures with 15 degrees celcius
- Setting CPU power management to minimum 100% in windows
- Windows 8 was clean installed
AND THE WEIRD THING IS, one time suddenly it worked flawlessly, I played on 4 different servers without problems. Smooth fps at 50+, no spikes, all at High settings on a 64 player map. Then when I woke up and tried again next morning, it didn't work again.
Ideas? ANYONE?
I ended up fixing my issue, I'm not quite sure but here's the 3 possible things that happened. Although our memory problems are not the same, my RAM/memory didn't get filled up.
- Windows 8 installed an update to fix memory issues with me noticing
- Perhaps the newest line of AMD drivers actually fixed it.
- I dismantled my computer, and put it back together (I think this made it work, don't ask me why)
