Ideas

MRASPZX's avatar
MRASPZX
Seasoned Rookie
3 months ago

High “Time Smoothing” Caused by CPU Bottleneck – Not a Network Issue

Hey everyone,

I’ve been struggling with a persistent issue in Battlefield where the “Time Smoothing” (extra interpolation delay) value keeps spiking extremely high — sometimes over 300–500ms, even when my ping is stable (30–40ms) and there’s no packet loss.

At first I thought it was a network issue, but after hours of testing I realized it’s actually CPU-related. Whenever my CPU frame time spikes or my main thread hits 85%, the Time Smoothing value skyrockets, and I start seeing:

Enemies teleporting or “rubber-banding”
Bullets not registering
The orange/red latency icon constantly flashing

Basically, the game engine (Frostbite) seems to delay rendering to “smooth out” the desync between the server updates and my local simulation — which means I’m effectively playing half a second behind real time.

I did some digging and confirmed:

It happens even on a wired gigabit connection
GPU usage stays low while  CPU cores max out
Happens only BF6

It looks like the game’s network smoothing buffer is compensating for CPU scheduling delays instead of just network jitter, which creates a massive input-to-visual lag that feels like high latency even when the ping is fine.

Could DICE or EA please look into optimizing main thread scheduling or providing an option to cap or adjust interpolation delay manually?
This issue makes the game feel unresponsive even on strong connections and good hardware.

Specs:

CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz (16 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Laptop GPU
Connection: wireless
OS: Windows 11, 
Average network Ping: 35ms

Would really appreciate if the devs could clarify whether this “extra interpolation time” is purely network-based or if it’s also compensating for CPU frame delays — because it’s becoming a serious issue for many players with modern CPUs.

25 Comments

  • OskooI_007's avatar
    OskooI_007
    Legend
    3 months ago

    Nichvill​ please post a screenshot with CPU and GPU performance graph on-screen. This will tell us if low framerate is due to CPU or GPU.

    Type this into the BF6 command console to see CPU/GPU performance graph.

    PerfOverlay.DrawGraph 1

  • YourNansAMong's avatar
    YourNansAMong
    Seasoned Newcomer
    3 months ago

    Not gonna lie, I could not follow the majority of what you said.

    But Im on a Lenovo Legion 5 so i decided to check, went into bios and I was already set to discrete graphics, decided to try the integrated graphics setting just to see what the difference was. The difference was a drop from ~80-100 fps to a solid 4 fps. Switched back real quick.

    hopefully someone over at EA reads this and understands what youre saying because im getting really tired of community servers and CQB gamemodes.

  • MRASPZX's avatar
    MRASPZX
    Seasoned Rookie
    2 months ago

    After quite a bit of testing (both on my own system and through customer feedback), I think we’ve found one more piece of the puzzle regarding the TN value spikes / Time Smoothing instability many players have noticed.

    🔍 What We Found
    On lower-end CPUs (typically under 64 cores), the game runs smoothly — no TN spikes or timing issues.
    On high-end CPUs, especially AMD systems or Intel CPUs with Turbo Boost enabled, the problem appears much more often.
    When Turbo Boost (Intel) or Precision Boost / PBO (AMD) is disabled, the issue completely disappears.

    I’ve confirmed this on several partner systems as well. We originally encountered similar timing problems during engineering simulations in ANSYS, and the same fix worked there too — disabling CPU boost features stabilized everything.

    ⚙ Possible Cause

    It looks like Battlefield 6’s engine is very sensitive to CPU frequency fluctuations.
    When Turbo Boost rapidly changes the clock speed, it can throw off the game’s internal timing or thread synchronization, which leads to the abnormal TN readings and stuttering.

    ✅ Workaround

    If you notice the TN value climbing very high (100–1000 ms) while CPU and memory usage look normal:

    Try disabling Turbo Boost (Intel) or Precision Boost / PBO (AMD) in your BIOS.
    Restart the game and monitor the TN value again.

    For me, and for several others I’ve spoken with, the TN value dropped to around 8–30 ms, and the stuttering was completely gone.

    💬 Summary

    Battlefield 6 seems stable on lower-core CPUs, but high-end processors may experience timing issues caused by Turbo Boost / Precision Boost.

    If your TN values are spiking even with stable FPS and ping, try turning off CPU boost features — it might completely fix the problem.

  • Throttled_Up's avatar
    Throttled_Up
    Seasoned Novice
    2 months ago

    This is the answer! If I hadn't hit my head on all of the silly assumptions the internet is making, I would have breezed right past your solution. But it did, in fact, completely fix the problem.

  • x-Scopi's avatar
    x-Scopi
    Seasoned Newcomer
    1 month ago

    This solution worked for me! But without turbo boost my config is getting like 30 fps so its unplayable either way☹️ 

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