Battlefield 3 - Horrible Lag

[Dent1]

I minimized my client and whatya know. BF3 is the first game to kill 24gigs of RAM.

Hopefully this memory leak will be fixed soon.

Hopefully this memory leak will be fixed soon.

Disable Page filing completely. Problem Solved!

There is also a DOS CMD to get Windows to cache more aggressively into RAM (not HDD). I can't remember the exact command off hand but look it up.

Running off an SSD might also help things too.

 

[jed]

Just a small update. No new system yet but the game has been running smoothly at 1024x768 with only network lag. Need to try to get a direct wire set up instead of wireless and I'll be good to go. Will update with new settings in a few weeks when new rig is up.

 

[lyndonguitar]

Just a small update. No new system yet but the game has been running smoothly at 1024x768 with only network lag. Need to try to get a direct wire set up instead of wireless and I'll be good to go. Will update with new settings in a few weeks when new rig is up.

good to hear that you can already play the game. is it also running fine on huge 64 player maps?

 

[jed]

I played a few rounds with some TPUers last night on a new full 64 player AMath server and there was no performance issues. A bit of rubberbanding due to latency however, although my ping was around 20.

 

[Dent1]

I played a few rounds with some TPUers last night on a new full 64 player AMath server and there was no performance issues. A bit of rubberbanding due to latency however, although my ping was around 20.

If your ping is 20 consistant the issue isn't just your internet connection. That is a respectable low ping. (low as in good)

I see little evidence to say it's latency alone. My ping is about the same and I don't rubber band.

 

[jed]

What else would it be? Interesting. My FPS was smooth and there was no other choppiness in the game.

 

[Dent1]

What else would it be? Interesting. My FPS was smooth and there was no other choppiness in the game.

If it's rubber banding it is your internet connection, but it isnt latancy if its 20 ping consistant.

Could be your internet connection is general, not enough bandwidth for Battlefield 3 in general. What internet package are you on? Are you getting the advertised speed? Have you done a speed test?

 

[LDNL]

I had this rubberband effect because there wasnt enough vram on the gfx card to store all those textures. It would always stay on the fine edge of what it could keep on the vram but sometimes when a little extra was needed it would freeze for a few seconds and continue at a speed burst. This made flying a jet a nightmare.

Edit: And my 2 cents to the discussion of what graphics card youre gonna get. The 660GTX would be a great choice. Not as powerful as many red suggestions but always better when the support is there if you catch my meaning.

 

[jed]

Dent - My speed test shows 18 MS ping, 20.5 MB download, 2.05 upload. Internet always runs great and downloads fast... Usually steam games DL at about 2.5 MB/sec. I'm using a wireless adapter and not a direct connection though which is always a poor choice. Can't connect to the router though with a cable.

LDNL - Thanks for the info. My 4850 only has .5 GB so could be the issue. A 3 GB 7950 is in the mail.

 

[MT Alex]

A 3 GB 7950 is in the mail.

Wow, that's sweet

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Wow, that's sweet

yeah. He will run the game on Ultra and his native FPS, and be blown away. huge difference then what he is currently playing at.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Dude, indeed. I was totally impressed just moving from two 6850s to a GTX 480 (and the crossfire setup is technically a bit more powerful). In addition to the big IQ improvement from going to 4x MSAA from 2x (mainly on long distance views) I also noticed all kinds of smoke and dust and other effects in places that just wasn't really there before. This 7950 should be like night and day for you; whole new game.

Don't screw around with FXAA in BF3 by the way; it just blurs the whole image. You can handle 4x MSAA with a 7950 at your res for sure, if not 8x.

 

[Dent1]

Dent - My speed test shows 18 MS ping, 20.5 MB download, 2.05 upload. Internet always runs great and downloads fast... Usually steam games DL at about 2.5 MB/sec. I'm using a wireless adapter and not a direct connection though which is always a poor choice. Can't connect to the router though with a cable.

Then it isnt connection related.

Nothing wrong with wireless, if there was you wouldn't be able to maintain 20.5Mbit with a relatively low ping. Today's wireless cards are just as reliable as wired.

LDNL - Thanks for the info. My 4850 only has .5 GB so could be the issue. A 3 GB 7950 is in the mail.

The 4850 is definitely a bottleneck its specatcularly below standard for BF3. Not because it has 512MB of VRAM, but because its too old to render these complex environments fast enough. Even if the 7950 had 512MB it would still be plenty powerful enough to render BF3 at an high frame rate, the shortfall of VRAM can be borrowed from the main memory (not that you have alot of system memory to borrow anyways).



Also just upgrading the video card isnt enough, because 4GB of system memory falls below the threshold required for BF3, this area needs to be upgraded to stop your system memory from the significantly slower HDD.

 

[EarthDog]

Outside of being slow, ram sure as heck is the issue with that card. The main memory is slower than the vram I believe(?) not to mention because it has to go through the system bus there is added latency. 1.5GB at 1920x1080 Ultra is about the minimum you want for that game.

 

[jed]

Thanks for the additional responses guys... Dent - No worries, a whole new system is in the mail. 7950, 8350, 8 GB RAM, 990 MoBo.

 

[Dent1]

Outside of being slow, ram sure as heck is the issue with that card. The main memory is slower than the vram I believe(?) not to mention because it has to go through .

Modern RAM is hitting reads / writes of up to 10,000MB/sec with latency in the nanoseconds. VRAM is faster than main memory, but in the real world it's going to make little difference. Video cards never have enough VRAM to begin, even if you have a 3GB video card it'll still need to borrow from the main memory on occasions.

The big issue is when you don't have enough RAM and it borrows from the HDD, because read / write is only 100MB sec and random access latency is about 10m/s. Its very slow.

Thanks for the additional responses guys... Dent - No worries, a whole new system is in the mail. 7950, 8350, 8 GB RAM, 990 MoBo.

In all honesty, I'd recommend getting more than 8GB of ram. Personal tests I did myself on Battlefield 3 last year shows that it it uses just over 5GB of main memory after a fresh installation of Windows. I only run 1440x900. I would suspect that 1920x1080 would require closer to 8GB which means you will be hovering just above the minimum memory specification still. Memory is so cheap, go all out buy 16GB of RAM. Even if you don't need it now you'll be better prepared for upcoming games i.e. Crysis 3, GTA 5 etc.

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks!

RE: Vram and using the HDD (READ THIS - shows vram usage for popular games). Why would it borrow unless some vRAM acts like system memory a bit and always has a little something paged out? I dont understand that statement so long as there is vRAM available (and per that link, most times it is with a 2GB+ card at 1920x1080).

EDIT: I see you meant system ram, disregard.

 

[jed]

Dent - Thanks for the input. If BF3 is still having issues I'll upgrade it to 16 G but for now I'll leave it. RAM is so easy to swap and buy that it's not a big deal if I need to upgrade. Would rather save a few bucks right now however as I initially was just looking for a GPU upgrade and it turned into a whole new system, LoLz!

 

[EarthDog]

4GB is really not enough... the move to 8GB is really big for this game. Its $35-$40 for 2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz... sell your current kit for $20 or something and take $15 towards that $40..

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO annoying there are no editing functions on an edit without going advanced.. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :shadedshu

 

[Dent1]

Thanks!

RE: Vram and using the HDD (READ THIS -

Its only telling you the VRAM usage in superficial terms i.e. it says 2604.8MB of VRAM @ 1920x1080. But it doesn't tell you how much data is being stored in the system's RAM or on the HDD. Computers store and access data in many places unpredictably.

Also 2604.8MB is very near to 3GB. BF3 is a year old. It's a given that next years game will pass the 3GB VRAM threshold and this is where the main memory comes into effect.

Bear in mind when I said BF3 uses more than 5GB @ 1440x900 I'm factoring in running the BF3 application launcher i.e. BF3.exe as well as the operating system overheads.

Why would it borrow unless some vRAM acts like system memory a bit and always has a little something paged out? I dont understand that statement so long as there is vRAM available

VRAM works almost like system memory. It's just a quicker store of memory. Effectively it's a temporary reserve for small game textures. It's not designed to replace system memory but to work alongside it.

 

[EarthDog]

Right... for the most part, we are talking vRAM right?

Just a note BF3 is odd in that the amount of vRAM it uses seems to be dynamic. In my experience, at 1920x1080, 1.5GB is enough to run this game without hiccups due to vRAM (say 560ti 448c). Yet with 2GB use goes up, and 3GB even more. That tells me we are running out of vram would you agree? Now, here is the kicker.. I play this game at 2560x1440 with a 2GB GTX680 with ZERO hiccups.

I guess I havent heard anyone group together the system ram and vram together as they are completely separate things.

Oh well, thanks for the info.

EDIT: system ram is close to 20,000MB /s (according to AIDA), but your point still remains.

 

[Dent1]

In Windows 7, if you go into Screen Resolution > Advanced Settings > Adapter.

It should show you much memory your video card can access from the main memory. The more main memory it has the bigger VRAM allocation Windows will give it.

In my case I have 3839MB of addtional memory acting as VRAM, making a 5887MB total of VRAM potentially.

EDIT: system ram is close to 20,000MB /s (according to AIDA), but your point still remains.

Yes, it depends on the bus speed of the RAM 1600MHz / 1800Mhz / 2000Mhz etc.

 

[jed]

4GB is really not enough... the move to 8GB is really big for this game. Its $35-$40 for 2x4GB DDR3 1600Mhz... sell your current kit for $20 or something and take $15 towards that $40..

SOOOOOOOOOOOOO annoying there are no editing functions on an edit without going advanced.. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :shadedshu

Hey mate. I've got an 8 GB kit sitting next to me as we speak. Waiting for other parts to upgrade. Thanks for the concern

 

[EarthDog]

In Windows 7, if you go into Screen Resolution > Advanced Settings > Adapter.

It should show you much memory your video card can access from the main memory. The more main memory it has the bigger VRAM allocation Windows will give it.

In my case I have 3839MB of addtional memory acting as VRAM, making a 5887MB total of VRAM potentially.

Right, allocated, but not necessarily used, correct? So, while its nice to have another bucket, it would be even better to know what is actually IN that bucket if anything (depending on the game/res/settings etc).

/we are drifting a bit OT, sorry about that jed!

 

[Dent1]

Right, allocated, but not necessarily used, correct? So, while its nice to have another bucket, it would be even better to know what is actually IN that bucket if anything (depending on the game/res/settings etc).

/we are drifting a bit OT, sorry about that jed!

It's unpredictable. It depends on the game, what is happening in the game and how the game's engine and/or windows decides to manage the resources available. The rational will be in real time.

Realistically there is never enough VRAM so it will be borrowing resources whether from the main memory or HDD or both.


This is an example of the unpredictable nature of memory:

A game duplicates some textures from the VRAM to the main memory, The VRAM is then emptied to store more recent textures. 10 seconds later you change scene in the game and now it has to fetch a portion of those old duplicates from the main memory and copy it back to the VRAM. Maybe the computer realises only 20% of those old textures is needed as you've moved your avater's ingame coordinates to (x,y) the system copies back 80% to the main memory, keeps 10% in the HDD just in case and leaves 10% in the VRAM. You kill somebody and you face coordinates to (x,y) now 2% of the textures on the HDD 1% from the main memory and 4% from the VRAM is needed. The system makes an educated decision to flush the rest of the textures to make room for more. Imagine your computer doing a more complex version of that a million times for every 20 minutes you game.

experience, at 1920x1080, 1.5GB is enough to run this game without hiccups due to vRAM (say 560ti 448c). Yet with 2GB use goes up, and 3GB even more. That tells me we are running out of vram would you agree? Now, here is the kicker.. I play this game at 2560x1440 with a 2GB GTX680 with ZERO hiccups.

Little to do with the VRAM. For example an GTX 680 with 1GB would still outperform a 560ti with 3GB of RAM.

The GTX 680 has a much powerful architecture in general, newer than the 560ti and was designed for more advanced rendering and this is reflected in the price. GTX 680 is high end, 560ti was midrange. The texel rate, pixel rate, memory bandwidth of the GTX680 is in a different league so it had a huge advantage at higher resolutions and with anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled.