Is BF4 still a turd or am I doing something wrong?

Gaming
1

Mkay, thanks for all the help guys. BF4 is now playable and I'm basically satisfied with the Mantle performance I'm getting right now. The hitching still occurs a few times during every match, but everything inbetween those hitches is 100% buttersmooth with an average of 117fps during my last round!

For the people who might stumble upon this with a similar issue and are wondering what I changed/did: I created profiles for both BF4.exe and BF4_x86.exe (just to make sure), disabled crossfire in those profiles (both GPUs will still be used though) and disabled frame pacing (this is probably what fixed it). No more stuttering and the hitching (GPU usage suddenly plummets and you're getting 0fps for a second ro two) has been reduced to a minimum. I also disabled the AMD audio device (I have a TV connected via HDMI) and close the browser window when I start playing. And now I have to atone for my sin of creating a similar thread on the battlelog forums, someone is trying to convince me that Mantle is harmful for my setup because my CPU is "too good" for mantle. Oh well......

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I'm talking about performance and Mantle support. I had to switch back to Windows 7 and everything seems terrible again, at least performance-wise. Even with my i5 4670k overclocked to 4.4GHz I get terrible drops in framerate at certain parts of some maps and whenever "levolution" happens (no matter what graphics settings). Obviously Mantle is supposed to help here, right? Well, the game freezes and stutters every other minute if I use Mantle (no matter if I use one or two GPUs), so that's not really great. Obviously in the test-range everything works beautifully, 100+ FPS across the board and the stuttering when using Mantle also seems to be gone. My questions here are (if you're playing BF4):

Is Mantle working correctly for you? And while we're at it, does Mantle work better in other titles? I've heard people complaining on the BF forums than Mantle works way better in all the other games that have implemented it (I don't own any of them so I can't really test that myself), so it seems to be (again) an issue with BF4 itself and not necessarily Mantle.

Does crossfire/SLI work correctly for you? I seem to get stuttering even on high FPS when using both cards, I don't even know if it is the infamous microstuttering since every other game that supports crossfire doesn't seem to have this problem.

Can you play BF4 under windows 7 without any sudden FPS drops? I mean, it's ridiculous that this game doesn't work correctly with the newest i5 and a pretty decent overclock, I think the CPU resources required are way out of proportion and I still think that this game is an unoptimized mess. With Windows 8.1 and directX 11.2 it works way better from my experience, but that simply isn't an option for me right now and you should never have to switch OS for a game to work correctly.

 

- "Why aren't you posting this on the battlelog forums?" Because the battlelog forums are basically full of shit and as soon as you try to discuss anything related to performance you get told that your PC is shit or that you have no clue what you're doing. I'm definitely staying away from this toxic environment.

I guess this turned out as more of a rant than anything else, but I'm really curious if I'm missing something really obvious here or if this game is still a steaming pile of shit 1+ years after release. If I can't make this PoS game run well in the next few days I'll probably just uninstall it and, I don't know, play games that are actually good.

Full specs are on my profile, I'm on a completely fresh windows 7 installation using the 14.12 drivers. Every other game works perfectly fine, both GPUs scale really well in most titles and I haven't noticed microstuttering or any of the other crossfire issues (even on heavily Nvidia-optimized games like Metro Last Light).

2

You said its a fresh install, try download the updates. That might help resolve your issue.

3

Running windows 7, xfire 7870's, latest drivers on directx11, no drops. i7 3770k @4.8, 2x8 GB ram at 2400 with tightened timings, and it is all prime stable/gpu stress tests stable. GPU's are currently at stock clocks haven't had time to play with gpu overclocking with new drivers yet. Gaming at 1080 but a mix of graphic settings. Mantle seemed to have a memory leak last time I tried it. I haven't tried mantle in a month or so. 

4

I get really bad framerate drops in multiplayer, whatever graphics settings I use @ 1680x1050. It's probably my weaker processor always at 100% usage on all 4 cores during gameplay. Idk Bf3 runs perfect 60+ fps at ultra settings. BF is one of my favorite games, but kinda have given up hope right now.

Athlon 750k @ 4.1GHz

MSI R9 280 

5

4770k 4.5GHz GTX 780 16GB's ram and windows 7 I get solid fps as long as I give my 780 a little extra voltage. Seems my 780 is undervolted stock. might help you out? I just add 0.1v and all stuttering stops.

6

I had the occasional but recurring stutter with Mantle until I switched to Windows 8. Didn't go back to compare since it was such a big difference. Under Windows 7 I ended up using dx11 and lower geometrical settings to avoid my similar i5 being the bottleneck on some maps.

R9 290

7

The game is updated, as is Windows. I've also got the newest drivers for everything else.

8

Seems like people with i7s (and/or higher OCs) have a more enjoyable experience under Windows 7..... Hmm, it's definitely not a straight up bottleneck for me since none of the cores are hitting 100% usage, I think it's fair to assume that the game is just terribly optimized at this point. I mean it's not groundbreaking in any way so it definitely doesn't warrant the extra CPU power needed.

Oh well, there are so many other games out there and all of them run well on my system, I think BF4 has had its chance. 

9

I'd disagree that the graphics were not groundbreaking a year ago when the game came out, but some of the maps are just taking it a bit too far in their geometrical detail compared to others. For the most part it's running great with an i5, just not in every situation with the highest detail settings. With Mantle at least together with Windows 8 (for whichever reason) though, then an i5 is all you need.

10

Eh, the maps might be big but they're not that detailed compared to many other games (even in 2013), foliage in BF4 is also a joke compared to many other titles not to mention that destruction is very limited. I mean it's a good looking game, no doubt about that, but there HAS to be something wrong when I can stare at a wall in Shanghai with literally nothing else on the screen and get FPS ranging from <60 to 110. The whole mantle thing is a mystery to me as well, why does it seem to work better on Windows 8? The only real advantage should be DirectX 11.2,  but that's obviously not a factor anymore when I'm using mantle. Again, I would love to test other mantle games but I don't have any (and amazon.fr dicked me over, not sending me my gold awards and civilization beyond earth). I heard that mantle works just fine on those other games, so it's another issue with BF4. If it wasn't for the weird stuttering (maybe frame pacing with Mantle is not properly implemented yet for crossfire?) and the freezing every few minutes I would love to use it since my GPU usage is basically pinned at 100% when I'm using mantle.

11

On my 7950 and i5 3570k (both overclocked, i5 at 4.4 Ghz, 7950 at 1 Ghz core) on a mixture of high/ultra settings (mostly high aside from meshes), I get pretty stable FPS that generally stays above 60. I don't really notice any hitching during levolution, for the most part.

Have you tried disabling crossfire and running on a single 290?

Edit: I do use mantle. For the most part I haven't had any problems with it, even when it wasn't optimized for the 7950.

12

My problems with Mantle are:

1. I get microstuttering with 2 GPUs enabled which is not the case with direct3d for some reason.
2. I can't disable the second GPU just for BF4, even if I make a profile for both the BF4.exe and the BF4_x86.exe that disables crossfire (again, works just fine if I switch to direct3d rendering). I would have to disable Crossfire globally, which is far from ideal.
3. With Mantle there is not only the noticable microstuttering but the game also freezes/drops to a very low framerate from time to time (every few minutes). This makes Mantle basically useless since it can completely screw you over in all kinds of situations.
4. Memory usage with Mantle is way higher. This doesn't seem to be a massive issue and my VRAM is not filling up (memory leak) like others have reported, but it's still concerning.

With one GPU the microstuttering is gone, but IIRC the freezing/hitching is still there. I can try it again, but the fact that mantle ignores my settings in CCC is really annoying (globally enabling/disabling Crossfire all the time sucks). I've found some settings that seem to work okay with direct3d and both GPUs, but it's not really all that great.

edit: Tested it with a single GPU and Mantle, microstuttering is obviously gone and the hitching doesn't happen as often (it's still there though). It happens whenever I first load a map and then just randomly. I've noticed that both the GPU usage and the core clock just drop for a moment, which is causing the hitching. It's really unpleasant and can last from just a moment to a few seconds. VRAM is not maxed out when this happens and everything else also seems normal.

I would actually like to play the game this way, it's way smoother than both GPUs in direct3d mode. The problem is that I manually have to disable crossfire whenever I play BF4.... Maybe there's a workaround for that, I'll look into it.

13

Do you have it installed on your ssd? 

14

No, BF4 is installed on my harddrive.

15

If possible I'd try that. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, but with how many assets "pop in" at the beginning of rounds on my system (off my SSD) and then stay for the remainder of the round, as well as sounds not always playing at first... I'm inclined to believe BF4 likes to throw you into the game before it's loaded all of the assets.

All of your hitches could be when BF4 is loading off of your HDD in the middle of a match. The micro stuttering I'd think is the dual 290s, but if you do put it on your SSD I suppose it doesn't hurt to try with and without crossfire.

16

I'm not putting a 50+GB game on my 120GB SSD, that's just not going to happen. I could test it but I doubt that it's going to make a huge difference. Also, why doesn't it happen with DirectX? It doesn't make any sense IMO.

I found an old thread on battlelog about this, disabling crossfire for the BF4.exe (which doesn't do anything, crossfire is still enabled) and disabling frame pacing are supposed to help. I just played one round with these settings and the microstuttering is gone, which is really cool. The occasional hitching still persists but it's comparable to single GPU mantle for me. I might just have been lucky, but this seems to work for some reason (frame pacing is borked with mantle in BF4? Maybe?) Oh well, I'll play a bit more tomorrow and see if it actually worked or if it's just a placebo effect, but it looks promising.

Thanks for your help so far, but I'm going to bed and try it again tomorrow.