Low FPS In All Games, Plus Random FPS Drops

Confused Mandarin

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Jul 24, 2013
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My Specs:
MSI GT60 Laptop
GPU: Geforce GTX 670M
CPU: Intel Core i7-3610QM @2.3ghz
12GB of RAM

In every game I've played, I get lower fps than I should. For example, in battlefield 3, I get 30-35fps playing on high, when I should (or at least I think I should) be getting 45-50. If I play on low, it periodically switches between 30-35fps and 50-60fps.
Additionally, whenever anything heavy happens in game (ie a lot of explosions, suppression, etc) my fps drops down to the 20s, sometimes down below 10.
During my normal 30-35fps on high, GPU usage is at like 98%, and CPU usage is well below 100%. During the fps drops down to 20s and below, GPU usage drops to 60-70% and CPU usage goes about to 100%. This leads me to believe my CPU is bottlenecking randomly, but I thought my CPU was good enough to handle battlefield.
These issues occur both in multiplayer and campaign.
I don't think overheating is an issue because I use a cooling pad and GPU temps never go above high 70s, and I have the latest CPU and GPU drivers and have tried using older drivers, so I don't think drivers are the issue either.
I recently factory reset my comp as well, in case I had accidentally changed some setting, or there was a virus my antivirus wasn't picking up, but I still have the problem.
One other thing I noticed was that Geforce experience recommends low settings for battlefield, even though my setup should be able to handle higher. Does geforce experience optimize based only on your setup, or does it actually run tests on your own computer?
Hopefully someone has a solution?
 
You might be expecting too much out of your laptop, those numbers are actually higher than I expected. It's clear that your GPU and CPU are maxing out at certain points which is a good thing because you know they are running. Make sure you are in high performance mode so that the operating system isn't throttling the CPU.
 

Confused Mandarin

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Jul 24, 2013
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According to notebookcheck http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-670M.72197.0.html I should be getting high 40s on high. And yes I am in high performance mode.
 


notebookcheck tested the game using a resolution of 1366X768 I believe your laptop has a full 1920X1080 screen, you will get noticeable lower fps because your graphics card has more to process.
 

Maxime506

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Apr 22, 2013
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Mind trying to go for the NVIDIA control software and set the gfx optimized for performance instead of quality, that u may gain 10+ fps. In FPS games the frames per second are more important than graphic quality if your laptop is not strong enough.
 

morgunus213

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Nov 9, 2012
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Your graphics card really isn't the problem 30-45 frames is what most games on console play on (unless its running and old engine like COD so you can get 60). Your real problem is your processor and it works like this. Your processor is running at 2.3GHz and it can over clock its self to 3.3 GHz for the purposes of battlefield it needs to be at about 3GHz all the time. So this is what is happening to you.
It starts off at 2.3 then it looks and sees that oh shit this isn't going to cut it i'm gonna step it up but it doesn't go straight to 3.3. it only gos to 2.4 then looks again. Then to 2.5 and again and again and again this process takes time and during this time while your processor figures this out that it needs "more" you get to eat suck frames. worse yet if you turn and look at a wall or something where you don't have a bunch of crap going on. it will say "oh i guess we are done now" and drop right back down only to repeat this process.

Things you can do to make this less of an issue. lower for FOV this will reduce some of the crap you have to render and thus that's less your processor to keep up with. If you don't see the people moving around then it doesn't have to think as much about them. Next lower your render distance this will suck balls if your sniping because people far away from you wont show up. BUT less things going on in front of you the better this is going to play out.
There are a few options that though graphical aren't entirely reliant of your card, Physics for one. if you have the option turn it off or down less random stupid bricks flying everywhere the better. i'm sure your getting the trend by now.

your card probably CAN do just fine i know i ran bf3 on high with my didly little 560ti its not an issue. you will also have the same problems in games like Planetside 2, saints row, GTA, and basically anything were you have a large world to screw around in. Because every step you make your processor has to forget everything it was doing and think about it all over again for a certain area around you.

"closed level" games will have much fewer issues. Bioshock Call of duty, Team fortress, Warframe, Most car games (ironically), and metro last night will hardly use your processor that's all GPU right there.

Things your GPU HATES TO DO your gpu hates to do anti-aliasing and shadows. it hates it gpu's just have a hard time thinking about all that all the time. its allot to think about turning these to low almost ALWAYS make for a jump in frames if you're GPU bound. Second, Resolution - how many tiny ass pixels its going to have to think about on your screen. pixel ratios work like this 1024x768 is 786432 pixles your gpu has to CONSTANTLY CHANGE AND THINK ABOUT. if you went to 1024x769 it would add another 1024 pixles to think about when you bump up your resolution even a little bit your probably adding hundreds of thousands of more things for it to be think about. and you have to ask yourself should i make it think about all of these pixels OR would i rather it just work on somthing else that would make this experience better for me. There are many resolutions that fit your monitor you might want to try one of them that is lower.

640×360, 854×480, 960×540, 1024×576, 1280×720, 1366×768, 1600×900, 1920×1080 are all for you lowing it down to 1600x 900 would save you 633600 pixles for your gpu to think about. and it will look to you nearly the same at 1366x768 you will see some (Jaggies) around the edges of stuff but your saving 1024512 pixels that's HUGE and you can expect that if you free up that many calculations you can spend them better on other stuff like shadows if you wanted them or smoke effects or whatever.
 

Confused Mandarin

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Jul 24, 2013
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Just tried; absolutely no change
 

Confused Mandarin

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Jul 24, 2013
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So if I overclocked my CPU so it just stays above 3ghz all the time, would that improve performance? And I did notice that the site I was getting benchmarks from was using lower resolution, so I will probably reduce mine.
 


Did you see if your laptop is indeed running 1920X1080?
 

Confused Mandarin

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Jul 24, 2013
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Yes it is, and you're right about the resolution notebookcheck uses. Still can't figure out the fps drops though.
 


Battlefield 3 multiplayer is pretty CPU intensive, try playing the single player campaign and see if you still experience these large drops. Between that and the high resolution it seems like your on par with the expected performance.