Battlefield 3 beta choppy

[vegawow]

Trying to play the Battlefield 3 beta, it is super choppy and completely unplayable. The performance monitor on my G15 show my CPU maxed at 100%. This is the first game I have seen this happen on. I am meeting minimum system requirements for the game. I have all the video settings in the game on LOW.

My specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual core processor 5200+ (2.7GHz)
NVidia GeForce 9500GT
500W pwr supply

Which component do you think is holding me back?

Thank you!

 

[C0rehound]

Have you tried the nVidia preview drivers that have been tweaked for BF3? How much RAM do you have?

And not to be an arse but to answer your question; pretty much all of it is holding you back. You would benefit greatly from a quad core CPU and a stronger GPU. Also keep in mind that this is still a BETA, end results may be better.

 

[vegawow]

4gb of RAM. I did install the nVidia driver for BF3, didn't help much. Yeah it looks like I'm going to have to upgrade for this game, which sucks. I guess being right at the minimum requirement isn't going to hack it to play.

 

[13thmonkey]

i'm not surprised, lower your resolution will help, the quality settings aren't doing a lot at the moment.

 

[C0rehound]

Meeting the minimum requirements might cut it for a decent single player experience, but multiplayer is a whole different story. For not to much money you could pick up a Phenom 2 x4 and a new GPU and get a pretty good increase in performance.

 

[whytethunder]

BF3 is running at reduced setting for stability. Keep in mind this is beta, but as they continue to roll out new maps, modes etc settings should open up.

 

[gamerk316]

Everybody knew BF3 was going to be very CPU heavy. It actually uses all of my 2600k, even the HT cores...Nothing short of a quad will be able to run the game well.

 

[vegawow]

My motherboard has a PCI Express x16 gpu slot. Can I put a PCI Express 2.0 x16 card in it? Newegg only lists one gpu that is PCI Express x16, which really limits my choices! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with me.

Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2

 

[C0rehound]

Yeah man you're good. Any of the newer GPU's are going to be PCI-E16x, Newegg only showing one may just be a search function error. You may however be limited by your 500W power supply depending on brand/quality. I'd look into a Phenom 2 x4 as well. Your current CPU will be a bottleneck for a newer video card.

 

[13thmonkey]

vega, you CAN put a 2.0 pci-e x16 into a 1.0pci-e x16 slot, don't worry about it.

 

[13thmonkey]

Everybody knew BF3 was going to be very CPU heavy. It actually uses all of my 2600k, even the HT cores...Nothing short of a quad will be able to run the game well.

What sort of fps are you getting, i'm on a Q9550 with GTX470 and getting mid 30's to mid 40's @ 2048x1152 depending on map, i'm starting to wonder if I could use an upgrade (actually I just want an excuse to upgrade)

 

[ilysaml]

Here is a good idea of the rigs playing it fine: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/327590-15-battlefeild-beta

believe me if i have all the games you do have, i would get at least 3-way nVidia 570s SLI

 

[ilysaml]

@ Op, all the components holding you back, time to upgrade for new system.

 

[shanky887614]

i dont think im even going to bother trying to run it on my system

got core2duo e7600 and hd 4670

got money in bank waiting for upgrade, dont want to anoy my stepdad again so soon so will wait till i get an aprentaship

 

[13thmonkey]

i dont think im even going to bother trying to run it on my system

got core2duo e7600 and hd 4670

got money in bank waiting for upgrade, dont want to anoy my stepdad again so soon so will wait till i get an aprentaship

Actually you might be fine, try the demo.

 

[jojoenglish85]

Man, just upgrade your hardware and you will be fine.

 

[blackhawk1928]

Trying to play the Battlefield 3 beta, it is super choppy and completely unplayable. The performance monitor on my G15 show my CPU maxed at 100%. This is the first game I have seen this happen on. I am meeting minimum system requirements for the game. I have all the video settings in the game on LOW.

My specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual core processor 5200+ (2.7GHz)
NVidia GeForce 9500GT
500W pwr supply

Which component do you think is holding me back?

Thank you!

You are likely going to have to upgrade your hardware to play the game on reasonable performance and quality levels. Your CPU and GPU are both lacking.

 

[Haserath]

Trying to play the Battlefield 3 beta, it is super choppy and completely unplayable. The performance monitor on my G15 show my CPU maxed at 100%. This is the first game I have seen this happen on. I am meeting minimum system requirements for the game. I have all the video settings in the game on LOW.

My specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual core processor 5200+ (2.7GHz)
NVidia GeForce 9500GT
500W pwr supply

Which component do you think is holding me back?

Thank you!

You barely meet the minimum processor requirements, which would definitely hold you back on multiplayer gameplay.

The 9500GT doesn't meet the minimum system requirements. An 8800GT is for minimum and that is better than a 9500GT by a long shot.

8800 GT:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8800_gt_us.html

9500GT:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9500gt_us.html

If you can only upgrade one, try going for the graphics card first as it will be a cheaper option, since you only have to replace the card. Also try an overclock on the processor if you can. The more speed, the better!.

 

[x Heavy]

Consider this.

I use 16 gig of memory at 2133. My G15 LCD reported 34-42% used during Multiplayer in BF3

My GPU's (MSI Lightning Extreme edition 580's) used 1240 mb max memory per card. That is nearly 3 gig and half the capacity.

GPU Temps maxed out at 55 C

My CPU would occasionally hover at 40% and spike once in a while and maxed at 62 C (i7 2600K)

I was upping my G500 mouse DPI to the third LED in order to harness the game world to turn side to side faster as infantry.

Most of the evening went well, learned to disable certain programs that interrupt and rise above the task bar.

My old build has a E8600 Quadcore socket 775 and 8 gig of memory at 1333 along with sata II intel SSD and several others. And two sapphire crossfire GPU's It would heat up and chop my game.

I regulated the old computer to regular net while I use the new build for BF3 that is coming out.

In short time to build your own. As far as settings are concerned, I did use performance in the Nvidia Beta drivers setting. I could play at quality but the tac lights and other... issues cause for concern.

Lesson one. See a enemy tac light, shoot on it.

Lesson two. See a enemy laser, displace and establish ambush.

Good luck!

 

[vegawow]

You barely meet the minimum processor requirements, which would definitely hold you back on multiplayer gameplay.

The 9500GT doesn't meet the minimum system requirements. An 8800GT is for minimum and that is better than a 9500GT by a long shot.

8800 GT:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8800_gt_us.html

9500GT:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9500gt_us.html

If you can only upgrade one, try going for the graphics card first as it will be a cheaper option, since you only have to replace the card. Also try an overclock on the processor if you can. The more speed, the better!.

Very informative answer, thank you! When you say that you only have to replace the card, what do you mean? I've done several video cards, never a cpu, but from what I can tell it is pretty much plug and play like a video card, besides maybe having to mess with thermal paste and BIOS. Is there something more complicated to it then that? Thanks again.

 

[vegawow]

You barely meet the minimum processor requirements, which would definitely hold you back on multiplayer gameplay.

The 9500GT doesn't meet the minimum system requirements. An 8800GT is for minimum and that is better than a 9500GT by a long shot.

8800 GT:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8800_gt_us.html

9500GT:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9500gt_us.html

If you can only upgrade one, try going for the graphics card first as it will be a cheaper option, since you only have to replace the card. Also try an overclock on the processor if you can. The more speed, the better!.

Very informative answer, thank you! When you say that you only have to replace the card, what do you mean? I've done several video cards, never a cpu, but from what I can tell it is pretty much plug and play like a video card, besides maybe having to mess with thermal paste and BIOS. Is there something more complicated to it then that? Thanks again.

 

[Haserath]

Very informative answer, thank you! When you say that you only have to replace the card, what do you mean? I've done several video cards, never a cpu, but from what I can tell it is pretty much plug and play like a video card, besides maybe having to mess with thermal paste and BIOS. Is there something more complicated to it then that? Thanks again.

Well, I wouldn't update your cpu for that socket anymore, so most likely you would have to replace the mobo, ram, and cpu to be able to upgrade your processor.

Since that mobo has Pci-e 1.0, any graphics card with the Pci-e specification can go into the x16 slot, because they are backwards compatible. The slot won't even hold the card back, because x8 2.0(basically the same bandwidth as x16 1.0) doesn't hold back video cards at all yet.

That power supply might not be able to handle the high end cards if it is a cheap one though!

 

[C0rehound]

He has AM3/AM2+/AM2, for not much cash or effort he could pop in this Phenom 2 x4 and maybe a GTX460 or HD67xx/68xx and get quite the boost. The power supply might be an issue. Vegawow, what's the make and model of your power supply?

 

[Haserath]

Dang, I hate that these companies use their processor names over so many sockets. I thought the Athlon 64's were on older 939 sockets, but that one appears to be an AM2.

It seems you will be able to upgrade to a newer Phenom II quad then.

I still think he should try the graphics card first as that seems to be what is really holding him back.

The PSU could be an issue if it is a cheap or low wattage model.

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

Well that system is quite underpowered for a game like BF3... that being said the nVIDIA drivers will have your CPU running at 100% causing some lag if you have a Dual Core CPU (and not a Quad core or higher).

The AMD BETA drivers don't have any issues... yeah... the opposite of what most would claim is the truth lol.