CPU usage for BF3 100% FX - 4100

Greek4592

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Aug 24, 2012
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Hello everyone! This is my first time posting on this website. I am in need of some help! I recently sold my i7 intel rig to build a budget AMD rig. (Due to school reasons) Anyways, long story short, whenever i'm playing BF3 Multiplayer OR Singleplayer my CPU reaches about 100 % and causes the game to crash. (Freezing of the screen then results in going alt tab and i have to CTRL ALT DELETE out of BF3.

So my question to toms hardware, is, WHY?! Why does this keep happening? Is the CPU bottle necking my 6950 or what on earth is going on? Also i play on a 27' 1980 * 1050 res.

Please help me out :)

P.S. I never overclocked either my CPU or GPU.

System specs as follows;

FX - 4100 @ 3.6
Gigabyte UMD3 900 FX
8 Gigs of Corsair Vengeance (2 x 4 GB)
AMD Sapphire 6950 (2G) OC Edition
800 Watt GS Corsair PSU rev 2
60 G OcZ SSD (For OS and BF3)
320G Storage HD

Thank you so much!


 
Solution
I tried to do this properly so I found a FX 4100 from older test platforms, having never used anything less than a FX 8XXX chip this is somewhat of a voyage of discovery. I have the chip running stable no throttling and heat is well in check at stock clocks, running DDR3 1866 Patriot AMD Performance RAM.

There seems to be a bottlenecking with some game titles, the Latency on the FX 4XXX chips is poor compared to the 8XXX chips, so much so they are at least 10% slower than a Phenom II, running it with the FX 8120 I have the latency is even worse, its something I haven't noticed or paid attention to but it seems like the IMC on the 4XXX series is seriously weak compared to old and the stronger FX chips.

I know most will...

Blahman11

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Yeah you would get rid of the bottleneck by overclocking the thing. It'll get 4.6ghz with a good cooler easily. That'll enable the GPU to stretch it's legs a bit. But I've never seen BF3 crash when the CPU is at full load, my Athlon 455 gets to full load but that never crashes the game.
 

Greek4592

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Aug 24, 2012
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Thanks for the replies everyone. I am currently not home, but I will check on that. It's just driving me crazy. I have a full tower CM Storm Trooper, all air cooled. My temps are awesome. During BF3 the highest I would see is 40-43 C for the CPU and 57C for the Sapphire 6950.

One thing that happens rarely as well is the "AMD Display Driver has stopped working and has successfully reset itself." My screen will lock up then for a second go black, then a static screen will appear for another second then go back to normal. :sweat:

I have built a couple computers, I am not claiming I am a tech master like most of you out there, but I feel confident everything is is plugged in properly etc..

I would love some advice for this AMD build as it is my first one. But most of all get BF3 to stop freezing! I love that stinking game!

Thank you to EVERYONE!



 

Greek4592

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Yes it is throttling , the core speed goes anywhere from 1200 - 3600 every second. Is this normal? Btw this isn't gaming.
 

noob2222

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the 4100 absolutely will bottleneck in BF3. even at 4.7 ghz it pegs at 100% in multiplayer. I have simulated the 4100 by shutting off 4 cores on my 8120. its not friendly for BF3.

the throttling your seeing is Cool and Quiet. it slows the cpu down when its not in use to conserve power.

The problem your having with crashing isn't necessarily related to the bottleneck however.
 

Greek4592

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Noob,

Thank you for your detailed response. I have one last question, do you think its a good idea to upgrade to a different CPU? How about the 8120? Will that workout with BF3?

Thank you.
 

noob2222

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the 6200 or 8120 will work well, 8120 being the better option. running 6 cores of my 8120, bf3 ran about 80% (fx-6200), the 8120 ~60%. This is with 6970 crossfire.

When overclocking, bump the ht and nb voltages slightly, say around 0.05v or whatever the smallest increment is on the board. it will help stability while allowing lower cpu voltage.

I have my 8120 at 4.7 ghz @ 1.344v stck turbo is 1.404 so technically im undervolted. the gigabyte board you have didn't overclock as easily, i was able to get 4.4ghz at 1.375v on my friends computer.
 

protokiller

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I am wondering if it is because the FX4100 only has two FPU units, essentially making it a dual core in FPU calculations.

I wonder if a Phenom II X4 would bottleneck nearly as much with it's 4 integer and FPU units.
 
When Bulldozer first came out and bios's were unreleased there were instances that under heavy loads the FX chips randomly throttled when they are not supposed to, even a 41XX chip should still be able to copiously handle battlefield 3.

I believe new mobo bios fix it, though they do have a number of fixes.
 

sheepsnowadays

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Aug 22, 2012
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Turn off Cool and Quiet and power saving features, I read on some forum where their cpu wasnt stable even at stock settings but disabling these features fixed it.
 

Greek4592

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Okay. I will try that, which power saving features other than that?
 
C1E and CStates, disable turbo core and manually set your vcore to a very safe preset, run stock clock and find stability. Set your load line calibration/Vdroop to high, maximum power it can get at set clock....if you isolate stability you can determine whether a) Processor is parking or b) bottlenecking...for me b) is a far along situation the FX 4100 is not GPU limited by a 6950

 

sheepsnowadays

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Battlefield 3 multiplayer is very CPU demanding, especially with 64 players, and probably wont even run on a dual core. Which is the reason they recommend a quad core.
 


LOL. BF3, Skyrim and Dirt 3 are some of the most CPU demandin games out on the market. They are the few games that actually make use of four cores.



Exactly what I was thinking. It's been seen with an I3 that dual core processors don't do that great with CPU demanding games like BF3. This is probably the same thing the CPU is the bottleneck.
 
I tried to do this properly so I found a FX 4100 from older test platforms, having never used anything less than a FX 8XXX chip this is somewhat of a voyage of discovery. I have the chip running stable no throttling and heat is well in check at stock clocks, running DDR3 1866 Patriot AMD Performance RAM.

There seems to be a bottlenecking with some game titles, the Latency on the FX 4XXX chips is poor compared to the 8XXX chips, so much so they are at least 10% slower than a Phenom II, running it with the FX 8120 I have the latency is even worse, its something I haven't noticed or paid attention to but it seems like the IMC on the 4XXX series is seriously weak compared to old and the stronger FX chips.

I know most will say the FX 4 should be faster in gaming due to it being a Quad plays Octocore but that I don't believe is true, the FX 8120 handles CFX 6970's in BF3 at over 100FPS, the FX 4 does it but its severely bottlenecked, the FPS bounces a lot, even in single card there are spikes of severe bottlenecking rendering gaming unplayable.

Just hold out until PD sell the 4100 at whatever you can get and throw in a FX 83XX chip.
 
Solution