BF3 update and SLI performance drops

[ubercake]

Anyone noticing performance drops in SLI when running BF3 since last BF3 update?

I noticed a framerate decrease after the recent BF3 update when I had my 580s in SLI installed. I run with full details (ultra where applicable, plus AA transparency of 8x in control panel).

I contacted the BF3 support team via chat. The first thing he had me do after confirming the game in fact worked on my PC is shut off SLI and restart BF3. After that, framerates were only a tad lower 10fps without SLI on, but averaging in the 50s without the drops and choppiness down below the 50s I was experiencing after the BF3 update a couple of weeks ago. So I asked the support guy if a lot of SLI people were complaining and he said they had gotten a lot of complaints about the video performance in SLI since the update, so their solution is to have people turn of SLI. I told him this is not a real solution. He said he'd forward the issue to the programming team as he had with previous SLI issues. So for now, I've switched my BF3 profile in control panel to only use the single gpu.

I've since swapped out for 2 680s and am having the same issue though the SLI performance is actually lower than the single-card performance.

As a side note, anyone contemplating a buy of a 680 right now I'd say go for it if you can get your hands on one. The single card performance in BF3 with all details on on a single 1080p screen is incredible.

Anyone else see a performance decrease after the recent BF3 update?

 

[ubercake]

I had an epiphany... I remembered having to do something similar with my 580s, so I tried it this morning. Turn off the PC, remove the SLI connector and put it back on rotated the other way (if the SLI letters face the front, put it on so they face the back or vice versa). When you boot your PC, and go into windows, you'll hear the sound like you added a new device but you won't see it searching for a driver or anything.

After I did this, I saw framerates from the high 70s (similar to the average with the 580s in SLI) up to close to 110 on average during the multiplayer game. I turn AA transparency 8x on, so I think I tax the cards quite a bit more than the benchmarks, but I'm confident this did the trick now. The performance does dip into the high 50s at times, but it did similarly into the 40s with the 580s as well after the recent BF3 patch. I turn the 'Show SLI visual indicator' option on and can see both cards doing the work.

It's strange, but I think you're better off installing the cards with no SLI bridge, installing the drivers, then shutting down and adding the bridge after the drivers are installed. I had to do this with the 580s and apparently didn't learn anything as I had to do it again with the 680s. All is good now.

Anyone want a freebie? Just post something under this topic.

 

[ubercake]

This actually didn't completely fix the issue. I had to re-install BF3 through the Origin interface.

It stinks that you buy the disk and it doesn't merely update over the web, it simply acts as a dummy and you still have to download 15.4GB each time you re-install. SLI framerates improved after the re-install, so I'm guessing more bugginess in the Origin updater. Even though the framerates improved after the re-install, the framerate dropouts that we're growing accustomed to in multi-player since this most recent update still exist. This performance dropout never existed prior to this update. My favorite is when you take someones dogtags on one of the more open maps such as Oman, watch the framerates plummet for the whole sequence of that animation.

I wonder why we're not all being paid to be EA's beta testers. I mean... This Origin BETA product sucks. I would caution anyone not to hit the 'Close Game' button during the 'Logging in...', 'Initializing...', or 'Connecting...' phases of the game launch or you'll end up with a hung bf3.exe process. As a result, you have to kill it through the Task Manager. And that warning you get about unsaved work ruining the program... Take it as more than a warning. Files really become corrupt since the last BF3 update and you end up having to re-install because you can no longer connect due to killing the darn BF3 process.

But since we're all EA's unpaid software testers we just have to put up with it, right?

 

[ubercake]

I answered my own jazz. mods can close this please or I'll just turn it into a blog.