BF4 Beta Performance Discussion - GPU & CPU

[BigMack70]

So, the BF4 beta is upon us, and the question is... how does it perform on your rig?

I got a chance to play for an hour or so this morning and was pretty surprised by the performance. I think I'm CPU bottlenecked!

At 1440p, all settings maxed, no vsync, I was seeing average framerates around the 70 mark and minimums around 40-45 when on top of the skyscraper surveying the map.

CPU usage was ~70%, GPU usage averaged at around 70% on each of my 780s as well. My rig is in my signature and I'm on the latest Nvidia beta driver released for bf4.

Can anyone with a SB-E/IVB-E CPU comment on CPU usage and GPU usage?

I am really loving the game so far - the gunplay seems much tighter than in BF3. I'm disappointed in the graphics overall, though - I don't think it looks as good as Crysis 3.

 

[Mahisse]

Hey I don't have any feedback facts since I haven't played it myself but why would you think that you're CPU bottlenecked if your CPU is running at 70%?
Also would you mind posting your full specs. I'm also very interested to hear how much RAM and VRAM this game is using. What is your experience with those paramaters?
Also.. It's a beta. Even though Nvidia had close communication with EA around this project there's no guarantee that their drivers are fully optimized. Did you try the beta drivers vs. latest drivers just to see if there's a significant difference?

 

[BigMack70]

My full specs are in my sig. I'm seeing about 2500-2600 MB of vram use - didn't check RAM use but I will later and post.

I say I'm CPU bottlenecked because I've never seen a game use more than ~70% average use on my CPU (BF3/Crysis 3/BF4), even when I've tested with settings turned down so that there's more than enough GPU muscle there to increase framerates.

Could be a driver optimization issue as well, of course, but my current guess is CPU bottleneck, since I'm assuming that Nvidia's new beta driver would remove any such serious optimization issues.

And I know it's a beta, but I don't believe that anything substantial will change regarding graphics within a month of release, unless the performance issues are due to Nvidia's drivers (which is always possible).

 

[Tree_Hugger]

Phenom II 955 @ 3.8 GHz
7970 3 GB @ 1000/1450 (13.10 beta2)
8 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz
Ultra Preset
1080p 60 Hz
V-sync on

Frames: 2324 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 38.733 - Min: 24 - Max: 54
Frames: 2250 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 37.500 - Min: 26 - Max: 55
Frames: 2211 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 36.850 - Min: 27 - Max: 53

FX 8320 comes in today so I'll update

 

[jman1968]

I'm seeing ~95% cpu usage on BF4 Beta. Do I need to upgrade CPU for launch, or is this driver-related? Stuttering like crazy.

Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit
i5 3350P quad-core
GTX 760 2 GB
8 GB RAM

 

[BigMack70]

I don't know, but I am at 70%+ cpu usage on my chip constantly... I think we just have a new king in terms of how demanding the game is on the cpu

 

[Harry424]

I think the issue is drivers as there are people with i7 s that have the same problem

 

[lonewolf331]

Many are having the high CPU usage problem. The forums on Battlelog are full of 'em. I ran into unplayable framerates like others have as well. Whether it's a CPU problem or just bad beta optimization since this is the build from before the E3 conference (why they went with that as an open beta is beyond me). So far no fix is available. Maybe DICE will release a bate update that addresses the issue.

It was weird though for me,one game smooth playing the next, unplayable. Almost every other game would switch up on me.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I don't know, but I am at 70%+ cpu usage on my chip constantly... I think we just have a new king in terms of how demanding the game is on the cpu

unfortunately i have to wait till Oct 4 in Australia to get the beta, but i will be happy to post results. Have you tried forcing hyper-threading off on your i7?

 

[burdenbound]

Averaging around 50 fps, GPU at full load CPU load at around 80%+ 1440p all ultra except for AA, post-processing, and mesh. I found that turning mesh to low made the picture a lot sharper. System specs in signature.

 

[ChrisCarbomb]

we got a similar rig Bigmack and my i7 averages around 65% and full load on gtx680. i do not have the newest drivesr from nvidia for bf4

 

[Buckerou]

My son can not even play on his PC. I know it is dated but from reading the requirements I thought he could play it. His rig is an Intel C2D 8600 @ 4Ghz, 8 Gb 1066 ram with 2 GTX460s in SLI running W7 64 bit. Upon starting to enter a server, when BF4 process starts, it runs both cores to 95% and then freezes. Wow! I really thought the game would run too. He is so disappointed.

 

[I3lood Eagle]

BF4 is supposedly partnered with AMD so Nvidia fans could be getting the cold shoulder as far as optimization goes which is kind of crappy on DICE's part. Oh well hopefully they fix the build, and honestly it's a BETA! and the entirety of the game is running on Frostbite 3 which is VERY intensive on CPUs. To sum it up "Don't worry about how the game plays until after the official drivers come out and the game actually launches",You'll worry yourself to death about performance until then if you do.

Also check this out if you haven't seen it yet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBecEtNAavQ

 

[lonewolf331]

My son can not even play on his PC. I know it is dated but from reading the requirements I thought he could play it. His rig is an Intel C2D 8600 @ 4Ghz, 8 Gb 1066 ram with 2 GTX460s in SLI running W7 64 bit. Upon starting to enter a server, when BF4 process starts, it runs both cores to 95% and then freezes. Wow! I really thought the game would run too. He is so disappointed.

It is just a beta. when the game is released on Oct. 29 it should be better optimized to play. A lot of people have reported similar issues. Though do a search on the forums in battlelog for the issues with a Core 2 Duo. I don't have one but I read several threads concerning this. Apparently even though DICE said they will work, they are having issues.

 

[I3lood Eagle]

One of my Instructors at the Institute I go to has had issues.
His specs are Sapphire 6870, and FX 6100 I believe, If I remembered that correctly.
He is entirely unable to play... It sounds like another Guild Wars II Fiasco in the rising.

 

[Qualtric]

I'm getting about the same load percentages as you are BigMack70, my rig is in my sig (i7 4770k @ 4.5 & SLI 770's).
CPU load is about 70% with GPU load being about the same, sometimes peaking to 80%. With all settings maxed @ 1080p I'm getting about 85-90 FPS average but that really depends on where you are on the map, it's pretty solid overall.

Don't forget to update to the beta drivers that are optimized for the beta.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I'm getting about the same load percentages as you are BigMack70, my rig is in my sig (i7 4770k @ 4.5 & SLI 770's).
CPU load is about 70% with GPU load being about the same, sometimes peaking to 80%. With all settings maxed @ 1080p I'm getting about 85-90 FPS average but that really depends on where you are on the map, it's pretty solid overall.

Don't forget to update to the beta drivers that are optimized for the beta.

is it maxing out the vram of your 2gb cards? or do you have details tuned down to suit?

 

[Qualtric]

I'm getting about the same load percentages as you are BigMack70, my rig is in my sig (i7 4770k @ 4.5 & SLI 770's).
CPU load is about 70% with GPU load being about the same, sometimes peaking to 80%. With all settings maxed @ 1080p I'm getting about 85-90 FPS average but that really depends on where you are on the map, it's pretty solid overall.

Don't forget to update to the beta drivers that are optimized for the beta.

is it maxing out the vram of your 2gb cards? or do you have details tuned down to suit?

After my play session today I realized I forgot to monitor VRAM usage.
I'll post back here tomorrow with the results.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I'm getting about the same load percentages as you are BigMack70, my rig is in my sig (i7 4770k @ 4.5 & SLI 770's).
CPU load is about 70% with GPU load being about the same, sometimes peaking to 80%. With all settings maxed @ 1080p I'm getting about 85-90 FPS average but that really depends on where you are on the map, it's pretty solid overall.

Don't forget to update to the beta drivers that are optimized for the beta.

is it maxing out the vram of your 2gb cards? or do you have details tuned down to suit?

After my play session today I realized I forgot to monitor VRAM usage.
I'll post back here tomorrow with the results.

i guess even if it is maxing out 2gb vram, you seem to be getting good performance anyway, so not really an issue if it is spilling over to system ram.

 

[ajl2011shooter]

My full specs are in my sig but I have i7 and 4gb 770's in SLI and I was getting around 40-50FPS in surround. My gpu usage was around 75%. I'm thinking I might have to overclock my cpu to get full GPU usage.

 

[fasterbetter]

hi guys,is it necessary to update to nvidia 331.40 beta drivers to play bf4 beta with playable fps or should i try it first with my current WQHL drivers? I am currently downloading open beta.

 

[Qualtric]

Just played a match again and VRAM was around 1.9GB, it was really pushing it. There was a short freeze when something exploded on the screen so I turned down MSAA to 2x. I do notice a difference in servers though, I've heard other people talk about this also. Some servers just make you stutter/drop FPS considerably over others.

I've also heard the build we're playing in the beta is an old build so some performance improvements might already be in the build DICE is testing at their office.

 

[Djentleman]

I don't know, but I am at 70%+ cpu usage on my chip constantly... I think we just have a new king in terms of how demanding the game is on the cpu

Yeah i really think this is just optimization issues.
Dice came out and said that this build is months old.
If you want to play with me sometime my alias is "s0ursnatch".

 

[iam2thecrowe]

ok, so just tried this game, stutters about every 10 seconds, gpu usage in msi afterburner shows continuous spikes/dips. does the same if disable sli. cpu usage is around 90-95%. max Vram useage is around 1750mb, on ultra settings 1080p. fps is from 60fps, down to 25-30 when it stutters. There are a whole lot of fixes on forums for the stuttering, going to try a few and get back to ya. game is not really playable as is. Using the new beta driver too.

 

[fasterbetter]

ok, so just tried this game, stutters about every 10 seconds, gpu usage in msi afterburner shows continuous spikes/dips. does the same if disable sli. cpu usage is around 90-95%. max Vram useage is around 1750mb, on ultra settings 1080p. fps is from 60fps, down to 25-30 when it stutters. There are a whole lot of fixes on forums for the stuttering, going to try a few and get back to ya. game is not really playable as is. Using the new beta driver too.

i have a much weaker GPU than you but get constantly between 40-60 fps with rare dips below 30 fps.but i have 900p monintor and not 1080p.also i'm on lowest settings as i do not see much difference between ultra and low. Its quite playable for me.Btw,331.40 beta drivers.