BF3 stuttering and CPU spikes

[FailApprentice 365]

It still sounds like your thermal paste on your CPU is going bad if it's causing this issue. When I first built my PC i had the same issue and had to re-apply my thermal paste, I put a little too much and had to change it out. Now it's running perfectly, on average when I play BF3 I get around 45-50 Degrees Celsius, my GPU is around 50-55 Degrees Celsius.

 

Also believe it or not, your GPU thermal paste can go bad, a lot of people change it out just in case because they put shit compound on it. I'd change both when you get the time man and see what happens with the results.

[Bromance 1,657]

Thought you mentioned you play on low settings. Any case good work as always. Depending on PC set up, gpu brand, and drivers one simple setting can have a huge impact as you proved. Newer engines should always cripple a system on high to stay relevant for the future. If you remember the release of CQ the dev mentioned they turned up a lot of settings due to the smaller maps and player limits. Imagine the frostbite engine going full bore.

[=ADK= warspite 317]

I think this post will finish up my troubleshooting as I made some breakthroughs today and I think I've got my problem solved 100%

 

* Please keep in mind my PC configuration (in my sig).

* I run with Vsync ON to prevent tearing

    - The game also renders well at the settings below with Vsync and Triple Buffering turned OFF

 

Issue: CPU lag spikes on BF3's perf meter (stuttering).  The lag spikes that were giving me problems appeared as a single spike that appeared at 1-second intervals for several seconds, then stopped for a few seconds, then picked back up again.  It was the 1-second interval that really had me going until I figured it out.

 

Assumptions:  Network and PC are good (no connectivity problems, drivers updated, etc.)

 

Fix:  Use the "GameTime.MaxVariableFPS" variable to limit your FPS to 2-3 FPS below your monitor's refresh rate (usually 60Hz or 120Hz).  Example:  since I have a 120Hz monitor, I have this variable set to 117.000 FPS.

 

        GameTime.MaxVariableFPS 117.0000

 

Issue:  Significant FPS drops in game when moving and looking around

 

Assumptions:  Same as above

 

Fix: Try turning "Mesh Quality" to LOW.  This setting, more than any other video setting, made my FPS far more stable on large vehicle maps (Caspian, Firestorm, etc.).

 

Well, that's about it.  I'm including some screenshots below to demonstrate my current settings and their effect on the performance meter in BF3.

 

My NVidia Control Panel settings:

 

 

My BF3 User.cfg file (it's pretty short, but it gets the job done for me)

 

 

Here's my final video settings config:

 

 

Here's a shot of some gameplay so you can see how tame my perf meter is now:

 

 

Well, there you have it.  Lots of great tips and info in this thread (based on the work of others), and I hope that I was able to roll up much of it and get it all together in one place.

 

war

Edited August 18, 2013 by =ADK= warspite

[Fellcrunk 33]

Necro'd.

 

I'm curious, War. Did you ever unpark your CPU cores? When I played BF3, before I unparked cores, I had massive stuttering and framedrops. After unparking all cores, I eliminated 99% of my stuttering.