Someone give me some reassurance! *BF4 related*

[Handykins]

Ok, (SPECS BELOW)

So upon the release of Battlefield 4, I've been playing it quite a lot. I'm under the impression and from everything I've seen
from various youtube clips that the spec of my PC should be more than capable of running BF4 all Ultra @ 1080p. However,
my FPS goes quite a bit under 60 frames quite regularly. I don't know if I should be playing with V-Sync on or off or what?!

Some maps ill be absolutely fine and it pretty much stays a solid 60 throughout, but some maps I can be in one area, even
when theres nothing going on and it drops to like 40? Anyway, just some help or general contribution to this topic would be
helpful. Basically, is this normal or should I be achieving a much higher frame rate? Also, so help with the V-Sync situation
would be cool.

Cheers guys!

Intel Core i7 3770K Ivy Bridge @ 3.5GHz (watercooled with Corsair H55)
Asus P8Z77-V PRO Motherboard
16GB Corsair DDR3 XMS3
3GB EVGA GeForce GTX 780 SC Edition
1050W Corsair HX1050 PSU
Corsair Obsidian 550D Case
230GB Sandisk Extreme SSD
1TB Western Digital Green HDD

[deejayburnout]

i always keep vsync on. i have noticed that when i have it off, my card seems to work harder.

i don't see the point in any more than 60FPS. anything above 40FPS for me and i am happy.

have you tried turning down the settings to high to see if the FPS stabilizes. maybe some maps need more ompfh than others

[Handykins]

I have played a few games with the settings on High, but I wanna play on Ultra! Just like everybody else!
But only because I believe my system is more than capable, even GeForce Experience optimizes everything
on Ultra etc.

[herulach]

Are you only at 1080p? If so it should easily manage. I get a solid 50fps even in 64 player at ultra (albeit with no AA) using a 670. A 780 should be more than capable. Do you have a second monitor? If so try putting the video settings into single display performance mode, gained me an extra 3/4 fps presumably as the cards not doing aero crap on the other window.

[ik9000]

Do you have anything else running in the background?
No backups kicking in?
AV doing a root kit scan?

How full is your HDD/SSD?
Is there enough spare capacity on the drive for the page file?
Do you have enough memory or is the machine having to use a swap file on the HDD to make up the shortfall?

Ventilation ok in the case? Have you checked temps and fan speeds? No throttling kicking in due to poor airflow?

Are you playing using wireless connection? Wired usually better + less prone to fluctuation in signal (at your end anyway)

[Bonebreaker777]

How does your PC fare in regular 3D Mark?
Long-term stability tests involving CPU and GPU? (FurMark or Prime95)
If all those turn out to be fine, drivers AND/OR settings I would say.
Do you overclock your 3770k?

[Dooms]

Hmmm you should be easily at Ultra @ 1080. Download 3D Mark demo off steam and run that to see if its an overall system issue or something just related to BF4.

[Handykins]

Do you have anything else running in the background?
No backups kicking in?
AV doing a root kit scan?

How full is your HDD/SSD?
Is there enough spare capacity on the drive for the page file?
Do you have enough memory or is the machine having to use a swap file on the HDD to make up the shortfall?

Ventilation ok in the case? Have you checked temps and fan speeds? No throttling kicking in due to poor airflow?

Are you playing using wireless connection? Wired usually better + less prone to fluctuation in signal (at your end anyway)

There's pretty much no room on the SSD that it's installed on, but would that cause an FPS issue? Ventilation is fine, all fan speeds and temps good.
Wired connection on BT Infinity. No second monitor or anything. I get so OCD about this stuff, when I have my FPS counter in the corner and it drops
below 60 it just makes me cry how much money I spent on a PC and this is what happens

[shaithis]

Upgrade from Windows 7

[Sheen]

What AA settings do you use? it have huge impact on fps

[ik9000]

There's pretty much no room on the SSD that it's installed on, but would that cause an FPS issue? Ventilation is fine, all fan speeds and temps good.
Wired connection on BT Infinity. No second monitor or anything. I get so OCD about this stuff, when I have my FPS counter in the corner and it drops
below 60 it just makes me cry how much money I spent on a PC and this is what happens

Well you have 16GB RAM. What size of page and swap file has windows created? If it's trying to reserve xGB of SSD space for these then that could be causing issues. Have a look in the resource monitor and see what sizes are allocated to these.

[Handykins]

What AA settings do you use? it have huge impact on fps

Everythings on max.

[Handykins]

Well you have 16GB RAM. What size of page and swap file has windows created? If it's trying to reserve xGB of SSD space for these then that could be causing issues. Have a look in the resource monitor and see what sizes are allocated to these.

How would i find out how big the page and swap file size is? Getting a bit techy for me haha

[ik9000]

How would i find out how big the page and swap file size is? Getting a bit techy for me haha

background (full fat version) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2860880

abridged version http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/w...virtual-memory
and http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/w...virtual-memory

Note windows defaults to setting page file to equal (or just exceed) the amount of physical RAM. So if your drive is cluttered....

Reduce the page size (virtual memory) at your own risk. MS recommends keeping more than your RAM size available to deal with crash dumps, and (I think) hibernating the machine. Now, if you know you'll never go above say 50% of your 16B, then you could argue that setting it to 8GB will be enough (it ought to be IMO), but you do run the risk that it might not be. Also if you run a lot of processes simultaneously there is a risk that maybe there won't be enough in the swap file to store idle processes, and you will force windows to keep more in the RAM - increasing the likelihood of problems with saving that info to disc if windows needs to e.g. trying to hibernate etc. Best way out? According to MS - ensure you keep 16GB free space on your drive. 20GB would probably give smoother performance

[ik9000]

it's probably worth adding that even if your drive is too full to allow the page file to have all the space it wants, it shouldn't be causing stuttering with FPS game... unless that game is maxing out your RAM (unlikely with 16GB to play with) and causing windows to try to store other process in the virtual memory...

Also if your OS drive is properly clogged up it may not be just the page file struggling to find space, and windows may be trying to do some tidying-up behind the scenes. Though I would have hoped it would be clever enough to avoid doing that when you're flat-out gaming...

Tbh I don't know enough about how it all really works in any great detail. Others will be able to go into more detail and correct me if I've misunderstood.

If you have HDD space, you could try moving some stuff onto the storage drive and free up a chunk of SSD space, does this help at all?

[Handykins]

it's probably worth adding that even if your drive is too full to allow the page file to have all the space it wants, it shouldn't be causing stuttering with FPS game... unless that game is maxing out your RAM (unlikely with 16GB to play with) and causing windows to try to store other process in the virtual memory...

Also if your OS drive is properly clogged up it may not be just the page file struggling to find space, and windows may be trying to do some tidying-up behind the scenes. Though I would have hoped it would be clever enough to avoid doing that when you're flat-out gaming...

Tbh I don't know enough about how it all really works in any great detail. Others will be able to go into more detail and correct me if I've misunderstood.

If you have HDD space, you could try moving some stuff onto the storage drive and free up a chunk of SSD space, does this help at all?

I've freed up 20GB of space on my main SSD (which BF4 is installed on), still not really any noticable difference. I have a feeling my machine simply isn't
good enough to get a constant 60 frames no matter what. The annoying thing is from what I've read, seen etc it should absolutely destroy anything.
I was under the impression the GTX 780 is one of the most powerful single core cards on the market, definitely within the top 5? I dunno, maybe ill have
to SLi or get a GTX 780 Ti? What do you think? Thanks for your advice so far by the way..