Battlefield 4 discussion..

[Jellyfish]

2142 was very cool in its time! i've been hoping for a 2143 so we can have those mechs back. and no, titanfall is not good enough haha...

God, i thought 2142 was awesome, i had it installed last time about a year ago with only about 3 active servers left... such a shame, i'll probably recheck again sometime. Loved the team dynamic, and the silo defence/defend titan/attack titan dilemma with the squads figuring out what to do (or having half the squad on the ground/other attacking.

[Chris-UK]

I really need to put some more hours into BF4. I gave up shortly after release due to the constant crashing. I have since come back to it and the crashing seems to be fixed (sort of) but I'm a little behind lol, about rank 10. I'm just getting slaughtered on every game.

[ZaO]

does anyone know which settings eat the most vram in this game? there's some levels that use nearly all of my vram and cause the game to sketch out and stutter. it's usually when playing a game of 64 player rush. i tried turning off aa and taking all the other settings down to low. but it's still doing it. i just don't understand what the hell it is that's using it all up! it's only in the couple of months that i've been getting this. so i think it's probably something in one of the patches.

[herulach]

Which levels? And have you got mantle on? I have no issues on a 2GB 670, so you shouldn't on a 3GB card.

[ZaO]

Which levels? And have you got mantle on? I have no issues on a 2GB 670, so you shouldn't on a 3GB card.

i can't remember all the levels. but the one i was playing earlier, which is the worst i've experienced so far was paracel storm on 64 player rush. i was getting full on lockups that lasted for maybe half a second at a time, and some pretty bad frame rate issues quite often. i just couldn't stop it eating all that vram no matter what i did with the settings. so i'm pretty sure that's what the cause of the lockups is. seeing as i've experienced the same situation in other games that have eaten all of, or nearly all of my vram (skyrim with mods being one of them).

i don't think playing with directx makes any difference. because i tested it out a few weeks back. but i will give it another run with dx again tonight and see how it goes! this issue only ever appeared once mantle made its way into bf4. and i used to get less than 2.5gb vram used max before then. so i'm sure it's something to do with one of the updates from around that time. since that time, i'm pretty sure i've also had way higher cpu usage as well. seems like mantle is working back to front lol...

anyway - i'll post back after i've had a good test on a few different levels with directx

[ZaO]

well, with directx (and the same settings i normally run with mantle) i managed to do a 64 player round of defending and attacking on paracel storm. plus i played a few other levels on various game modes. my peak vram usage for this session has been 2066mb. so based on that, it's looking like mantle is using up way more vram for some reason. siege of shanghai was a lot worse on directx once the tower had collapsed though. but over all, i think the game has run better. i'll keep checking vram as i play more with directx and see what i think. but if it's just mantle, then at least i know what the problem is i'll give mantle another shot when naval strike and new drivers are out.

if anyone else has noticed high vram usage with mantle - then please do share your experience! would be good to know if it's a common issue with it!

[ZaO]

My Origin client is downloading Naval Strike now! I assume we can play it. So it looks like I have my evening sorted

Edit: Patch notes - look like my problem might've been fixed Back to Mantle!:

"MANTLE
-Mantle now requires Catalyst 14.2 or later drivers.
-Fixed multiple crashes.
-Fixed memory leak when switching between windowed and full screen.
-Optimized memory management which can reduce amount of performance stalls when video memory is overcommitted.
-Improved performance when vsync is used.
-Fixed bug with offset mouse cursor when using full screen and horizontal windows taskbar.
-Multi-GPU: Added initial support for frame pacing for smoother frame rate in full screen mode, enabled by default. Can be disabled in console / User.cfg with “RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod 0”.
-Multi-GPU: Fixed black screen when starting on machine with multiple GPUs where the weakest GPU has the display attached to it.
-Multi-GPU: Fixed intermittent crash when switching between windowed and full screen mode when having multiple GPUs

DIRECTX
-Fixed bug with borderless window not covering entire screen when starting up

*Temporarily disabled, as the team is working on addressing an issue related to it. "

[shaithis]

Most of those should have been fixed months ago

[ZaO]

Most of those should have been fixed months ago

yeh haha... well i just played a couple of the new levels with mantle. i've never played these before, obviously. but my vram usage was topping out around 2gb. so it's looking good so far

[chuckskull]

Best DLC yet IMO. Carrier assault makes me hanker for 2142 and walking tanks though.

If you haven't tried the G36C since the patch, it's beastly now. Sure some will whine but I like having a really good gun I can use across all classes.

[Dooms]

Ooooo will have to check it out now Naval is out. I LOVED 2142's titan mode.

[chuckskull]

It's not as good as the old one, but it's good fun still. Like to see the carriers be slightly more complex, that parts over a bit quick for my liking, but that pattern of bouncing between wide open spaces and vehicles then brutal CQB along with having the multiple ways to win is still very compelling.

[ZaO]

hey all. i made a pretty useful discovery tonight. if any of you are experiencing a lot of crashes with bf4 - try disabling your firewalls "HIPS" feature if it has one. i've been playing with a few different firewalls tonight after finally upgrading my very old version of comodo's one to the latest version. the latest version makes bf4 crash within seconds, even with HIPS disabled. so i tried Online Armor, but that did the same thing - until i disabled all HIPS features. i'm in the process of trying to get the latest comodo firewall working ok with bf4. but no luck yet. anyway - just a heads up incase it helps anyone out

[outwar6010]

It's not as good as the old one, but it's good fun still. Like to see the carriers be slightly more complex, that parts over a bit quick for my liking, but that pattern of bouncing between wide open spaces and vehicles then brutal CQB along with having the multiple ways to win is still very compelling.

It would've be awesome if they added an epic nuclear explosion at the end of the match.

[kalniel]

It would've be awesome if they added an epic nuclear explosion at the end of the match.

I think the same of many a game of footie..

[ZaO]

are any of you guys having serious issues with this game lately? the people who who weren't getting serious issues before i mean. i can't even play it anymore. it locks up on loading. and if i'm lucky enough to get it to load, it plays really badly, then locks up within seconds. it's related to ntldll.dll everytime. i thought it was just an issue with updating to the new comodo firewall before. but i've tried uninstalling that, reinstalling the game, bl web plugin and graphics drivers. and it it just won't run. i have a feeling it's something to do with a recent server patch :/

edit: funny how i often seem to find solutions to my problems soon after asking about them haha a combination of using directx instead of mantle, and deleting all the bf4 files in my documents folder appears to have fixed the problem. i'll see how it goes from here..