I see a few issues
 
*Never use one map, on one server, on one night to make a judgement call on performance issues.
Such things -must- be tested on multiple servers, different days and with many reboots and maybe ever a router reset before going into troubleshooting mode.
I have personaly and repeatedly made this same mistake myself.
  
First off your running at 2560x1440 (nice) but you have adjusted your in-game FOV setting to 85.
At a 2560x1440 aspect ratio you should be using the value of 70, as higher values will cause "stretching" increasing the overhead on your videocards, not to mention the very large increase in pixels rendered. The very first thing I would do, is set the in-game FOV value back to 70
 
Next, your in-game "Graphics Quality" setting is set to ULTRA...
But your OSD is NOT showing the correct VRAM use for 2560x1440 and the Ultra setting. This would lead me to belive that you are having somekind of issue with properly texture streaming to your videocards.
Are your 580's 1.5gig or 3gig cards?
 
Next, I see that your Core i7 2600k @ 4.9GHz 1.38v has HyperThreading Disabled, while this can certainly be done it's NOT helping your performance with your OS, Nvidia drivers or BF3 as all of those programs -are- Hyperthreaded. This "could" be an issue if your running a large background load of services/apps...
I would certainly be testing with the HT setting ON and then OFF, and monitor the effect during testing on performance.
 
Next, I see your running a 120gig SSD
Please describe your drive setup (software). Where is the OS and the Origin/game located and what is the current free space available and what size of page file are you using?
 
Next, you mention a previous "black screen" issue... that required a GPU BIOS flash to fix...
Please describe what the failures were and what you were doing when they happend, as this "may" point us in a certain direction for troubleshooting, IE PSU or releated issues... 
 
Next, I see your using the Afterburner OSD display. There is a known bug in the RTSS server (OSD) function with the latest Nvidia driver sets. I would like you to Uninstall Afterburner (completely, and remove all profiles and saved data), then re-install it and do NOT enable the OSD function for testing purposes.... just make a fan profile (if needed) and leave everything else at defaults except for "Start with Windows", and then view the data and take screenshots after leaving the game. 
 
Next up is your NVCP
Please -match- all the settings exactly as shown below (in the global settings panel)
*Note: if you have made -any- changes in the NVCP "Program Settings" panel for BF3, please hit the RESET button there, before switching to the Global settings tab and making the changes shown below.
   

Next, I am not aware of any issues with 295.51 and BF3 and performance, other than problems with installing or loading it at boot. As long as your cards detected, the driver is -always- loading correctly at boot and SLI is being enabled... I see no reason to switch drivers.
If you -really- feel its a driver issue, then I would recommend 285.79.. but hold off on changing untill we have done some testing.
 
Next, I see you have 8gigs of RAM. Please state how many sticks (4gigs x2 or 2gigs x 4), also right click on "Computer" and see what Windows is reporting on installed and usable RAM.
 
There are a few other things that "might" be going on....
Lets see what you report back with, and we will go from there bro.
I am quite sure we will get you running perfectly, once we have sorted out the issue 
 
EDIT: Since you are using 1.5gig 580's, I suggest trying the BF3 in-game settings -exactly- as shown below, as this will drop the texture pool size and possibly help reduce streaming issues/CPU cycle use

         
 

maniacvvv

I see a few issues

First off

 
I don't understand, did you miss-click the submit post button? 

 

deezlit

Since updating have you enabled sli in the Nvidia control panel?
Another option is to run the repair tool within origin. This is pretty strange.

 
Of course enabling SLI is the first thing I do always after installing new drivers.
 
Didn't try to repair the game, but I might have to if we can't find a solution.
 
 
I am leaving to the gym in about 5 minutes, so I will read any reply in about 2 hours, I appreciate any  help.
 
 
 
Edit:
 
Maniac, as soon as I am back I will try with 70 FoV, only reason to use that is because I was using 85 at 1920x1080 and I did not know what to use in 2560x1440. :P
 
Any other things I should try once I'm back from the gym?
 
Edit2:
 
Before I leave, something I also noticed last night when that lag occured in Caspian Border, is that I could be at +100fps looking at one place of the map from the Viper helicopter, and as soon as I turned and looked into the Russian base for example (I was above the E flag at the fuel station) It would drop to 30-35fps for no reason including the GPU usage.
 
 
Thanks again for any help given, I will read all new replies in about 2 hours.
 
Edit3:
 
Maniac, I think the vram is being read properly, I don't think it is an issue of having all set to Ultra, as this did not happen before, and I have Windows aero OFF so that leaves another 100MB or so free to be used.
 
They're the 1.5GB versions, and at Metro 2033 for example it does use up to 1.5GB if I use MSAA, but do not believe those ~600MB of usage in that screenshot, like I said I was in WINDOWED MODE and I had just started the game to simply capture the video settings with a screenshot. Normally when gaming in full screen after a few seconds vram stays anyhwere from 1.2GB and 1.4GB, but it never hits the limit, of course without using MSAA.

budd200369

On a side note...is a 1000w psu enough for a tri sli 580 setup?

http://www.guru3d.com/art...80-3-way-sli-review/14

Its one of the issues to be looked at surely if other things dont pan out, but he reports his Metro2033 is fine.

Will reducing textures from Ultra to High make me lose quality? Only reason I got a 3rd GTX580 was to run Ultra AND HBAO. :P
 
   
   
- Lowered FOV to 70, and lowered the Texture quality to High.
- Uninstalled MSI Afterburner completely, rebooted, installed again, didn't enable OSD, just enabled fan profile.
-I will keep Hyperthreading disabled as I never had an issue with it disabled and I see no reason as to why this would cause the issues, CPU is never above 90% usage in worst situations like heavy explosions or building destruction.
- Also I set the Nvidia panel identical to your picture, only thing I had to change was the Multimonitor display thing, the pre-render thing was already set to 3. (BF3.exe profile was on default, couldn't hit Restore as I had nothing changed).
- As to one of your questions, I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit in the Vertex 2 120GB, as well as Origin and Battlefield 3 (And few other games, got 20.5GB free).
- From the 8GB of RAM, they're 4GB (2x) sticks at 1600MHz 7-8-7-24.
 
Let's try some Caspian Border now. :)
 
 
Here's a graph;
 

 
Notice I started gaming then minimized to change sound settings into headphones, that's why usage went to 0 for a while. Then maximized again and played on chopper a bit, as you see the gpu usage dropped for no reason in the middle of the game (Just played like 2 minutes) and I went from +100fps to like 72fps for no reason, this happens a lot with these drivers.
 
What else should we try?

Nice screenshot, but we also need to see the Vram loading during the drop..
 
You also did not note if you were in the chopper alone or with someone else.
 
*As mentioned in my guide, on maps like Caspian looking in certain directions or being in certain situations will cause frame drops...
I often see fps on a full Caspain 64 player map vary from 180 to 75

I just had huge fps drop exiting the US base with the car, it dropped to 38fps for no reason;
 

In fact as soon as it happened I turned around to return to the base and it happened again (Not sad badly but still lagged).

Vram hit 1.2GB max and CPU usage was all good below 50% most of the time.
 
What do you think? Drivers?

yea same here...i avg around 70-80% gpu usage with some pretty horrible spikes at times on 64 player conquest even as low as 30-40% usage and 50fps or less =/

kcuestag

What drivers do you use?

I went back to 285.62 WHQL and they seem much better for Battlefield 3 than 295.51 BETA. :)

Looks like I'm staying on these, unless you tell me 285.79 BETA are even better. :P

 
using 295.51 currently...this weekend i do plan on putting 285.62 back on here for a bit but after the Mass Effect 3 SLI profile in 295.51+

Well I have determined that it is a driver issue as the 285.62 WHQL run perfectly at a constant +60fps all the time with the same settings as I was using on the 295.51 BETA.
 
I guess I will stick to these WHQL until the next are released, thank you everyone for your help, specially Maniac, you were of GREAT help.
 
Would you recommend me to keep these WHQL (285.62) or go to 285.79? Seeing how you got 2x GTX580's, your input could be interesting. :)

You think they'd work good in 3-Way SLI? 285.62 WHQL work quite well, I should try those since Skyrim profile does amuse me. :D

I did a clean Windows 7 install, and installed 285.79.
 
Downloading Battlefield 3 and other games now, still have to install other applications too! :P
 
I'll let you know how these run on BF3.

I also heard that last night's patch on Battlefield 3 messed many people's performance. :P
 
Anyways I did a clean Windows 7 install and installed 285.79 BETA, I'll be using those as Maniac recommended me, and using High textures instead of Ultra since they look just the same. :D
 
I'll let you guys know how the game runs once I have some time to play in like 3-4 hours, doing some school work right now.

This happened to me randomly yesterday on my 560 Ti 448. I was flying around a jet on Caspian and suddenly the FPS dipped to 20 for about 30 secs. I alt-tabbed and went back full screen and everything went back to normal. I'm guessing it was that patch?

chrisdglong

kcuestag

I also heard that last night's patch on Battlefield 3 messed many people's performance. :P

Anyways I did a clean Windows 7 install and installed 285.79 BETA, I'll be using those as Maniac recommended me, and using High textures instead of Ultra since they look just the same. :D

I'll let you guys know how the game runs once I have some time to play in like 3-4 hours, doing some school work right now.

They must look the same for 1920x1080, but on 2560x1440 I can definitely tell the difference. 

 
Then you must have some special eyes because I can't tell the damn difference between textures on High or textures on Ultra.

To be honest the only options I notice going from Ultra to High are things like Terrain decoration, Shadows, and HBAO.