Another 560 ti and BF3 FPS Low Or Drop!

Hello Evga Forums,
 
Well I just Installed my 2nd evga 560 ti DS running SLI and When I play battlefield 3 i get about 60 to 90 fps then drops at
20 to 30. Goes Up and down, I look at the evga precision looks like each gpu is running at 40% each and changes either up or down.
Temp. is under 60 degrees c. I did clean install with the new drivers using maniacvvv tips. Been working on this for the past 3 days after coming home for work till 2am... BF3 settings on High 16x,aa post on high, aa off, vsync off, just like the tips. I read forums all over google and evga sites..  Someone Please help!!  
 
My Specs:
 
Q9550 OC to 3.4ghz H80 Cooled
Evga 750i FTW SLI MOBO
2x Evga 560 ti DS 900mzh
8 gigs of DDR2 Ram corsair XMS
PSU Corsair HX80 850 watts
Case is Corsair 600 t with 7 fans so i have good airflow and cooling...

I suspect your processor is bottlenecking which you can't do a whole lot about. You could try turning your texture setting down to medium to see if that takes a bit of pressure off the processor.
BF3 is a pretty processor intensive game.

thx for the quick reply. I try turning it down to medium and still not much improvements on fps. Sometime next year in the summer plan on changing out cpu and mobo, just going little by little.. But trying to just get a stable 60 to 80 fps. and I'll be happy... 

I would just test with turning more settings down. Even though that sounds painful you'll want to find that setting that is killing your processor. If turning down that first texture option didn't help try shadows next.

Does it seem to bog down at certain times or is it just random?

Just random, the new DLC maps made the fps drop even more. When heavy loads during game play fps drop to when im in a big server. oh and does physx on my 2nd 560 ti. any difference if i change that setting or to cpu?
 

CPU physx would hurt even more. It really sounds like your CPU is working really hard already. I'd leave the physx at auto and it should have the GPU's take care of it.
 
If you're having a lot of trouble on the DLC maps maybe try turning down the mesh detail. There is a lot more destructible stuff which all those little pieces on the ground have to be chugged through by the CPU. 
 
Really you gotta keep playing with the settings. I know I have started to not like the 64-player matches because it causes my machine to bog down a bit too. That and there aren't enough vehicles for that many people :(

What part of the game [level] and which servers tend to make this happen?
 
The bottleneck argument becomes iffy when rates of 60-90 exist on some parts of the game and 20-30 on others, unless someone is hinting their opinion/preference that a lack of a bottleneck would make their rates above a certain number all the time.  But arguing preferences doesn't help the OP.

I don't really think it is that big of a stretch for BF3 to be requesting more of the CPU than it is capable of. Especially given the extreme difference in demand between something like standing at the first spawn point when a game just starts and having multiple enemies, vehicles, and exploding buildings around you. That is a lot for a CPU to chew on.
 
My money is on the CPU.

It is pretty easy to tell.  While using either precision or afterburner and coretemp load up a game, windows out and check your gpu1 and gpu2 usage and then look at your cpu usage.  If your gpu's aren't maxed out and your cpu is.  Bingo Clark!  Otherwise your gpu's will max out and your cpu will not.  I am in the latter category on my setup.  My gpu's max out and my cpu's are like at 50%.
 
BTW I can see all my stats on my g15 keyboard.  That keyboard purchased long ago is worth its weight in gold!

Set PhysX to AUTO, remember that BF3 does not use PhysX
 
While you have a small CPU bottleneck, you do have the cards needed to play well.
 
There is no need to use the settings "presets" as that drops all kinds of stuff in the BF3 in-game settings.
 
All you need to do is get your VRAM pool size down and then drop only the settings that are hardest on your CPU.
 
Use the "Custom" BF3 in game preset and set Texture Quality to HIGH (that will drop the VRAM)
Then set Motion Blur and HBAO to OFF
Drop EFFECTS to MED
Dont use Deferred AA, set that to OFF and use the PostAA and set that to HIGH
 
That should help even out the FPS a bit and raise your min FPS
 

Well I tweaked here and there, happy with 60 fps doesn't drop that much then 40 on big games.... I guess there's nothing else to do until i build a new rig...

i see you have a water block on the cpu and it is O.C. maybe try to push the O.C. a little more say to 3.8 ..... my 2 cents

Overclocking to 3.8 or anything 3.4 wasn't stable for me.. I think the mother board can't handle it.... I would if i could =(

16x aa?  I'd turn that down for a start, the processor should handle the game easily, in some cases it can be faster the a lynnfield i5 at stock speeds.
 
The main issue with BF3 is graphics memory, I expect a single 560TI with 2GB would get 40-60 on ultra details.  A 1GB card would need to turn textures down a notch to fit in 1GB.  16xAA is very memory intensive, esp as the game itself has 2 separate AA settings of it's own.  Are you setting this in the nvidia control panel?

the nvidia control is on application controlled

Do the drops occur in single or multiplayer or both?

Mutltiplayer only and its ok when its like 16 vs 16 or less, but once theirs a lot of players and action fps drop... I'm thinking bottlenecking my cpu... but before the new patch i would getting better fps with a single 560 ti and my old asus maximus board.. i got this 750i sli ftw for $60 bux so i can sli. but didnt get the fps and performance i wanted.... 
 

can you record the CPU usage with windows performance monitor in administrative tools in the control panel while playing to verify?
 
Would the internet connection affect the framerate if it gets too much for it?

my internet is fast.. My ping is around 30 or under. I don't in servers that have high ping.. recording cpu usage i never done that or nor how to. 

Open up performance monitor, located where i said in the above post.
 
Select performance monitor in the left pane, you should now have a graph in front of you for total processor time.
 
There should be a way of recording but the interface has changed since I last used it in win2000.  Instead you can alt-tab out of the game when you get these framerate drops and see if the CPU has got to 100%.
 
The current duration is 100 second but you can change this by right click/properties where it says performance monitor in the left pane that you clicked to get the graph in the first place.
 
If the graph drops out at any point just change the priority for mmc to above normal in the task manager.

Well in game it steady as 80 under 90 and times it goes to 100 then drops back to the 80's

Well in game it steady as 80 under 90 and times it goes to 100 then drops back to the 80's

do you think the times it goes to 100 correspond to any major drops in fps?

So far i didn't see my cpu hit over 100 about 80... So i don't know whats going on...

I would start looking at what you have running at boot.
 
You need to turn off anything thats not needed. This less that is running on a clean boot to the desktop, the more resources are available.
Do a fresh boot and take a screensjot of Task Manager (as shown) and lets see what you have to work with
  

I had 2 sli gtx 560 ti's and the same thing happened to me. I now have a gtx 580 3b ultra classified and it doesnt happen anymore. What i think it is is the vram is getting maxed out and whenever that happens you get framedrops. You cant put aa on or have all details on ultra because then in map like Caspian your frames will drop in intense parts. It doesnt happen no more with 3gb of memory and supposedly 2 gtx 560 ti's are better than one gtx 580 but the vram will always be limited

Yeah on boot up on task manager theres nothing really running...
on bf3 settings stuff are on high an aa is off...
Not much i can do. =( 

jeffsmoky728

Yeah on boot up on task manager theres nothing really running...
on bf3 settings stuff are on high an aa is off...
Not much i can do. =( 

Of course there is, your problems are from the increased CPU loads in the B2K maps....
All you need to do is drop the settings that use CPU vs those which are only GPU.
The "high" preset is not going to set it up that way for you, you must use Custom and do it yourself.

Check your PM's

I just installed the SLI update, now fps are stable but each 560 ti is running at 60% or higher when playing, is that normal??

Thx maniac for the phone call walk through to fix settings... SO far so good, got a sold 60 fps nothing below 50 during heavy action with 64 people on B2K maps... Thank you once again!! =)

jeffsmoky728

Thx maniac for the phone call walk through to fix settings... SO far so good, got a sold 60 fps nothing below 50 during heavy action with 64 people on B2K maps... Thank you once again!! =)