Lag on BF3

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viatical08

New Member
I'm letting my friend borrow my 660 Ti. He lags on BF3 but he can run Tomb Raider on ultra pretty smoothly. On BF3 he even lags on low settings, it goes down to like 19 FPS. We tried reinstalling too.

His specs:

Operating System: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (6.2, Build 9200) (9200.win8_gdr.130410-1505)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: XFX79U
System Model: XFX nForce 790i Ultra 3-Way SLI
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 1642MB used, 2452MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 11



Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 660 Ti
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1183&SUBSYS_36633842&REV_A1
Display Memory: 3779 MB
Dedicated Memory: 3012 MB
Shared Memory: 767 MB
Current Mode: 1600 x 900 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Model: VE208
Monitor Id: ACI20A8
Native Mode: 1600 x 900(p) (59.978Hz)
Output Type: DVI
Driver Name: nvd3dumx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvwgf2umx.dll,nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um
Driver File Version: 9.18.0013.2018 (English)
Driver Version: 9.18.13.2018
DDI Version: 11
Feature Levels: 11.0,10.1,10.0,9.3,9.2,9.1
Driver Model: WDDM 1.2
Graphics Preemption: DMA
Compute Preemption: DMA
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 5/12/2013 17:42:27, 15143904 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71E3E-52C3-11CF-105C-6E161CC2C435}
Vendor ID: 0x10DE
Device ID: 0x1183
SubSys ID: 0x36633842
Revision ID: 0x00A1
Driver Strong Name: oem7.inf:0f066de34a948e92:Section067:9.18.13.2018:pci\ven_10de&dev_1183
Rank Of Driver: 00E02001
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_C ModeVC1_C ModeWMV9_C
 
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His CPU and RAM are the bottlenecks. If I'm reading this correctly, he has an E8400 with 2GB of RAM. I bet both of those are slowing him down.
 
Looks like the CPU is pretty much at 100% usage and almost all the RAM is being used. Upgrading the CPU and RAM would help, but upgrading LGA 775 CPUs and DDR2 RAM is pointless. Would make more sense to go and buy something like a 3570K with 8GB of RAM and a new board if he wanted to upgrade.

The CPU and RAM is more than likely causing the lag. It is true that the graphics card matters most when gaming, but his system isn't balanced.
 
I believe that board uses DDR3, so get 2 x 4 GB G.Skill RAM (if he upgrades to a new CPU and board later, he can reuse the RAM) and a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus and do a big OC, and he should be able to play BF3 on medium without any lag.
 
We need to know for sure the board is using DDR3 RAM before we suggest he spends money on more RAM (some 775 boards used DDR3, most DDR2). Personally, after the time and hassle you've gone through to fit a new cooler and overclock the E8400, it would have been easier to upgrade to something newer and you would get a bigger performance boost too. The i3 3220 and the AMD FX-4300/6300 are cheap and would perform better than his E8400.
 
spirit said:
We need to know for sure the board is using DDR3 RAM before we suggest he spends money on more RAM (some 775 boards used DDR3, most DDR2). Personally, after the time and hassle you've gone through to fit a new cooler and overclock the E8400, it would have been easier to upgrade to something newer and you would get a bigger performance boost too. The i3 3220 and the AMD FX-4300/6300 are cheap and would perform better than his E8400.
Click to expand...

how would the i3 3220 perform better if its only .3 Ghz better? and he also has a H55 Corsair water cooler
 
viatical08 said:
how would the i3 3220 perform better if its only .3 Ghz better? and he also has a H55 Corsair water cooler
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Have him overclock as long as he know what's he's doing. Core speed doesn't mean a whole lot honestly, it's more about how efficient the architecture of the CPU is. Which the i3 has a much more efficient architecture. Try overclocking and maybe toss in some more RAM and see what happens.
 
viatical08 said:
how would the i3 3220 perform better if its only .3 Ghz better? and he also has a H55 Corsair water cooler
Click to expand...

The i3 is much newer and has a much newer architecture. The i3 is faster than the quad-cores from the E8400's era too for the same reason.

Remember too that the i3 is a hyper-threaded dual-core, so it has two cores plus an additional two threads (so two cores, four threads), whereas the E8400 only has two cores and two threads. The extra threads also make the i3 faster.

Clockspeed is irrelevant to comparing CPU performance in most cases.
 
Overclock it to 4GHz before you try and replace it. There aren't too many games that phase as a E8400.
 
Okedokey said:
Overclock it to 4GHz before you try and replace it. There aren't too many games that phase as a E8400.
Click to expand...

Yeah but if you replace it I'd go for a amd processor if you don't get an i5, that way you can overclock it since you already have a cooler.

But you almost definitely need some more ram too, 2gb isnt much and BF3 is a very demanding game
 
Okedokey said:
Overclock it to 4GHz before you try and replace it. There aren't too many games that phase as a E8400.
Click to expand...

You'd be lucky to get an E8400 stable at 4.0GHz. It can be done, but something in the 3.6-3.8GHz range is probably more doable.
 
If I were him, I'd buy 8GB of DDR3 RAM and try and OC the CPU.
I have a few E7200's, and they OC from 2.53GHz to 3.2-3.3GHz and remain stable.
If the CPU (the RAM will be OK) is still the bottleneck, I'd look at some Haswell chips that are coming out June 4th.
 
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Jiniix said:
If I were him, I'd buy 8GB of DDR3 RAM and try and OC the CPU.
I have a few E7200's, and they OC from 2.53GHz to 3.2-3.3GHz and remain stable.
If the CPU (the RAM will be OK) is still the bottleneck, I'd look at some Haswell chips that are coming out June 4th.
Click to expand...

If it were me I'd just upgrade to a newer platform altogether. That why he could get a better CPU too. Even an AMD FX-6300 would be much faster than his E8400 and a lot easier to overclock.
 
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