The AT Battlefield 4 F.A.Q., News, and Discussion thread

[SexyK]

I'm seeing an average of around 50% total CPU usage. Surprised it's not higher, but still nice to finally load up a game where the hex core can stretch its legs a bit.

 

[QuantumPion]

Think i will be as bold as to say the whole remark about windows 8 having better cpu optimization wasn't marketing bs....every time i find a guy claiming a excellent experience on windows 7 in BF4,its cause they either have a fx8350 or a i7 chip....the ones stuttering keep posting they have amd quad cores and i5 chips.....

The few i5 owners which don't appear to be many it seems to be having a stutter free experience on 7 most likely have highly overclocked chips......

I have an i7 3770k and I have stuttering. When I turn SLI on (GTX 680's) the stuttering makes the game unplayable. In single card mode the stuttering is moderate but playable.

 

[2is]

Think i will be as bold as to say the whole remark about windows 8 having better cpu optimization wasn't marketing bs....every time i find a guy claiming a excellent experience on windows 7 in BF4,its cause they either have a fx8350 or a i7 chip....the ones stuttering keep posting they have amd quad cores and i5 chips.....

The few i5 owners which don't appear to be many it seems to be having a stutter free experience on 7 most likely have highly overclocked chips......

Well... I also have a 2500k setup running windows 7. It doesn't stutter either, it's just noticably lower performing than my i7 machines. There's a much simpler explanition and that's that the game is a Beta. I highly doubt the performance characteristics will remain the same once the game is released or else very few people will be able to play it.

W8 has helped a few people, but there's been just as many saying they still have issues (Source: Battlelog forums) the one common denomonator isn't i5 or i7, it's that everyone is runnign the same (early?) beta code of the game.

W8 is a newer OS and thus has better thread management than W7, and I don't doubt that may help with the game in it's current state, but I think recommending a complete OS overhaul to achieve better performance in a beta is a bit drastic.

 

[QuantumPion]

I hope that is the case. I'll be pretty pissed if I have to spend $200 on W8 to get the best performance, especially since it was on sale for $30 last year.

 

[skipsneeky2]

W8 is a newer OS and thus has better thread management than W7, and I don't doubt that may help with the game in it's current state, but I think recommending a complete OS overhaul to achieve better performance in a beta is a bit drastic.

Well the sooner Dice can fix this stuttering issue if they do during beta which i doubt,the sooner i can make the switch back to window 7.

I simply believe there is a missing file of some sort during the game install in windows 7 that is often corrupted during installation that windows 8 installs correctly,i doubt the os as a whole is just that much better its just that its the only fix sadly enough for me lol.

Hey,thanks by the way for suggesting classicshell,its pretty awesome.

 

[2is]

I hope that is the case. I'll be pretty pissed if I have to spend $200 on W8 to get the best performance, especially since it was on sale for $30 last year.

It might still be that W8 gives the "best performance" particularily with AMD FX chips since the scheduler knows how to hanlde thier shared resources better but based on everything I'm reading, the current state of performance has more to do with the game being a beta than the OS you're running. There are just too many contracting experiences to chalk it squarely down to OS.

 

[moonbogg]

What kind of feedback is DICE looking for? So far, the best thing about BF4 is the LACK of that damn sun in my eyes. I swear, right after playing BF4 beta, I played some BF3 and I was reminded of how lame that sun glare is. You literally can't play the game while facing in that entire direction. Screw realism. If I want realism I'll join the army and go get myself shot at, and I'll do it while wearing sunglasses.

 

[Paul98]

I have an i5 3570k at 4.4ghz, and a 7850 at 1050, running windows 7. I don't have stuttering problems, at least for the most part. Every once in a while it will but for the most part runs just fine.

 

[taq8ojh]

Damnit, side scroll wheel clicking still doesn't work in BF4. I hoped they'd add support for this but no... What's the bloody point of having extra buttons when the game doesn't recognize them?

 

[DeadFred]

I just went into the lowest ping (20ms) empty server I could find. Running around on foot doing different things my frame rates would stay in the 70-80 range most of the time with the occasional spike up into the 100s and dip into the 40s.

Get in a helo and things really go wild, like from the teens to 200! I flew to point D and parked above the flag and just sat there looking at a single point and watched my frame rate jump wildly about. It doesnt seem to matter what is going on on screen the fps are all over the place.

i52500K @ 4.2 that stays around 94% in game
Using the latest beta nvidia drivers with GTX670 SLI
Ran the DIRECTXSETUP
Reduced settings to High, restarted game, same result.
Does this in all the (empty/full) Conquest servers Ive tried.

Ive concluded this is just a jacked up beta, and pray things are better at launch. Even if windows 8 were the answer, I still wouldnt move to it.

 

[Zargon]

Damnit, side scroll wheel clicking still doesn't work in BF4. I hoped they'd add support for this but no... What's the bloody point of having extra buttons when the game doesn't recognize them?

You can probably do it w software


I noticed I lost my remapped keys between sessions :-(

 

[GullyFoyle]

So how do you get into the beta if you purchased through gamefly? I'm not really seeing anything about the beta after i bought it on there.

Do you own BF3 Premium? You should see an Icon in Origin for BF4 beta next to the picture for BF3, a friend of my had to to go in and look at the dlc packs under BF3 (click the i button after clicking BF3), after that the bf4 Beta icon showed up.
Didi you buy BF4 Digital deluxe from Gamefly? I think the bf4 Beta icon should show up after the BF4 icon.
You would probably have to be given your game key to enter in Orgin.

Other wise wait until tomorrow and it will be open to all, probably under free games in Origin.

 

[moonbogg]

Ive concluded this is just a jacked up beta, and pray things are better at launch. Even if windows 8 were the answer, I still wouldnt move to it.

Me neither. I'm too cheap in addition to what a pain in the ass it shouldn't be, but would end up being anyway.

 

[GullyFoyle]

Damnit, side scroll wheel clicking still doesn't work in BF4. I hoped they'd add support for this but no... What's the bloody point of having extra buttons when the game doesn't recognize them?

my MX518 mouse has two thumb buttons, I tried mapping Melee to both of them, it stuck for one, but trying to set the other seemed to lock up the bind keys screen

 

[skipsneeky2]

Ive concluded this is just a jacked up beta, and pray things are better at launch. Even if windows 8 were the answer, I still wouldnt move to it.

I have decided just to run a dual boot partition,used to do this during the vista days when i ran ubuntu alongside vista,till i decided just to stick to xp solely which i did till 7 came out.

Windows 8.1 preview can be downloaded directly from microsoft for free and its good till Jan 15th,only thing i lost was a few hours of my time and a blank dvd disk.

 

[Spike]

my MX518 mouse has two thumb buttons, I tried mapping Melee to both of them, it stuck for one, but trying to set the other seemed to lock up the bind keys screen

I was able to assign it to both of my G5 thumb buttons, I wonder if there is an issue with the MX518?

 

[taq8ojh]

You can probably do it w software

Yeah I hoped the game could do it natively I tried it with Logitech's software in BF3 and it still didn't work, lol.

 

[smackababy]

Wow, I updated to the latest Nvidia drivers and performance is terrible now. I am downloading the beta drivers and hoping that fixes it.

 

[Phoenix86]

I read somewhere that they were recommending older drivers (don't know which) for Nvidia cards. I'm running the latest ATI beta drivers and they seem to work OK. Only one crash that did look video related, a minor stuttering which everyone is getting.

 

[DeadFred]

I read somewhere that they were recommending older drivers (don't know which) for Nvidia cards. I'm running the latest ATI beta drivers and they seem to work OK. Only one crash that did look video related, a minor stuttering which everyone is getting.

I read that too, the January drivers I believe it was. I may give that a try just to see for myself.

 

[smackababy]

I upgraded to the beta drivers and everything is fine now.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I read somewhere that they were recommending older drivers (don't know which) for Nvidia cards. I'm running the latest ATI beta drivers and they seem to work OK. Only one crash that did look video related, a minor stuttering which everyone is getting.

Keep on hearing that 320.49 i believe are giving some people a better time then even the most current beta drivers,not sure if there is any truth to that.

 

[Grooveriding]

Somehow I think this map will be one of the worst performing maps. It was the same in BF3 that heavy smoke/fog caused slowdowns. This beta map is full of the stuff everywhere.

When you pass by on the road besides the skyscraper after it's collapsed there is a ton of fire/smoke/dust/fog etc. and you get a framerate collapse. I would say this is probably one of the more graphically demanding maps that will be in BF4.

Also the X25 Air Burst is crazy OP. You can use that thing to destroy people from long range, lots of fun

 

[DeadFred]

Also the X25 Air Burst is crazy OP. You can use that thing to destroy people from long range, lots of fun

So thats what someone was raining down on me at C today, I couldnt figure out what or where that was coming from. I thought maybe it was mortars. LOL

 

[DeadFred]

Keep on hearing that 320.49 i believe are giving some people a better time then even the most current beta drivers,not sure if there is any truth to that.

I was gonna try some older drivers but its probably not worth the effort. After all it is playable for me, its just annoying to get those big dips. Who knows, they may give us a beta patch or two like they did with BF3.