Does Your PC Run the BF4 Beta Well?

i've got an i5 2500k oc'd to 5ghz and a 7970 and it's not running smoothly for me either. Beta's a beta!

If anything, this cements my decision to go with the PS4 version of the game. I can't be bothered to upgrade right now, and to be frank I'd rather get an all new set-up in a couple of years, so my hopes all hinge on my future PS4 being up to the task.

I don't doubt for a second that it'll run way smoother on new gen consoles, but will it be in 1080p? I care about that too. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.

@seppli: I don't know much about your processor, but your video card is several years old and only has 1gb of video memory. Depending on what settings you are running on that 1gb could be causing some of the significant slow down. BF3 on 1080p ultra settings used way over 1gb of video memory. A mid priced video card with 2gbs of video memory might help quite a bit to boost your average fps, but the processor might be hindrance. The multiplayer side of the Battlefield games tend to use up a lot more CPU than the singleplayer.

Eh, I think that sounds more like a "this is a beta" thing and not a "my computer is aging" thing. Your computer is aging, though.

As long as I don't use ultra textures, I should be fine VRAM-wise. Auto-detect put me on medium-high settings with some FXAA and SSAO, and it definitely can run it swell - just not smoothly. Mostly an optimization issue.

My PC is definitely not Ultra material, it wasn't that for BF3 either.

@squirrelnacho:

A decent upgrade for a HD 5870 is about in the pricerange of a PS4, and the better a GFX card I get, the more my CPU will hamstring it. I don't really need a sidegrade with more VRAM. It's really not a good time to invest in PC gaming for me right now. I'll be getting the most for my money spending it on a new gen console.

@seppli: Well if you will be using a console a lot, then it sounds like that would be a better choice for you.

I cant even get it running. Some sort of invalid license missing dll error when I try to connect to a server.

Well - I'm certainly not buying a 6 core bulldozer, which is the only upgrade I can make on this motherboard, and an all new PC is out of the question right now. Mostly because the PS4 will pick up the slack really.

That said, my CPU should definitely be enough to run game smoothly. Not at a buttery-smooth 60+ FPS, but definitely at steady 30+. It's an optimization issue. Lots of folks have much stronger CPUs than I have, and still get the massive drops in framerate.

Yeah, fine over here.

Catalyst 13.9 on a 7950, Intel i3 3220, 16gb ram and the game is on 3tb green drive. 1920x1200 with settings on high, not using fraps but it's above 40's unless a noob tube blows up near me.

Rolling an i5 4570k with an AMD 7870, runs around 50-60 fps in high setting 1080p. I think performance on AMD is better for BF4 because of the new AMD's graphic library thing, also I think Windows 8 helps because of DirectX11.

But you know what: Who F knows for reals... for a game that looks exactly the same as BF3 I don't understand the performance gap.

i5 2500k with a decent overclock, GTX 580. Unplayable bad stutter and input lag. Updated drivers and everything, no fix yet. Yea it's a beta but it sure makes me glad I didn't end up preordering

I'm not at all surprised that it performs poorly for you. A) the drivers aren't really ready, and B) your system is very modest for this game. Keep in mind this is a next gen game. You're right on the cusp.

It runs great for me, but I'm on a GTX 680, a 3770k, and 16GB of RAM. Actually feels smoother than BF3.

It's a beta with no real drivers dude. It's not an optimization issue, it's a driver issue. Just be patient. And the game is CPU intense, that's just the way it is. There's a lot of shit exploding and other CPU stuff going on. How does BF3 run for you? If it runs well for you, BF4 will too when new drivers are all ready to go.

I don't think the beta is using that stuff. Also, they are doing similar lower level access stuff on the nVidia side as well. Less significant, but it's there.
Also, the game looks far, far sharper than BF3. Turn off Post AA, and the texture detail is a hell of a lot more intense. Explosions look a lot nicer too, more particles flying off and all that, etc. The map in the BETA is also a lot more detailed than previous maps have been, if you ask me.

I would love to try this on my 770 but I don't want to preorder the game.

I am running it on a 4670k with 16 GB and a 2GB GTX 770. Runs like shit.

Open Beta starts on the 4th. I guess you might be able to preload the client already. Origin.

Running with a 660 GTX and a 5 year old Q6600, along with 6GB DDR2. It should run as well as BF3 does, but it definitely does not.

Huge spikes like that in performance can usually attribute to one or two specific settings/effects.

In all likely hood the game still needs to be fully optimised as well as official drivers released to support it.

Either that or there's just like one shading or lighting or post processing effect thats only really handled well on cards newer than yours.

i5-2500K

8GB DDR3-1600 RAM

eVGA GTX 570 HD 1.2 GB

1TB WD Caviar Black

Windows 7 SP1

1920x1080 60Hz

Runs pretty bad. Haven't done the console frame rate display thing yet, but I'd guess 15-20 FPS is what I'm getting. Running it with its settings on Auto or Low and any mix in between fixes nothing. Runs about the same. Ultra does fuck it up even more (5-15), but I had no dreams of running it that way anyway. BF3 runs quite well on my machine with everything but Texture Resolution on Ultra (50-60+ FPS). Tried older drivers and the latest beta drivers and they didn't fix anything either. I'm thinking it's just the "beta-ness" of it, the fact that optimization isn't done, and the fact that no official drivers exist.

Also, side note: How long before I have to upgrade my rig to continue playing high-ultra settings in most games at 1080p?

I am frankly disappointed with the frame rate issue. I am running an i7 2600k, 16gb Ram, and a GTX 760 2gb and I can't keep it above 30fps. And forget about it once the building comes down. There is absolutely no way I shouldn't be running smooth. I can run BF3 on ultra on a 2560x1440 display at over 60fps. No matter what settings I try or what people tell me to tweak it makes little difference. And I'm a dumbass for preordering this.

I5 2500k, 7970, 8gb ram, most things on high, runs about 50 - 40fps average but sometimes I do get crazy frame drops to the single digits also crashes like a motherfucker. Oh yeah and 1920x1080.

Yep. No issues at all running it at 60 (because of vsync). Everything set to ultra.

i5 2500k OC'ed to 4.6

GTX 780

I've got pretty much the same setup as you, and I figured since I was able to run BF3 at pretty high settings, BF4 should run just fine as well.
For me, the game is completely unplayable, even on Low settings. Wondering if they intend to fix the performance issues before the game goes retail, but seeing how the full game is less than a month away, I doubt it.

Will wait a week or two, and if nothing's improved by then, I'll cancel my preorder.

4GB DDR3, FX8120 and an OC Radeon 7850 and it runs smooth maxed out other than some stuttering issues that I assume are a beta/server thing.

People running Core2 architecture CPU's or Pre current AMD line up's shoudn't expect to fare well here. The game on my 4770K running at 4.5ghz sits around 80% usage on average. The Core2 architecture (your Q6600's and what not) is over 7 years old at this point, they had a good run but nothing lasts forever. Stuff like the Phenom II was never up to snuff, they pull essentially the same performance as the Core2 gear but was 3 years late to the party.

This game is a CPU beast (frankly I'm happy to see modern hardware being used) and it's definitely showing for people who have been stubborn when it comes for CPU upgrades. Even those running Sandy Bridge should probably look into dialing up the clock speed if they're hitting a wall during big events (the building coming down).

Are you running the new nvidia beta's that came out the other day, you'll need those. That machine should handle the game pretty much fine.

i5 3570, 8gb RAM, GTX 660, 720p TV.

I am getting between 45-60 FPS on the auto detect settings. It looks like most things are on utra or high. For some of you having serious frame rate issues, try downloading the newest drivers. When I first started I had like 10 FPS on low, downloaded the drivers and achieved the above results.

Still disappointed with the performance. It doesn't really look any better than BF3 (which I can run on Ultra at a constant 60), but it sure doesn't run as well, but I guess it is a beta. Not getting the full game anyway, I've been done with military shooters for a while, only got BF3 because it was in the EA humble bundle.

I haven't tried it yet, but I've got an SLi setup, which beta's are almost never optimized for so we'll see.

i5 2500k(no OC), 8 GB RAM, HD 7870XT 2GB, running at 1080p on all ultra w/ no MSAA, high FXAA, and HBAO or HDAO or whatever the fuck kind of AO they've got after SSAO.

I haven't looked at actual framerate numbers because I honestly don't care enough to, but it feels smooth to me.

GTX 670 and Phenom II X4 955 BE and I can't even run it on low at 1280x720. Something definitely not right there.

Currently using an i7 920 (OC'd at 3.4 GHz), 12 GB of RAM and a GTX 770.

Framerate is very playable but I feel like it should be a lot better. I can run Battlefield 3 maxed at 1920x1200 at 60+ FPS but I'm barely getting over 50 FPS on BF4 and it dips in the thirties quite often. It's not to bad but I feel like it should be better. What I find strange is that my GPU load never goes past 65% when playing. I think there's an optimization issue somewhere.

On a second note, the game is a lot of fun.

EDIT : Yes, i'm using beta drivers.

I5 2500k/ 560 GTX/ 6 gb ddr3 ram all stock. I'm running at around 40-70 fps with massive fps drops here and there on all medium setting. I am able to run BF3 on high settings at 60 fps capped. I think the maps size itself is causing issue with the engines graphics renderer because it culls geometry/textures way to harshly when going up/down stairs so the map is still probably being optimised. My biggest bottleneck is most likely my hard drive. My fps also drops below 30 when point C goes down and the water physics spray up hitting the land.

Not maxed all the way out, no.
Well ok, it can't really be maxed out since it's missing all the fancy textures this time around as well that will apparantly really make it stand out.
But my hardware is getting old at this point so I'm not even trying to max it. I only get around 30-35 FPS with the settings as high as they can go, so meh.

Most problems I have are server related anyway

It's called your Phenom II X4 :P

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/01/07/amd_phenom_ii_x4_model_940_black_edition_processor/5#.UlC1WFAvg5Q

It was rubbish on release 4 years ago and it's super rubbish now when running modern games with any sense of CPU usage.

I was running BF3 at 40fps averagely. With BF4 it's like a slide show when there's action going on. There's some impressive new things, but overall I fail to see how they are big game changers with the series. Also, they made such a big deal with the water, but too me it looks like blue pudding.

evga gtx 770 sc acx and i7 2600k

runs really smooth

@korwin: Yep my rubbish CPU that four years later played Crysis 3, BF3, Witcher 2 and everything else until now without issue. Definitely shouldn't be able to play what is essentially BF3-2 at minimum settings.

If BF4 is utilizing an updated instruction set for something like physics calculations then it makes perfect sense, it is after all also headed to XBO and PS4 both of which support instructions well ahead of the PII line. The performance difference between running a cloth physics calculation for instance using AVX and Serial is somewhere in the order of 3-4 times as efficient.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/soa-cloth-simulation-with-256-bit-intel-advanced-vector-extensions-intel-avx

The constraint solver loop is the key hotspot for cloth simulation. This code section was timed within a the sample application as well as within a standalone testing framework to ensure all code paths were optimized and measured properly. Hand-optimized serial, 128-bit Intel AVX, and 256-bit Intel AVX versions were tested on a single Intel® processor with the codename Sandy Bridge microarchitecture. The application is single-threaded. The following table shows the average number of CPU cycles required per constraint update as well as the overall application frame-rate for the simulated scene with many cloth objects totaling just over 37,000 points and about 193,000 constraints which the solver iterated over 16 times per frame.

Performance	Serial	SIMD 4 (128-bit)	SIMD 8 (256-bit)
CPU Cycles per Contraint Update	35.5	9.3	5.6
Solver Speed up	1 (Baseline)	3.8X	6.3X
FPS	18	62	100
Overall Speed up	1 (Baseline)	3.4X	5.6X

And yes, the Phenom is totally and unequivocally hot garbage (that poor 670 is being bottlenecked to high heaven). AMD haven't been a genuine contender in the desktop CPU market since the Athlon X2 was throwing down against the Pentium 4 Conroe. It's a damn shame really since I used to buy quite a lot of AMD gear back in the day but ever since Intel has had free reign of the desktop space, which means there's never any sort of price drop on a line over time.

@korwin: I'm well aware that it's time to upgrade and I'm looking to soon but you act like the 955 was some sort of a disaster of a release. If anything they were seen as hope for AMD when they came out and reviewed pretty well, especially for gaming.

GTX 670, runs fine on ultra except erratic stuttering. Common issue it seems.

I didn't try the beta drivers from Nvidia yet either.

I'm not sure where you got those reviews from, the performance review from the Phenom II launch that I linked makes it's case pretty clear

The Phenom II performance speaks for itself. It loses to its old nemesis, the Core 2, which I think some folks will be surprised by. The Phenom II loses to the Core i7, which I think was to be expected. The Phenom II is a loser.

Does that mean it is without value? Absolutely not. But I think those that will find value in it will be few and far between and even fewer of those folks will be computer hardware enthusiasts.

If you are a gamer or a content creation professional, my suggestion to you is to save your pennies and get the Intel Core i7. Even if you have to wait an extra few months to save up for good DDR3. The Phenom II just does not have long legs, and I don’t think I will want to pay for DDR3 to dress one up next month either.

The bump to DDR3 with the socket update at the time helped it stretch it's legs some but at the end of the day it was still behind the performance curve when stacked up against CPU's 2-3 years older than it, let alone the current at the time competition. If Nvidia released a new card tomorrow to compete with the new R9 line up but it's performance lagged behind a 5870 people would be in hysterics.

Windows 7 has DirectX11 and has for a long, long time.

Even Vista has DirectX11.

Supposedly BF 4 will be the first game to support AMD's Mantle API when it is released, which should mean running BF 4 on GCN based GPU will lead to a big performance increase compared to to a similarly non-GCN based GPU.

i5-2500k, GTX 570, 8GB RAM.

On High Settings I get 45-50fps with a lot of drops that can hit single digits. Frame drops seem to happen when the game suddenly needs to draw in a lot of objects at once (e.g. when I turn around a corner and a bunch of people come into my line of sight).

I have a 560 ti still and with everything on high it was between 30 and 40 FPS. Good enough for me

Game is still telling me to have Origin installed to play when I already do.

Fuck this hot mess.

i find 99% of the stuttering comes around fire. 50fps with most settings on high/ultra. hoping this gets fixed as FR drops into the teens and single digits.

i7 3770k @ 3.5Ghz, Galaxy 670 4gig, 8gig ram, Dell u3011.

I finally admitted to myself that I won't have any fun playing the beta on my PC, so I grabbed the PS4 version of it. It looks decent and runs at a smooth 30ish frames.

Jeez - the 24 player Conquest version has Scout choppers in there. How awesome does wiping out scores of camping snipers feel? Soooo fucking good! Attacking the top of the Skyscraper? It's like Terminator 2, just supersized. The things I can do at the helm of these badboys... oh man!

And damn shooting with a gamepad feels so much better to me. I feel the flippin' recoil! How about that. Of course I could play with a gamepad on PC, but the playingfield just doesn't allow for that, at least if I want to be at all competitive.

my 6850 wont let me :(

i5-3350P, Radeon HD 7870 2 GB, 16 GB DDR3 RAM

High preset but with Textures set to Very High also I ran it in Windowed mode 1280x720 for the most part (since I was also doing something else at the time) but I can run it at 1920x1080 just fine on a single monitor set-up.

It was solid for the most part, there were a few noticeable frame drops (like a sudden hitch) but it was not at all disruptive and very playable. I'll suggest to the OP if you can try getting a 7870 or 7950 if you are more inclined to get an ATI card since it'll be the holiday season and there'll probably be some good deals on graphics cards that you might be able to snag. You can probably get a 7870 for under $200 or a 7950 at around or above $200 bucks too and if you are just gaming on a single monitor set-up, you'll be pretty happy with either one of those cards.

@korwin: Yep, I've noticed it eating up a lot of my CPU too (varies 55-70%).