BF4 - now that it is out - game stability

[Skouperd]

Hi guys, this is my views on the BF4 game crashes and what I’ve experienced. Let’s just ignore for a second the server restarts which impacted everybody. I would have expected DICE to do something like : “hi guys, the server will restart with new patches as soon as this game ends…” warning to the players and then restart as soon as the map is finished. Either way, let’s ignore those.

I have a feeling that a lot of the system crashes being experienced by users is a result of heat or a bodge overclock. The times when my game have crashed was always because I omitted to set my graphics fan to maximum performance (ultra gaming). I use something called GPU Tweak to manipulate my fans on my graphics card. I have three different settings on it, “silent” for my normal day to day operation on the computer, “gaming” for average games, which will ramp up the fan to about 60% max. Then I needed a new setting for BF4, called “ultra gaming” whereby my GPU fan is basically set extremely aggressively to run at 100% as soon as the heat exceeds 45 degrees. (I use Corsair Linked to control my CPU temps, and the same there, I’ve set it a lot more aggressive than I normally would)

Most people if I am not mistaken in this clan (and elsewhere) have overclocked their systems. With an overclock, people will run something like prime 95 for hours on end, if they are thorough they will then run some graphics benchmark like 3dMark and then declare their systems stable. Other people that are slightly more thorough will follow up their Prime95 torture test with something really hectic like Furmark and only then declare their system stable. However, I don’t think the above is the correct approach to test the system for stability, the reason being that you are stressing a single component at a time, first CPU, then GPU.

Battlefield 4 is by far the most intensive game I have ever played from using the resources in your computer (I would even say much more so than a game like Crysis which emphasised graphics too much). As a result of this, Battlefield will stress your systems like nothing before it ever has, using all the available RAM, all the available CPU power, and also all the Graphics settings. Hell, I even felt the heat on my power supply (a 1000W Corsair) and for the first time ever it was warm. As such, I think a lot of the errors / bugs that we observe is the result of system instability rather than game instability.

In order to remove the above from the equation, may I suggest you do yourself a quick test to determine if your system is really rock solid. Run Prime95 torture test, while you also run Furmark at the same time. If your system doesn’t fry something then you know it is stable. If it fries something then you know where your problem is. I will suggest when you run the above test, that you keep a close eye on temps and stop the torture as soon as you see the heat rising.

You can also read this guy’s article here: http://blog.szynalski.com/2012/11/25/the-right-way-to-stress-test-an-overclocked-pc/
Which effectively says the exact same as mine, but not quite as elegantly… ;-)


The only time my system crashed was when I forgot to set the fan speeds to their maxs, otherwise it was really rock solid. This is my setup:

1. GTX580 (stock clock rates, stock ASUS cooling)
2. e5-2760 cpu (stock clock rates, Corsair i80 cooling)
3. Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi (stock clock rates, stock cooling)
4. Firefox (people has experienced crashes due to Internet Explorer)

Oh, I did experience one crash, that was in the single player mode, but that is a bug with a lot of people experiencing it on the exact same place.

any event, my 2 cents on the topic

[J_Th4ng]

I've noticed that the game is very well optimised for multi core CPUs. I've switched off HyperThreading on my 3930K, but all six cores are getting a good load (50-70% on each core). My CPU is overclocked to 4.5GHz. My GPU's (2x GTX670) are running at stock.

I had absolutely no issues running the game up until late afternoon yesterday, when I had 3 CTDs in the space of about half an hour. I'm not sure what caused these, I'll try and take a little time to diagnose this evening.

In general though, I'm pretty impressed with how the game runs. With the exception of the server restarts, the game has been remarkably stable, considering how taxing it is on all of your PC components.

[KakHard]

CTD's are a result of the game itself. (BF4 has stopped working)

If you are having sound issues or where the game hangs and the sound loops at that point, you can disable all your HDMI and HD audio outputs.
Just leave your Mic and "Speaker output" or whatever your actual sound device is called.

That sorted it for me.

[Skouperd]

I can agree with you jarrod on the core utilisation. When I looked at my CPU it was definately as if there is a preferance to the real cores being used than the hyper threading ones which is exactly how it should be. (i.e. I had all 8 cores utilised and only about 4 of the hyper threaded ones was being used).

[Skouperd]

also, what I have found to be the case, in a lot of scenarios, people will say they are just sitting on the "black screen". I have found that the black screen can take some time before it moves away (I think the shaders and things are loaded then) so perhaps just be patient a bit.