Graphics Card Change

[undrt0w]

When I got my computer I purchased an AMD 7950 card. When BF4 came out I thought it would be awesome and I would need the best video settings for it, so I went and bought a second AMD 7950 card to do xfire. Then it turned out BF4 is crap and xfire is crap as well...at lest for BF4. I had turned off the second card for a while and decided to try it again with the latest drivers. Well, I play on mostly LOW with some MEDIUM settings (the Symthinc propose) and with xfire I go from 120 to 80 FPS. Nothing stable and it just goes up and down, plus there is some stuttering. So, I said frak it, I will do the following:

1) Sell both cards and get a NVIDIA. I am hopping to get 400 Euro in total from both.

or

2) Sell only one and keep the 7950.

Can you hardware guru guys tell me what you think? Which would be the better option? I want a good NVIDIA card around the 400 Euro price range so I can at least get 120 FPS with these crappy settings. I get the now with only one 7950, so maybe keep it? Dunno what to do All I know is Xfire is not working for me.

Thank you kindly.

[matsif]

1) there is absolutely no guarantee that the nvidia hardware will work better for you. I constantly read things of people with 780s and such with well worse than 60 FPS, which you already seem to be doing better than. I am playing on a single 7850 as well with no real issues anymore on mostly ultra settings.

2) If your monitor is only 60Hz, you're not gaining anything, as your monitor isn't refreshing fast enough to actually show you those frames. So before making a suggestion more data is needed about the rest of your system. Why do you want 120 FPS so bad?

3) There's really nothing terribly wrong with crossfire, but there is a ton of problems with the frostbite engine and how it implements things.

I'd suggest keeping the 7950s for now as you probably see benefits with both of them in other games, BF4 is just an outlier because of how crappy the game was made. You should in theory be able to run those 2 cards into the ground over a couple more years.

[Necromancer]

i personally don't think 2 card worth the money. crossfire/SLI setups has additional problems on top of the card issues.

I just pulled out my old Radeon 5850 which got me 50-70 FPS stable on low settings @1080p and replaced with
R9 280x and i get ~80 FPS not stable on High, often goes to ~50 in some places. so... i don't think its a big improvement. I was expecting more, especially not go down to 50 (its not spikes, its stable 50FPS at some areas).

[Hitman47]

stuttering you say? how much RAM you got undertow?

[undrt0w]

Thx for the suggestions guys. Here is some more info:

CPU: i5-3570K
MOBO: ASUS P8Z77-V
RAM: 16GB
Monitor: BENQ XL2411T

So, it shouldn't be the RAM. The monitor has 144Hz refresh rate...hence why I get pissed off when I don't get more than 120 I know there are debates that the eye can't understand more than 60Hz, but it defies the purpose of getting such a monitor at the first place right?

Other games seem to run stable although I don't play many new games so I can't really say. I will check with Titanfall.

[knorren]

Those people getting bad fps with 780s are just incompetent fools who doesn't know how to configure their computer correctly with drivers and hardware, or they have a really old cpu and not enough ram and thought the best gfx would help them enough, well that's not the case.

I used to run my GTX570 on medium settings and got "ok" fps but not good, so I got the GTX770 instead.

I've heard alot of people getting the stuttering with AMD cards who have Mantle enabled, probably because it's still in beta stage and will probably not get finished until BF5 arrives!

I've found lots of posts in other forums where people have problems with 7950 in crossfire, they have a good avg fps when testing but the low is usually very low compared to the average and highest.

If you want good fps with Nvidia, go with GTX770 or better, maybe 4GB version or a even a 780.

[undrt0w]

Yeah, I read a dozen of posts about 7950 xfire problems and how to fix them. None, of them worked.

I tried Mantle for couple of days but now I switched back. I actually got better FPS with Mantle, but at some points it would drop to 35 for a sec, stutter like hell and then get back to 120-130 stable. Maybe they will optimize it even more in the drivers to come and hopefully xfire will run better on Mantle. Who knows. The answer I think lies in the fact that BF4 is just a sh1t gane, but no news here.

[knorren]

The funny thing here is that for some reason, it's the people who own hardware from the "battlefield 4 hardware partner" who complains the most.
People with Intel cpu's and Nvidia gfx barely says a word about it.

[undrt0w]

Hey gurus,

I decided that I will sell my 2 7950s for a Nvidia card. I would be thankful for some recommendations. Now, I am inclined towards knorren's proposal of a 770, but would love to hear what you think.

I guess I will stick with one card instead of 2, since I don't wanna risk it again with dual config. Probably though SLI works better than Xfire.

[King6moh]

I definitely prefer the 1 card in comparison to two. I have a 770 which I am very happy with. Would recommend either EVGA or XFX for their warranty (and overall sexy look).

If you want to shell it out some more money, a 780 (or even a 290X).

Good luck!

[Ash2Dust]

I'm in the camp of CPU is probably the most important with the BF franchise. Whenever I "upgraded" my video card, BF would look prettier but no real performance gain.
When I got a new CPU/motherboard, the stutters went away. I also think I am handicapped by my 60Hz monitor when I see vids of people spinning and everything looks smooth.
I also would get a new hard drive each time. So a clean install of windows and a faster drive may be a factor.
Just my perception.

[King6moh]

CPU: i5-3570K
MOBO: ASUS P8Z77-V
RAM: 16GB
Monitor: BENQ XL2411T

I do agree Ash, but I think based on his specs, it shouldn't be a monitor issue. The i5 is also a pretty solid CPU although a generation older. Must admit though I am not too familiar with the older generation.

I would do as Ash suggested with the HDD (an SSD even if you could!). Also, I tend to always have the battle screen off or even my whole battlelog closed as you'll see some performance increase that way.

[undrt0w]

Yeah, that battle screen...i recently noticed it would run better without it. Such a bummer!

I am going to be monitoring my CPU these days to see if it clutters while playing BF4.

SSD was next on the list...everyone is loading so much faster with it. Well, I will get rid of the cards as there is no point in having 2 if they are not working and then after that I will go for an SSD. Problem is I get low FPS...like 80 when I have 80% of the things on LOW and the rest on MEDIUM. I am not sure if SSD will help for that.

Aslo, could it be because I run Win 7? I read that Win 8 give quite the boost on FPS for BF4

[matsif]

Yeah, that battle screen...i recently noticed it would run better without it. Such a bummer!

I am going to be monitoring my CPU these days to see if it clutters while playing BF4.

SSD was next on the list...everyone is loading so much faster with it. Well, I will get rid of the cards as there is no point in having 2 if they are not working and then after that I will go for an SSD. Problem is I get low FPS...like 80 when I have 80% of the things on LOW and the rest on MEDIUM. I am not sure if SSD will help for that.

Aslo, could it be because I run Win 7? I read that Win 8 give quite the boost on FPS for BF4

placebo as far as operating system, you might see like a 10% increase at best, which you can probably achieve through cheaper means and without having to nuke your whole system. win8.1 doesn't do anything better than win7 other than a bit better usage of multiple processor cores, but it also requires more RAM and such to use (not really a problem for you with 16GB but still). if that low of an improvement is worth having to reinstall a bunch to your hard drive, then go for it, but I don't see it as a worthwhile course of action if you're paying for windows.

80 is also not low fps considering how horribly unoptimized this farce of an engine is (and that they keep introducing memory leaks with each update). I bet you're probably getting nearly the same FPS with everything on ultra, I mean I'm getting like 70-75 on a single 7850 without the most up to date drivers and most settings on ultra (occlusion/AA and a few others on off or high),

I honestly don't think you're going to see any major FPS boost by swapping cards unless you're going to shell out for a 780 or 290x. even with the top of the line stuff I doubt it would improve FPS by 40-50 frames. You would probably see a larger improvement by getting a newer and faster processor. I saw huge improvements going from a AMD 8120 (3.2 GHz) to a AMD 8350 (4.0 GHz), going from a stuttery mess at 40 fps to generally smooth at around 75 with no settings differences. Assuming you haven't overclocked and are running at the stock 3.4 on the i5 3570k, bumping that up to something a bit faster or newer will probably yield better results.

as to the battlelog crap, there is a javascript thing you can throw into firefox/chrome that disables the background animations (I think it's a battlelog option now as well) that should help, or you can just close battlelog after BF4 loads. just closing your browser in general should yield some slight gains.

SSD will help load times but isn't going to really improve anything else.

I'm still of the opinion you're being a bit silly by dropping these 2 cards for a single card only because of BF4. Just as many people complaining about stuttering and issues on 770s and 780s as there are with 7950s and 280x and 290x cards with a myriad of processors and RAM and such. It's a horrible engine that has been horrible since they introduced it to PC with bad company 2, and there is no sign of it getting fixed any time soon.

[Necromancer]

Windows 8 gave more stable FPS when the game launched.
They fixed it for win 7 since then. No point in upgrading now.

I bought a new card and went from low settings to ultra, and hardly noticed any difference. Maybe because I hardly care about graphics, but I really had to concentrate and search for the diffrences.

As to FPS, I don't think you'll get more then 80 stable FPS on ultra with a 770, and keep in mind there are plenty of places on every map that will force your graphic below that no matter what.

Don't expect too much of a perfomance gain with this game or visual change.