I posted this on my Gaming Community website to summarize all of the stuff I've tried to far to fix this issue and the results I've had. I've pulled a ton of info from many sites and I've had some limited success in minimizing the impact of what is obviously a flaw that end users have very limited control over. In theory, the source of this problem could be a Windows patch or some other invisible wide-ranging software change, a bug in the game code, or a bug in the netcode. Anyway, here are the results of what I've done to try to minimize the effects of this problem to date:
Yesterday I've gotten some positive results with the tests I've run on several different servers. I've made some good headway and have gotten to the point where I get significant stretches of lag-free gameplay, then I will get a hit of lag briefly, then no lag for awhile. I have to assume that this is probably normal. To date, I've tried:
- Clean install Win7 x64
- Latest BIOS
- Stock clocks
- HT disabled
- C1E (and C3/5/7, and SpeedStep) disabled
- Virtualization disabled
- Latest chipset drivers
- Core Parking diabled
- Latest Nvidia drivers installed
- Tried two different video cards, no change in the issue
- Latest NIC drivers, IPV6 diabled (unavailable in my Comcast segment anyway)
- Some network stack tweaks (no effect that I could notice)
- Vsync on
- FPS limited to 59.95 in user.cfg (with appropriate FPS set in game, with ingame vsync on)
- Changing several of the in-game settings
- Made lots of changes to my user.cfg file
All of the above things really didn't help much, then I did the things below yesterday (leaving the earlier changes in place):
- Disable DLNA server
- Disable Origin Notifications
- Disable Origin CloudSync
- Nvidia Ctrl Panel
- Set Max Prerenderered Frames to 1
- Turned Vsync ON
- Set Triple Buffering to OFF
- Turn off Network Discovery
- Flush the DNS cache
- Disable ECN Packets
- Disable UPnP service (in Win7 and in my router)
- Disable SSDP Discovery (Win7 service)
- Disable Pagefile (swapfile)
In my user.cfg file, I set maxframes to 59.95
In game
- Set my resolution to 1920x1080 @59.95Hz
- Set Vsync to ON
- Set Network Smoothing slider all the way to the right (full)
Gameplay was much better after making these changes. I'm not sure which thing or which combo of things did the trick, but I took the "throw a bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks" approach and it seems to have helped.
I'm still not "lag free", but at least the game is a lot more playable. I know a lot of you will say, "Wait, you're introducing input lag and other nasties by using network interpolation and turning Vsync on. I have to agree. I am sure that, although gameplay appears to be smoother, my hit registration is suffering somewhat for it. Since I don't play competitively, these slight offsets are a sacrifice I'm willing to make in order to see better in game and enjoy the gameplay more. I figure if YouTubers can live stream and play at 60FPS with Vsync and network interpolation maxed out to smooth the game (while being competitive), I can suck it up for casual play.
As far as I can tell, despite these settings, I have no perceptible input lag. Maybe having a powerful PC and a 120Hz monitor helps keep the input lag down to a dull roar. My replacement video card gets here Friday, and once I have it installed, I should be able to Vsync at 120Hz vice 60Hz. I will test that out and see how things go with two GTX 670s in SLI and the game running on mostly "Low" settings. More to follow this weekend.
So, to date, this post should serve as a pretty comprehensive list of things to try to reduce lag and stuttering in BF3. It is probably even better that I don't know exactly what did the trick, because everyone's system is different, as are their networks and the hops between their router and the game server they are playing on. There are so many variables that no one can definitively say there is "one right thing" to do in order to fix the lag in BF3.
war
