Every once in a while we come across some gaming issue that when we approach those responsible for it, NVIDIA, AMD, the game developer, they seem as lost as we do.  For the last few days I have been banging my head on the table trying to figure out an issue with GeForce GTX graphics cards and Battlefield 3 and I am hoping that some of YOU might have seen it and can confirm.

While testing our new X79-based GPU test bed we continued to find that while playing Battlefield 3, frame rates would drop from 30+ to ~10 while running at 2560×1600 and Ultra quality presets.  It could happen when walking down an empty hallway or in the middle of a huge dramatic shootout with some enemies.  And sometimes, the issue would reverse and the frame rate would again jump back up to 30+ FPS.

A 10 frame per second tank?  No thanks…

Even more odd, and something the normal user doesn’t monitor, the power consumption of the system would drop significantly during this time.  At 30+ FPS the power draw might be 434 watts while when running at the ~10 FPS level it would draw 100 watts less!  The first theory was that this was the GPU going into a lower "p-state" due to overheating or some other bug, but when monitoring our GPU-Z logs we saw no clock speed decreases and temperatures never went above 75C – pretty tame for a GPU.

To demonstrate this phenomenon we put together a quick video. 

In the video, you are seeing the "tearing" of Vsync in a much more dramatic fashion because of of our capture method.  We actually were outputing a 2560×1600 signal (!!) to an external system to be recorded localy at a very high bit rate.  Unfortunately, we could only muster a ~30 FPS capture frame rate which, coupled with the 60 Hz signal being sent, results in a bit of double up on the tearing you might usually see.  Still, the FRAPS-reported frame rates are accurate and we use an external system to capture to video to remove the possibility of any interference on performance during the capture process.

The hardware used in this video was actually based on an ASUS X58 motherboard and a Nehalem Core i7-965 processor.  But wasn’t I just talking about an X79 rig?  Yes, but I rebuilt our old test bed to make sure this bug was NOT related to X79 or Sandy Bridge-E.  The systems that exhibited the issue were:

  • Intel Core i7-3960X
  • ASUS P9X79 Pro
  • 16GB DDR3-1600
  • 600GB VelociRaptor HDD
  • Windows 7 x64 SP1
  • GeForce GTX 580 (two different cards tested)
  • 290.53 Driver

Also:

  • Intel Core i7-965
  • ASUS X58 WS 
  • 6GB DDR3-1600
  • 600GB VelociRaptor HDD
  • Windows 7 x64 SP1
  • GeForce GTX 580 (two different cards tested)
  • 290.53 Driver

For me, this is only occurring at 2560×1600 though I am starting to see more reports of the issue online.

  • Another 560 ti and BF3 FPS Low Or Drop!
    • Well I just Installed my 2nd evga 560 ti DS running SLI and When I play battlefield 3 i get about 60 to 90 fps then drops at
      20 to 30. Goes Up and down, I look at the evga precision looks like each gpu is running at 40% each and changes either up or down.
      Temp. is under 60 degrees c.
  • GTX 560 Ti dramatic FPS drops on BF3 only
    • "having any setting on Ultra will cue dramatic and momentary fps drops into the 30’s. if i set everything to High, i will stay above 70 fps with the new beta 285.79 drivers released today (which i thought would fix this problem but didn’t). i’ve been monitoring things with Afterburner and i’ve noticed that GPU usage will also drop at the same time these FPS drops happen. nothing is occurring in the game or on the screen to warrant these drops, FPS will just drop even when nothing is going on or exploding and i’m not even moving or looking around, just idle. they occur quite frequently as well."
  • BF3 Frame Drops
    • "When i use 4xAA i get abnormal framedrops, even while nothing is going on, on the screen.
      The weird thing is that, when it drops, it always drops to 33/32fps, not higher, not lower.
      It usually happens for a few seconds."
  • BF3 @ 2560×1600 Ultra Settings Preset Unplayable
    • "I know its a beta, but i haven’t heard any problems yet about framedrops.
      Sometimes my frames drop from 75fps way back to 30/20 fps, even when nothing is going on, on the screen."

So what gives?  Is this a driver issue?  Is it a Battlefield 3 issue?  Many of these users are running at resolutions other than the 2560×1600 that I am seeing it at – so either there is another problem for them or it affects different cards at different quality levels.  It’s hard to say, but doing a search for "radeon bf3 frame drop" pulls up much less incriminating evidence that gamers on that side of the fence are having similar discussions.  

I have been talking with quite a few people at NVIDIA about this and while they are working hard to figure out the source of the frame rate inconsistencies, those of us with GeForce GTX cards may just want to back off and play at a lower resolution or lower settings until the fix is found.