Battlefield 4 stutter, new drivers or patch?

This is how I have had my pc setup since day 1 of playing bf4 its been butter smooth Only have had a mild oc of 4.2 and my card are at default clocks. Only had my 1440p screen a few days after upgrading from a 1080p 144hz Asus VG278HE and still smooth as.

 

When NVidia first came out with the 337.50 drivers, I noticed that Crysis 3 would stutter periodically. Eventually I pin pointed that down to the shader cache being enabled. After disabling, it played smooth as butter..

I think that the shader cache setting really only helps with slow or older CPUs. But if you have a fast overclocked CPU, it will actually cause stuttering because the compiled shader has to be pulled from storage which takes time..

With a fast CPU like a Core i7 or Core i5, it should easily be able to compile the shader in real time with no hit to performance however..

 

I've noticed the opposite in Battlefield Bad Company 2 DX11. It stutters a lot more when Shader Cache is disabled.

 

Exactly, and you have a mobile CPU which is slower and has a lower TDP than it's desktop counterparts.. Shader cache is morel likely to help slower CPUs than fast desktop CPUs like what I, and fernake have..

Of course there's also a possibility that NVidia have refined the technology since the last time I tested it, but I doubt it. Compiling shaders in real time shouldn't be an issue with fast desktop processors.

And by fast I mean Core i7 and Core i5 CPUs which have been overclocked..

 

Doubt it. Bad Company 2 is the only game I have in which Shader Cache seems to make any sort of difference.

 

Just wanted to add to this thread. For me too, the release of the latest WHQL Nvidia Drivers appears to coincide with the stuttering behaviour described in this thread - on death especially, and during certain maps (or it could be some kind of slowdown due to having played a series of maps). What I have not tried:

- running with a "high performance" profile (although this was never needed in the past) <-- I WILL TRY THIS NEXT
- checking to see if my cores were somehow re-parked due to Windows Update, and then un-parking them again
- disabling shader cache as suggested here
- rolling back the drivers

As this stutter has suddenly started, I am still unsure if we can pinpoint the error exactly to Nvidia Drivers. It could have been some other change (Windows Update as mentioned). Will investigate and report back.

 

This issue is purely driver related
The slight hitches have been around since the 332.xx drivers in both BF3 and BF4.

They only occur randomly and are very rare though for most users.
But 340.xx does seem to have made it slightly worse IMO.
NVIDIA is working on reproducing the problem, and hopefully fixing it in an upcoming driver.

Slowdowns or other general performance problems in BF3/4 can also be caused by Origin.
Please remember to disable the ingame Origin overlay

 

Still running 335 driver on purpose. Saw performance go down by something close to 10% after that.

 

I have a weird situation where sometimes the SLI scaling drops down, then alt+tabbing seems to fix it.

Also my 'temp' file, where the shader cache is compiled, its in the RAM, so I don't think its hitting performance at all. Now it scares me to think what if shader cache is hurting performance in some games.

 

Anyone have an update since the latest WHQL (344.11) were released?

For me, the issue seems to have been resolved - so it looks like it was a situation inherent to the last-released WHQL (340.52).

Can anyone else confirm?

 

I found that the 344.11 release is terrible for my GTX 770 SLI.
The 337.88 release seems to be the best.

 

i swap to amd because my gtx 680 sli having horrible ramdom fps drops 60fps to 5 fps spike is horrible cant play in ultra.

will 337.88 solve this?

 

Performance with latest drivers seem to help the stuttering. Not to mention BF4 has been running like crap since Dragons Teeth patch which I hear will be fixed in next update soon. So I would just wait till that patch drops.

 

Hey all, looks like the latest set (344.48) have reintroduced SLI issues. Terrible stuttering and both cards not being used to the max

Anyone else have a similar experience?