BF4 - R9 290, DX or Mantle

Huge memory leak

Crossfire R9 290 - huge memory leak in Direct x 11 or mantle i've tried both. Single card still works fine. Other games work fine. Kinda disappointed.

After about five minutes in BF4, my Vram usage is up to 6gigs which doesnt seem possible.

 

yea that sucks ass. tbh im going nvidia next round of cards. both these for mantle and thats the thanks we get.

 

Found this on BF4 CTE forums:
https://twitter.com/tiggr_/status/522851545746903040

So the problem with Mantle and Crossfire remains unsolved...

 

VRAM usage reading refers to the sum of VRAM usage on all cards in CrossFire. If you see 6GB VRAM being used, that's 3GB per card.

 

Doesn't Crossfire/SLI still use memory mirroring? Meaning even if your total vRAM is 6GB, in reality you can only use 3GB because both cards must have the exact same info stored in vRAM.

 

Yes, but tools like MSI Afterburner show the total for both cards, so 6000 MB VRAM usage is actually 3000 MB for each card.

BF4 on the other hand shows in game (with the Mantle renderer) about ~3000 MB but that's 3000 MB on each card.


LE
There seems to be some hope:
https://twitter.com/tiggr_/status/525000879724716032

 

I took a break from bf for a while and have gotten back into this last week or so and Mantle for me now is completely unplayable. I'm running the latest Omega drivers, tried 14.9, and even tried the new new beta drivers. Running Mantle is like a slideshow. It shows 55-60 fps but looks like 10 fps.

DX11 is more playable but certain parts of almost every map I get fps drops to the mid 40s (which to me is unplayable). I'm running mainly high and ultra on my settings and it doesn't make a difference if I go to medium, still get the drops.

I have my second monitor up monitoring my components temp, load, etc. and my 2500k @ 4.5 is at 100% until I die and go to my load-out screen, once I get back into the game it goes back up to 100. Is my processor bottle necking my system or is this just poor programming from DICE?

I used to run my 6950 on medium settings 60fps no problem. I feel like I should be able to run Ultra no problem.

 

1 thing you might try is delete the 2 MantlePipelineCache files found in the Documents - Battlefield 4 - cache folder. These files are created at initial start up of Mantle and then reused in subsequent game starts. Just, after initial creation is made under the then current Mantle version, when you change Mantle versions (through driver updates), starting game again uses these cached files created under the old Mantle version. Inconsistencies/incompatibilities may occur between the cached files and the new Mantle version. After deletion, restarting game in Mantle will have these files recreated using the new Mantle you have installed.

Should maybe delete these files after every driver update or GPU card change.

And are you using a driver cleaner (like DDU) when changing Catalyst drivers? Highly recommended.

 

Okay, thanks for that Mantle cache tip.

I will say though, back when I was playing and Mantle was working well, I did notice that DX11 was smoother when running/free looking even though DX11 was taking fps hits and mantle was not. I preferred the DX11 smoothness but used Mantle because the fps would never dip below 60.

And when I was testing drivers the other night I was using DDU when cleaning drivers.

When I tested the 15.x drivers the CCC icon in the taskbar would not start up when Windows did and when I would right click on the desktop to open up CCC, the computer would freeze up for a second and then CCC would not open. Something was corrupted. Just a heads up to people, I couldn't get those to work.

 

Mantle was leagues better than DX11 for me when I still had my FX8320 and a R9 290. Framerate was higher and no microstuttering.

 

I'm thinking I need to delete those cache files. I've never heard of such a thing so they're the original ones from when I installed BF4 on this install of windows 4-5 months ago. I've installed 5-6 different driver sets as well in that period of time. It's probably all junked up.

 

They are shader caches that are built at first run.

they are suppose to get deleted and recreated if the game detects new drivers, but it screws the pooch occasionally.

 

mantle is working just fine,
it will greatly enhance your fps when you are cpu limited

but mantle also has a downside,
mantle consumes more vram than directx (please dont ask me why).

its like 500-1000mb more in bf4, what makes it pretty much unusable on 2gb cards like 270x.

 

Something is seriously fcked up with bf for me.

I reinstalled the 14.11.2 beta drivers, deleted my mantle cache, and deleted my config file in the bf4 folder.

Mantle with Vsync on still is choppier than all hell. It's honestly like a strobe light it's that bad.

Furthermore, I was reading to try and disable the page file so I did. I went to advanced system settings, page file, and selected NO PAGING FILE and restarted. After the restart I opened up the afterburner hardware monitor and went to the bottom to monitor the paging file usage. Boot up bf4 and sure enough it show that 8 gigs are allocated to my page file and it goes up to 7 gigs or so. I alt tab out to do some digging and I get the "computer is running out of resources." This is while my ram was running about 4 gigs usage out of 8.

I don't know if there is something wrong with my Windows installation now because obviously whatever I did, did not turn page filing off.

I've seriously never have had this many problems getting a damn game to run. I don't know if I should completely reformat my computer or what?

Here is a picture of my perfoverlay graph: http://i.imgur.com/f0zwnho.png (That's with me on the test range)

 

Yup thats Mantle. It's been like that for 4-5 months... at least, since that's when I bought the game.

The only fix is to turn vsync off and limit fps > 120.
Or even better, just switch to DX11.

Wait wait... that's with Vsync off?
Hmm last time I bothered to check it worked OK.
Try reseting your config to default.

 

Okay, I'll give that a try.

Here is a pic of my memory and page file usage: http://i.imgur.com/wCzCWG5.png

I don't understand how if I have it set to No Page Filing this shows up like this??? Shouldn't it be 0?


EDIT: I tried what you said and turning v sync off gave me more fps (in the 100's) but there was still a stutter. 2-3 minutes in my game crashed saying I didn't have enough resources.

 

And yet my system does ok when I play, frame limit or no frame limit. Had been good for 6 months for me before that 8th July dice patch F'ed up crossfire. Took them months before they fixed that.

Now, it is all good for a while..... Only problem I have atm is the vram creeping up to eventually fill the 3Ghz limit (not sure if this is just a crossfire issue or does effect single GPUs too.) AMD are aware of it and looking for a solution.

So here are 3 Pics in Mantle that might be of interest (yeah yeah, test range but you get the idea under controlled environment):
First is with in-game vsync on.
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j90/Akhar/Mantlevsynconnocfg_zps14cf85fa.jpg

Second pic is same but with no in-game vsync, and the following line in user.cfg : GameTime.MaxVariableFps 59.94
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j90/Akhar/Mantlevsynconcfg5994_zpsffde1056.jpg

Third is NO vsync
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j90/Akhar/Mantlevsyncoff_zpsbe15141d.jpg

Note the difference in perforoverlays between the first 2. I don't use the ingame vsync - it sucks. I use the following line in my cfg file for my 60Hz monitor: GameTime.MaxVariableFps 59.94
Primarily, fps limit is to keep my heat output down in Summer - gets hot here with no air con. Performance is more than acceptable when limited.

For info, those shots were with settings all ultra except no msaa with a 125% screen resolution on a 2560x1080 monitor.

 

yup this is it, no good with vsync
(and good lord, even with only a test range)

Tbh i don't know from where I pulled frame limiting, oh thats right... someone told me to use 59.94 with vsync on, and sadly it doesn't fix anything.
No wait again it does help a little. (Its been a while since I played BF4)

TL;DR with Vsync ON use DX11, with Vsync OFF use Mantle

 

its like Mantle occasionally forgots how to do Triple Buffering, and just plunges to 33ms

 

DICE EA’s David Sirland Confirms Win 8.1 Only AMD Memory Leak Issue – Fix Coming Via Driver Update

Hopefully fixed with the next beta. Amazing how many people flat out denied an issue ever existed.