Battlefield 4 - Naval Strike - Stutter

As if I wasn't disappointed by Carrier Assault enough, it seems that the Naval Strike expansion for Battlefield 4 also included a whopping heap of STUTTERING at no additional charge!

I was reading through my daily tweets yesterday from my gaming list on Twitter when I followed a link posted by @AMD_Roy

Mantles smooth frame rates revealed; http://t.co/JrgjcXPWgw @Overclockers_UK @AMDRadeon @NVIDIAGeForce
— Roy@AMD (@amd_roy) April 3, 2014

Which is where I found:

I noticed a bug with Mantle and crossfire, dices implementation of frame pacing hurts fps badly. Disable it by typing 1/2RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod 0 into the console.Once you do this fps shoots up and it remains just as smooth. Try it.

I am not using crossfire but I am using mantle, so I didn't think this would affect me but lo and behold; After entering RenderDevice.FramePacingMethod 0 into the console I was back to the smooth FPS!

Stuttering solved.

Did this work for you? Let me know in the comments below....

NFS Most Wanted - Camera Stuck Sideways

I fired up Need for Speed: Most Wanted only to find the camera stuck sideways.

I ran across this post which I can confirm fixes the problem: http://answers.ea.com/t5/Need-for-Speed-Most-Wanted/Default-View-Switched-to-Sideways/td-p/321572

Long story short, you have to set Origin to offline mode, delete a config file, launch the game, exit, then go back online and sync the newly created config to the cloud.

Have fun!

Skyrim - Damn You Stormcloaks! Crash

I picked up a copy of Skyrim recently while it was on Steam Autumn Sale 2013. I had read about the game and all the mods for quite some time. So needless to say, I started going through the process of installing the Realvision ENB mods as soon as it finished downloading.

Several hours later I fired up the game and off I went. It was difficult to tell if the mods were enabled because I didn't play vanilla Skyrim.

That was apparently the least of my problems as I couldn't seem to make it out of the opening scene. After some Googling I discovered I wasn't alone but no one had an answer to the problem; the problem known as the "Damn you Stormcloaks!" crash.

Long story short, I was able to get around this little problem by launching the Skyrim launcher, clicking data files, and unchecking everything except for the first 3 items which are official DLC.

After making it through the beginning area, save your game and exit. You can then reload your mods and all should be well.

Click Data Files

Uncheck all but the first 3. (if you have the DLC)

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) Freezes - Crashes

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) is consistently freezing / crashing on PC.

I'm not sure exactly when it started, but will consistently crash in under 2 minutes once I have started racing.

The application log in the event viewer shows the following:

Faulting application name: NFS13.exe, version: 1.5.0.0, time stamp: 0x512cfdc3

Faulting module name: NFS13.exe, version: 1.5.0.0, time stamp: 0x512cfdc3

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x008c4878

Faulting process id: 0x132c

Faulting application start time: 0x01cee933d7eadb11

Faulting application path: E:\Games\Need for Speed(TM) Most Wanted\NFS13.exe

Faulting module path: E:\Games\Need for Speed(TM) Most Wanted\NFS13.exe

Report Id: a642e5a7-5527-11e3-b8f6-93f33f22e2c2

Has anyone found a solution to this?

Battlefield 4 - Performance Tweaks (cont)

CPU is spiking.

Are you running crossfire? Are you running the latest catalyst drivers? If so, you may be inadvertently hindering Battlefield 4 performance.

I have experimented with Cat v6, v7, v8, and have found that v6 offers the smoothest experience with vSync enabled in Battlefield 4.

This is on a MSI 6990 with all settings set to Ultra with the exception of MSAA and FXAA which are both off.

I was also experiencing crashes in BF4 fairly often. Exiting out of Steam and Raptr while playing Battlefield 4 seemed to fix that issue. I suspect Raptr was the culprit, but haven't taken the time to determine this for sure.

You can view the full thread on the Guru 3D Forums.

Also, it has been said that disabling core parking will help with performance. If you're unfamiliar with core parking, then let me Google that for you.

Update 11/14/13: The biggest performance tip I can give is, upgrade your video card. :) I just upgraded from an MSI 6990 to a Sapphire r290x and the difference is night and day. If you have a 6990 and you're on the fence about upgrading, do it!