Weird VRAM usage problem in BF3 (7970)

[BrightCandle]

I highly doubt this problem is hardware related. I would put this as one of two problems:

1) The drivers for whatever reason are reporting the wrong VRAM values to the game and its thus failing to initialise properly. But we have evidence this is not the case with other games fully utilising the VRAM.
2) There is a bug in BF3 that is causing the game to save settings that are wrong. Presumably in the settings file there is a saved VRAM value that is too low, caused by some bug in BF3 itself.

(2) seems far more likely than (1) and hardware fault sounds very unlikely for this.

What I would propose you do is look at the settings file, find anything that could be the VRAM size or related to it and mess around with the settings, then set the file to read only. That way the game can't overwrite the settings and you can toy with them by hand to find out what will fix the problem. Then you report to BF3 forums as a bug.

 

[Peddeh]

I've already had a look, but only 1 of the config files is readable, the rest is just full of hex characters I don't understand. The config that is readable however, has nothing in there to do with VRAM usage :/

I could upload the files to my dropbox and link them here, maybe one of you can see something

 

[BrightCandle]

Oh if its binary there isn't likely a lot we can do.

If anyone else has the same GPU as you they could send you their config files and you could try those.

 

[Stuka87]

13.4 is the latest WHQL driver, but not the latest beta driver.

Give 13.6 a try here: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-6WINBetaDriver.aspx

 

[Peddeh]

I'll give it a try, thanks

 

[nanaki333]

i know you said you tried older drivers, but how old did you go? as i said, i had to use 12.4 for the longest time due to frequent problems. part of the reason i switched back over to the green side. that and i usually get whatever the fastest gpu is of the time.

 

[Peddeh]

Oldest I went was 13.1, also tried the beta driver.

 

[Stuka87]

You know, worse case, borrow your friends 7970 and pop it into your machine. If the same thing happens, its not your card. If his runs fine, its your card.

 

[Peddeh]

Issue is now fixed. Thanks to everyone that gave input!

 

[BrightCandle]

How did you solve it in the end?

 

[Peddeh]

Got my friend, with the exact same card to send me his BF3 config files. Edited the settings using Notepad++ (the one config file I could actually read, the rest are just full of unreadable hex values as I stated previously), saved them and set them to read only. It's been fine ever since!

Something else I changed, which might have coincidentally solved it:
I noticed in Device Manager, a device named "PCI Simple Communications Controller" highlighted with an exclamation mark, so I put in my MSI Drivers disk and searched for the driver there.

It could of been either one of these solutions, but it's been fine ever since. Just happy BF3 is finally eating up plenty of my VRAM again :sneaky:

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Glad you got it worked out!