Battlefield 4 sooooo slow on iMac Big Sur

[Kryten]

I've been running Bootcamp and Win 7 and Battlefield 4/3/1 (amongst other games) with ease on my old 2009 Mac Pro 16Gb (El Capitan) for years with no issues. Just upgraded to an iMac 27 inch 3.8Ghz, 24Gb, 8Gb Radeon 5500XT, Big Sur 11.4 and BF4 on BC Win 10 (not activated) doesn't run. It starts up incredibly slowly but maps do not load, just hanging on map screen. Is it a 32/64 bit issue? Any suggestions much appreciated. Thank you.

 

[pigoo3]

I'm seeing a few differences between the two systems that might be impacting things:

1. Maybe graphics hardware on 2009 Mac Pro vs. graphics on 2020 27" iMac.
2. Windows 7 on Mac Pro vs. Windows 10 on newer iMac.
3. Could video drivers be missing on the Windows 10 install for the game?

If it were me...I would investigate if this game is compatible with Windows 10 & the video hardware on the 2020 iMac...and if it is...is everything installed so it runs ok.

HTH,

Nick

 

[Kryten]

Thank you Nick. I will dig a little deeper re compatibility. Not so easy I have found to dig up to date information. Maybe an Origin forum? And here was I thinking it would be straightforward.

 

[pigoo3]

I will dig a little deeper re compatibility. Not so easy I have found to dig up to date information.

Yes I hear ya. Battlefield is definitely a long running game (wasn't exactly sure which release/releases of the game you were most concerned with).

Maybe if you still have your 2009 Mac Pro (all was running fine)...and can't get the game to run properly on your 2020 iMac...maybe turn your Mac Pro into a dedicated gaming machine.

Nick

 

[Kryten]

Yes, thank you Nick. I had thought of that but it's very limited because of the 2Gb graphics card. I'm not also sure if the processor isn't a bit old too. It's a 5.1 running El Capitan so it's pretty ancient. I'm no expert but it struggled to run Ghost Sniper Warrior 3 for example and that's not a new game. All work and no play.....as they say....

 

[pigoo3]

When I said "dedicated gaming machine"...I was mostly thinking of JUST the games you've been running on it up to this time (which you said were running "with ease").

If you were thinking newer games...yes I agree...your 2009 Mac Pro's CPU & GPU (as is) probably aren't up to the task of running newer games at higher resolutions (don't know if your 2009 Mac Pro is a 4-core or 8-core unit).

As you probably know...2009 (4,1) Mac Pro's can be upgraded to 5,1 Mac Pro's (similar performance to 2010-2012 Mac Pro's)...but it can be pretty expensive. You probably can also use various Windows video cards in your 2009 Mac Pro...that have more than 2GB RAM. But all of this can get expensive.

Nick

 

[Kryten]

Thank you Nick, again. It's a 5.1 early 2009, so not sure how many cores it's got I'm afraid. It sits in the corner now for the moment. But I have had some success with Bootcamp on the iMac internal. Initially no games would run at all except frame by frame at about one per second, before quitting. I went onto the Steam Forum and had a few helpful replies, one of which was spot on. Download drivers from bootcampdrivers.com , so I downloaded their latest and ran the AMD installer and it worked perfectly. So a headsup, Apple Windows Support software is only so good.
The only downside is that I'm running this from my 500Gb internal SSD with only 125Gb assigned to BC, so it soon fills up.
But if I do the same to the external SSD I only need to work out the sound and keyboard files and where to place them in Win10 etc, and it should work, thereby releasing 125Gb from my internal. That's the theory anyway. thank you again for your reply.