Battlefield 2 Memory Usage *Results Updated*

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: SuperTyphoon
my bf2 stutters a bit with 1 gig, but i think its just the buggy demo version.

yeah same here, takes an age to load the first time, then the lag is unbearable for a minute or two, which im sure is EA's crappy programming hash job

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: QurazyQuisp
I just found this, although it doesn't help a whole bunch, it does show a little bit, mostly that the better the video card, the better performance you'll get.

http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-2147-x-x-x

thats a good read....looks like the better the GPU the better for the player. im glad i have a 6800GT, thats capable of ultra speeds all day long

its also good to see that 2gb of ram isnt necessary just yet

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Killrose
This is only a demo, I bet they will come out with a fix for mem usage. I cannot play for the first 20sec of the first game that loads due to stuttering

I hear that they didn't fix it in the final version. I run everything on high, 16x12 4xAA 8xAF with an A64 (2.4), 1 GB RAM (200mhz), SLI GTs. Stutters like mad for those first 20 seconds, like you said.

If I drop only Textures to Medium, no stutter at all when starting the first match.

I really wonder whether 2GB would fix this. I will be watching this thread for the results. Another gig is only around $80 for the cheap stuff. But, then again, maybe I should look closer at the IQ to see if there's much of a difference between High and Medium Textures.

 

[xtknight]

They should benchmark the x800 xl 512 MB card with this demo. That would be something interesting.

 

[Rudee]

Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
Looking at these comments here, I'm going to skip BF2. I find it ridiculous for any game to require 2GB just to run smoothly.

Its a result of shoddy and inefficient code. Many games that are poorly developed in terms of efficiency rely on super fast hardware to make up for the shortcomings in the game engine. It's just the way it is. Special optimizations in the code require driver enhancements, as you are probably already aware of.

 

[JBird7986]

I have 2GB and I can testify from personal experience with all the settings on high (except AA and AF), there is no stuttering at all. The gameplay is almost as smooth as any other game I've played, though I'm beginning to worry that this may be the last flagship title my venerable 9700 Pro can handle. Time to up to the R520...oh, well...

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Spacecomber
I ran the game in a 800x600 window; so, I could see several System Monitor windows running at the same time. I had them monitoring Available Physical Memory, Percent of Swap File Used, Hard Drive Reads and Writes, and Page Faults. This is on an Athlon XP system with a Geforce 6800GT and 1GB of RAM.

Even at this low resolution, once the game loaded a single player level, all the physical memory is basically in use (about 25mb free). There is a gradual process of slowly adding data to the swap file, though it is only reaches about 12% of the swap file being used, even after playing for an hour. The main thing is that none of the page faults seem to be associated with any disk reads. If the page faults did require reading off of the hard drive, the game would stutter. But game play remains smooth; so, whatever is filling up the RAM and spilling over to the page file doesn't seem to be critical during the game play.

I guess I should try this again, but run the game at higher resolution. I could have the system monitors running in the background and alt-tab out to see what they look like after playing for a while. (They may be eating up some resources, but I don't think this is much compared to what the game draws.)

Space

dual monitors>j00 for seeing what's happening in a game as far as all that stuff is going on

that said, i saw BF2 go over 1.2Gb PF usage with my 1Gb of RAM and 9800 pro (everything on high at 1024).

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Since ive heard a lot of debate about whether or not BF2 will use more than 1GB of memory, i plan to do some extensive testing with 1 and 2GB at various settings and resolutions to show real world performance differences between the 2.

I doubt you'll see FPS differences at various resolutions.

When memery becomes a minor to midrange issue it will affect two things in my experience:
1) load times (10-15% range)
2) After loading a map there will be some stuttering/hitching for a few seconds to a minute or so depending on how memory starved you are

Only when memory is a serious issue will it directly impact FPS.

At least this was my experience when trying to evaluate various amounts of RAM in BFV and UT2004. Once the initial hitching was out of the way 512 MB, was fine, but with 768MB there was no hitching. 256MB was so bad that it impacted regular FPS. I wouldn't be surprised if 2GB gets rid of what you are experiencing after level load but has no other impact on FPS.

Personally I think benchmarking multiple resolutions is unnecessary, I'd try the min and max res first, because then if (when?) there's no difference you can skip all the in-between resolutions.

The last page of the gamespot article pretty much supports this:
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-2147-x-x-x&body_pagenum=5

As 512MB/3000+ is the same FPS of 1GB/3000+ at 1600x1200, but I challenge someone to tell me there is no difference between the two after they actually try both. FPS is simply not a good indicator for optimal RAM size.

 

[xtknight]

Here's a small command-line-based program I wrote in C++ to get the used and total physical/virtual/pagefile memory per each second of time. Just start this before you run Battlefield 2, or any game for that matter.

http://home.comcast.net/~asmatte/MemMon.exe

Save it to c:
Open MS-DOS with start menu run: command (win9x) or cmd (winNT/XP).
cd /d c:
memmon > statsfile.txt

When you specify to output to a file, it's normal that nothing is displayed in the command line window. When you want to stop recording memory, press control+c in the console. To look at the results open notepad c:\statsfile.txt. The statsfile.txt is overwritten unless you use two greater-than signs (>>) in which case DOS will append the results to the current statsfile.txt, separated by the MemMon version info and current time shown at the start of each log. When I ran this while playing the BF2 demo, only physical and page file memory changed. To be honest I'm not quite sure what "virtual memory" is, versus "page file". If you want to see results in the command line without outputting to a file, omit the greater-than sign(s) and the filename. This utility used 0% of my CPU and 616K of my RAM while it was running. Hope this helps.

 

[Ackmed]

I should get my second gig of ram this week. Ordered another gig of Muskin Redline PC4000. Sold my beloved Mushkin PC3500 LvL2 to get it.

 

[whoster69]

Can't wait to see the results. I'm just about to buy the new parts for an upgrade myself. I'll probably have them by the time you get this posted (since I'm ordering tomorrow), but I'd still like to see them.

There is NO WAY that I won't be getting BF2. The demo is just too much fun to pass this one up! I'll probably play it for thousands of hours just like I did BF1942!

 

[Spacecomber]

Best I can tell, there's no need for more than 1GB of RAM while playing BF2, though the game does seem to suck up all the RAM available. I've played for a while at 1600x1200 online and I didn't notice any page faults requiring disk activity during the game. At least for me, that's the criteria for when more RAM in necessary to play a game.

This doesn't rule out that there might be some other advantages to having 2GB of RAM, such as exiting to the desktop or bringing up a menu. I'm just saying that this game doesn't push you into needing more than 1GB in the way that games like the DC mod required more than 512MB in order to keep the hard drive from being hit while in the midst of a level.

Of course, this testing is based on just the one map available, and I might be singing a different song after I get the full game or after people start coming out with some mods.

Space

 

[JBDan]

Originally posted by: StrangerGuy
Looking at these comments here, I'm going to skip BF2. I find it ridiculous for any game to require 2GB just to run smoothly.

Its really a kik a_s game though. Lotta funnnnnn

 

[Rudee]

I noticed more of an improvement in when I upgraded to a 10000rpm harddrive (WD Raptor) then I did when I upgraded to 2gb of RAM, which I did just a while back.

 

[iwearnosox]

I'm running a 6800 ultra sli rig, 1gb of ram, 74gb raptor and a AMD venice 3500+. I'm running at 1280x960 and it stutters quite a bit. All settings are on high though.

I am going 2gb, possibly 4gb tomorrow and doing a clean install when I install bf2.

 

[xtknight]

Any of you guys got any results with my program yet?

 

[iwearnosox]

Originally posted by: iwearnosox
I'm running a 6800 ultra sli rig, 1gb of ram, 74gb raptor and a AMD venice 3500+. I'm running at 1280x960 and it stutters quite a bit. All settings are on high though.

I am going 2gb, possibly 4gb tomorrow and doing a clean install when I install bf2.

Update: went from 1gb to 2gb with a clean install of xp pro. It makes a significant difference for me at 1920x1200. BF2 runs great, I'm now loving it.

 

[whoster69]

I just ordered the parts for a new system:

ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 SLI Motherboard
AMD 3700+ San Diego CPU
2GB OCZ PC3200 High Performance Platinum Series RAM
BFG 6800GT

I'll post some results when I get the stuff and get it up and running if you want.

 

[Dkcode]

Please do. Post all performence settings for all hardware combos. Its intresting to read peoples experiences plus it helps people choosing new hardware to decide on something.

 

[xtknight]

Here's a graph of memory usage on my system over 84 minutes of BF2 online gameplay. Memphys is physical RAM usage, and mempf signifies page file usage.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/xtknight/bf2demomemusage.PNG

Conclusion: BF2 does indeed max out my gigabyte of RAM and nearly all 1.5 GB of my page file! The only thing that was in the background at the time was Trillian, a chat program. If anyone wants the Excel macro I made to interpret MemMon's output, let me know. The time is in minutes:seconds. I was too lazy to have it say 1 hour 20 minutes so it just says 80 minutes. Besides, there's not enough room and most tests probably won't be this long.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Since ive heard a lot of debate about whether or not BF2 will use more than 1GB of memory, i plan to do some extensive testing with 1 and 2GB at various settings and resolutions to show real world performance differences between the 2.

I doubt you'll see FPS differences at various resolutions.

When memery becomes a minor to midrange issue it will affect two things in my experience:
1) load times (10-15% range)
2) After loading a map there will be some stuttering/hitching for a few seconds to a minute or so depending on how memory starved you are

Only when memory is a serious issue will it directly impact FPS.

At least this was my experience when trying to evaluate various amounts of RAM in BFV and UT2004. Once the initial hitching was out of the way 512 MB, was fine, but with 768MB there was no hitching. 256MB was so bad that it impacted regular FPS. I wouldn't be surprised if 2GB gets rid of what you are experiencing after level load but has no other impact on FPS.

Personally I think benchmarking multiple resolutions is unnecessary, I'd try the min and max res first, because then if (when?) there's no difference you can skip all the in-between resolutions.

The last page of the gamespot article pretty much supports this:
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-x-2147-x-x-x&body_pagenum=5

As 512MB/3000+ is the same FPS of 1GB/3000+ at 1600x1200, but I challenge someone to tell me there is no difference between the two after they actually try both. FPS is simply not a good indicator for optimal RAM size.

The stuttering at 1600x1200 4xAA is HORRIBLE, we are talking 3-4 minutes on a 64 player server of unplayable 3fps or less hitching.

The memory is here today, beginning testing now, will put results in the OP.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Here's a graph of memory usage on my system over 84 minutes of BF2 online gameplay. Memphys is physical RAM usage, and mempf signifies page file usage.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/xtknight/bf2demomemusage.PNG

Conclusion: BF2 does indeed max out my gigabyte of RAM and nearly all 1.5 GB of my page file! The only thing that was in the background at the time was Trillian, a chat program. If anyone wants the Excel macro I made to interpret MemMon's output, let me know. The time is in minutes:seconds. I was too lazy to have it say 1 hour 20 minutes so it just says 80 minutes. Besides, there's not enough room and most tests probably won't be this long.

Thank you, that is some solid proof that BF2 definatly will use far more than 1GB of memory. I will include this in the OP so i dont have to do it later

What settings did you use for that memory usage?

 

[Acanthus]

2xAA results coming soon!

 

[deadseasquirrel]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
2GB AA results coming soon!

Yikes. You STILL had hitching with 2 GB??

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: xtknight
Here's a graph of memory usage on my system over 84 minutes of BF2 online gameplay. Memphys is physical RAM usage, and mempf signifies page file usage.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/xtknight/bf2demomemusage.PNG

Conclusion: BF2 does indeed max out my gigabyte of RAM and nearly all 1.5 GB of my page file! The only thing that was in the background at the time was Trillian, a chat program. If anyone wants the Excel macro I made to interpret MemMon's output, let me know. The time is in minutes:seconds. I was too lazy to have it say 1 hour 20 minutes so it just says 80 minutes. Besides, there's not enough room and most tests probably won't be this long.

Thank you, that is some solid proof that BF2 definatly will use far more than 1GB of memory. I will include this in the OP so i dont have to do it later

What settings did you use for that memory usage?

1280x1024, every single thing high, and 4x AA. PC3200 400MHz TCCD 2-2-2-5, in 2x512 MB (dual channel) mode.

Mine hitches for a good 3-4 minutes at the beginning too. Gee they'd be better off doing a precache like ut2k4 does before starting the game. It wouldn't irritate me so much if I didn't have to go around unlagging the coders' faults myself. What makes me furious is the asynchronous threads. Your input lags while the game still goes on. So I was driving in a jeep, I saw a teammate ahead, and sure enough, the game hitched and by the time it was over its period of lag my teammate was already splat on the dirt in misery. Realistic, huh, EA? Well in real life we don't have this 'lag'. I wonder what they were on when they coded the engine for this game. It takes what seems like five minutes to join a server too. I tried defragmenting the BF2 directory with no avail. I'll defrag my whole hard drive tonight.