Best settings for Battlefield 2 to look good and run fast

[Wekiva]

I just recently got an NVIDIA GeForce 6800 and so I turned up the settings in BF2. I am getting some framerate issues and am wondering what settings are the best for having things look good and yet still run as fast as possible. What should I turn up and what should I turn down. Here are my stats (or see sig for complete list):

CPU: Intel P4 3200MHz
Motherboard: Asus P4P800
Memory: 1024 MB of Geil PC-3200
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800
Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74.0 GB @ 10000 RPMS
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

 

[zerocool84]

turn textures to medium and lighting to medium. the textures are wut kill BF2. i have a 6800 as well and a 3200+64, 1GB RAM and it runs spiffy. im sure you'll lag a little in the beginning of a map while it loads the textures but after that i get no slow down at all and i run it w/2xAA 4xAF

 

[Kaspian]

I run it with most of the options on high except, lighting=medium and shadows=off. Also what resolution are you runing the game at? 1024x768 here. Try this tweak guide and see if it helps you.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Set everything to medium.

 

[Spacecomber]

If your 6800 is a 128MB version, you might get away with high textures. Turn textures down to Medium if you are getting choppy game play (hard drive activity) after you've been playing for about 20 mins or so. For more FPS, I would start by turning down dynamic shadows to MED. After that, I would try adding these, one at a one, to see if I was getting the FPS I needed, without giving up too much visual quality. Terrain - MED, Texture Filtering - MED, Geometry - MED. If still not enough, try these more drastic steps, Geometry - LOW, Lighting - LOW, and Dynamic Shadows - OFF.

Space

 

[imported_FishTaco]

Draw distance to 100%, Geometry to high, dynamic shadows at least to low. Those are the things that can show enemy positions so they would be the last settings I would lower. Yes, a few times I have seen a person's shadow before I see them from around the corner. The only practical effect for Effects on medium is to see the smoke trail from a grenade launcher which doesn't show if you have it on low. Seeing the smoke trail from the grenade launcher can be helpful in some instances but you also want to make sure your framerate stays steady when there's a ton of effects on the screen. Not seeing the grenade launcher's location can get you killed but so can bad frame rate in an intense firefight, so if your card can't handle medium effects during intense combat I'd drop it. For your textures, since you only have 1GB, set textures to medium. Everything else is just eyecandy and can be sacrificed in whatever order suits your personal tastes.

For reference, during single player I shoot for a frame rate of around 70-80 fps average. Using the same settings will drop me to an acceptable 40-50 fps average on a 64 player server.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: FishTaco
Draw distance to 100%, Geometry to high, dynamic shadows at least to low. Those are the things that can show enemy positions so they would be the last settings I would lower. Yes, a few times I have seen a person's shadow before I see them from around the corner. The only practical effect for Effects on medium is to see the smoke trail from a grenade launcher which doesn't show if you have it on low. Seeing the smoke trail from the grenade launcher can be helpful in some instances but you also want to make sure your framerate stays steady when there's a ton of effects on the screen. Not seeing the grenade launcher's location can get you killed but so can bad frame rate in an intense firefight, so if your card can't handle medium effects during intense combat I'd drop it. For your textures, since you only have 1GB, set textures to medium. Everything else is just eyecandy and can be sacrificed in whatever order suits your personal tastes.

For reference, during single player I shoot for a frame rate of around 70-80 fps average. Using the same settings will drop me to an acceptable 40-50 fps average on a 64 player server.

Right... so the tank that i cant see miles down the road shooting and killing all my comrades running stupidly down the hill has its draw distance set to 100% and a 6800 card probably :frown: Tad unfair on those with a sucky card lol... I got a 9800 PRO which im gonna go try with 100% dd.

 

[imported_FishTaco]

Originally posted by: Soviet

Originally posted by: FishTaco
Draw distance to 100%, Geometry to high, dynamic shadows at least to low. Those are the things that can show enemy positions so they would be the last settings I would lower. Yes, a few times I have seen a person's shadow before I see them from around the corner. The only practical effect for Effects on medium is to see the smoke trail from a grenade launcher which doesn't show if you have it on low. Seeing the smoke trail from the grenade launcher can be helpful in some instances but you also want to make sure your framerate stays steady when there's a ton of effects on the screen. Not seeing the grenade launcher's location can get you killed but so can bad frame rate in an intense firefight, so if your card can't handle medium effects during intense combat I'd drop it. For your textures, since you only have 1GB, set textures to medium. Everything else is just eyecandy and can be sacrificed in whatever order suits your personal tastes.

For reference, during single player I shoot for a frame rate of around 70-80 fps average. Using the same settings will drop me to an acceptable 40-50 fps average on a 64 player server.

Right... so the tank that i cant see miles down the road shooting and killing all my comrades running stupidly down the hill has its draw distance set to 100% and a 6800 card probably :frown: Tad unfair on those with a sucky card lol... I got a 9800 PRO which im gonna go try with 100% dd.

Geometry to high suppossedly changes what you can see at a distance too. Although I haven't seen quantitative proof for myself, I have it set to high anyway.

Yes, I agree that it's unfair to those without a current setup, video settings for a game like this should really only affect eyecandy not gameplay. But since it does affect gameplay, it'd be a smart idea to push the settings that let you see the enemy and reduce the purely eyecandy options.