Best settings to run BF 2 on ?

[ciproxr]

I have a MSI radeon x800 128mb, not overclocked and I have been playing BF2 with everything on high except terrain and dynamic shadows and with 2x AA but recently relized that it wasent internet lag that would cause my game to freeze occasion but low fps........

I still got decent fps with those settings except when an explosion would happen near me or something thats when the fps would drop or when i died......

here are my current settings

http://img441.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled25rs.jpg

What do u guys think are the best settings to get my BF2 looking as nice as possible.....I really dont want to remove the 2xAA cause it makes a huge difference in how BF2 looks...

heres my rig

NESO PIXO A700 Black 17" 16ms LCD Monitor

Antec Solution SLK2650-BQE Black case

Antec Smartpower 350w psu

AMD Athlon 64 3200+

MSI RS480M2-IL Socket 939 mobo

CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400

TwinMOS 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400

MSI Radeon X800 128mb

Western Digital 80GB

Seagate Barracuda 160GB

NEC Black 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive

NEC Black IDE DVD Burner Model ND-3520A BK

Onboard sound with Altec Lansing BX3 Speakers

Linksys Wireless-G WRT54GS

Logetech Dual Action Controller

 

[duragezic]

Check out the BF2 Tweak guide on Tweakguides.com. There are Low-Med-High screenshots side-by-side so you can determine what settings you can lower without much loss in graphics quality.

If you are getting a lot of hard drive swapping causing the slowdowns, make sure you have Texture at Medium or lower. This one makes the biggest difference in RAM usage. See bob4432's signature where he has a link with BF2 ram usage. Between that and the tweak guide you should be able to get it quite a bit smoother.

Also, make sure EVERYTHING is shut down before playing BF2. You should have no system tray/background programs running, and hopefully your process list is under 20 processes while playing BF2. I'm usually around 17 processes when I game.

And if RAM usage doesn't seem to be your problem, I'd recommend overclocking your video card. I seem to remember reading that a lot of the X800 series cards can overclock quite well. This will ensure you will be able to keep video card-related settings like AA on.

 

[ciproxr]

thanks for the info

 

[professor1942]

More RAM would help a bit with the stutters, but it's never going to run perfectly on a 128 MB card unless you run it at low & ugly settings.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: professor1942
More RAM would help a bit with the stutters, but it's never going to run perfectly on a 128 MB card unless you run it at low & ugly settings.

Runs fine at medium settings 1024x768? with a 9800PRO and 1gb ram. All the OP needs is an extra 512 mb stick of ram and there will be a huge performance difference.

 

[ciproxr]

u know what guys i think its ram too, i put the settings lower like dynamic shadows and its using less memory and gave me a pretty big performance gain.......and when i exit bf2 my desktop is actually useable instead of real slow .......seems like like i need more ram.

 

[JK949]

I'm a bit intrested about what background programs you can shutdown while playing
games online. Do you recommend turning off your Anti Virus also.

 

[potato28]

Put the lighting on low. Looks crappy, but you can see where everyone is. Then put the dynamic lighting to High, and you have the ultimate pwning settings.

 

[Mutilator]

If you're going to spend the money upgrading RAM... I'd go ahead and get 2x1GB instead of 1x512MB... 1GB is highly recommended for BF2, 2GB will cut your loading (well technically "verifying client data") down by a good 20 seconds so you can be one of the first smacktards on the runway. 😉

After the lack of RAM... the AA is whats hurting you the most. I have a 3000+, 2GB RAM, 9700 pro and decided to just use 1024x768 medium settings and then move view distance to 100% which changes the settings to custom. Not the prettiest by any means, but it gets the job done.