CPU limited in BF2 I am. Nope I was wrong.

[VIAN]

Yes, me with a 2700+ @2200MHz & 200FSB.

This baby limits a 6600GT. That's right. I was able to turn on AA and see little decrease in performance at 1024x768. I even turned everything down to Medium, but still using AA, and nothing changed really. I got a bit smoother gameplay by turning the sound quality to Medium instead of High.

EDIT:From feeling this is what happened, but checking with Fraps is a different story. If set at low I get up to 90 fps, medium is about 70, High is about 40. With AA added it was around 24, which is weird, because previously it WAS better. I think Battlefield just has a lot of kinks for me to make these kinds of assumptions. Maybe a bit more sleep as well.

 

[cbehnken]

nice find, battlefield 2 has a lot of bots, so it makes sense.

 

[rise]

what kind of fps you getting vian?

 

[VIAN]

Well, this was in Multiplayer.

My fps with or without AA hovers somewhere around 28-32 and sometimes goes a bit below that in heavy explosions or with post filtering.

 

[bjc112]

Originally posted by: VIAN
Well, this was in Multiplayer.

My fps with or without AA hovers somewhere around 28-32 and sometimes goes a bit below that in heavy explosions or with post filtering.

@ 1024 ?



That's sad, cause lots of people will be upgrading..

 

[VIAN]

I apologize for being incorrect. I've experience some weird stuff with the demo and graphics settings before should've known that this wouldn't have been any different.

 

[VIAN]

I figured out what was causing it, or at least help cause these low fps.

There is an option in Audio call Audio renderer. You can choose between Hardware, Software and some other option.

Having audio quality on High - If I choose Hardware for the Renderer, I get about 25fps looking towards the center of the level. This was at the rightmost flag with 2 pools and one partially filled with water. On the empty pool, I stood before it looking towards the center of the level. This is what used to happen. When I looked toward the center of the level, my framerates went to crap. If I choose Software for the Renderer, I get about 40fps. That's amazing. All this time I had it on Hardware.

See, I didn't exactly know that I didn't have hardware since, I know I have a chip on my mobo, you know- that's hardware. I didn't know specifically what they meant, so I assumed and assumed wrong. Software is for built-in sound. I guess Hardware is a DSP or something.

 

[Tu13erhead]

Just for the record, generally unless you have a non-onboard sound card (i.e Audigy, etc.) you'll want software rendering. Those onboard cards just aren't designed to do the calculations that third party cards are (except _maybe_ SoundStorm).

I have an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum...anyone know how I can enable "Ultra High" setting? Do you need an Audigy 4?

 

[coomar]

i' use soundstorm to do hardware sound all the time

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: VIAN
Yes, me with a 2700+ @2200MHz & 200FSB.

This baby limits a 6600GT. That's right. I was able to turn on AA and see little decrease in performance at 1024x768. I even turned everything down to Medium, but still using AA, and nothing changed really. I got a bit smoother gameplay by turning the sound quality to Medium instead of High.

EDIT:From feeling this is what happened, but checking with Fraps is a different story. If set at low I get up to 90 fps, medium is about 70, High is about 40. With AA added it was around 24, which is weird, because previously it WAS better. I think Battlefield just has a lot of kinks for me to make these kinds of assumptions. Maybe a bit more sleep as well.

FRAPS has issues with certain games.....on Splinter Cell Chaos theory my fps never went above 20 with FRAPS on. turned FRAPS OFF and it was much much much smoother

 

[Spacecomber]

With regard to the hardware option in BF2, the following is from the readme.txt file.

- We recommend Creative sound cards for use with Battlefield 2.

- The following sound cards do not support the Hardware Audio
Renderer option:

Altec Lansing ADA70 USB Speakers
AOpen AW-320
AOpen Phantom 3D AW-724
ASound Express II
Aureal Vortex
Aureal Vortex 2
Aztech A3D
Creative Labs SB 16 PCI
Creative Labs SB Audigy 2 NX
Creative Labs SB Audigy LS - (5.1)
Creative Labs SB Extigy
Creative Labs SB Live 24-bit
Creative Labs SB Live
Creative Labs SB Live PLATINUM
Creative Labs SB Live Value
Creative Labs SB Live X-GAMER
Creative Labs SB Live X-GAMER 5.1
Creative Labs SB MP3+ USB
Creative Labs SB PCI 128
Creative Labs SB PCI 512
Creative Labs SB PCI 64
Diamond Monster Sound II MX300
Diamond Monster Sound MX400
Diamond Sound Impact S90
Ensoniq Audio PCI PNP
ESS Canyon 3D
ESS Canyon 3D-2
ESS Maestro-2 3D Audio
Hercules DIGIFIRE 7.1
Hercules Game Theater XP 7.1
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1
Hercules Gamesurround Muse Pocket USB
Hi-Live PCI
Hi-Live PCI SC4000
IOMagic Storm Surge
M-Audio Sonica
M-Audio Sonica Theater 7.1
M-Audio Transit USB
Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 USB
Nvidia nForce Audio
Nvidia nForce2 Audio
Philips Acoustic Edge
Realtek ALC861 audio
Siig Soundwave Elite 2000
Siig Soundwave Pro PCI
SoundMAX 3
SoundMAX
SoundMAX Cadenza (Intel 845)
SoundMAX Cadenza (Intel 850)
SoundMAX ADI AD1980 CODEC
Turtle Beach Montego A3D Xstream
Turtle Beach Montego II
Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Yamaha Xwave-192
Yamaha Xwave-512
Zoltrix Nightingale Value

Ruling out that many cards (including many of the Creative cards, which it says are recommended) doesn't seem to leave a lot of cards that will support the hardware option.

The Creative X-Fi audio option is for a next-generation audio card that isn't even available, lol.

Space

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Spacecomber
With regard to the hardware option in BF2, the following is from the readme.txt file.

- We recommend Creative sound cards for use with Battlefield 2.

- The following sound cards do not support the Hardware Audio
Renderer option:

Altec Lansing ADA70 USB Speakers
AOpen AW-320
AOpen Phantom 3D AW-724
ASound Express II
Aureal Vortex
Aureal Vortex 2
Aztech A3D
Creative Labs SB 16 PCI
Creative Labs SB Audigy 2 NX
Creative Labs SB Audigy LS - (5.1)
Creative Labs SB Extigy
Creative Labs SB Live 24-bit
Creative Labs SB Live
Creative Labs SB Live PLATINUM
Creative Labs SB Live Value
Creative Labs SB Live X-GAMER
Creative Labs SB Live X-GAMER 5.1
Creative Labs SB MP3+ USB
Creative Labs SB PCI 128
Creative Labs SB PCI 512
Creative Labs SB PCI 64
Diamond Monster Sound II MX300
Diamond Monster Sound MX400
Diamond Sound Impact S90
Ensoniq Audio PCI PNP
ESS Canyon 3D
ESS Canyon 3D-2
ESS Maestro-2 3D Audio
Hercules DIGIFIRE 7.1
Hercules Game Theater XP 7.1
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1
Hercules Gamesurround Muse Pocket USB
Hi-Live PCI
Hi-Live PCI SC4000
IOMagic Storm Surge
M-Audio Sonica
M-Audio Sonica Theater 7.1
M-Audio Transit USB
Microsoft Digital Sound System 80 USB
Nvidia nForce Audio
Nvidia nForce2 Audio
Philips Acoustic Edge
Realtek ALC861 audio
Siig Soundwave Elite 2000
Siig Soundwave Pro PCI
SoundMAX 3
SoundMAX
SoundMAX Cadenza (Intel 845)
SoundMAX Cadenza (Intel 850)
SoundMAX ADI AD1980 CODEC
Turtle Beach Montego A3D Xstream
Turtle Beach Montego II
Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Yamaha Xwave-192
Yamaha Xwave-512
Zoltrix Nightingale Value

Ruling out that many cards (including many of the Creative cards, which it says are recommended) doesn't seem to leave a lot of cards that will support the hardware option.

The Creative X-Fi audio option is for a next-generation audio card that isn't even available, lol.

Space

Wow, that is quite the list. Looks like I lucked out having an Audigy Gamer(unless the LS is somehow the same).

 

[Auric]

Ultra High is for the forthcoming X-Fi. Essentially, the hardware setting and resultant performance requires an Audigy DSP with appropriate drivers. I surmise an LS would be fine with a modified driver setup so it is detected as some other Audigy and thus is not artificially crippled to justify a lower price point. Likewise, the Live! 24-bit prolly works too (not that it is on the exclusion list) but without any mod necessary. Except in ye olde days of SoundStorm, or even earlier SoundBlaster on-board, today's on-board solutions are akin to translation chips for software processing. Which are invariably poor value for gamers since I reckon they disproportionately sap CPU's price/performance wise. That is, $40 spent on audio hardware can result in better performance, and undoubtably better quality and features than if that $40 was spent on the next better CPU saddled with software audio.

 

[xtknight]

Don't use FRAPS. Use the "renderer.drawFps 1" command in the console (tilde). It displays current/average FPS in red near the top-left corner.

Hardware/software audio:

The hardware option will attempt to use DirectX to expose a hardware sound chip/card's API. If that hardware processor is slower than your free CPU cycles, your FPS will suffer, assuming your CPU is already saturated. If you have any semblance of a decent audio processor, generally this is not true.

The software option will strictly use the CPU for all audio calculations, and send the raw output to the sound chip/card, which sends it directly to the speakers.

What's really happening is that your audio device is so slow that the CPU and graphics are way ahead of it. So in order to keep the audio/video in synchronization, the game has to wait for the audio data to come in to finally 'play' it. So you are not CPU limited. The CPU and graphics card are just being put on-hold. In fact, your CPU (probably) has cycles to spare. If everything was asynchronous, the game would be an absolute disaster.

In the end (if you had a decent hardware-accelerated card), yes you would be CPU limited by BF2. When you use software audio processing, your CPU isn't waiting for external hardware to process the audio. Instead, it's hindering the normal gameplay processing.

Keep in mind that the frames per second is not a measure of graphics card speed, unless the graphics card is the limiting factor, which would make it a decent relative speed measure. FPS is actually a measure of how fast the CPU, graphics card, audio card, AND (in the future) the physics card can process the game's frame.

 

[Mrvile]

Also keep in mind that EAX will limit your performance. If games are choppy and you have EAX you can try turning it off. Just a note.

 

[supastar1568]

Vian, do you think an extra GB of memory will help. I have:

AMD 64 3200+
6600gt
1GB Corsair PC3200 Memory.

I play with shadows off, lighting, texutures and filtering at medium, everything else is on high. 1024x768..

After playing on a 64 player server for about a half hour, I got a 55 average fps. I believe thats fairly good. Think 2GB will allow me to turn up the texture.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: supastar1568
Vian, do you think an extra GB of memory will help. I have:

AMD 64 3200+
6600gt
1GB Corsair PC3200 Memory.

I play with shadows off, lighting, texutures and filtering at medium, everything else is on high. 1024x768..

After playing on a 64 player server for about a half hour, I got a 55 average fps. I believe thats fairly good. Think 2GB will allow me to turn up the texture.

You need a better graphics card to raise the settings high enough to need 2GB of memory.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Don't use FRAPS. Use the "renderer.drawFps 1" command in the console (tilde). It displays current/average FPS in red near the top-left corner.

Hardware/software audio:

The hardware option will attempt to use DirectX to expose a hardware sound chip/card's API. If that hardware processor is slower than your free CPU cycles, your FPS will suffer, assuming your CPU is already saturated. If you have any semblance of a decent audio processor, generally this is not true.

The software option will strictly use the CPU for all audio calculations, and send the raw output to the sound chip/card, which sends it directly to the speakers.

What's really happening is that your audio device is so slow that the CPU and graphics are way ahead of it. So in order to keep the audio/video in synchronization, the game has to wait for the audio data to come in to finally 'play' it. So you are not CPU limited. The CPU and graphics card are just being put on-hold. In fact, your CPU (probably) has cycles to spare. If everything was asynchronous, the game would be an absolute disaster.

In the end (if you had a decent hardware-accelerated card), yes you would be CPU limited by BF2. When you use software audio processing, your CPU isn't waiting for external hardware to process the audio. Instead, it's hindering the normal gameplay processing.

Keep in mind that the frames per second is not a measure of graphics card speed, unless the graphics card is the limiting factor, which would make it a decent relative speed measure. FPS is actually a measure of how fast the CPU, graphics card, audio card, AND (in the future) the physics card can process the game's frame.

wow, that was a good little read, cheers man :thumbsup:

 

[supastar1568]

well, i just played with all of the settings on medium instead of high-medium, and i still averaged 55 fps after playing for 20 minutes.

So pretty much i get the same fps whether its on medium or high. So maybe i dont need 2GB of memory but i think an extra 512mb would be good, because that would bring me to 1.5GB.

 

[VIAN]

After playing on a 64 player server for about a half hour, I got a 55 average fps. I believe thats fairly good. Think 2GB will allow me to turn up the texture.

55fps is good. It would be better if you get a better GFX card. if using PCI-E, then maybe it will benefit, but if not, then no it won't.

So pretty much i get the same fps whether its on medium or high. So maybe i dont need 2GB of memory but i think an extra 512mb would be good, because that would bring me to 1.5GB.

And what would 1.5GB do. Wait until the game comes out before making purchases. The system requirements could still change.

 

[supastar1568]

yea, im using PCI-E. Gonna wait till the game comes out and stuff.

Plays smooth anyway, Vian what fps are you getting with your settings and setup?

 

[VIAN]

My rig is in sig.

Nvidia drivers: Quality, vsync off, trilinear forced.

No firewall,anti-virus,spyware protection enabled.

I did that renderer.drawfps 1 thing and there were two numbers, don't know what they mean, but both were mostly just above 30. Which is decent. Sometimes they would go down to 25 for a split second.