My budget Bad Company 2 machine does not run Bad Company 2 :)

[SgtSpoon]

Problem found : i'm an idiot!

When i assembled my pc, i inserted my videocard into the lower pci-e slot of my motherboard. It seemed like a good idea to prevent heat buildup between videocard and cpu.

So i assumed those 2 ports are the same, but apparently the upper on is a PCI-E-X16 slot, while the lower one is PCI-E-X4

I moved the card, and i now play at 1024*medium in DX11 mode with all fancy features enabled, and the frames bounce between 50 and 100!

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Well its good that you were able to solve the problem. Now go and play the game you need to get all your unlocks asap

 

[betasub]

So PCIe-4x was fine for your other games, but not for BC2? And now you have it running at PCIe-16x, BC2 runs much better? Check with GPU-z to confirm those PCIe lane speeds.

 

[SgtSpoon]

So PCIe-4x was fine for your other games, but not for BC2? And now you have it running at PCIe-16x, BC2 runs much better?

Yep, that seems to be the case. Battlefield2 ran smooth as butter on that X4 slot. Even Dragon Age ran smooth, although i do notice it now runs even better. B:BC2 is apparently much more demanding on the PCI-E bus.

Check with GPU-z to confirm those PCIe lane speeds.

I happen to have a screenshot from GPUZ from when the card was in the wrong slot, so i can compare:
4X slot reports : PCI-E x16 @ x1
16X slot reports : PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x16 2.0

I've just spent a couple of hours playing online/tweaking the settings, and i'm keeping them at : 1024*786, with the settings below. In this config, the minimum fps is like 45, while on average i get 55/60 ( Much better than the average fps of 23 i was getting! ) I guess i could increase the resolution, but i like the high and stable fps. I've also kept the cpu at 3.5Ghz and memory at 1.6Ghz now (although that overclock doesn't do much for performance, stock speed is more than enough)

[WindowSettings]
Width=1024
Height=768
Fullscreen=true
RefreshRate=60
VSync=false
[Sound]
Quality=high
VoipEnable=false
SpeakerCount=0
[Graphics]
Effects=high
Soldiers=high
Vehicles=high
Overgrowth=high
Undergrowth=high
StaticObjects=high
Terrain=high
Shadows=high
Bloom=false
HSAO=true
MSAA=2
Water=high
MainQuality=high
Texture=high
DxVersion=11
Aniso=2
Detail=high
RenderAheadLimit=0
Fov=55

 

[llee]

I rofled at the title of this thread, glad you figured it out.

 

[M0RPH]

Are you still using a 4:3 CRT monitor? Time to join the modern world of LCDs my friend.

 

[betasub]

Thanks for reporting back with the lane speeds, SgtSpeed! I was wondering why a full physical PCIe x16 slot would be such a problem at x4, but you've found it was x1! That should've been a problem for any graphics-intensive game, so I'm surprised how well the other (non-BC2) games ran for you.

 

[SgtSpoon]

Are you still using a 4:3 CRT monitor? Time to join the modern world of LCDs my friend.

No, i'm using a 19" lcd (Samsung 193P). It even has a refresh rate of a whopping 20ms (and to be honest it doesn't bother me)

 

[jtisgeek]

I good numbers with everything on medium with my 5770 1650 I agree with some of the posts saying that it doesn't get much better by lowering resolution For me only like 2 fps difference from 1280 to 1650 seems to be all about the msaa settings.

 

[MrK6]

Yep, that seems to be the case. Battlefield2 ran smooth as butter on that X4 slot. Even Dragon Age ran smooth, although i do notice it now runs even better. B:BC2 is apparently much more demanding on the PCI-E bus.



I happen to have a screenshot from GPUZ from when the card was in the wrong slot, so i can compare:
4X slot reports : PCI-E x16 @ x1
16X slot reports : PCI-E 2.0 x16 @ x16 2.0

I've just spent a couple of hours playing online/tweaking the settings, and i'm keeping them at : 1024*786, with the settings below. In this config, the minimum fps is like 45, while on average i get 55/60 ( Much better than the average fps of 23 i was getting! ) I guess i could increase the resolution, but i like the high and stable fps. I've also kept the cpu at 3.5Ghz and memory at 1.6Ghz now (although that overclock doesn't do much for performance, stock speed is more than enough)

Glad to hear you figured it out . Just looking through your settings, I'd recommend turning off HSAO (quite difficult to tell the difference, but requires a lot of horsepower), putting Anisotropy at 16 (it's practically free now a days), and increasing resolution to your native resolution (with or without AA, try both). Also, try increasing the FOV to 75 or 80 - despite the performance penalty, you see a lot more and it makes close quarter fighting much easier. As far as minimums go, you also might try increasing your CPU speed even further, as BC2 eats CPUs alive in multiplayer.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

I run 1900x1200 on GTX 260 Core216 with everything up, runs smooth as butter. That is prob the min card I would recommend.

You can pick them up pretty cheap.

link to pretty cheap gtx260 please?