twimtbp at it again? battlefield 2 has issues with ati

[Rising Phoenix]

Maybe this should be a whole thread on its own. My computer was doing great before BF2 demo was installed. Now, I had to RMA my new Leadtek 6800 GT I got in April. I am using my old ATI 9700 Pro now and it is crashing on BF2 and other games now. So, I have been doing some research and found some things interesting:

1) Make sure you have GREAT cooling going on in your computer. The WHOLE system (CPU, GPU, etc...)

2) If you are using a battery backup and have a high end card (i.e. 6600 and up...), unplug it from the battery backup and plug into the straight power of your battery backup system.

3) Drivers, drivers, drivers. Make sure you have them updated.

About the cooling part, it is crazy! I have never had to worry about the case getting hot! I guess I am going to open one side and put a fan on it.

Does anyone else has suggestions or comments, please post!

Thanks!

 

[Acanthus]

Your cooling has to be absolutely terrible to cause any real problems with stability in your system. I guess if you give no thought to cooling at all, and have a terrible case with no fans, and no air conditioning in your home, then it can become a problem.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
EA at it's best...

What's with all the EA bashing? Sure, they're not Polyphony Digital or even any where close to that level, but I've been making mods for C&C Zero Hour lately, and I'm fairly impressed with the design of the game. Not only is it easily moddable though text-based ini files, but looking through the files, you can see how much detail they have in the game for physics modeling and even graphics, and this is for a strategy game, not something that's usually high on 3d graphics and realistic modeling. Of course, all that good stuff could just be the result of the developers who were making the C&C series before EA took over (forgot who it was), so I dunno if EA deserves any credit for it.

 

[Rising Phoenix]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Your cooling has to be absolutely terrible to cause any real problems with stability in your system. I guess if you give no thought to cooling at all, and have a terrible case with no fans, and no air conditioning in your home, then it can become a problem.

On the contrary, my case temps have always been very low. (CPU at about 35C-45C full load and MB temps at 75F-85F full load)

I have played and used the computer for many things and have left it on for days before, crunching numbers and doing burn in test for high end cards and 3D game preformance tests and the temps would only go up by about 5 from the above stated temps.

No, I know about case cooling and and build my cases with as little wires and other things in the way. Air flow is great inside the case. But now, heat is a issue. Also, the area that I have around maybe the problem. I have noticed that if I go to another room in my house, it is much cooler. I go back to my computer room, it is about 5 degrees warmer. So, I think by putting a fan in the area will help with the airflow as well.

Actually, this is great because it is something new to learn about and to keep me busy!

Thank you for your posts and keep them coming!

 

[Munky]

My bro 's comp runs the game semi-decently with a A64 3200 and a 6600gt at 12x10 high settings no AA, but he gets distorted textures on walls in some places. I'm thinking to try this out on my XP-M + 9800p (both oc'd) just to torture my comp and see how high the temps go. Hopefully this wont result in a reformat/reinstall, or <gasp...> burned out components

 

[Rising Phoenix]

Tell me what you get and how cool you have your house. I keep mine at about 73F.

BTW, has anyone else heard anything about battery backups messing up the stability of the power for the computer? I have heard about it but I didn't know if there was anybody else have real issues with is. I have a APC 350VA battery backup. I heard it can mess up the power for the video cards because of the massive amounts of power these new cards require...especially with BF2.

 

[CheesePoofs]

Originally posted by: Rising Phoenix

Originally posted by: Acanthus
Your cooling has to be absolutely terrible to cause any real problems with stability in your system. I guess if you give no thought to cooling at all, and have a terrible case with no fans, and no air conditioning in your home, then it can become a problem.

On the contrary, my case temps have always been very low. (CPU at about 35C-45C full load and MB temps at 75F-85F full load)

I have played and used the computer for many things and have left it on for days before, crunching numbers and doing burn in test for high end cards and 3D game preformance tests and the temps would only go up by about 5 from the above stated temps.

No, I know about case cooling and and build my cases with as little wires and other things in the way. Air flow is great inside the case. But now, heat is a issue. Also, the area that I have around maybe the problem. I have noticed that if I go to another room in my house, it is much cooler. I go back to my computer room, it is about 5 degrees warmer. So, I think by putting a fan in the area will help with the airflow as well.

Actually, this is great because it is something new to learn about and to keep me busy!

Thank you for your posts and keep them coming!

BF2 will NOT make yoru CPU hotter than prime 95 will, and I doubt it'll make your GPU hotter than Farcry or Doom3 will. Its got to be some other problem with your computer ...

 

[MBrown]

My 6600 non-gt runs silky smooth at 1280x960 @75mhz at everything on medium exept for texture which is at High. No AA

 

[Drayvn]

Ive got a 3500+ Winnie, X850XT-PE and 1Gb of Ram. Youd think id be totally fine. Well i am in the performance area, ive had not lag issues with performance or anything, no corruptions.

Just the really annoying thing of that the game keeps shutting down my internet connection whenever i try to enter a multiplayer game.
OR
I get into a multiplayer game and after about 7 to 10 minutes, which im guessing is the end of the round by that time. That it freezes my comp, so i have to reboot.

So yea, crappy internet problems with constant crashes. I hope they fix it. PLEEEEASE. I never got these problems with other online games. And on the single player games i can play them forever. But i do get disconnected for a few seconds at the end of the round on the single player games, which brings me back to my account screen. I think the game keeps overloading or maybe jsut switching my net connection of for some reason. I think this is the problem but its magnified when im online. Any help?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Rising Phoenix
Tell me what you get and how cool you have your house. I keep mine at about 73F.

BTW, has anyone else heard anything about battery backups messing up the stability of the power for the computer? I have heard about it but I didn't know if there was anybody else have real issues with is. I have a APC 350VA battery backup. I heard it can mess up the power for the video cards because of the massive amounts of power these new cards require...especially with BF2.

The APC UPSs are supposed to have AVR (automatic voltage regulation) to keep the power very steady, if anything its supposed to increase stability. I would imagine though that the cheaper models are not designed for the power draw of todays PCs because they were designed years ago and havent changed at all recently.

The higher end models with AVR that are designed to handle multiple servers would be less likely to have this problem as they are designed for much higher power draw, or course at a much higher price of entry.

Hope this helps.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
Ive got a 3500+ Winnie, X850XT-PE and 1Gb of Ram. Youd think id be totally fine. Well i am in the performance area, ive had not lag issues with performance or anything, no corruptions.

Just the really annoying thing of that the game keeps shutting down my internet connection whenever i try to enter a multiplayer game.
OR
I get into a multiplayer game and after about 7 to 10 minutes, which im guessing is the end of the round by that time. That it freezes my comp, so i have to reboot.

So yea, crappy internet problems with constant crashes. I hope they fix it. PLEEEEASE. I never got these problems with other online games. And on the single player games i can play them forever. But i do get disconnected for a few seconds at the end of the round on the single player games, which brings me back to my account screen. I think the game keeps overloading or maybe jsut switching my net connection of for some reason. I think this is the problem but its magnified when im online. Any help?

What drivers? EA says you should be running the absolute newest drivers out for the best stability.

 

[Munky]

Ok, just played around with the demo. My system:
Mobile Barton @ 2.4ghz
128mb radeon 9800p --> xt bios @ 440core/370mem
1 gig ddr400 @ 2-2-2-5
catalyst 5.3

Settings are 10x7 85hz, terrain, textures, filtering are high, everything else is medium, 4x AA. Average fps in the low 40s, using the built in fps counter. The only problem is that the shadow edges have some seriuos aliasing, and changing the settings didn't seem to help. Also, I can see the mipmap transitions in textures, even though I set texture filtering on high. Seems like it's doing plain trilinear, not anisotrophic filtering. In fact, I put a couple more settings on high, like lighting and shadows, and it didnt seem to make any difference, either in fps or visual quality. Weird if you ask me.

Sound quality was on high, and switching to SW/HW didnt seem to affect fps, and eax was enabled too. I'm using soundstorm audio, didnt really test if the sound quality changed on various settings.

I actually like the fact that the game optimizes shaders for your system. No, I don't like waiting, and I dont know if it reduces image quality, but it's a good feature if it actually improves performance, and more games should use it.

 

[Drayvn]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Drayvn
Ive got a 3500+ Winnie, X850XT-PE and 1Gb of Ram. Youd think id be totally fine. Well i am in the performance area, ive had not lag issues with performance or anything, no corruptions.

Just the really annoying thing of that the game keeps shutting down my internet connection whenever i try to enter a multiplayer game.
OR
I get into a multiplayer game and after about 7 to 10 minutes, which im guessing is the end of the round by that time. That it freezes my comp, so i have to reboot.

So yea, crappy internet problems with constant crashes. I hope they fix it. PLEEEEASE. I never got these problems with other online games. And on the single player games i can play them forever. But i do get disconnected for a few seconds at the end of the round on the single player games, which brings me back to my account screen. I think the game keeps overloading or maybe jsut switching my net connection of for some reason. I think this is the problem but its magnified when im online. Any help?

What drivers? EA says you should be running the absolute newest drivers out for the best stability.

Tried it on 5.5 and now i am on 5.6 and no change. *sniffle*

 

[Rising Phoenix]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Rising Phoenix
Tell me what you get and how cool you have your house. I keep mine at about 73F.

BTW, has anyone else heard anything about battery backups messing up the stability of the power for the computer? I have heard about it but I didn't know if there was anybody else have real issues with is. I have a APC 350VA battery backup. I heard it can mess up the power for the video cards because of the massive amounts of power these new cards require...especially with BF2.

The APC UPSs are supposed to have AVR (automatic voltage regulation) to keep the power very steady, if anything its supposed to increase stability. I would imagine though that the cheaper models are not designed for the power draw of todays PCs because they were designed years ago and havent changed at all recently.

The higher end models with AVR that are designed to handle multiple servers would be less likely to have this problem as they are designed for much higher power draw, or course at a much higher price of entry.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for your post and great info.
Well, in all this, I FINALLY found the problem...and it was a heating problem. BUT, it wasn't something I did. The Antec 430 TruePower PSU have a thermal power switch. When hooked up to the motherboard, it reads the temps off the board and itself and regulate the fan speed according to the need of cooling.

It looks like the temp senser is out because, I did notice that the case fans were running low and never did speed up. Then it hit me to monitor it. Yup, the temps got higher in the case but the fans never went up. Matter of fact, the case fans are running at 1400 rpm and they should be running much higher because of the heat then kick down to keep the temps down. Anyhow, I disabled the thermal switch and now the CPU is at 36C and the motherboard is at 25C. One crip...the sound is louder now. I have a ASUS board with "Cool and Quiet" tech. Has anyone tried this and is it good or should I just live with the "jet engine" I got now?

Thanks

 

[imported_Noob]

Originally posted by: munky
Ok, just played around with the demo. My system:
The only problem is that the shadow edges have some seriuos aliasing, and changing the settings didn't seem to help.

Turn Dyamic Shadows off.

 

[Genx87]

Got the demo and it isnt just ATI hehe.

This thing has its issues on Nvidia cards as well.

 

[imported_Noob]

Who has the retail game? Does it perform better?

 

[Rising Phoenix]

I will say that now my computer is very well cooled, I have been getting great FPS and long play on my ATI 9700 pro with all on high except AA. That is set on "None". Works sweet and without breaking a sweat now!

I haveplayed the demo on both my ATI and my Leadtek 6800GT with no problems. The only problem I have, that isn't about the video, is the multiplayer console is terrible. SOF II and JOPS were a LOT better on that interface. Also, I hope there will be a "friendly-fire" off option. I am sick of these "children" teamkilling. Takes the fun out quickly!

Just my 2 copper.

 

[Drayvn]

Ok this game is killing me, i thought i had figured it out, thought i would switch off AA in the game, as ive heard a lot of ppl aer getting problems from the CCC enabled AA.

I thought it would be reversed on me. But no... i actually only played about 10-15 minutes before i get thoroughly peed off on repeating sounds and a frozen screen.

 

[Rising Phoenix]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
Ok this game is killing me, i thought i had figured it out, thought i would switch off AA in the game, as ive heard a lot of ppl aer getting problems from the CCC enabled AA.

I thought it would be reversed on me. But no... i actually only played about 10-15 minutes before i get thoroughly peed off on repeating sounds and a frozen screen.

I think I *might* know the problem with some of the video cards having problems. Might is the key word but I have been experimenting with the video cards, drivers, temps, etc and found something interesting.

Just a theory but BF2 is pretty graphic heavy and because of this video cards are going to be used pretty heavy. That isn't a problem really but I believe it is testing how well our computers (moreover, video cards in relation to case cooling) are being cooled.

I have noticed that if I shutdown and remove my front fans but leave the back fans going to pull the air into the case, it still gets very warm with the video card but nothing to worry about the CPU, Southbridge or memory cooling. Those temps are still nice and cool but my video cards temps are knocking on the threshold temp for video card shutdown. (For safety of the video card not burning up.)

Now, I put the front fans back in and running with the back fans so that the air is blowing onto the video card, the temps are normal heavy gaming temps. Also, the game never crashed or locked up. I played for about 5 hours to test and see and it was working with everything on high and no AA as opposed to no front fans and only playing for about a hour and then crashing occurs more often. (This was tested on a ATI 9700 PRO)

So, my thought is that maybe 50% of the problems are heat issues. This is just from my testing for about a week. Not to say it is fact or in stone.

I wish RivaTuner has core temp readings for a ATI 9700 pro card.

 

[Drayvn]

Ive got an X850XT-PE that from what i can tell from ATITool is running at 68 to 70 depending on the load in the game.

Check out ATiTool, its got temp readings, and also a log so that you can finish gaming and then look through the whole log to find out the highs and lows and inbetweens.

Also the thing i find reeeeally wierd is that on the tested GPUs for BF2 theres everything in the nVida line up, up to the 6800U... But for some reason they never bothered testing it on an X850XT-PE? Maybe thats the problem...

 

[nVa]

Originally posted by: Drayvn
Ive got a 3500+ Winnie, X850XT-PE and 1Gb of Ram. Youd think id be totally fine. Well i am in the performance area, ive had not lag issues with performance or anything, no corruptions.

Just the really annoying thing of that the game keeps shutting down my internet connection whenever i try to enter a multiplayer game.
OR
I get into a multiplayer game and after about 7 to 10 minutes, which im guessing is the end of the round by that time. That it freezes my comp, so i have to reboot.

So yea, crappy internet problems with constant crashes. I hope they fix it. PLEEEEASE. I never got these problems with other online games. And on the single player games i can play them forever. But i do get disconnected for a few seconds at the end of the round on the single player games, which brings me back to my account screen. I think the game keeps overloading or maybe jsut switching my net connection of for some reason. I think this is the problem but its magnified when im online. Any help?

Well Drayvn ive got the exact same problems except while playing online for about 10mins it just closes down on me or sometimes i get freez screens its really starting to piss me off. Plus i have a XT 850 PE and 1gb of ram too. so iam guess its a bug with bf2