BF2 Peformance Tips and Tweaks

If there's one thing that you'll want to work on, it is tweaking your Battlefield 2 online game performance. People with high-end systems, won't need to do much tweaking. Just set everything on high and let her rip! But us poor slobs who have less than that, we resort to tweaking. And tweaking we shall do!

In single player mode, it's ok to have a FPS (frames per second) of 30 or so. You can tweak the control panel dials in-game to get a playable, decent looking game with the highest graphics settings your card can handle.

In multi-player (LAN/WAN), you want the highest FPS possible. For example, if your framerate is 30 FPS, and the guy you're shooting at has an FPS of 60, well, he's getting twice as many looks at you to take aim and fire. This is not acceptable on multi-player. You'll want at least 50-60 FPS. In order to do this, you'll have to sacrifice graphics quality in exchange for performance.

To get your maximum FPS, do this:

First we'll need to make sure you have a bare essentials running in Windows XP. Kill all unneeded applications running in the background. I won't cover how to do this here, so I'll assume that you've done that and continue on.
In your graphics (ATI/nVidia) control panel, leave everything at it's default state. Changing anything here just makes it more difficult down the road. There's plenty of time to go back after we get the basics covered.
Now, let's find your FPS. In-game, bring up the console by pressing the ` key (to the left of the #1 key).
Type in renderer.drawfps 1 This will place an overlay showing you your FPS in the top left corner of the play screen To disable this, type renderer.drawfps 0
Alternately, you can use FRAPS, a fine utility that does more than just display your Frames Per Second.

Once you see the damage report on your FPS, you'll want to tweak your settings.

Start by setting all of your graphic settings to low. Everything!
Then go back in-game and check your FPS. If it's 50-60 FPS, then you're basically screwed from going any further, and that sucks. If you got anything over 50-60 FPS, then we have something to work with here. If you have an Audigy card, skip this next section.

On-Board Audio

If you have on-board audio, we may gain a few FPS by making a few basic changes. Go to Options, then Audio, and select Software from the pulldown menu.(if it isn't selected already) Untick EAX, and choose Medium for sound quality. Save your changes. Go back and check your FPS. It most likely will show an increase of a few FPS.

One of the biggest killers of FPS is Dynamic Lighting and Shadows. Kill these to off and watch the FPS climb!

Adjusting Graphics Quality

This is all trial and error from here on. You'll have to spend some time bouncing back and forth between settings to check if you've done good!

From my own trial and error:

Two big killers of FPS are Dynamic Shadows and Dynamic Light. Crank these down or turn them off and recheck FPS.
Turning down the View Distance Scale can help, but don't expect too much.
Once you find your niche and you have an acceptable framerate, you can go back to your graphics card control panel and mess around with settings. But, exit the game completely before screwing around. Then restart the game and check your FPS. Don't do it while running the game!
In a multi-player game, you may have to go downward from what you've set here in single player. In multi-player, you have to contend with more people, larger maps, and many more explosions, so be prepared to make even more changes.
If you plan on running everything on high, be prepared to have 1.5 GB RAM or more. Should you run into problems, just crank down Textures to Medium and leave everything else on high.

Special Forces

With the addition of the Special Forces pack, new problems arise. Namely lag. In addition to the above, you may have to further tweak your settings down in order to avoid excessive page filing, a real killer!

Dealing With EA Patches

With the unpredictability of Ea and their buggy patches, it's always a good idea to back up your existing Battlefield 2 folder. Why? Well if something goes wrong, you can easily restore it back to pre-patch.

Prior to upgrading to the new patch:

In Windows Explorer, go to the folder that contains Battlefield 2--> C:Program FilesEA GAMES
In the right pane, highlight and right-click the folder Battlefield 2 and choose Copy
Now simply paste it into the same C:Program FilesEA GAMES folder

Essentially what you have in that folder is:

Battlefield 2

Copy of Battlefield 2

Now apply the patch. Only the original Battlefield 2 folder is affected by the patch. The copy remains untainted. Now you're able to toggle between both versions by creating a shortcut to the executable.

I'll be adding to this as I learn/read more about the game. If you have anything you'd like to add, please feel free to contact me. Please don't ask for help in setting up your game, (as much as I'd like to) I don't have the time needed.

To the benefit of DICE (Digital Illusions) and EA (Electronic Arts), they've given you the tools to squeeze the most from your system no matter what your system specs may be, as long as they meet the minimum requirements.

Last Edited:: 09-17-2007 21:40:04

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