IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

[casnoshado]

Hi,

I just want to start by saying the following post is not likely related to the crash to desktop issues that other users have been having.

I have been playing BF2 since the day it was released and haven't had any issues until the new patch and/or AF booster pack. I am confident I have isolated the (my) problem to a memory leak.

Basically, the game will run fine but the application will slowly increase the use of physical RAM and VM. The lag begins and gets worse until the FPS is near zero. This is because the I/O on the drives is going nuts because the RAM and VM are all gone. It isn't the processor or lack of memory, it is purely the bottleneck at the HDD level.

I knew owning an IT company would come in handy some day! We have run some system monitoring tools and sure enough the VM and page file get beat to hell as the game plays on. I can usually get one or two rounds in before i need to reboot.

Interesting pic below showing the VM going off the scale after using 2GB of physical RAM.

I tried lower resolutions and disabling other options but it eventually kicks in. We have used every IT troubleshooting logic/experience that supports some clients with more than 50 servers but yet we can’t solve this problem! Previously, I was able to have all the settings at the highest levels and would get an FPS of around 70.

Now i have had all the solutions from EA including reinstalls etc. but nothing has worked. A few canned responses were sent rather quickly but never once do they acknowledge any similar issue or possibility of a bug. I feel it has to be a bug with the patch and it won't be resolved until the next version is released.

I would like to use this thread for people who experience the SAME SYMPTOM - not crashes to the desktop - but a gradual degradation of FPS due to the hard drive being over worked (memory leak).

I have a bit of a beast so I know my system isn’t the issue with the lag. My system specs are:

AMD FX55 (no overclocking)
Fatal1ty Sli Motherboard
Dual 6800 Ultra in Sli
2 GB of Corsair memory
x2 10K RPM Raptors in RAID 0 (stripe)
Separate disk for the page file
580W PSU
Nice cooling solution
WinXP Pro w/ SP2
Latest official Nvidia drivers
Latest Windows Updates
Open TCP connections w/ 24Mb ADSL
Updated punkbuster and directX

Looking forward to finding people in the same boat!

Matt

[sackynut]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

i think i had this problem today with SF when i was playing with my clan, it started after about 4 rounds and then got bad after about 5, and then got kinda better wen the map changed. i dont know if its memory leak or something, just thought id tell ya, incase itis

[firezip]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

Finally a non-idiot theroy to our battlefield 2 problems. Dumb EA doesn't know sh!t so yea........

Quake Wars FTW!
How do I know?

ET PWNED SO FREAKING HARD!

[elstonieo]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

i know someone that will only play 24/7 servers with lots of rounds,because after a few map reloads they get the same problem as u

Edit: when i used to fix laptops there was 1 brand that used to get Page file problems with windows xp and stoped other applications from working after awhile

could give turning page file off a try and see what happens

goto system Properties / Advanced / Performance / settings / advanced / Virtual memory / change / No Page file

[FingolfinKing]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

I occasionally have the same problem. Basically, once I get to round 4 or so, my game will have these weird FPS drops where everything will lag immensely, then get better, but slowly keep degrading in performance. Aside from a complete format, I have found no solution. My system:

AMD X2 4400+
2GB RAM
2x 7800GTX (SLi) (256MB)

[signa]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

I wonder if this is related to the 15/66 fps bug?

[FingolfinKing]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

Seems possible....knowing EA/DICE

[Farhad]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

I have the same problem.

[ToNy]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

Same problem, but it doesnt get worse, it just lags at certain spots in the map like when I turn my mouse 180 on karkand, some spots will just be sluggy feeling. :X

[FingolfinKing]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

Same problem, but it doesnt get worse, it just lags at certain spots in the map like when I turn my mouse 180 on karkand, some spots will just be sluggy feeling. :X

That's EXACTLY waht I have!!! It seemed to be fixed after a format, but it came back just yesterday, I have not found out why.

[casnoshado]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

Just an update - tried a few more things. I have uninstalled and reinstalled. Just put on BF2 and Patch 1.3 (full). Same issue, memory leak after about 30min of playing. I didn't load AF this time to remove that from the equation. I think it is pretty clear there is an issue with the patch and not any of the booster packs.

The VM went up to 2.5 GB again and only happens for BF2. I have been playing the new Hitman and Half Life 2 ep 1, and some other high end games, and no issues.

Gut feel is that i will need to hang up my M16 until there is a new patch.

[Cigar_Man]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the c

There have been memory leaks with bf2 since it first came out. They had to patch the first server version as soon as it was released as it was consuming all server resources in a very short time. The client was not as bad, but it has always been there, it just shows up more on some configurations than others.

I seriously doublt that the next patch will fix the memory leak since it has always been there. There was some discussions on what it would take to fix it in a server forum but they figured it would take a massive rewrite of the basic code, which will not happen.

Some things that have helped others are:

Disable virtual memory

Set the bf2 executable to a higher priority

Changing the cpu affinity

Others just cant play the game with their computer.

GL

[firezip]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

Quake Wars FTW

[FingolfinKing]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

!!! For the other guy who was experiencing sluggisness, I may have found the answer. When checking my temperatures, I noticed that whule my processor and graphics cards were exceedingly cool, my chipset was idling VERY high. Perhaps this is the problem?

[JEEPFREEK]

Re: IT Professional, Had Support from EA - still not working even though i know the cause

I have this EXACT same problem..

my system stats are high end and I know that it's not because of my hardware as I run other high end games with no problems.

I have a logitech g-15 keyboard and on the system monitor, I can actually see the ram usage go up and up with every round.. it's like the game won't UNLOAD the map or resources it took up for the previous round... very frustrating.

I tried turning off the pagefile/virtual memory and the problem still existed, just did it faster.

I tried an uninstall/reinstall of the game, tried patch versions 1.3 and 1.4 beta..

I had such high hopes for this game and always seem to have hopes for the patches that will fix the issue.... i'm saddened that EA has chose to ignore this issue as I have been a big fan of the BF series.. I'd like to say I'll buy BF2142.. but after purchasing BF2, BF2SF, and both booster packs.. well, I'm just about tapped out for purchasing buggy software that just sits around..

System specs

AMD athlon x64 3500+
DFI Lanparty UT SLI DR-expert
dual 6800GT in SLI
3GB of RAM (kingston.. I'm no OC'ing my ram atm)
Soundblaster audigy2 ZS