stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

[Skwurl]

I'm experiencing an incredibly frustrating problem. After about 15 mintues of smooth online play, bf2 begins to stutter and eventually freezes becoming unplayable. I have to ctrl alt del to exit the game and my resources are still spiked after I exit - in fact my page file is sitting about 1.5 gb.

I have a high end computer and have run bf2 fine in the past. I've updated my audio drivers as reccomended by this board.

Does anyone have any ideas what is causing this? My temps are okay for both cpu, mother board and video card.

I once experienced a similar problem a long time ago and realized that my motherboard fan wasn't spinning. Unfortunately, this time it IS spinning so I know that's not the problem. I've also JUST formatted so I know there is no spyware or viruses on the system.

Please help!

[Koavauxe]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

I have the same issue, I've got 1GB of RAM with the textures on Medium and still sometimes have the problem when the computer decides to do something with one of the background apps which needs some RAM which disrupts the files which bf2 need to play.

I can suggest a reboot, after a few days/week or two I'll always reboot which always improves performance.

[camper.]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

It's obviously your RAM. 640k is not enough, download Himem.sys from the Microsoft website and upgrade to 8mb. And that CPU is a bit crappy, at least a 386...


Anyway, try playing on a clean boot of Windows (Start => Run => msconfig and then disable all startup items and as many non-essential services as possible), see if that helps.


Have you got a dynamic page file? You want a constant sized swap file or you'll get stuttering when Windows tries to make it bigger. Go to My Computer => Properties = Advanced => First settings button => Advanced => Change button, then go to every drive, set it to "No Paging file", then go to a local disk partition (i.e. a drive on your HDD) and click "Custom size" and set it to whatever. I'd say start with about 4096MB in both boxes.

[[R-PUB]MrD]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

I've just got the same problem and am reinstalling the game now to check the problem isn't to do with install. next will be a format and fresh install i think. I thought at first it wasn't enough power going through the GPU but that wouldn't account for the audio stuttering either.

[ConscriptVirus]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

post ur real specs

and having a high page file may cause stuttering, since its slow compared to ur ram

[Skwurl]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

specs are as follows:

AMD64 3000+
2GB RAM
320 GB HD
6800 GT 256MB

This computer eats BF2 for breakfast. I've been running the game on high 1600x1200 for over a year with no problems. As soon as I update 1.41, the gameplay slowly gets slower and slower until it freezes.

I've heard that a manual punkbuster update sometimes fixes lag so I'll see if that works tonight.

Personally, it looks like some sort of memory leak because the pagefile usage is still at 1.5 GB AFTER I exit. It takes a reboot to fix it.

UPDATE: Okay so I manually updated punkbuster - still have the same problem. It's definitely a memory leak of some sort. Game runs great for about 15 minutes and then BAM - page file overload.

Freaking annoying.

[[R-PUB]MrD]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

EDIT : AVG free anti virus caused my issues. I had slid the slider from normal to high, realised it interfered with playing online, set it back to normal but it was still giving me problems, allowing me to play but causing a drastic stuttering. I have removed AVG and installed the free AOL/Kaspersky active virus shield software and I'm fine now



PS. if you have a decent venice 3000+ you can overclock it with a cheap and cheerful arctic freezer 64 to 3500+ speeds (2249mhz) with a few bios changes. it really helps with BF2

[imported_Magik Empire]

Re: stutter...lag...eventually unplayble...WTF

I thought it was only me that was having this issue, seems like it is a big issue and a memory leak somewhere. Sometimes Bf2 plays great, then kablam, 2.7gb of pagefile (I only have 2gb of RAM). Might be a driver issue.

I also have an AMD64 3700+ @ 2800, 4x512 of 3200 PCZ Gold, DFI Expert SLI-DR, X-FI Platinum, 2x250gb Hitachi T7K250 in Raid-0

May be one of these issues, I have not tried going back to a previous Nvidia driver before the latest ones.

I also had AVG until it let several virii through and now am using Panda 2007 AV. So AVG might be the issue but since its uninstalled it might not be.

-Magik