Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

[Synergy]

The following fix may or may not help your FPS - but for me it definitely fixed my stuttering.
This is something I discovered yesterday when playing around, and I haven't had time to extensively test it - but seeing as I'm at work and have nothing better to do (haha) I thought I'd share...
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Edit Sound.con in Battlefield2\Mods\xpack\settings - set the value right at the bottom of the file (sound.cachemegs or something) from its default value 90 to 180.
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I'm pretty sure thats close to the name of the variable but i can't check right now, if someone can get the exact name i'll correct it.

EDIT: The name of the variable is - 'sound.setProperty required-buffer-size'

EDIT: Time to update the post with some more findings....
Nforce 4 6.67 / 6.70 mobo drivers seem to perform about the same.
Nvidia 77.72 and 81.84 drivers seem to perform better, the latest 81.94/95 give some people stutters.
EAX Off 'may' improve FPS slightly and it actually doesn't affect the sound as much as it does in many games.
Various sound drivers dont seem to affect the game performance drastically - but i'm using the YouP-PAX Fi (audgiy/x-fi series) to be completely up to date.
Vsync does not directly effect the stuttering.
I have tried locking my fps using game.lockfps (locking to my vsync'd refresh rate), this does 'seem' to make the game a little smooth but i havent tested this scientifically or anything its just opinion based...
Changing various driver settings such as triple buffering does not seem to improve game performance noticably (in fact triple buffering often results in worse performance in BF2 for many people).
Disabling sound entirely (disabling device in device manager) does not fix stutter.
Adjusting PCI Latency values for my sound card etc does not seem to affect performance / stutter (this may help if you have an AGP card, but i cannot test as im on PCIE).
Setting the process priority higher (tested at high, and above normal) or lower (below normal) does not affect performance.
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A bit of background in case the above doesn't help and you want to know what else i tried...
My System: A64 3200+, 1GB PC3200, 7800GTX, UDMA133 RAID drives, new windows install patched up, K8N4-E (NF4 mobo), Audigy 1
Drivers i tried:
Mobo: Nforce 6.70 drivers
Sound: old betas, X-FI 1161, 1143 beta, latest official Audigy1 XP drivers and the ones im using now YouP-PAX FI (modded X-FI Drivers).
Video: XG 81.94, XG 81.84, NGO 77.72, and current XG 81.95
I tried changing the OpenAL DLL too, but it didn't make any difference. I also tried changing various graphics settings in and out of the game, but no change. I was also watching the process CPU usage when the game stutters (2 monitors), it tends to drop - but nothing else 'takes' the CPU time apart from the system idle process...
Anyways, the only thing that did seem to help was disabling EAX, this helped for one level - then the next was stuttering again. I decided that it must be some kind of sound caching problem (since the problem was often worse in firefights / choppers, and since i'd already fiddled with dynamic lighting / effects settings thats the only other 'heavy' thing in these situations).
Like I say, I'm not guaranteeing that it will help you, and I still get lower FPS than I ever did with normal BF2 - no matter what graphics settings I use, but it definitely sorted my stuttering.
Happy to help :P

[r0uJe]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

exact entry is "sound.setProperty required-buffer-size 90" and it's right at the bottom of that file...

[I-AM-J3ST3R]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

I may give it a try when I get off work. :P

Its pretty sad how poorly SF runs on high-end gaming machines. IMO it gives ya the feeling like your hardware isn't up to par but in all reality its poor game coding. What a sad world we live in. :laugh:

[Synergy]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

Thx Rouje, i'll update it.
Jester, nice to know we all work so hard at work :)

[Synergy]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

No one tried this yet? I'm interested to see if we can nail the problem down a little more :)

[imported_rhohan]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

well, i changed it, we'll see what happens when i get home (vnc is a good thing).

[Synergy]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

hehe yep - its a shame you cant get it to update the screen fast enough to play games (even MMO's)...err not that i tried, i'm busy ofc.

[Talus]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

I'm gonna try it RIGHT now

[Talus]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

Hmm..I think I may see an improvement.

Thanks! I'll start passing this one around.

I'll have to see if I can find a full Leviathan server (and get lucky enough to get the attack chopper) to really test it out.

[redrider]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

I for one think this might be a good place to start but how do I get (find) the line you guys are talking about (yeah Im at work too, electrician waiting on parts).

I wish I knew what kind of a computer the guys who do the programing on this game use. It would help answer a lot of questions. I have a hard time believing (sp) that we are finding problems that they didnt know about. Its hard to see how a computer would have problems with the amount of unused resorces that mine has but I do. (over 60 Gig free disc space, 3 gig ram, 6600 video card with 256 meg ram, and cpu is Pentium 4 3.2 Gig with 2 meg L2, Ive checked system resources and they almost never go over 50% in game play, so what gives) The weird thing is that some days its ok and some days its bad and just gets worse, and like you guys its mostly frame rate problems A.K.A. lag. Anyway thanks....Red

[I-AM-J3ST3R]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

Posted on the EA BF2 Forums. Might be worth a try?

Posted by: Wingman15

I found something that fixed my problems with lag in SF's. I have an nVidia 6800 with the 81.95 drivers. I don't get anymore lag on any SF map after doing the following.

Open the two VideoDefault .con files in your c: \program files\ea games\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2 (and xpack) \settings folders. Change the following lines from a 0 to a 1.

renderer.allowAllRefreshR ates 1

renderer.setFullScreen 1

Start your game back up a nd see if that works. It worked wonders for me and others. Hope it works for you guys. Enjoy

[Talus]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

That above fix really didn't help me at all but I still think it is a good idea anyway.

[SteManCorps]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

I had these stuttering issues also after installing BF2:SF and patch 1.2.
So I checked my drivers and all where upto date except my nForce Audio.
So I did the obvious, restarted my machine and the stuttering had gone completely.

I guess everyone has tried this...

[PimpYo]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

I had these stuttering issues also after installing BF2:SF and patch 1.2.
So I checked my drivers and all where upto date except my nForce Audio.
So I did the obvious, restarted my machine and the stuttering had gone completely.

I guess everyone has tried this...

i use an a2 zs and have all my nvidia audio stuff disabled on the motherboard via the bios.

[I-AM-J3ST3R]

Re: Possible BF2 SF / 1.12 Performance Fix

Well besides getting my ass handed to me because my team flatout sucked. That little fix I posted took my FPS back up to an average of 37 frames.

Playing about 3 rounds and switching a map, then another 3 rounds, then a map switch. It crashed to my desktop after loading warlord.

Get off your f'in ass DICE and start fixing these problems!