X850XT Performance

[JCFast]

Ok I have read many threads in different BF2 related forums about this cards "problems" with BF2. I have one as well in my computer.

It doesn't seem to run as good as it should. If you put everything on high and some AA on the game doesn't run with stable fps. It jumps from 90 to as low as 35 or even lower depending on the amount of AA.

If I'm to believe all these dudes even 6600 card can run the game with everything on high and get very good fps and so on.

Is there some quality difference or so? Does the game look better with X850XT than example 6600 so the X850XT needs more power to run the game? And is there a "secret switch" in CatalystControlCentre wich would solve this problem or so? Or would the renaming the BF2.exe do any good? Or any other tweaks or so? (I have formatted recently, installed correct drivers/patches for every piece, cleaned registry, checked for spyware7viruses and so on...)

And I'm not alone on this problem, as I stated I have read other peeps having this kinda "problem" with this game. Is this ATI's problem or a local one or maybe a optimisation problem from DICE?

The rest of my computer is:
AMD 64 3500+
1,5 GB RAM (1GB + 512MB)
Club3d X850XT
X-FI XtremeMusic
MSI Neo-4F mobo
Nexus 350W PSU

If you're going to whine about the PSU's quantity, don't bother. It can keep my computer running well. It's a quality one so it beats a lot powerful PSU's which aren't quality ones. And I can run other games fine, and if it was from it I would be suffering stability issues with my comp wouldn't I? And computer should be fine because I get near 6000 points from 3DMARK05 which should be normal for my card.
Would it help if I ought to buy another 1GB RAM stick and take the 512MB stick off to get those 2GB DUAL RAM?

[RedOx]

Re: X850XT Performance

Odd, I just wrote a similar thread regarding my performance as well. Though my setup is different we share the same family of vid card, I have an x800xl. I know running bf is as demanding as they come, especially with maxed settings, but I think these cards are good enough to expect nearly flawless performance. I dont know what more to do, im hoping future tweaks may help the problem.

I did rename the bf.exe as a suggestion someone gave, didnt notice much. Things that have helped are the closure of all resource hungary idle processes...whichever those may be for you. I hope someone has more suggestions for the both of us.

[JCFast]

Re: X850XT Performance

Hope so too. But maybe this is the thing where the money matters for the game developers (NVIDIA ads and all). Thou I have a lot of open processes but I don't know which of them I should terminate. Any programmes I could use to clean them? Cuz going one by one through with internet sites isn't so fun...

[Uncleadolph]

Re: X850XT Performance

I think it's because BF2 was designed around the nVIDIA chipset the performance with a lower end nVIDIA card may slightly top a higher end ATI card. I think all it does with it being based around the chipset is improve performance on the 6 series and lower. Because the 7 series came later there isn't as much of an improvement of an equal ATI card.

-Ben

[imported_Foxen]

Re: X850XT Performance

I have Sapphire X800XT and the shadows are really pixelated and blocky.

[Jackass]

Re: X850XT Performance

Uhh, that makes me shattering. Hmm, is 6800 Ultra really better than this card?

[DieFledermaus]

Re: X850XT Performance

I own a X850 XT as well and i suffer the same shadow problem as foxen. So i just leave shadows off. I use to have a 350 watt PS but the X850 was drawing a lot of power from it so i bought a 480 watt antec and everything is fine now.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/radeon-x850xt/index.x?pg=3

[JCFast]

Re: X850XT Performance

Did that PSU upgrade really increase your performance? I mean that did you have a lot of problems with 350W, like unstability and extreme lousy fps's and so on?

BTW 6800Ultra is slower than X850XT generally but it depends on the game, but the in 3D Performance tests like 3DMARK05 ATI cards tend to get better results. But it's the gamemakers like DICE did in BF2 who "optimised" the game for NVIDIA to probably get some free testing equipment and perhaps some extra cash for their use?

[<RS>FiveTon]

Re: X850XT Performance

My input:

I have a x800xl AGP and was having serious problems with it, or so I thought. My computer isn't the greatest (AMD XP-m 2500+ @2.2, 1 gig corsair value select, 73 gig raptor) so I decided to get a new video card. I went from an 9800 all-in-wonder 128meg card to the x800xl. I expected a major improvement, and was shocked to see that it didn't run much better than my 9800.

Hmmmmmm, somethings not right.

After months of tweaks and random things potsed on forums, I still had a game that I loved, but it played terrible.

Fast-forward to two weeks ago:
My loving computer decides to start giving me BSOD at random times. Yippy!!!! Well, I think it has something to do with software or drivers because of the error mesage that was given. So, about this time I hear of people having problems with thier SB audigy 2 zs cards. I have a SB audigy 2 zs platinum, so I decided to uninstall the card and run onboard sound for a test. Uhmmm, can you say 50-60 fps increase.

Conclusion:
After uninstalling sound card, my computer continued to give me random BSOD. So, I decided it would be a good idea to reinstall windows, it had been a few months anyways. Reinstall windows, reinstall video card, and then soundcard. Thing is, when I installed my soundcard I only used the drivers that were on the cd that came with the card. BOOM!! My computer simply shocked me when I saw the difference in play in the game. I am no longer looking through forums for help, now I am trying to give help.
I can tell you that I had reinstalled windows prior to this to see if it would help in bf2, but it didn't. I now realize it is cause I updated my drivers to the newest ones when I did that. So the second time I reinstalled, I kept the old drivers, and it run flawlessly.

Hope this helps and sorry for the length

[JCFast]

Re: X850XT Performance

Thanks for the help mate but thats not the solution to my problem unfortunately. I used to play the game with onboard soundcard before had nearly the same performance as I have now with X-FI and reinstalled Windows.

[DieFledermaus]

Re: X850XT Performance

X-FI is the best sound card i have ever had.

[Jackass]

Re: X850XT Performance

Thanks for the help mate but thats not the solution to my problem unfortunately. I used to play the game with onboard soundcard before had nearly the same performance as I have now with X-FI and reinstalled Windows.

That's probably because you've forgotten to enable it in BF2 Audio.. :laugh:

[NoSoup4You]

Re: X850XT Performance

The shadows were a known issue for a while. Update your drivers to Catalyst 5.11.

As far as performance yes Nvidia cards perform much better in a majority of games because a majority of game developers use nVidia based workstations. The only game that has been developed thus far for ATI was Half Life 2, and it shows in the benchmarks. Simular to the way that most games give nVidia the win Half Life 2 benchmarks show that an X850XT PE actually out preforms a 7800GTX.

[Uncleadolph]

Re: X850XT Performance

I have an Audigy 2 ZS and my FPS is normally around 30-50. Is it down to my sound card?

-Ben

[NoSoup4You]

Re: X850XT Performance

Make sure you have your affinity set so that BF2 uses the 2nd core (core 1) and that windows uses the first (core 0). This will help performance in-game. The sound card shouldn't make that big of a difference because the X-fi settings switches a whole bunch of rendering things. If you have the Audigy2 ZS you should be able to run it on hardware and settings on high with no problem.