"Verifying Client Data" Tips.

[Regent]

There’s been a lot of speculation regarding the amount of time it takes for “Verifying Client Data” in BF2. Let’s separate fact from fiction, shall we?

First of all, it has nothing to do with Punkbuster. BF2 is running an MD5 hash check on the game files on your hard drive to make sure none of them have been altered. This has been verified by punksbusted.com:
http://www.punksbusted.com/forums/in...opic=17456&hl=

Secondly, since this is a disk intensive process, the speed of your hard drive has everything to do with how long it takes to get the job done. Slower 5400 RPM drives, (common in laptops and older computers) are going to take forever to verify. 7200 RPM drives will perform better, and 10,000 RPM drives will verify even faster.

Here are some suggestions that will help to reduce the amount of time it takes to verify:

Defrag your hard drive!
During verification, BF2 is reading files from your hard drive. Do yourself a favor and defrag your drive so BF2 doesn’t have to search all over the place to find them. Programs like Perfect Disk may do a better job of defragging your hard drive than the utility included in Windows, as they move most frequently accessed files to the outer edge of the disk where they can be read more quickly. Keep in mind that you need at least 15% free space on your hard rive to do a proper defrag!

Get a faster hard drive!
You should have a 7200 RPM hard drive for a gaming machine, at the very least! 5400 RPM drives just don’t cut it any longer, and drives with a 16 Mb cache will perform better than drives with an 8 Mb cache. 10,000 RPM drives speed up almost every process including booting Windows, defragging your drive, anti-virus scans, searches, and loading games and maps. If you can afford one, you’ll be very pleased with the improvement in game performance, and the increase in performance of your computer overall. The Western Digital Raptor is considered to be the fastest SATA hard drive on the market today. Of course, the performance of a faster hard drive is somewhat dependant on a reasonably fast processor. A P3 400 with a Raptor isn’t going to perform as well verifying as a P4…

Get more RAM!
BF2 will use as much as 1.3 Gb of RAM all by itself, and Windows XP likes to have 512 Mb to run like it should. Therefore, 1.5 Gb of RAM is pretty much baseline for optimal performance in BF2, and 2Gb doesn’t hurt. 2 Gb of RAM can be had for less than 200 USD these days, so start saving! While the time it takes to verify is primarily a function of hard drive speed, every aspect of BF2 will run better given a sufficient amount of RAM.

Make proper use of your page file if you lack RAM!
Tweakguides.com has a guide to help you set your machine up properly for gaming, including tweaking your page file. I'd strongly recommend that you read it, and put it to good use. They have a free version for download in PDF format, or an advanced version for sale at a reasonable price:
http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

Also, see CaptainPuffy’s Optimisation Guide:

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showpost.php?p=541747&postcount=3

Finally, a sure-fire way to avoid having to wait forever for the game to verify is to play on servers that don’t verify at all!

Servers that run Linux, or Linux 64 bit operating systems don’t have the capability to verify client data, while servers that run Windows OS do. Check the icon second from the left in the server browser:

Penguin Icon:
Server is running Linux. No verification process.

64 Icon:
Server is running Linux 64 bit OS. No verification process.

Bar icon:
Server is running Windows OS. Server will run the verification process.

http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg...ted=1130280434

Many thanks to IVfluids for help with this tip!

[IVfluids]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Btw, it is actually just a plain old penguin and a Grey 64 icon. It is just green in the sshot I used because I was highlighting them to stand out more for the discussion at the time.

And thanks for taking the time to put it all together for everyone

[Regent]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Btw, it is actually just a plain old penguin and a Grey 64 icon.

:laugh: Yeah, I was looking at your SS from the other thread. Edited post, thanks!

[Robske007a]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Lol, so there's no verification in linux and 64? WHY THE HELL IS THERE A VERFIF. ON WINDOWS THEN?

[IVfluids]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Probably one of two things

1) They just never programmed it for some reason or were not able to get it work

2) It's there, but it is broke. I don't have a BF2 server on Nix, so I wouldn't know.

There is one Linux server out there that has it. But, it mite be a server running something like wine, a virtual pc or windows emulator (way too much overhead in my personal opinion but doesn't rule it out). Or they may have found a way to do it and just haven't told anyone. Dunno.

[leslie9800]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

pretty cool tip. I didn't know that. Good job

[^nUbl4z0r(!)]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Thanks man....great job, will try out those linux servers

[IVfluids]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Just be ready to accept the fact that when you play on a non-Pure server, that it is more open to cheating.

PB only scans what is in memory by default (I have an email from them on this, perks of being a league admin), so it does not check to see if anyone has manually edited game files. Pure picks up the duties of making sure nobody has tampered with the game by manually editing certain things to give you an advantage, I won't go into detail on what can all be changed, but you would be surprised at what you can get away with.

So it is a give and take situation with that. You can have a longer load time and be assured that the cheating is kept to a minimum, or you can have a fast load time and willingly accept that you are only going to have about half the cheat protection. But at least you now know this before going into it

[Regent]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Punkbuster only works as well as the server admin sets it up, BF2 verification process or not. The recommended PB configs from punksbusted.com include MD5Tool checks for stock maps and mod files, and checks for core BF2 files. Seems like the Ranked Server Program should require more thorough PB configs for servers that don't verify.

[IVfluids]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Only problem with that is, not all admins have access to the root files (or pb folder in the main directory) of the game because of the TOS/EULA for the ranked server files which state that the clients are not to be allowed access to those files (ranked files). And because of that, with some server providers, they don't allow you access to the games directory at all.

Unless you can manually punch the command lines in for specific checks through the command console, your sol and have to rely upon your server provider to do that for you.

It is something that should just be fixed for the nix kernel in general. There is alot of fuss about keeping things fair, but this just seems to have slipped by the hole.

Don't get me wrong, PB MD5 is a good thing and should be done if you have the opportunity to do so.

[specter]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

is it just me or does the new patch make the time even longer?
used to be 1-2 minutes, now its about 5 minutes

[Regent]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Only problem with that is, not all admins have access to the root files (or pb folder in the main directory) of the game because of the TOS/EULA for the ranked server files which state that the clients are not to be allowed access to those files (ranked files). And because of that, with some server providers, they don't allow you access to the games directory at all.

Exactly. Which is why I think it would be a good idea for BF2RS to require ranked server providors to use Punksbusted.com recommended configs for Linux boxes.

is it just me or does the new patch make the time even longer?
used to be 1-2 minutes, now its about 5 minutes

I haven't noticed any increase in verification times myself. Still takes about 30 seconds.

[imported_yehaaa7]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

but sometimes even if i go to any of both linux servers it still verify client data. why!? dunno how much mb cache and rpm i have

[IVfluids]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

but sometimes even if i go to any of both linux servers it still verify client data. why!? dunno how much mb cache and rpm i have

Because some people are figuring out how to get it to work on the Linux box. I think they just have to copy over the necessary files from a Win server over to the Nix box, just a guess.

[whoster69]

Re: "Verifying Client Data" Tips.

Nice info, but there has to be a lot more to it than that. I have two computers sitting side by side with the following configurations:

#1
7200RPM SATA 150's
2GB RAM

#2
7200RPM PATA (old and much slower)
1GB RAM (again much slower)

I defrag both computers all the time. For some reason #1 is MUCH slower with the "Verifying Client Data" than #2 is. #1 is much faster in game.