128M video card not good for EF

[Kapyong]

Greetings all,

(I thought I'd make a new post about this for all the 128M card users.)

I have a 128M card (6600GT.)
I use FRAPS to check my FPS.

Usually, on BF2 I run at low-medium settings (individually tweaked) and get 40 FPS or so - quite OK for me.

But,
using EF I see periods of 20 seconds or so when I get only 6-7 FPS (unplayable) - typically this occurs when I move towards where the action is (i.e. more textures are loaded.)

So,
I used RivaTuner to check my texture VRAM usage - I see my local texture VRAM (TRAM) top out at 109M (the actual amount of local TRAM on a 128M card) with non-local TRAM (i.e. AGP aperture in my system RAM) about 40-50M or so.

When this 6FPS slow-down occurs, RivaTuner shows me that the TRAM usage is "shuffled" between local TRAM (on card) and non-local TRAM (system RAM).

I see the local TRAM usage figure drop a little and vary quickly up and down slightly while the non-local TRAM usage figure rises a little and also varies rapidly.

In short, what appears to be happening is that the card texture memory fills up, so the game has to off-load some texture into system RAM texture memory.

But this process takes 20 seconds or so - which seems very long, so this may be a bug - let's hope Dice fixes it.

The easy answer is - get a 256M card.

Kapyong

[kaheiyeh]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

It's quite well known that BF2 runs best on a 256MB video card since it's quite a video and RAM hog.

[Kapyong]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

Greetings,

It's quite well known that BF2 runs best on a 256MB video card since it's quite a video and RAM hog.

Indeed.

But the point is -
plain BF2 does NOT have these slowdowns,
EF does.

Kapyong

[kaheiyeh]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

But the point is -
plain BF2 does NOT have these slowdowns,
EF does.

Hmmm ... i'm not seeing any slowdowns in EF compared to normal BF2. Though I do see an enormous drop in performance in SF.

[Metalbolt]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

You also have a 256mb graphics card. So you wouldn't.

[Kapyong]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

Yah,

My tests show EF uses about 170M or so.

Which means a 256M card will be fine,
but the 128M cards may not.

Kapyong

[Yonni]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

Greetings,

Indeed.

But the point is -
plain BF2 does NOT have these slowdowns,
EF does.

No problems here (radeon 9700, 128mb).

[CyripticGhost]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

EF runs fine on my ATI Radeon 9800 pro. All medium settings and 4x AA get 40-50 FPS.

[NATESOR]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

EF runs fine on my TYAN 9800 pro 128mb. Great Wall will very rarely experience a fps drop, but other than that performance is on par with vanilla or better.

What are your settings? If you have textures at high, you might just need to set them to medium and the problem's solved.

[imported_G.I.Jersey]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

Interesting post, but I have an eVaga 6800 NU with 128M and all is buttery smooth, except on Great Wall whcih I am getting alot of graphics lag when turning with my mouse i'm getting freezes and stutter! I agree that all flavors of BF2 do in fact run better on a 256M. But those of us with 128M'ers are still getting some pretty decent performance.

[-[MDS]-Stormy]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

Runs just fine here on a 6600GT 128mb. This is after about five minutes on Smoke Screen (using FRAPS),

Min, Max, Avg
25, 82, 51.492

That is with everything but shadows (low) on medium with AA on 2x and filtering on medium running at 1280x1024x60. rest of sytems specs are,

XP-M2500+ @ 2.2ghz
1.5 gb PC3200
NF7 v2.0

And using the 84.20 drivers.

[whitenoise]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

It runs just fine on my laptop... 55 FPS.

Pentium 4 3.6
128 gig ati mobility radeon
2 gigs of ddr 2 ram.

all smooth at medium.

[Metalbolt]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

I guess us other guys just need more ram.

Still kinda silly that the new maps need more system resources, since it is a booster and not an expansion, really bad design on DICE's part.

[TOAO_VTEC]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

Oddly enough, I just upgraded to 2 7900GT 256MB's in SLI and already have 2 Gig's of RAM, yet the game is suddenly hitching badly despite running at 60-80 FPS's at maxxed settings. :S

[IntensivCareBear]

Re: 128M video card not good for EF

bah this thread starter knows nothing.

you might as well ask donkey kong about all this technical mumbo jumbo.

my 6600 GT works just fine, and i notice no diff in performance between 1.12 SF and 1.2 plain BF2.