low fps on certain maps/ in certain situations. Help appreciated!

[Colonel Ragman]

Hi Community,

I come to you, to ask for some help to improve my fps on my system. I've tried everything I could think of and still don't have a clue, what that issue is all about.

Let first be said, I have started playing PR 2 years ago and never ever before did I have any issues whatsoever with performance. I was always playing on highest settings without any bad impact. I recently had like a 6months break and back there everything still worked fine. Now with me starting to play again, on maps like Shijia Valley, Fallujah West, Gaza always and on nearly every other map in certain situations like heavy smoke and explosions I experience a slight to really heavy "hardware lag".


So what changed in my computer setup the last 6 months?
- I bought a creative x-fi xtreme music (before, I had onboard realtek hd sound)
- I switched from Windows Vista 32Bit to Windows 7 64Bit(I am quite certain this is the problem)
-I got myself a new monitor 24 inch (22inch before)


And what did I already do?
-deinstall and a clean new install with all drivers (graphics, sound, chipset)
-take out the x-fi, deinstalling the corresponding drivers and reinstalling onboard sound
-assigning battlefield 2 to just one cpu core on my quad core cpu
-checking temperatures and workload on cpu, graphics card and ram memory. Everything seems fine and not overloaded at all. 3.2-3.5 of my 4GB Ram are usually used. CPU is at around 50% Load when playing PR, Temperatures all around 35-45?C ( I take great care when it comes to heat management)
-overclocking cpu (since it was never overloaded I did not really think that would change much and it didn't)
- checked processes in the background and none is using up much or is in any other way unusual
-lowering all graphic settings/ sound settings in pr to minimum. Changed nothing besides an increase of somewhat 3fps while "hardware lagging".
- since someone stated that running the game in compatability mode(which I had running always with PR) is lowering performance, I siwtched that off completely, still nothing changed.
-I even switched my graphics card for a day to try, if my card got damaged or something - again nothing.



Updated what I tried already:

-Switching off visual design and stuff in Win7
-defrag my HDDs
-disabled fetching, superfetching, indexing
-playing around with the pagefile location and size

my rig:
Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate
Asus P5 QL-CM Mainboard
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400
Geforce 260 GTS (atm GeForce 8800GTX for test purposes)
4 GB= 2x 2GB DDR2 Corsair Ram CL 5-5-5-15 in dual channel
HDD's: 3x Western Digital Caviar 250GB
Creative X-FI Xtreme Music

I am very desperate at this point and even can't get myself to play at all with that issue.
Pleas anyone, do you guys have a few tips other than "reinstall windows" or "upgrade your rig"? ( truely those are the 2 most said things when someone has a computer issue, eh? )
I am damn sure it is Windows 7 plaguing me here, but I just don't know how to counter it.

Might that I forget to tell something, if I will add that later in my original post given I remember.

Sincerely
Colonel Ragman

[Pedz]

You may have to lower textures to medium. My old rig (Q6600 + 8800GTX) started to play worse and worse, got to the stage where I gave up the graphical ghost and just played on Low and got great FPS everywhere on all maps. Unfortunately as the games developed its become more and more taxing on the systems, and without true multicore support from BF2's engine, I don't think it will get much better any time soon (unless this LOD fix works wonders).

Windows 7 is the better of most windows systems, so nothing wrong there. But to fix lagg problems, its necessary to lower your textures to medium unfortunately.

Another thing you could try, is turning off Windows Aero, can give you a slight performance boost.

Out of pure interest for myself, any idea what your GPU temp is hitting during use?? I remember my old 8800 was running into the 90's on occasion , want to see if thats usual, or if it needs a bit of a clean (I handed it down to my parents who think its the fastest machine ever xD, perspective is a wonderful thing.)

[Colonel Ragman]

Hi,

and thanks for the reply.

As I might not have stated clear enough before, I already tried to lower ALL settings including resolution to the absolute minimum. No increase in performance whatsoever.

My rig never had a single issue with fps all the time before play PR. It should not be about the components.

Switching off visual design and stuff in Win7 did no good.

To your question, no my graphics card has a "workload temperature" of 45-48C, very rarely it rises up to 51?C.

PS: I stated something wrong in my rig:
Graphics Card 8800GTX is indeed what is installed right now - for test purpose. I usually have a GeForce 260 GTS in my computer. (Note: I already tried it with both cards)

[Colonel Ragman]

Alright in the TG forum desant_1 stated:

"I had a similar issue, but it was appearing on all maps - it was related to Mumble overlay function which somehow utilized crazy amount of CPU cycles, leaving nothing for PR and driving my in-game fps count close to 0. "

I will try that today. So far I have played one round on dragon fly with that disabled and it ran smooth. I still need more testing though.

[Colonel Ragman]

*Update*

Unfortunately, the above stated solution attempt changed nothing....again.

By the way, I also overclocked my cpu, no change in fps. So I cleary have evidence here, that it has nothing to do with my CPU.


I will try setting up a dual-operation system and see if that helps.

Keep your advice coming

[LITOralis.nMd]

quick suggestions:
1. you have one HDD for your OS, and another HDD for your game installations?
2. you have installed page files on all of your HDDs?
3. download older WHQL certified gpu drivers, uninstall your current gpu drivers , reboot, install the certified gpu drivers
4. have you properly defragged your PR mod directories when updating to the new patch? Try mydefrag.com free defragger, and look through the mydefrag forum on how to script your own defrag routine. (You want to put BF2 and the PR mod folders on the fastest part of the driver obviously. Scripts for Steam software and games
5. Set your Nvidia Control Panel options to default, or add/remove AA.
6. QUOTE: "24 inch to 22inch monitor"... Did you switch resolution? if you did, drop back to your older resolution.
7. Download the WesternDigital HDD diagnosis tools boot CD and test your HDDs.


IMHO from what you said, you should properly defrag your entire bf2 directory and all sub directories.

[Valleyforge3946]

So far all good info. what resolution are you playing at? These new drivers and a lot of the newer cards are geared toward higher resolutions although the 260 is not new anymore. Additionally, just becasue you overclocked the cpu doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't that. In fact i have that exact cpu in my laptop.(well the mobile version that is slighly downclocked) Anyways, PR has become a graphical beast lately and the magic mark for many people is when a cpu has a clock rate over 3Ghz. High clock rate these days is a must for PR as it only uses 1 core. What did you overclock too?

Also disable any antivirus software or cpu heavy programs you may have running in the background. Normally said lag is caused by CPU or switching from ram to pagefile. I don't normally recommend this as it is generally for lower systems, try using a 1, 2 or 4 GB flashdrive as a a secondary pagefile via readyboost and then play the game. See if it reacts differently. Just trying to narrow things down for you.