Hey, I actually had a long PM discussion with a guy recently about this same issue. I was glad that there is a solution... but I don't like what it is. Here are some excerpts:
In Muttrah , Fallujah, Vadso and other maps that have big cities, when I get in the middle of the city or the map , or even looking towards the city my fps drop suddenly from over 60 to ~35 fps , some times i even got as low as 23 fps . So how could I fix this , in other games I have no problems ? Should I optimize the game in some specific map , I mean after I delete the cache from Documents/Bf 2 . Thank you
I have a pc build similar to yours :
Amd Phenom 2 x4 3.8 ghz OC
AMD 6970
8gb ram-1333 mhz
MSI 790fx MOBO
1tb wd (7200 rpm , 64 mb)
I think that the problem is that we have amd videocards maybe, does Catalyst AI have something to do with it ?
I'v been trying all kind of things for the better half of the year and I have not been able to see any improvements .
I have done that before [lowering all settings to minimum] but my fps kept going low.
I fixed my fps issues by buying a new CPU , the i5 3570k , now I get 60+fps on every map , fallujah included
Clearly a bottleneck. Rhino talks about drawcalls a lot and I think that is a major culprit. The newer CPUs have higher bandwidth capacities on their buses and so besides higher IPCs, they can receive more data to process at any given time, and spit out that increased load better.
It explains why you'll only see your graphics card working @ ~35% capacity but your FPS are still low.