Sapphire X800 Pro - Low framerates BF2

ThomasMack

Hello everyone! I'm back. With more problems

I'm getting low frame rates on my PC with Battlefield 2. Overall, any game I play I get exceptional frame rate but really doesn't seem as though my video card is running its full power.

My specs:
Sapphire Radeon X800 PRO AGP 8x
Asus K8V Se Deluxe
3 HDD, all 7200RPM
Audigy 2
AMD 64 2800+ 1.8GHZ
1 GIG of pc3200
512MB of PC2100
(Yes I know they are mixed, but when I closed Battlefield 2 it lagged my pc so bad I had to reboot)

Here is a list of options in my bios and their setting:
HT Frequency: 800MHz
HT Data Width (Upstream): 16 Bit
HT Data Width (Downstream): 16 Bit
Memory Configuration:

Memory CLK 100MHz
Cas Latency (TCL): 2.5
RAS/Cas Delay (TRCD): 3 CLK
Min Active RAS(Tras): 6 CLK
Row Precharge Time (TRP): 3 CLK
RAS/RAS Delay (RRD): 2 CLK
Row Cycle (TRC): 9 CLK
Row Refresh Cycle (TRFC): 10 CLK
Read Write Delay (TRWT): 3 CLK
Read Preamble: 7.5NS
Asynchronous Latency: 7 NS

DRAM ECC Enable: Enabled
MCA Dram ECC Logging: Disabled
ECC CHip Kill: Disabled
DRAM SCRUB REDIRECT: Disabled
DRAM BG Scrub: Disabled
L2 Cache BG Scrub: Disabled
Data Cache BG Scrub: Disabled

AMD Cool & Quiet: Disabled

Primary Graphics Adapter: AGP
Search for MDA Resources: Yes

AGP Mode: 8x
AGP Fast Write: Enabled (Disabled with SmartGart)
Graphics Aperture Size: 64MB

MPS Revision: 1.4
PCI Delay Transactin: Disabled

Onboard AC'97 Audio: Disabled
OnChip SATA BootRom: Disabled
OnBoard Promise Controller: Disabled
OnBoard LAN: Enabled
OnBoard Lan Boot Rom: Disabled
OnBoard 1394

Serial Port1 Address: 3F8/IRQ4
Serial Port2 Address: 2F8/IRQ3
Parallel Port Address: Disabled
OnBoard Game Port: DIsabled
OnBoard MIDI Port: Disabled

Plug And Play OS: No
PCI Latency Timer: 64
Allocate IRQ to PCI VGA: Yes
IRQ3-5: Avaliable
IRQ7: Avaliable
IRQ9: Avaliable
IRQ10-11: Avaliable
IRQ14-15: Avaliable

CPU FSB Frequency: 200MHz
CPU Speed/Voltage Setting: Auto
DdR Voltage: Auto
AGP Voltage: 1.5v
V-Link Voltage: 2.5V
Performance Mode: Auto

Suspend Mode: S1 (POS) S3 (STR) Auto
Repost Video on S3 Resme: No
ACPI 2.0 Support: No
ACPI APIC Support: Enabled

Current TEMPS:
CPU: 43C/109F
Motherboard: 35C/95F
CPU Fan: 4687RPM

Voltages:
VCORE Voltage: 1.488V
3.3V Voltage: 3.376V
5V Voltage: 5.026V
12V Voltage: 11.712V

AI Catalyst is on 'advanced'
Video card info:
BIOS Version: 009.004.001.013
BIOS Part Number: 113-A26101-107
BIOS Date: 2004/07/19
Core Clock: 473MHz
Memory Clock in MHz: 452MHz

Geometry Instancing ENABLED
DXT Texture Formats ENABLED
Alternate Pixel Center DISABLED

Here is my average FPS in games:
Half Life 2: 40FPS
16xAF
6xAA
1280x1024
Lots of stuttering, but high settings might be the cause (never did this when I first got the card though)

Call of Duty 2 Demo:
Maxed all settings
According to fraps, 30-60FPS
Smooth as silk!

Battlefield 2:
15-40FPS
Resolution: 1024x768@75Hz
Terrain: High
Effects: High
Geometry: Medium
Texture: High
Lighting: High
Dynamic Shadows: High
Dynamic Light: Medium
Anti-Aliasing: 2x
Texture Filtering: High
View Distance Scale: 95%

Audio Renderer: Hardware
Sound Quality: High
Enable Eax: Enabled

Battlefield 2: Special Forces
15-25FPS


I was thinking maybe my sound card is going bad, but I don't think thats the problem. I was thinking maybe my RAM was bad, but why would other games play fine?

Battlefield 2 is a big time memory hog..

Any tips? Thanks

ThomasMack

To add on to that, I DO get missing textures errors quite a bit. All my drivers are up to date. Chipset, video card, sound card, etc.

I even updated my BIOS

Kombatant

I have two things to suggest on top of my head. First of all, try issuing a checkdisk of the drive you have your games installed, in case there are some cross linked files or anything. Then reinstall the game fresh, and see if the missing textures persist. What I would also do is to remove the extra 512MB RAM you have, and try with only 1GB; maybe this mixing does strange things to Battlefield (which is a very memory hungry game, so it takes up most of it). Oh and do me a favour and increase your aperture size to 256MB

Try those and if I think of anything else i'll post again

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ThomasMack

I've formatted over 5 times trying to fix these issues :-P And recent format was a like 3 weeks ago.

I can remove the RAM, but I still got missing textures errors with the 1GB of ram... and it's funny, this only happens on BF2. Like I said HL2 runs fine >< MAXED!

I'll set my aperture size to 256MB, but it was that because I recently updated my BIOS.

The problem with only 1GB is that I will get lots of stuttering, and after I close the game my PC lags like CRAZY. I can't even use it, so bad I can't click on the start menu... after installing the 512MB, it fixed that issue.

I can assure you, my next pc will have 2GB+ :P

Any more tips? What about voltages? Fast writes?

Kombatant

Do a test. Load up Task Manager, and then load BF2. Play for a few minutes, and then close it. As you said, Windows should be laggy once you exit. Look at Task Manager and tell me whether there are any processes that consume too much CPU.

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g4bb3

Do this. FPS will be high and u wont barely notice differnce in graphics.
Terrain: High
Effects: Medium/low
Geometry: Medium/low
Texture: High
Lighting: low /medium
Dynamic Shadows: low / medium
Dynamic Light: off
Anti-Aliasing: 2x keep it.
Texture Filtering: low / medium
View Distance Scale: 100%

leave atleast 4-5 gigs free diskspace on c:
defrag. it will fly trust me.
yeah 2 gigs helps aswell as 16 pipes. cpu is not that intense on bf2.
64p maps eats more ram than 32p ofcourse.

ThomasMack

OK I will do this, but I have a lot of work to do before I can even think of BF2.

I'll try it this weekend...

ThomasMack

Well, I did this and the graphics.. look like.. crap.

hehe, I used to run it all on high with no issues. But it just gotten worse, and worse, and worse.

I get roughly 40fps, 800x600..and my aperature size is 256MB.

g4bb3

Worse and worse hmmm. Sounds like a system issue.
how much free diskspace do u got on C:\ ?
Any difference if its a 64player or 16player map ?
Any BF game below 1024x768 looks like crap.

ThomasMack

I have 19.2GB left on drive C.
Drive D I got 73.4GB, and drive S I got 161GB.

Now I have my paging file set:
Drive C: Off
Drive D: Off
Drive S: 1152 - 1152

Could that be the problem? Even though I did do what I read on the internet, and tried multiple settings, I seem to get no changes.

When I get time I'll hop on a 16 person map. Could this all be drawn down to my internet? I have 3Mbit DSL... I know playing online can drop your fps.

But what I'm confused about is I get about 4800 on 3d mark 05!

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1145207

g4bb3

since u dont got 2 GB ram the game allocates memory to the pagefile.
Even more if you have many background programs.
The pagefile should have equal amount as you have in RAM.
If there is no diskspace for the pagefile or if the disk is very slow or heavy defragmented it becomes issue.
Play on servers that offer your a ping below 80-100 ms more than that i think feels crap.

"Clearing Shader Optimizations: When you change the graphical settings BF2 attempts to optimize the shaders used in the game for the best performance on your particular hardware. These optimized files are stored in your \Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache\ directory. If you've changed your settings several times, I recommend you finalize your changes, close BF2, go to the above directory and delete everything under the \cache\ directory. The next time you start the game and play single or multiplayer, your shaders will be optimized again. Close BF2 one more time, defragment your hard drive, and now things should be much smoother and load much faster the next time you go to play BF2."

check out this tweakguide
http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_1.html
good luck

e!i

The 2800 probably dont help you either, a bottle neck considering your card

ThomasMack

I've cleared the shader optimizations many times.

Why does my laptop with a 9700 and a AMD64 3400+ (I think) get 30FPS, all medium, 1280x768, with 2Xaa? It has 1gb of memory.

I think its related to my chipset, personally. VIA, well, maybe just sucks? :-D

ThomasMack

Well here you go. Screenshots of my wonderfully low frame rates:
http://mack.sidrahq.com/Screenshots/...w%20Framerate/

I took several screenshots while playing, as you see I barely get 33fps. Not all the screens are recent, some are a few weeks old.

I have a screenshot of my task manager too.

If you're curious, here's screenshots of all the games:
http://mack.sidrahq.com/Screenshots/

Help :'(

-J_B-

Insteading of screwing around with the pagefile and what not, let windows handel that, Try the Omega drivers and dont expect to be able to run everything on highest with 1GB of ram, put the lighting/dynamic lighting/dynamic shadows etc on medium and the rest of high. Is the X800 128mb or 256mb? If its 128mb put the textures on medium.

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-J_B-

Actually I think I know the problem, go into your BF2 directory and find the video config, change "renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1" to "renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 0"

Its located in D:\Games\BattleField2\mods\bf2\Settings

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ThomasMack

If you let Windows manage it, it will change the pagefile while you're playing a game. In other words, you'll lag.

They don't improve crap.

I'm not running anything on highest, most of it is medium. I have 1.50GB of ram, also. I have X800 PRO 256MB.

ThomasMack

What will this do?

Edit: It's already set to 0.

The_Neon_Cowboy

#1 do not mix PC3200 and PC2100
#2 update you video drivers, chipset drivers, sounds drivers, bios and all that…
#3, What PSU are you using? Model? Wattage?

Your running with low system specs there for you can’t run well
with high setting try turning some things down.

TURN OFF DYNAMIC SHADOWS there is 10 FPS + and an IQ
Boost right there

Turn off AA/AF

Your audio quality setting can have an adverse effect on your fps.

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ThomasMack

1. I know, but if I take out one it'll lag like nuts. Plus, I'm getting a new PC soon (after christmas)
2. Everything IS up to date
3. FSP Group, 500 Watt
Review: http://www.cluboc.net/reviews/power/..._source/ax500/

.. I just want to play BF2!!

ThomasMack

Well, it happened. I was playing a GREAT game of America's Army. You know, I was 12-0 on the third round.

Boom. Whadda you know.. my screen jizza's up! I can't see anything, I close the game and I can't read any of my icons. It's like artifacts all over. I check my CPU temp, 100F, I check my GPU temp, 40C

... I reboot.

Everything works.

I open up ASUS probe, and it's alerting me that "+3.3v is below thershold(sp)".

Then all the sudden my PC shuts off.

Goes back on.

Off again.

On.

Off.

On.

Off.

On.

Off.

.... I pulled the plug.

Now it won't boot backup.

What to do?

gashman

If you really need to access your PC you could try disconnecting hardware like PCI cards/drives to get your PC to the bare minimum and boot with that, but I would favour being patient and getting a new PSU.

Try unplugging some of those drives and any extra fans/lights you dont absolutely need to see if it will boot. That hopefully should save you some power capacity to get it started up.

Quoting: http://www.informit.com/articles/art...&seqNum=2&rl=1 -

You may want to try removing some ram to see if it will boot up.

ThomasMack

What happened was a plug decided to jump out, causing my PC to fail and eventually not boot. Apparently it kept struggling to be connected (which resulted in the on-off-on-off thing).

I fixed it.

Nothings wrong with the PSU, it was my fault. My PSU was the highest rated in any reviews I could find.

ThomasMack

Think I can get some performance out of my CPU and GPU if I do a little bit of overclocking?

daedal

Well overclocking your video card won't do much as it looks like your CPU is bottlenecking.
Overclocking your CPU will yield better results than your video card.

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