Optimizing Your Computer

Introduction- As you all know, BF2 is a big system resource hog. The game won't even start if you don't have a good enough computer and it doesn't support Geforce 4 cards. (Not even the Ti series :0) The game requires at least a Geforce FX 5200 128MB, so if you got a series lower than that, then don't bother buying the game. This guide will cover the in-game settings of the game and the forceware control panel and other computer stuff.

Note: This guide is meant for low end computers and for nVidia users, so if you got ATI, then look somewhere else.

Download new drivers: Drivers are like what makes your video card work. If you don't have any, I think you may be able to use your computer, but it will be very slow and laggy. To download/update drivers, go to http://www.nvidia.com and click on download drivers.

Deleting old shaders: Battlefield 2 is really unorganized. It doenst delete the old shaders from when you change your video settings, so go into the game, change the video settings to how you want it and then quit out. Go to "My Documents/Battlefield 2/mods/bf2/cache/{D7B7...." and delete the 60ish files in there. Then join a server and let it optimize your shaders again. Then, if you wish, defrag your harddrive.

Running at another DxLevel/another thing/shaders- This may affect how the image quality looks, but with experimenting, I have noticed no change in quality and stuff. First, download RivaTuner v.2.0, and it will take a while to install since it has to match with your video card. Next go to Driver Settings when it first appears and click on the customize button, and select the X icon button/Direct 3D settings. And go to shaders and force 1.4 shaders for pixel shaders. Note: this will not work for the demo. The affects of this is that it dramatically improves FPS and the downside of this is that it will take off some of the shininess in the game. Actually, the only place where i see this is the dome on the Mosque in Mastuur city. It won't be shiny.

You can also force DirectX 8.0 to improve performance for very little image quality loss. In fact, I don't see any. So here's what you do. Create a shortcut of BF2.exe and right click on it and go to properties. Then in the target box, add -dxlevel [number] inside the quotes. The number corresponds to what Dxlevel you want. 80 for 8.1, 81 for 8.1, or even 70 for 7.1. So try it

More Memory: If you add -heapsize [number] to the end of the target line in your shortcut, you can help shorten memory stutters. The number represents how many kb of memory that it will use for the game at first, I think. So here's what you do to find what number you would use. Take the amount of memory you have in megabytes, for example 512MB of memory. Divide it by 2, so I get 256, and add three zeros to the end. This isnt that accurate, but it doesnt have to be. It just helps.

AGP APERTURE SIZE: This is one of the biggest tweaks that helped my fps. Go to your BIOS and change the agp aperture to the max it can be (256mb for me). To do this, restart your computer and when you see "Hit F2 to enter setup" or some other key (it depends on your computer), hit F2 (or the button your suppose to hit) and then a grayish screen will appear and scroll down with arrow keys and look for "agp aperture".

Forceware Control Panel: This can be accessed by right clicking on your desktop-->properties-->settings-->advanced-->tab with the name of your graphics card. If you don't see it, you need to update drivers or get a new video card. But before click on the tab with the name of your graphics card, click on "Trouble Shoot and enable write combing and make sure the hardware acceleration thing is on Full

NNow go to the tab with the name of your Graphics Card. On the side, you will see a list.Click on Performance and Quality settings and then on the drop down menu next to View, switch it to Advanced Settings.

You will get something like that.  Now switch:

Antialiasing settings Off

Anisotropic filtering Off

Image Settings High Performance

Vertical Sync Off (unless you are getting more than 70fps)

Force mipmaps None

Conformant Texture Clamp: On

Extension Limit: Off

Trilinear/Anisotropic mip filter/Anisotropic sample optimization On

Triple Buffering Off

Negative LOD Bias: Allow (doesn't really matter though)

Gaining Memory: BF2 is also known to be a memory hog, so you might want to turn off some settings.

Go into Start-> Run, and type in 'msconfig', and go to startup. Here is a list of things that you won't need.

NvMcTray, nwiz, qttask, and a bunch of others. You can actaully google each one and theres a site that tells you what to do.

In-Game settings: The game comes with some in-game settings and truthfully I wish there were more things you could adjust, but here we go.

Effects: This controls how explosions look and other effects. Setting this to medium or high will mean bigger explosions and bullet holes and more dust from people running around. I would recommend setting this to low or medium for low end machines. Low still has the explosions, but they don't look as good, and you won't see bullet holes.

Texture: BF2 has different sizes of textures. As you go from low to high, it means that BF2 will use larger textures. Textures affect how your sleeves look, how player models look, and just about everything else. The part of hardware that comes into play here is the amount of RAM/ video RAM your video card and computer have.

Geometry: This affects how many polygons each model uses. As you go from low to high, the more polygons BF2 will use. So what are polygons? A polygon in video terminology is like a triangle. An example will be try to make a circle with just triangles. You will get like a square if you use 2 traingles, but you will get more of a cirlce the more you use. (Think of pizzas) Basically this affects how leaves and some guns and other stuff look. From low to medium, you will see the individual leaves in a shrub, and rocks will look more like rocks, and the minigun in the blackhawk will have like 6 barrels instead of a octogonal block. Setting this to medium isn't that much of a risk, so I recommend it, but if you are suffering FPS issues, drop it to low.

Lighting- This affects how dark some place is. For example, on medium settings, you will have a dark area under a bridge. But if you set this to low, then the place under the bridge will be light. I recommend setting this to low since it eats up system resources and it makes it easier to see enemies.

Shadows- Very simple, setting this from low to medium will make shadows on players and shrubs and vehicles. Set this to low because this eats up system resources.

Anti-Aliasing- Aliasing is basically the jagedness you see on slanted objects. This basically takes slanted areas and makes them straight. Leave it off for low end.