9300 geforce 6800 battlefield 2 / CSS DOD SOURCE performance

i found i had to play BF2 on a lowered resolution and medium lighting to get rid of the stops every few seconds in intense fights.. but it still looked gorgeous. css is good to go at high on everything but i prefer playing it at 1440x900 and increasing the AA more... just a bit more fluid..

(on stock settings of course)

It is ok in stock form. Use new NVIDIA drivers, and overclock the sucker (for the 6800 vanilla you can do it automatically in the drivers) for a 30-50% performance improvement. Overall, this is much much better than the desktop I built in spring 2004.

The full-screen shaders in BF2 really hurt the framerate at high res. Like the "blur" shader when an explosion goes off near you. Cuts your FPS in half at 1920x1200. And that's with an OC'd Ultra.

CS:S and DoD:S run great maxed out though, usually well above 60FPS. HDR in DoD:S really hurts performance above 1400x900 though so I usually turn it off.

The stock will have stutter lag, but it's not constant through the entire game. Textures have to load from the HD, specifically in BF2. Takes about 5 minutes of constant stuttering (like every 2-3 seconds), then it tapers off to the default 80+ FPS with the 6800. I have a standard screen, 1440 x 900, same options, 1 GB RAM, 1.6ghz Pentium M.

You may want to O/C the gpu. Try 300/700 and go up from there. Mine runs 350/750 24/7. It can bench at a bit higher speeds, but I am not looking to damage anything.

What's considered a stutter? I've maxed everything with the highest resolution and It's not stuttering. It's actually the one game that has made me wanne keep my 9300.

EDIT: I take that back. It does stutter a tiny bit on the highest resolution. :\

runs fine with the specs in my sig

I run BF2 on all high settings and the maxium default resolution I can on my WXGA (somewhere below 1440 x 900)

Your fine, and other peoples fine are two complete different games. CS Source needs tons of cpu power to keep min fps up, and BF2 needs tons and tons of ram.

Ok here is a full detail review of BF2 on a 9300 with a 6800go (Non Ultra)

First off I love the game, I play it a good deal...not over kill but I have got about 93 hours on ranked servers...a few more on non-ranked here are my stats... http://bf2s.com/player/trs*lindy/

A super great place to start for tweaks is here http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_1.html I suggest reading the whole thing with special attention to the video settings as some of them dont really differ from medium to high in terms of looking any better or different at all. There is screen shots in the tweak guide showing this.

Ok my 9300 has a 2.0ghz cpu, 2gigs of ram, 80gig 5400 rpm drive and the 1440x900 screen. I have a very mild overclock on my video card at 340/690 for 3D only, 2d is not over clocked. Detect optimal settings told me I could go to 369/740?....but I always play it safe so I backed that down t what I now have 340/690.

I have not had any...ZERO...over heat problems and that is with stock cooling NO special AS5 (total IMHO) and the A05 BIOS that does slow my fans to silence at times. To top that off I play on a Dell 1905F 19inch LCD with the lid on my 9300 closed, and NOT propped up in the back...and after 3 hours of playing its rock solid with no heat problems.

Ok my res is set to 1280x1024 when on my 19inch LCD or 1440x900 when playing on the laptop screen...about the same number of pixels so one is not better than the other in terms of having to draw less and being faster.

My in game settings are as follows:

Terrain High
Effects High
Geometry High
Texture High
Lighting Medium (see tweak guide)
Dynamic Shadows Low (see tweak guide)
Dynamic Light Low (see tweak guide)
Anti-Aliasing OFF
Texture Filtering Low (see tweak guide)
View Distance Scale 100%

Ok the first 4 give you ALL OF YOUR DETAIL the rest enhance the detail but it will not look more realistic or more detail just enhanced.

If you read the tweak guide all of my low settings are that way because in the screen shots you cant see a difference and upping it makes things slower.

The Dynamic stuff and the AA are FPS killers big time, especially the dynamic stuff. That said having the Dynamic stuff on low adds cool shadows and lights to give the game a more realistic feel....like the shadows of helicopter blades on the ground etc. I cant tell a difference when I up it past low...except for the performance hit.

AA....I never use it in a FPS to busy moving around to notice jaggies and at higher res it is less effective. On a slow based game at 1024x768 or less it would be a requirment...but not here.

RAM.........I had 1gig and with the 4th setting Texture set to HIGH the game really needs 1.2-1.3gigs of ram. With Textures set to Medium it needs 850megs of ram. So on high with 1gig of ram you will get pauses until you cash the map you are on....move across the map...pause...move more...pause...you get it. So with 1.5gig or more you are golded with Textures on high.

VOIP........turn it off, it sucks @ss and lags you out, use teamspeak its much better.


Sound: I have mine set on hardware medium NO EAX, with EAX on you get sound pauses.

All this I and get from 40-90fps all of the time and a very playable game...love the game.

Happy hunting!!

Sorry for duplicated reply... (stupid internet)

Plz see below.

DoD: Source

All Maxed except AA 2x not 4x. Average of ~50 FPS.
It never goes below 40FPS.

what res is that on mmz?

1440x900

with AA 4x .. I will get 30FPS...

Specs in sig. I play BF2 at 1440x900, 2xAA and 8xAF, every video setting on high/max, 40FPS+ (usually 65). I run HL2 at 1440x900, 4xAA and 16xAF, all options except water high (doesnt look realistic to me with water on reflect all). CS:S I play on big servers so it's always CPU limited, and I dont play with AA because it's easier to aim without it (headshots from a distance, etc.).

I'm talking about DoD: Source

BF2 all maxed is ~45FPS
HL2 all maxed is ~100FPS
DoD: Source is ~50FPS

i run BF2 smooth with the o/clock as specified in my sig... I found what cut the stutter right out was increasing my RAM from 1Gig to 1.5Gig.. made a HUGE difference.. I also still get Internet lag when im on a 64player server and theres high pinging players on the server.. but thats got nothing to do with my PC its a server/ISP issue..

I run on High settings with AAX4 on.. cant do with out AA on .. its just so much nice with AA turned on.. the only setting I leave on Medium is lighting.. although I could up that and see what happens.. Im guessing it wont affect game play much.. maybe a few FPS less but overall my game runs smooth! and my o/clock is stable.. dont let anyone tell you you need an XPS system to play this game maxed out.. You may just need more RAM and to o/clock your 6800 Go