I found this in which breaks it down a bit simpler Author: Psythik @Gamespot Game****s Forums
There are quite a few performance guides out there (such as this one:
http://gamers-underground...ompany-2-tweaks.html), but personally I feel they're all incomplete and not very well written. So here's my version (targeted towards both noobs and more knowledgeable folks):
1.1 :: Settings.ini First off, you may or may not know that the most important settings when it comes to performance aren't even in-game. They are under
settings.ini. Open the file in a text editor (such as Notepad) and tweak away!
settings.ini is located here:
In Win7/Vista: C:\Users\[
you]\Documents\BFBC2\settings.ini
In XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[
you]\My Documents\BFBC2\settings.ini
After you make your changes to the file & save, you will need to mark it as read-only to keep the game from changing your settings back.
If you are not very good at computers (or uncomfortable with editing
.ini files), Liseda from the EA forums has made a simple tool that can change most (but not all) of the same settings for you. Get it here:
http://ohlawl.com/liseda.html 2.1 :: Settings that make the biggest performance impact Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) The higher you set this, the less "jaggies" you will see. Using AA takes a massive chunk out of your FPS however.
¬ Best Performance:
0 (1x)
¬ Best Quality:
3 (4x) and above
Bloom Effect that attempts to mimic the way the human eye sees a bright object right after looking at a darker one. Makes sunsets look gorgeous in this game at the cost of FPS.
¬ Best Performance:
false (off)
¬ Best Quality:
true (on)
DirectX Mode (DxVersion) Changes what version of DirectX to run the game in. The game looks "prettier" in DX10 (better water, dust, etc.), but the effect is subtle so you might want to turn it off. This setting will only affect users running Vista/Win7 with a DX10 capable GPU.
¬ Best Performance:
9 ¬ Default:
auto (Note: You may experience graphical glitches running in DX9 mode, such as flickering textures and not being able to see out of the mounted turret window. AA doesn't work in DX9 mode either.) Horizontal Based Ambient Occlusion (HSAO) Advanced form of shadows that add depth to objects, but can negatively impact performance. Here are some comparison screenshots (from the beta but it still applies):
ON: http://img222.yfrog.com/img222/8094/hbao10.png OFF: http://img21.yfrog.com/img21/4914/hbao9.png ON: http://img268.yfrog.com/img268/9527/hbao14.png OFF: http://img96.yfrog.com/img96/425/hbao13.png ON: http://imgur.com/avj2B.jpg OFF: http://imgur.com/7y9Gu.jpg ¬ Best Performance:
false (off)
¬ Best Quality:
true (on)
Shadows ¬ Best Performance:
medium or
low ¬ Best Quality:
high Undergrowth Quality of the grass that is "painted" on the ground. There's a lot of this, so turning it down helps.
¬ Best Performance:
medium or
low ¬ Best Quality:
high VSync Syncs the games FPS to the refresh rate of your monitor to eliminate "tearing" (noticeable on fast movement). Only turn this on if you can maintain 60+FPS constantly. Otherwise it'll negatively impact performance.
¬ Available settings:
on,
off Psythik Posted 3/11/2010 5:31:32 PM
2.2 :: Settings that make less of a performance impact Most of these settings make almost no difference in performance, so you might as well leave them on high.
Anisotropic Filtering (Aniso) Quality of textures at a distance. In all my years of gaming I've never noticed a performance impact from using this, so it's safe to just leave this maxed-out.
Detail ¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Effects Quality of effects like explosions and whatnot.
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Overgrowth Amount of grass and weeds that stick out of the ground.
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Soldiers Level of detail on humans.
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high StaticObjects Quality of various objects (barrels, rocks, signs, etc.)
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Terrain Quality of general terrain (not including grass; see Overgrowth & Undergrowth)
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Textures Quality of general textures (walls, fences, poles, etc.)
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Vehicles Level of detail on all vehicles.
¬ Available settings:
low,
medium,
high Water There's not a whole lot of water in this game so you might as well turn it down.
¬ Best Performance:
medium or
low ¬ Best Quality:
high 2.3 :: Other settings Field of View (Fov) See:
http://badcompanytwo.com/...2-field-of-view-guide/ RenderAheadLimit There is a bit of controversy as to what this setting actually does. From what I've found, either it's viewing distance of objects, or how much the CPU is allowed to get "ahead" of the GPU. Personally I would just leave this setting alone, as setting it to the wrong thing can cause crashes.
¬ Best Performance: Your results may vary
¬ Default:
2 Sound Quality Only set this to
high if you have a high-end CPU that can handle it. On my 3.6GHz Core 2 Duo,
high caused the game to eat CPU, and the sound to crackle in the menus, as well as randomly freeze. Most people should leave this on
low.
Medium works great for me.
¬ Best Performance:
low ¬ Default:
low SpeakerCount This is completely different from the sound settings available in game. Use the following guide to determine which number to pick:
¬ 5.1, 6.1, & 7.1 systems:
6 ¬ 4.0 & 4.1 systems:
4 ¬ 2.0 stereo & 2.1 systems:
2 ¬ Default:
0 (auto detect?)
3.1 :: Miscellaneous If your mouse suddenly stops working If you bought the game from Steam, bring up the overlay and close it (Shift+Tab)
For other versions, Alt+Tab or Alt+Esc works too
If you screw something up You can get the original
settings.ini file here:
http://www.badcompanytwo....downloads/settings.zip For a small FPS boost with ATI cards: Open the Catalyst Control Center. Click Graphics (top left) > 3D > All > Set
Catalyst A.I. to
Advanced. This may cause problems for other games though, so don't forget about it!
Always keep your graphics drivers up-to-date! ATI and nVidia are constantly making improvements to game performance, so keep them updated!
4.1 :: Coming in v2.0 Comparison screenshots of every setting (this might take some time), and a few other things here and there
This Added Info is provided by Triggerpappy:WebSite FragWorld
http://www.fragworld.org/...weak-guide.html/?p=433 (4/13) Moved to New Website
(3/25) New Drivers from ATI (10.3) and Nvidia
(3/22) EA DICE has put up their
FIX IT UP List ! WOOT! Thanks DICE
Helpful Links - Here are complete GPU/CPU metrics to show you what you what performance should be getting with your equipment
- Download FRAPs to display your FPS - Frames per Second in game. I recommend 60FPS for smooth gameplay
- ClanDirectory - Add your clan listing or any gamesites and then you can rate it! the ultimate clan and gaming resource
- Bad Company 2 Portal - Every BC2 utility, guide and article and you can add more if you find something new! stats, sigs, strats, reviews, guides it has everything
I have Found This extra helpfull guide that has some of the same but has info to help those with other OS that is not covered under the one above sorry is so long but in all this madness you should find what you need I like to Thanks Triggerpappy Owner of the Fragworld WebSite for providing it to all of us. P.S. Read thru it hope u find hwat you need to make Game Play better.
http://www.fragworld.org/...weak-guide.html/?p=433 This is Hes link to his web site there u don't have to subscribes to leave a thanks or Comments.
General Comments This game is CPU intensive with things like sound thrown at the processor the game will not work on single core. Quad core is ideal but not necessary.
Performance should be much better for everyone now with full optimization and it will get even better after some patches and will become more stable.
The net code will also get better. Already the servers are at R9. If you get can not connect to master EA server then just keep trying. If you have CTD's and other problems see our troubleshooting section. A lot of it is driver or quite frankly EA's fault not your machine.
All the items here should still work and help especially turning off shadows and going to dx9. these will really bump up your FPS.
Make sure you download the latest video drivers from Nvidia and ATI. Use beta drivers at your own risk, but they do sometimes help. Make sure you have other programs like browsers and xfire turned off if you have performance problems.
Backend Tweaks and Settings.ini
In Game Settings - Lower your resolution and turn effect and other graphic options to low
- Turn sound down from hi-fi to headset (you will have to do this each time you load the game) BC2 uses a lot CPU for sound. I
Settings File is located - Here - Change sound quality to low (also changeable in game menu but resets every time to hifi)
- Change DXVersion-auto to 9 (to force DirectX 9)
- Change Bloom=true to false
- Change HSAO=true to false (also settable in the in-game "advanced" graphics settings)helps esp with quad core
- Change renderaheadlimit to 0 instead of 2 *New in Retail
Other settings.ini changes that you can try: (from
BadCompanyTwo.Com)
- Undergrowth=”medium” – Put this to low, if experiencing frame-rate issues.
- Water=”medium” - Not really any water to traverse, go ahead and set this to low.
- MSAA=”2" - This is Anti-aliasing, this will always use up a lot of a gpx cards resources. Set this to “0"
- Shadows=”medium”- you can also set this to low to improve performance
- Textures=”medium”- Setting this to low can improve FPS at the cost of visual eye candy.
- Aniso=2 - Set this to 0 to disable Anisotropic filtering.
**You can also use
Gossamer's Bad Company 2 Launcher Tool to adjust these settings**
To force the use of all processors: -
- Add "+fullproc" without the quotations to your desktop shortcut or Steam game's "launch options". (This brings a small amount of extra CPU power, I know what EA Repi said in beta:)
- You can go to Task Manager and manually heighten the priority to force it to use more CPU See Picture
To fix sticky controls (for those who get key shadow/lag with wasd etc): - Delete the joystick controls under foot (options->controls->foot), then it works fine
To run the game in a window: - Simply hit alt+enter and change your resolution to something smaller than your desktop.
To enable the Steam overlay on DirectX 10 and 11: - Participate in the Steam client beta (Settings > Account > Beta participation).
Downgrade Audio for Better Performance (From TylerCiggy) Downgrade your soundcard frequency soundrate TO 44KHZ AT 16BIT AND uninstall AC3 FILTER -For ATI Video Cards, disable Catalyst AI (in the 3D section in the advanced Catalyst Control Center). Only do this if you are using this sound fix. @To Win 7 users 1.- Go to control panel 2.- Go to SOUND option 3.- Double click in your audio current output 4.- Go to advanced options 5.- Change your sample rate to the lowest. @To XP users 1.- Go to control panel 2.- Go to Sound & Audio Devices 3.- Click the Audio Section Properties 4.- In the Sound Play section, click in the "Advanced Properties" button 5.- In performance tap, downgrade the "conversion quality sample rate" or something like that
If your game is constantly Crashing: - - Make Sure you are running the game as Administrator. Keep in mind the game is still unstable on 64bit machines so it may be the game/drivers/servers
If you have an ATI Card: Mouse/Joystick Issues
For sticky/laggy mouse issues: - Disable mouse acceleration in the game's mouse settings, and turn off Vsync in the graphics settings.
To fix sticky controls (for those who get key shadow/lag with wasd etc): - Delete the joystick controls under foot (options->controls->foot), then it works fine
Mouse is way off in game: - Looks like the game has a conflict with desktop DPI scaling in Windows Vista and 7. Just to clarify, this is nothing to do with mouse DPI — I'm talking about the visual DPI of the OS. If you have a higher operating system DPI set (very common if you play on a TV) the menus will become almost unusable, with the cursor not reflecting what'll actually be clicked — the click zone ends up considerably to the left of the cursor, making clicking stuff on the right third of the menus impossible. This can be rectified on the user side by going here or where ever game is installed: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\battlefield bad company 2 beta Right click BFBC2Game.exe, then Properties, then Compatibility, and tick Disable display scaling on high DPI settings.
To Fix Yaw Left/Right On Joysticks (from Necromancer on Steam)
1. Open Documents\BFBC2\Input\air.dbx with Notepad
2. Search for the string
ConceptYaw 3. Below it look for this section:
Code:
%MINIFYHTMLb63a83d4216248cf130de3f42ff3441965%
4. On the line
1 change 1 to -1
You can't look up-down and/or left-right - "my mouse isn't working" - You've accidentally bound something to the axes that BF2 uses for looking around. - Reset your controls to fix this - In future, when binding things to your mouse, pay close attention; if you move the mouse at all while binding, it will register & bind that horizontal or vertical movement axes, replacing your look ones.
Ports/Server Browser Tips
What ports should I open for multiplayer if I'm having connectivity trouble? (from EA UK forums)
**Link**how to port forward** - port 18390 TCP
- Outgoing port 18395
- TCP Outgoing port 18395
- UDP Outgoing port 13505 TCP
- Outgoing port 80
- TCP Outgoing
- **Unconfirmed** UDP 22000 (This is only for LAN)
- UDP range 23000-23009
- #GameSpy Master Server UDP Heartbeat: Allow UDP Port 27900
- # GameSpy Master Server List Request: Allow TCP Port 28900
- Also if you are having problems there are beta drivers available that are supposed to fix some problems (ie reflective water with ati cards)..check the forums
To help speed up your server browsing these tips can help you get results quicker. - Use Favorites/History whenever possible
If you use the server browser then Use the server browser When it starts to search click CANCEL Select the options:
- Ranked
- Not Full
- Not Empty
- No Password
- Leave Punkbuster checked
- Hit Refresh
You can use your friends list in game to connect on them without accessing the server browser. Also the filter is case sensitive. To look for a specific server open the server browser hit cancel and then add the text of the server you are looking for in the filter. For example to look for our servers you can type "frag" or "fragworld" in the filter and it will be faster than a full refresh
How to adjust your FOV -Field of View
- In your Settings.ini we showed you before in My Documents/BFBC2 the default is FOV=55
- You can adjust that up to 120 (per repi)
- The FOV in the settings.ini file is the vertical FOV, people usually talk about horizontal FOV
- You have to convert your desired HFOV to VFOV using this calculator: **LINK** FOV calculator.
- Enter your screen resolution in pixels (e.g. 1920x1200)
- then the desired HFOV
- click calculate
- it will show you the VFOV setting you need to put in settings.ini. -Thanks to Renegade from UK forums for this info
TroubleShooting 1) Crash to Desktops
- make sure you have the latest drivers esp video drivers
- make sure you are running the program as an administrator (running steam as administrator too)
- change DXversion to 9 in settings.ini
2) Low FPS
- adjust your settings.ini files as instructed (dxversion, shadows, resolution, sound, renderforward etc)
3)Connectivity Problems or Server List with very few servers
- Open Your ports
- check your firewall and antivirus
4) Getting Kicked by Punkbuster (from BFBC2 Forums)
- Reinstall Punkbuster
- If you’re using Steam, go to File, Settings, In-Game Tab and uncheck Enable Steam Community In-Game.
- Go into your installation directory for BC2 (default for xp: C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\ or win7: C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\). Check to see if the following exists
\pb\ 3 files:
pbag.dll, pbcl.dll, pbsv.dll \Punkbuster\ 1 file:
pbsvc.exe - Download the lates version of pbsetup and when unpacked, transfer the pbsetup.exe to the desktop
- Delete the PB folder in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Battlefield Bad Company 2 - BETA
- Run PBSETUP from the desktop and add BFBC2
- If you recieve an error towards the end of the update where it’s something along the lines of:
- “HTM MD5s do not match security information. Please try updating again later”
- Check your antivirus software for quarantined items associated with punkbuster.
5) Extreme brightness and glare esp from water
- Turn off bloom in settings.ini
- update your driver
6) Connection lost , can't join games or see friends online, any other server browser problems
- Try closing BFBC2 and opening it up again (make sure it closes as it always doesn't)
- delete all values for Recent Games and Favorites in your gamesettings.ini file in your mydoc BFBC2 folder
- Also try manually updating your game by going to your bc2 install folder and running eaupdater.exe or bfbc2update.exe
Please Rate this Guide and Provide Feedback if it helps or doesn't Please Let us Know how this guide worked for you. What your FPS was before and what FPS and FOV you are running now. Let us know if it didn't help.
post edited by lastsamurairick - 2011/05/26 18:59:29