battlefield bc 2 is eating my np8662 for breakfast, help please

Hello, i've just purchased the excellent game battlefield: bad company 2, and all of my settings are at medium quality (shadows low, bloom off). A typical game for me consists of 15 vs 15 matches, like 30 or so players in a match.

My fps ranges from a steady 30-35fps down to 22-24 and sometimes it dips even lower than 20fps, which is unplayable.

np8662
4GB Ram
nvidia gtx 260m
p8800 2.66ghz dual core

Would getting a Core2 Quad Q9100 4x2,26 GHz 12 MB Cache FSB 1066 44 Watt drastically improve my fps?

BTW that CPU goes for over 300 euro, that's insane, almost another laptop for that price.

Anyone know a cheaper reseller for cpu's for a laptop in the rest of the world?

Thank You

 

Are you using latest drivers? Not familiar with the game but can you turn off Depth of Field as this can hurt a lot of machines. Monitor your temps as your CPU may be throttling and running at a lower speed.

Are you sure its FPS and not lag?

 

bc2 benefits from both cpu and gpu speed. Unfortunatley you have a weak cpu and a midrange gpu

if your running at native res then i would be happy with medium settings in a 30 player game

The only real way of giving you a major increase is to change the gpu

CPU swapout would give abit of an increase but not a huge amount

 

I dunno. Bad Company 2 is a pretty CPU hungry game. I went from my P9700 to a Q9200 and With nearly high settings, I get mid 30's gameplay. Sometimes in the 20's and I usually am on 32 man servers (although I suck lol). All four cores are nearly maxed while playing (80-90%). So it is a very CPU hungry game. I think shadows and HBAO affect FPS the most as far as GPU. Unfortunately I can't tell you what it was before and after because I basically got my Q9200 in just before I got BC2. Both CPU and GPU are stock clocks.

Here's my settings:

 

It may be a CPU thing, I have a QX9300 and get between 20 and 35 FPS, with the below settings:

 

Try lowering the res a bit and give the GPU a little OC to see if that helps before spending a lot of money.

 

You will get better performance in exchange for much less eye candy and environmental effects by forcing Dx9 by editing the settings.ini in the Mydocuments BFBC2 directory. Also make sure you game is patched to the latest.

 

I have anti-aliasing off (or as they call it: "1x MSAA"), Anisotropic Filtering on x8, but everything else on high (plus HBAO) and running in DirectX 10 mode. My FPS don't seem to drop below 30 in 32 player games. Turning up the anisotropic filtering or the anti-aliasing kills the frame rate. Maybe you should disable the MSAA.

 

Try these settings, they worked wonders on my desktop in terms of drastically bumping up the fps:

HBAO OFF
Shadows Low
Detail, Texture, Effects Settings High
AA 2x
AF 4x

Simply lowering AA from 4x to 2x (all else equal) gave me 10-15 fps.

 

- Change to DX9
- change Audio to "headphones"
- Change Audio format on computer to 16bits,44100hz [control panel>RealtekHD>Speakers>Default Format tab]

*Also the games "ping" is not actually a ping the way most games use it. It actually is a latency between the time info from server to client is processed by the client then sent back. This is found to be heavily influenced by frames-per-second (FPS), causing systems with low FPS to have a much higher "latency" which in turn creates hit registration issues. In short, if you can't get above 40 constant FPS, then play on all LOW settings to increase the playability of the game and increase the efficiency of the games netcode.

 

Where did this come from? That's really crappy. So you need a powerhouse machine to really make multiplayer playable.

 

I don't think FPS has anything to do with latency, since all action/first person shooter games are made such that the network loop is separate from the gameplay loop, even if the gameplay loop lags, the network loop will still process as normal, an evidence is that your game won't freeze up when your internet lags like warcraft 3, which has network loop coded into the gameplay loop, which is mostly done for RTS multiplayer games.

 

just curious what driver everyone is using with nvidia mobile cards? i have a clevo m571tu and im using 186.81 and i have no problems running this game with the setting at high 1xAA 16x Anistropic hbao off vsync off

 

Those 186.81 Drivers gave me graphical corruption in DX10 Mode with BFBC2. I am using Dell Mobile 196.86 Drivers with a modified .inf now and get great performance in all games, no longer any graphical corruption in BFBC2 and better performance in GTA IV.

 

you dont use drivers directly from the nvidia site?

 

lol you guys are really slaves for eye candies. Run it at native, all low except medium texture, 2X aa, 4X AF. Bam!!! 40+ fps all the time. Its an ONLINE COMPETITIVE game. FPS is king. Period. I can't even stand playing this game at 30 fpsish.

 

Whoa, didn't expect so many replies so fast

By latest do refer to those BETA one's? I'm using 195.62 from 2009, using drivers from laptopvideo2go just gives me a BSOD, especially the most recent ones. No DOF in settings and powermizer doesn't scale my CPU. I'm using FRAPS to record ingame fps, thanks.

Yeah I figured as much about my CPU, but my GPU is a midrange one, really?

I just checked the vendor I purchased my sager, and they only have

NVIDIA GeForce GTX280M with 1024 MB GDDR3 RAM 256 Bit
NVIDIA GeForce GTX285M with 1024 MB GDDR3 RAM 256 Bit
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 with 1024MB GDDR5 Memory and DirectX

To my knowledge the 285 is just marginally beter than the 260? Is it even possible to upgrade the 8662 with a 285 or ati 5870? I'm not sure how the ati one fares in tests, but ATI is a damn disgrace on the linux side (i dualboot). What GPU did you have in mind I could use for the 8662,thanks?

That's very interesting, if you have a constant 30fps at high settings, then i'm pretty sure you would stroll through medium without any issues I pressume? Do you know any store that sells Q9200 in USA (worldwide shipping), thanks for the reply.

Your GPU is the same as my own right?

Hmm again that's very interesting, I pressume you have an nivida 260gtx m as well?

I'm already running at 1280x800, don't wanna go lower than that. Did you OC your nvidia 260GTX M?

Yeah I forgot to mention i've already edited my settings. I'm already running with dx9, thanks.

Already running MSAA at 1x, don't think you can disable it completly at least not in the ingame settings. Do you have an 8662 with the same spec as as I do? Because I have anisotropic at 1x, no HBAO, and directx9. Thanks

Hey, I'm already running a similar setting but thanks anyways. My AA is at 1x and AF 1X.

I'm using FRAPS to record my fps not the ingame one. Already running directx9 instead of "auto". You're probably right about the FPS, the thing is my fps stays sometimes around 30-40fps depending on the situation, aka how much ***** we have on the screen. Going LOW just to maintain a steady 30-40fps feels a bit meh to me... hehehhe you know what I mean.. thanks for your reply

Well I didn't buy a gaming laptop just to run everything at low

Thanks for your reply though

 

I am running GTX 260M as well, stock clocks. Q9200 is not a resale part, it's an Engineering Sample part, never was released, but you can still find them on eBay. Clocks go: Q9000 2.0GHz, Q9100 2.2GHz, Q9200 2.4GHz, QX9300 2.53GHz. It's not easy to overclock in the NP8662, but you can get 200MHz out of your CPU if you use a certain PLL (somewhere on these forums) with SetFSB. But so far 2.4GHz is enough for me.

And I agree with the effects. No you don't *NEED* them I'm all for gameplay over graphics, but the graphics in this game offers great immersion.

 

Having a shootout with debris flying, smoke, dust, swirling winds, sun spots and crisp character definition at 30 fps Vs a plain environment, with no HBAO effects, undetailed characters and no environment effects at 40 fps. It all adds to suspension of disbelief.

I play singleplayer though so it is different.

 

I have a GTX 280M, which is just a bit better than the 260M.

 

Its cpu intensive. But also go to your settings.ini and change directx=9 if you haven't.

 

Anisotropic filtering x8 is really taxing and once you go past x4 the gain is minimal. I would recommend turning it down.

 

I took mew advice and voila the game is a heck of a lot better, my fps rarely if ever drops below 35 fps. The game still looks great at low, and the increased resolution 1680x1050 (natively) vs 720p really looks better.

I'd love to upgrade my CPU to a quad, but it's a pretty hefty sum, thanks for the tip though.

 

There we go! Now go and enjoy the game.