Author Topic: Good PC but not enough FPS?!  (Read 1023 times)

Offline YaPh1l

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Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« on: 08-02-2012, 18:02:11 »
Hello guys. I really enjoy playing FH2.
A while ago I got a new motherboard and new RAM. I did a fresh install of Win7 x64 and BF2 1.5 as well as FH2.4.
My specs (short):
AMD Phenom II 4x3GHz
6GB (4GB+2GB) DDR2-RAM
AMD/ATI Radeon Hd 5770
When playing FH2 (or AIX) on maxed settings at 1920x1080 my FPS decrease when more is happening on my screen (not 100% if this is the only situation). The strange thing is, that my processor is 60% idling, my GPU only uses 20-45% power (depending on FPS) and I have 3GB of free RAM. Still, the FPS sometimes decrease to ~15 (my GPU then only uses 20-25%).
I force VSync with RadeonPro, but turning it off won't help.
I also tried re-creating the shaders, using min settings at 800x600 and defrag my HDD, but it didn't help.

I have no idea what the problem could be. Do you have any tips I could try?

Best regards, Phil.

Offline LuckyOne

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #1 on: 08-02-2012, 20:02:37 »
Maybe something went wrong with the installation? Have you tried reinstalling? And what are the exact "max settings" that you're using? Maxed in-game or in Catalyst?


I have the same card and also get occasional slowdowns when there's a lot of smoke and explosions when I try to force 24x AA and crank up all the sliders. Turning them down a bit in Catalyst usually helps.

This is an old game and does not perform best on the "latest and greatest" cards...
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Offline YaPh1l

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #2 on: 08-02-2012, 21:02:16 »
By max settings I mean in-game settings. I do not force any settings via Catalyst except for VSync.
The "smoke slowdowns" happen too (caused by 100% GPU usage because of the old engine like you said) but the slowdowns I have begin when there's just a group (5-10) of soldiers on my screen (and are not a result of high GPU usage).
I will try re-installing BF2 as soon as I have time and report back.

Thanks, Phil.

Offline LuckyOne

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #3 on: 08-02-2012, 22:02:21 »
I do not force any settings via Catalyst except for VSync.

I don't believe that's really the cause of the issue but I think that according to the latest manual you're supposed to set AA and AF through Catalyst and disable it ingame for the (new) shaders to work correctly or something like that (although that still doesn't seem to work on this card as I lost my suppression shaders in the last patch).

Let's wait for someone more knowledgable to reply...
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Offline Kelmola

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #4 on: 08-02-2012, 23:02:28 »
i5 & 5850HD here and the smoke effects still cause massive FPS drops @ 1920*1080.

Turning down the "effects" (or whatever) from in-game settings to medium helps immensely (without hurting visuals too much), even more than dropping AA level from Catalyst (but teh smoke at High is so beautiful I'd rather take the occasional stutter).  But YMMV - your mileage may vary.

Though on my old rig, with a Sempron3000 & 7600GS AGP, the same trick worked as well: effects "low" and after that I could keep textures on "medium" and everything else on "high" @ 1024*768. Which would suggest that even DX9 cards were "too modern" for the engine :P

Offline YaPh1l

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #5 on: 09-02-2012, 15:02:08 »
I re-installed BF2, patched it and installed FH2.4, but still the same.
Lowering the in-game settings won't help, I already tried with lowest possible settings.

Best regards, Phil.

Offline djinn

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #6 on: 09-02-2012, 15:02:32 »
I have similar problems myself.

playing online is mostly fine, although it DOES happen there too.

Playing with bots though, it happens 70% of the time.
I play it with perfect frame rate, able to push up to 96 bots, even on Brest without issue.

Then other times, playing with 64 bots, you get the game breaking up, sound repeating.

I have a full proof system that prevents me from getting viruses, I scan for errors in my registry daily,
and defragment at least once a month.

It has happened on multiple installs of the game.

My specs are:
5 x 2GB RAM
Asus P6X58D Motherboard.
Geforce GTX 560TI
Creative Fatal1ty XFI Sound card
Windows 7 x64

*Game installed in its own partition with excess free space



Offline YaPh1l

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #7 on: 09-02-2012, 20:02:24 »
I can't test online since my internet connection is too slow. I only play coop in my LAN.
I wonder if it's maybe related to the AI (bug or sth.), but wouldn't that slow down the server and not the client? We recently played AIX, dedicated server running on a different machine (32 bots): Everyone's game worked well except for mine, I had the lags I described above (with processor over 50% idle, GPU using only 20-45%, 3GB free RAM, ping: 1-10ms).

Best regards, Phil.

Offline djinn

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #8 on: 10-02-2012, 12:02:14 »
bots do take more resources than when playing online.

But if you ever played it without lag before, then it may be some external resource using up your memory.
The four resources that count (In order of how much they count) are:
1. OS
2. Processor
3. RAM
4. Graphics

Offline YaPh1l

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #9 on: 11-02-2012, 12:02:09 »
2, 3 and 4 shouldn't be a problem as I stated above.
1. OS
But what can I do aboud that? Are there any options that I should enable/disable?

Thanks, Phil.

Offline Kelmola

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #10 on: 11-02-2012, 14:02:49 »
No matter how many cores you have, BF2 runs on a single core. Nice if you have another one for antivirus, firewall, system processes, etc. but any extra beyond that won't help much. Bots eat CPU power for breakfast, so core clock is vital - but 3 GHz should be enough for 32. Also, BF2 can only use a maximum of 3 GB of memory, being a 32-bit application.

OS, biggest difference in speed is that Vista just tends to be slower in all games compared to XP or 7, but only if you are already bottlenecked by the hardware. Tweaking OS is mostly pointless, because you are not bottlenecked by CPU or RAM to begin with. Turning of firewall and/or antivirus is not really recommened (unless behind a router firewall), and like stated above, is not likely change much. Turning off indexing service might help, but it's not like it's doing anything when you play. Also, if Win7 notices a "heavy" process being run, it's sensible enough to discontinue scheduled background processes like defragmenting automatically.

We should be lucky the game runs as well as it does now. Not all 2005 games even run on modern hardware at all, let alone support widescreen resolution.

Offline LuckyOne

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #11 on: 11-02-2012, 15:02:22 »
Yeah but sometimes has to be wrong with the way his system is set up...

I get constant 60-70 FPS with vsync on... The only thing that bothers me is that "zoom lag" sometimes which I think is a BF 2 thing and related to network code.

EDIT: Have you tried running FH 2 as administrator, in XP compatibility mode (SP 2)  and tick the "Disable desktop composition" box?
« Last Edit: 11-02-2012, 15:02:34 by LuckyOne »
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Offline YaPh1l

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Re: Good PC but not enough FPS?!
« Reply #12 on: 11-02-2012, 17:02:05 »
I always run FH2 as admin. Compatibility mode and disabling desktop composition didn't work either.
As an example:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/851/forgottenhope2201202111.png/
I had about 30 FPS there, but neither CPU nor GPU nor RAM were at 100%.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/718/forgottenhope2201202111.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/forgottenhope2201202111.png/
First one is the map, second one is the player list (32 bots + me, on local coop server).

EDIT:
It seems that other people with other mods experience the same problem:
http://www.realitymod.com/forum/f27-pr-bf2-support/103820-low-fps-overall-good-equipment-2.html
The first post on this page describes what happens in PR, and the same happens with FH2 on my PC.
EDIT2:
I found another thread that is very new: http://www.realitymod.com/forum/f360-general-technical-support/106853-gpu-usage.html
I now tried completely removing my driver and re-installing it. But this didn't work either. Any other ideas?

Thanks, Phil.
« Last Edit: 16-02-2012, 16:02:16 by YaPh1l »