Help please!

[Rule of Wrist]

Camel, your setup is basically like my old setup, except I had nvidia instead of that ati8500... I did ALL of what RC listed in his post. No go. Every single thing. Nothing helped.

So I said screw it, and got a new board, cpu, vidcard, and soundcard... no more issues It was taking so much time to try to figure it out that it was less frustrating to just spend the money on some new hardware... old stuff was two years old anyway.

I used to run very smooth on the old system @ 64 players, but since 1.6, with PB and all the new features and stuff, it was running like shit... now, with the new system, I've yet to see my fps meter drop below about 85 fps... usually it is pegged on 100... take off the fps lock, and it goes higher than that...

New specs:

AMD athlon64 3000+
MSI k8t neo
1GB kingston pc2700
ATI 9800pro
audigy2

Hopefully, this will last me another 2 years

[Bullhead]

ummmm....what they said.

I apparently slept through/missed this thread, so most of the good stuff has already been covered, but I'll throw my 2 cents in anyway....

1. Start by trying to optimize what's there, i.e. update drivers (mobo, sound, etc), defrag, uninstall ANY programs you don't use, check blackviper's site (Buli posted the link) for services you can turn off, run Ad-Aware, do windows update, blah blah blah.....

2. If that fails, do a clean install, but do it very specifically. After you install windows and drivers, do not install anything other than BF1942 (except for sec. stuff, like A/V and windows updates). Don't even install TS if you can help it. Test in this state. If you still lag at this point, you either have a hardware conflict/setup issue, or you need to upgrade. The odds of it being a software issue at this point are very low.

3. If you do upgrade hardware, here's some ideas:
a. New Mobo and Proc (and here's why): The same ABIT board RC, myself, Murg, and others run is <$100 online, and includes everything you could need for features, including AWESOME onboard sound, so you could dump creative. New proc runs $80-$300, so it's up to your budget what you buy. Nothing less than a 333FSB AthlonXP, and ideally a 400FSB Athlon.
b. POSSIBLY, new memory. 1gig is fine, and PC2700 is fine, but if it's generic ram it might not be fine.

Anyway, if you want, post screencaps of what you have in MSconfig, and in taskmanager, and mayhaps we can find something. Maybe even post your devicemgr if it has errors, and any BIOS screens if you have questions (assuming you have a digi camera to take a pic with).

[RCglider Profile]

Originally posted by CrazyBri
RC when guadal comes up on ecgn 1 and it's a full server, how about joining on your 1.4 tbird and taking some screenshots during gameplay with fps enabled. If you can hold 30-40 on the ground near the flags I'll do a cartwheel. (w/o looking straight at ground or sky)

BTW I've worked a [b]lot with this game engine and for you to say my "bottleneck" remark as being phuey is pretty bold.

It blows my mind that you think a 1.6ghz isn't a bottleneck to a radeon9800 pro. I don't care how the hell you tweak the system it's still a bottleneck on cpu demanding games. (ie not counter-strike )



The graphics quality slider adjusts the LOD parameters. This affects how many vertices your videocard has to crunch at any given time. THe videocard takes the burden of this.

Effects slider is mostly tied to the fillrate on the videocard. Faster CPU can help though but it's mainly from the vid card.

Now I will agree with you that his system might have motherboard/agp/memory/overall tweaking issues. I remember him saying he was at 5fps on el al. When I played el al on #1 (64 players) with my tbird 1.3 and pc133 RAM + Ti4400 I would drop pretty low at times but not below 15fps. And that was with weaker IRQ management via windows2k (sound card + vidcard + network card sharing the pain)

Camel I've had VIA chipsets and they can lead to a lot of issues like RC mentioned. With windows2000 there used to be some major problems with their drivers and how they dealt with AGP operations. You should checkout their 4 in 1 changelist to see what improvements were made over time and see where your current VIA drivers fit on that list. [/B]

I will obligue on the screenshots, plus a Fraps log and video settings.

Sorry if I seemed huffy, it's just that I've fixed so many pc's to run BF42, whenever I see 'no matter what settings I use it's bad', that's a big red flag, and the common advised fix is 'spend more money'. It may improve performance, but it's usually not the root cause and may be an unnecessary expenditure.

In my experience, the cpu is only a bottleneck to the video card if the application requires it. This will be plainly seen in running benchmarks. A 9800 pro is beyond what BF42 needs and so is a XP2600, therefore the game should run smooth even with a comparatively slower cpu. It doesn't need a 5000-6000 3dmark 2k3 score. Assuming he's not running AA/AF and ingame video at max settings....that is not the problem. If he wants that, of course a faster cpu is warranted.

A friend of mine just installed a 9800 pro in a P3 1 ghz that had a GF2. I had my doubts, but it made all the difference in the world. Prior to that I went through his pc and did the tweaks so he could play, but he wanted better graphics because BFV was pretty bad as you can imagine. He doesn't get 100+ FPS like I do, but it plays just fine. Even BFV now looks good and plays well too. I thought he crossed the line with that configuration, but he was on a budget and proved me wrong. He even has the Dell OEM psu!

Camel didn't say if the game lags only online. I'm wondering if maybe the problem is his internet connection??

Now, if he does a fresh install, the correct simple tweaks, has the latest drivers installed properly (including 4in1 via drivers and bios), and still has problems then I strongly suspect a conflict somewhere....Creative Labs cough cough. At that point if there's no resolution to the problem, rather than spend $72 on a cpu, I would buy a basic NF2 motherboard (Shuttle AN35N, Abit NF7 etc. around $55-65), use the Audigy, and that will at least make the game playable.

Or as an alternative, sell the Audigy, buy an Abit NF7-S (sound storm) for $85-90 and also a faster cpu, assuming money is an issue.

Will a XP2600 improve performance under normal conditions? Yes. Is it the answer to his complaint "doesn't seem to make a diffrence if in game settings are high or low"? NO WAY..

I've never used a dual monitor setup, so maybe that's the issue?

A word of caution using Black Viper's SafeProStart reg tweak. I haven't confirmed it, but it may cause System Restore to not work properly. On two installs I tried to use System Restore after using that tweak and it failed.

[Camel toe joe Profile WebsiteYIM]

Hey guys thanks for the feedback, I don't plan on any more upgrades at the moment and if they are i was planning on making the jump to 64 bit as wrist did(new mobo and cpu).

The thing is that I made so many changes at once(new hardware, drivers, and dual monitor setup)it's hard to say what the problem is. I just know that even before I made the upgrades my fps did lock up as they do now, they were shit but for the most part were 20-30 with plenty of action and some dip below that. last night I hopped on some random (server #1 was empty) and the fullest one had 42 player everything was running great. I had disabled the dual monitor and had defragged before that so I look foward to a full server tonight. if not I will hit the drawing board again

[Bullhead]

Originally posted by Camel toe joe
Hey guys thanks for the feedback, I don't plan on any more upgrades at the moment and if they are i was planning on making the jump to 64 bit as wrist did(new mobo and cpu).

Don't.

AMD will be releasing their 939pin Athlon's VERY soon (like this week possibly), and 939pin mobos will be coming out almost simultaneously. This will be the 64bit athlon platform to get, hands down. All the goodies of the FX line, at a much lower cost (only thing you lose is 1/2 the cache, from 1mb to 512). Once these have been out for 1-2 mo's, then buy.

Originally posted by RCglider
It doesn't need a 5000-6000 3dmark 2k3 score.

If you look through that 3DMark03 thread we had going, I said something very close to this. With full blown AA/AF, at it's default res of 1024x768, I only scored around 2400 3dmarks, yet I can run BF flawlessly at the same settings (over 100FPS), so obviously BF only needs a 3dmark score of around 2000 to be smoothly playable WITH graphics candy.....

[residue Profile]

outside of processor, i'd guess it's a configuration issue. except for the cpu, your hardware far surpasses what i used to play on and is superior to what i have now.

[inspctr_gadget Profile]

camel, before i upgraded i had an Athlon XP1700+ with 512 meg of ddr266, with an ATI 9800pro w/128meg. running with windows xp pro. i had a mobo with onboard sound (nvidia chipset). i was running with 64 voices enabled and hardware support. the graphics were on 1024x768 with everything on high.

this system ran most of the maps with no problem at all. some of the new maps like aghelia, and the forgotten hope maps were not performing well. the problem with these was not enough memory. virtual memory on the hard drive was being accessed constantly, which slowed the game down terribly. when i put 1 gig of memory in that problem cleared up.

so i believe that your hardware is sufficient for the task of running bf42. some of the optimization tips might help. i know that one time on aberdeen i was getting about 5 fps during gameplay. it turned out that Norton was running a process in the background when this happened.

gadget

[Chacal Profile Website]

First time I hear about issues involving BF and dual monitor. Anyone has more info about that?

[residue Profile]

running dual monitor causes a slight performance hit but nothing too significant. i highly doubt it is the cause of camel's choppiness.

[Mr. Slayer Profile]

Well just in case you consider upgrading your processor i have the Athlon 3000+ with a 333FSB and when i upgraded from the Athlon 2400+ it made a world of difference and you can get if off newegg for a decent price as well. Very good processor.

-Slayer

[Camel toe joe Profile WebsiteYIM]

well stll having problem after disabling dual mons and fresh defrag so here are some screenshots and a DxDiag.txt apreciate the help

[CharlieDontSurf]

Well Camel, I've got the same problem and reading through the HUGE thread of Tommy Boy's fix I believe my problem (and possibly yours too) is the IRQ conflict. There are no yellow exclamation marks but I am running W2K and IRQ 11 has several things assigned; including my 9800pro, Audigy 2 and network card. I think Rule, who was also running W2K, just gave up (possibly too soon) and bought new equipment and is probably running WXP now.

Now my question is this: is it possible to reassign these devices to a different IRQ and if so, how is it done? A friend of mine suggested that I move the PCI Audigy 2 to a different PCI slot (other than #1 slot) but that didn't work. I know I should just suck it up and go to WXP but there has to be a way to get this to work.

****EDIT******UPDATE*****
Here's a link to a forum where I found a possible answer. It deals with disabling the ACPI for W2K. I've also included a possible fix.

http://www.certfaq.com/bb/sutra4157.html

and the fix

http://www.matrixvision.de/support/appendix/966/acpi_deinstall_engl.PDF

I'll try this tonight and report back.

[Bullhead]

RCGlider can correct me if wrong, but I'm pretty sure you'll lose some performance/functionality but NOT using ACPI......

And yeah, it's time for XP

[CharlieDontSurf]

Yeah, but I don't like giving up the fight that easy. I don't like quitting on a problem that I know it's just a configuration problem.

I'll probably end up nuking my system in the not so distant future as I may be going with a new mobo/proc.

Thanks for the info, though.

[Bullhead]

Ok, lots of fat to trim from that processes list....

1.UpdaterUI, point32, jusched, all crap (useless).
2. I'm presuming you don't try to play BF with these running: Paint Shop Pro, msnmsgr
3. If you're running FRAPs, try not, just in case (it's been known to lag some people).
4. The LVComS.exe is for you webcam. You could try just ending the process b4 loading up BF, and hopefully it won't restart itself.
5. ATIRW.exe is presumably for your Remote Wonder, which you probably aren't using when gaming. It's sucking up 7mb of memory at that instant, so again I'd end the task to try and get that back (every little bit helps).
6. Most of the rest is either system stuff, or things I'd suspect you use (like the couple of Cisco ones), so it's up to you to experiment with ending some of those processes before loading up, just to see what effect they have (you can usually restart them later, or at worst reboot when you need 'em back)


Services:

Do you see the massive list of automatic things on startup? This is the glory of XP bloat at it's finest........

1. Automatic Updates.....personally, I remember to check WindowsUpdate.com about once a week, so this service is utterly useless. I kill it (disabled).
2.Messenger = KILL IT IMMEDIATELY. This POS service is responsible for numerous Pop-Up/under ads, and serves NO USEFUL FUNCTION whatsoever to 99% of the world. Why it's automatic by default, god (err, Bill) knows....
3. Remote Registry and Secondary Logon..... Do you ever plan on editing your registry via a network? Do you really want people to be able to log onto your pc under different credentials? Then why have these services running 24/7? = disabled.
4. Wireless Zero Configuration......Do you run a wireless network? If so, then this service is aok. Otherwise, kill it (you can turn it back on later if you do add wireless).
5. Fast User Switching Compatibility......Do you have multiple users? If so, great, leave it. If not, kill this too.
6. Oddly enough, you have Human Interface Device Access disabled, which should/could cause issues with your input devices (keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.). Might want to turn that back on (automatic is default, I believe).


MsConfig:

1. POINTER = stupid, useless mouse app. Mouse works just fine without it. Doesn't even really do much IMO. Experiment with/without.

2. SunJavaUpdateSched = another worthless autoupdate memory leech. If you use java that much, you'll know when new stuff comes out, otherwise you can update when it's actually a problem....

3. NeroCheck = This is only needed if you have NON-Administrator accounts on your pc who need the ability to burn cds. Otherwise, it's crap.


Here's my stuff, for comparo. With the exception of msgr, and IE, that's what's going on when I game.....