BattleField Crash

[Miltzi]

I have used my current graphics card (8500 1gb) for about 1 and a half years now and I have been able to play all games on a low-mid resolution until now. Call of Duty-MW2 works perfectly as does Far Cry 2 and other relatively new games. A few days ago I purchased BattleField-Bad Company 2 and after installing I immediately noticed a lag while playing single-player, even on lowest settings.
I then installed Fraps to check how many fps I was getting and it turned out to be about 20-25 fps which as i'm sure you all know is a bit too slow to play games properly. On Call of Duty-MW2 I get up to 65 fps so i am confused as to why this is so.
I then switched to multi-player and got a slightly higher frame rate of 30 fps (max)
After playing Multi-player for about 10 minutes, i'm not exactly sure what happened, you may call it a crash but the game froze and a buzzing noise came from the speakers. After waiting about 10 minutes, nothing changed so I was forced to restart my computer. I cannot stay in the game's multi-player without this happening every time.
Could it be that my graphics card is not powerful enough for the game? Or is it a software issue? If it is the graphics card then that should not be a problem as I am buying an ATI XFX HD5850-black edition in about 2 weeks. My Graphics card Drivers are fully updated to the latest version. I took a video of what happens in multi-player, here is a link: YouTube - Battlefield crash
(Turn up your speakers so you can hear the buzzing noise coming from my speakers)
Thanks so much in advance for any help. It will be much appreciated.

 

[Fumz]

It's two things: your cpu just meets the minimum requirements, and right now EA back end servers are having serious issues.

You could try clocking up your core, but to be honest, I had an E8400 that couldn't even give me smooth play at 3.6GHz-4GHz. Of course, what's good and smooth is entirely subjective, so you may view things much differently with an OC? Bad performance is the result of DICE's last patch, R7, which brough a 20% drop in fps for about 60% of the people. There's another patch that due out; however, it was supposed to be out ~ 5 weeks ago, and nobody will say for certain whether or not it addresses the performance issue. That they don't say they address it doesn't bode well.

The EA backend issue is anyone's guess when they'll figure it out? Every Tuesday they do maintenance, and every Wednesday something seems to be worse.

 

[Miltzi]

Ok thanks for the help, does that mean that other new games that are released, e.g Call of Duty-Black Ops will most likely run fine on my computer (i will have a better graphics card by then but not a better cpu?)
And do you recommend any programs to attempt to overclock my CPU, and how much should I overclock it by to be safe with standard cooling?
Thanks so much for the help

 

[SleeStak]

yea BFBC2 PC has been a struggle since day one to get it working properly so you are not alone having problems with performance with the game

Fumz is right about what he says about your specs and that last patch was terrible from DICE/EA

we have discussed BFBC2 tweaks/fixes on these forums so you should be able to find some performance tweaks in those posts and also try the EA forums it has a Tweaks /Help "fixes" post sticked that has some helpful info if you can sift through all the posts

 

[Miltzi]

Ok thanks, 1 more thing...if you had my PC with my specs, would you buy the new graphics card that I mentioned or a new CPU? I am worried to buy the new graphics card now as it seems that perhaps my CPU is in need of attention instead...?

 

[Fumz]

Nobody can say with 100% certainty how an unreleased game will run on your rig; however, we can make good guesses. Since Treyarch is doing Black Ops, I'd say that if you can run CoD: World at War good, then you'll be able to run Black Ops good... but you can't hold me to that.

I do not recommend overclocking software, at all, ever. I think if you're going to do it, then you should do it properly, which is manually in the bios. The last thing you want is to have overclock software pump a ton of voltage into the core when you don't need it. There's a guide stickied in the overclocking forums here; you could, and should, start reading there.

 

[Miltzi]

OK sounds good thanks. I think I managed to solve the crashing problem, i read that someone else just had to take of the windows 7 feature which changes your backgrounds automatically which I think has solved that issue. Now the only thing left is the lag, do you think the new graphics card will solve that issue?
thanks for Ur time and effort.

 

[Fumz]

If the lag is due to EA backend server problems, or if it's due to the server you're on not having been rebooted in a while, then no piece of hardware you buy can resolve that issue. Your only option is to try a different server. If you're running 64-bit, you have to run the game as Admin to be able to see pings. However, sometimes they don't display. My best advice would be to use the region filter to set your region.

As for improving performance, that's a tough call. Both cpu and video card are right at the minimum levels, and that was before R7 brought the 20% performance hit. If you're thinking beyond Bad Company, then perhaps a graphics card might be the way to go, but if you're focused on Bad Company, and future BF titles, then a quad core is probably the best first buy?

Bad Company, a console port, is poorly optimized, so at least for that game, you'd get the biggest performance increase by getting a quad core. If you can also afford a new gpu, that of course would be great too.

Here's a gpu performance chart, created pre-R7. Keep in mind these figures were created using a 3.7GHz i7, and while there's no chart for your resolution, you can still get a sense of where you card is going to place: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 GPU Performance In-depth > 1680x1050 – High/Medium/Low - TechSpot

 

[Miltzi]

Ok thanks so much I have a much better understanding of the problem now. Im gonna buy the graphics card and overcock the CPU in bios. I have the standard intel heatsink so by how much do yuo think I should overclock it to have a lower risk of overheating?

 

[Fumz]

Without knowing what cpu you have, I can't tell you what temps are safe. To know only that it's a Core2 isn't enough. However, for the most part I can say the entire line clocks very nicely.

It's not so much the heat you have to worry about, although it's a concern; it's volts that kill cpu's quickly. Without aftermarket cooling I suggest you stick to seeing how high you can go without adding voltage to the core... which is something I would advise against.

I don't know what you're using to watch temps, but Hardware Monitor is good, for temps on everything, plus it displays min, max and current, which is always good information to have: CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

 

[Miltzi]

Ok thanks for all the help. My Intel Dual-Core E2180 is now running at 2.2ghz and the game doesn't lag nearly as much

 

[Fumz]

Those cores can do ~ 3-3.2GHz on air @ ~ 1.375-1.4 volts... but again, since you don't have aftermarket cooling, don't push it, keep it at stock volts Having said that, a 200MHz OC on a Core2 is very mild. Not trying to rush you into this or anything, I'm just saying... it'll go higher. Are your temps good?

Btw, I forgot to mention this earlier, turn your sound settings down for more performance. For reasons unknown to man, or woman, DICE decided to process all sounds in the cpu instead of passing them off to the sound card/chip. Dual cores get bogged down by hi-fi or war tapes.

 

[Miltzi]

I have tried overclocking to more than 2.2 ghz in the bios. The motherboard has three standard overclocking settings (Lvl 1, 2 and 3) and manual.
Level 1 and 2 work perfectly (Lvl 1 is 2.1 ghz and a slight voltage increase and lvl 2 is 2.2 ghz and also a slight voltage increase)
After setting the overclock to one of those, the computer restarts immediately after I hit save&exit and boots into windows perfectly holding the new CPU frequency and voltage but anything more than that (lvl 3 which is to 2.3 ghz or manual to even higher) causes the computer to have a blank screen for about 5 seconds and only after that does it restart but the CPU is back at its standard 2ghz after that...
I have no idea why this happens and I would like to overclock to a higher freq if possible...?
thanks in advance for any help

 

[JonM33]

I have used my current graphics card (8500 1gb) for about 1 and a half years now and I have been able to play all games on a low-mid resolution until now. Call of Duty-MW2 works perfectly as does Far Cry 2 and other relatively new games. A few days ago I purchased BattleField-Bad Company 2 and after installing I immediately noticed a lag while playing single-player, even on lowest settings.
I then installed Fraps to check how many fps I was getting and it turned out to be about 20-25 fps which as i'm sure you all know is a bit too slow to play games properly. On Call of Duty-MW2 I get up to 65 fps so i am confused as to why this is so.
I then switched to multi-player and got a slightly higher frame rate of 30 fps (max)
After playing Multi-player for about 10 minutes, i'm not exactly sure what happened, you may call it a crash but the game froze and a buzzing noise came from the speakers. After waiting about 10 minutes, nothing changed so I was forced to restart my computer. I cannot stay in the game's multi-player without this happening every time.
Could it be that my graphics card is not powerful enough for the game? Or is it a software issue? If it is the graphics card then that should not be a problem as I am buying an ATI XFX HD5850-black edition in about 2 weeks. My Graphics card Drivers are fully updated to the latest version. I took a video of what happens in multi-player, here is a link: YouTube - Battlefield crash
(Turn up your speakers so you can hear the buzzing noise coming from my speakers)
Thanks so much in advance for any help. It will be much appreciated.

Bad Company 2 is very CPU intensive. Your CPU is a nasty bottleneck. You need a quad core CPU if you really want to enjoy this game.

Your video card is extremely old and was weak for it's generation as well.

Time to upgrade.

 

[Miltzi]

Ok tnx, im gna upgrade my Graphics card and then my processor.
Thanks for the help

 

[Miltzi]

My Asus 5850 1gb DDR5 Voltage Tweak 38% is being delivered 2morrow

 

[Miltzi]

Ok guys I have my new Asus EAH5850 graphics card and it runs unbelievably. I can play all of my games on the highest settings (except battlefield as it wont update for some reason)
Windows experience rating gives me a 7.7 out of 7.9 for graphics and gaming graphics
I plan on overclocking it with MSI Afterburner, what clock speeds to you recommend I set it to? (safely)
Thanks