Going single core would be incredibly stupid really and a complete waste of time. The Athlon II X3s clock just as high and have a chance to unlock to quad with the right motherboard. They would be my budget chips of choice at the moment. Having said that, if you're changing platform Intel could be an option depending on budget.
-
Competitor rules
Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.
460GTX / X2 5000 'BE'
- Thread starter ChrisGTL
- Start date
A single core Sempron would be totally useless for BC2 and even unlocked it wouldn't be much better than the CPU the Op already has.
I am genuinely surprised that the OP is seeing such poor performance even at low settings (despite BC2 being CPU hungry). I get better framerates playing it on my Alienware M11x R1 which has a Core 2 Duo clocked at 1.73ghz coupled with a GT335m (1366x768 with custom config).
I did spend a lot of time tweaking the config files to get the game to run though.
The following might at least be useful to the OP whilst he waits for the new components (It might actually help anyone who has a relatively weak CPU) :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...field-bad-company-2-optimization-m11x-r1.html
Guys, even if the cpu is bottlenecking the 460 it should NOT run slower than the 8800 under adjust case.
The only possibility I can see here OS that the PSU doesn't provide enough juice.
on the upgrade part, that 30quid mobo with nice athlons 2 x3 or x4 or 2nd hand phenom should come at just over 100.
The only possibility I can see here OS that the PSU doesn't provide enough juice.
on the upgrade part, that 30quid mobo with nice athlons 2 x3 or x4 or 2nd hand phenom should come at just over 100.
Thanks, I have done the tweaks (most were done already, apart from the disable EAX etc) - I seem to have gained 5-8fps doing this so thanks
Is there anything I can do to test my PSU? If its just a case of new PSU then i'll get one but dont want to upgrade it if it doesnt change anything.
Thanks
Thanks, I have done the tweaks (most were done already, apart from the disable EAX etc) - I seem to have gained 5-8fps doing this so thanks
Great news there! Glad I could help.
I have been doing some BFBC2 testing of my own on my server (similar specs to your PC but Intel based).
The basic specs are:
Pentium Dual Core (Core 2 Duo) E2160 (1.8ghz, 1mb L2 Cache)
2GB DDR2 1066mhz memory @ 830mhz
Windows XP SP3
I wanted to see just how much a system like this (which is comparable to your own) would bottleneck a single GTX460, so, I slotted one in from my main PC, the results were interesting to say the least.
With the CPU at it stock frequencies I got the following results:
Min - 5
Max - 57
Avg - 25.82
With the CPU clocked at 2.8Ghz I got the following:
Min - 12
Max - 156
Avg - 38.36
In absolute number terms this is a 13 FPS or 48.5% performance increase for a 55% increase in CPU clock speed.
The following settings were used for the test:
Game Settings: "Cold War" 5 minute FRAPS run through from the beginning, 1440x900, All High, No AA or HBAO (XP)
Dropping the Settings to medium made no difference at 2.8ghz clearly showing I am still CPU limited. Please remember this is actual in game performance taken via FRAPS rather than any form of canned benchmark. I found the second run through (2.8ghz) more than playable so I would expect the same experience from your system.
For those interested I also plotted a graph against time to add some meat to the otherwise standalone frame rates posted above:
Overall I am still someway off the performance experienced by my main gaming PC (A Core i7 920 @ 3.8ghz) but the game *should* be playable on your (OPs) PC.
EDIT - You should be fine using a Molex to PCI-e adaptor for the GTX460. That is what I am doing with the 460 in my server at the moment (the PSU is a Antec Earth watts 380 unit)
I'm still not getting as high figures as your overclock...and im @ 3.2Ghz.
I noted some figures down on paper, taken from Afterburner.
BFBC2 - Menu screen 60fps (I have v-sync enabled), as soon as I click search on the server browser and all the servers are displayed my fps goes down to 37.......
Why the hell is that? 37fps in a menu?
I noted some figures down on paper, taken from Afterburner.
BFBC2 - Menu screen 60fps (I have v-sync enabled), as soon as I click search on the server browser and all the servers are displayed my fps goes down to 37.......
Why the hell is that? 37fps in a menu?
Personally I wouldn't take any notice of the FPS in the menus.
I was only running my CPU at 2.8ghz as it's the highest clock speed I know I can achieve without lots of bios tweaking. Your CPU at 3.2 should at least be comparable to my CPU at 2.8 as I know the Older K8 processors were slower clock for clock than the Core 2 based processors.
Try doing what I did, download FRAPS and set it up to run for 300 seconds when benchmarking (5 minutes). Set everything to high in game at whatever resolution you run at (1440x900 is the max I can do on this pc). Run the cold war level and begin the benchmark (press F11) when you can take control of the character, be sure to skip all of the cut scenes (where the helicopter takes off).
Doing the above will be useful for two reasons:
1) Comparison to a comparable PC
2) A good base to see if any tweaks you apply will result in actual performance benefits.
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
8069, 300000, 17, 140, 26.897
Thats with:-
[WindowSettings]
Width=1680
Height=1050
Fullscreen=true
RefreshRate=59.882999
VSync=false
[Sound]
Quality=low
VoipEnable=false
SpeakerCount=0
[Graphics]
Effects=high
Soldiers=high
Vehicles=high
Overgrowth=high
Undergrowth=high
StaticObjects=high
Terrain=high
Shadows=high
Bloom=true
HSAO=false
MSAA=0
Water=high
MainQuality=custom
Texture=high
DxVersion=10
Aniso=0
Detail=high
RenderAheadLimit=0
Fov=55
8069, 300000, 17, 140, 26.897
Thats with:-
[WindowSettings]
Width=1680
Height=1050
Fullscreen=true
RefreshRate=59.882999
VSync=false
[Sound]
Quality=low
VoipEnable=false
SpeakerCount=0
[Graphics]
Effects=high
Soldiers=high
Vehicles=high
Overgrowth=high
Undergrowth=high
StaticObjects=high
Terrain=high
Shadows=high
Bloom=true
HSAO=false
MSAA=0
Water=high
MainQuality=custom
Texture=high
DxVersion=10
Aniso=0
Detail=high
RenderAheadLimit=0
Fov=55
Try changing to DX9 (unfortunately I cannot do a comparable DX10 run as this machine uses XP). Also try a lower FOV (45 or so).
The only other quick thing to try is making sure that the game is running at high priority (right click on the process in the task manager). The way to to di this automatically is in the thread I linked to earlier in this thread.