The 5200 tweakpage!

Introduction: So you just bought a nVidia FX 5200 for a computer upgrade and its a pretty decent card....for someone who plays solitaire all day. Good news: you can play Battlefield 2 with it. Bad news: It's just about the worst card out there that can run the game. I'm not gonna throw any quick facts, so I'll just get to the point with Battlefield 2 and tweaking your system for the game. First, this is a guide to help people with 5200's run BATTLEFIELD 2 better. Some of the tweaks here won't work with the ATI cards...just focused on 5200 and maybe some 5500s or 5700s. By the way, I also realized that my 5200 only has a 64bit memory, which isnt that great, and even with that, I get 25-35fps on a 64 player karkand server.

2) After you run GameXP, I would download TuneXP and visit this site http://gear.ign.com/articles/626/626714p5.html and just follow the instructions. This will free up some more RAM. You can read the rest of the guide as it introduces other topics.

3) Download a tweaked driver. There really isnt much difference, but I've been really happy with the Z-Tweaked 82.12 Drivers with my FX 5200. However, I'm not 100% certain about this, but Z-Tweaked Drivers might have something against anti-aliasing and anistrophic filtering, but with a FX5200, i dont think you will be using those settings.

4) The biggest FPS gain is with this tweak and it might already be in effect with your system, but most likely not. The thing about this game is that it can use both 1.4 Pixel Shaders and 2.0 Pixel Shaders and the 5200 supports both, but it has really crappy performance with the 2.0 Pixel Shaders and for some reason, it uses the 1.4 shaders in the demo, but uses the 2.0 shaders in the real game, which kills your fps. So this tweak is basically, force 1.4 shaders on your video card.

(note this only works with nvidia cards Geforce FX 5200 or higher and ATI cards x800 or higher. (the 9200s and 9600s and 9800s cant use this tweak)

The game might look worse, but there isn't much difference. Look HERE.

Note: if your dome in Mastuur City looks shiny, this tweak will get rid of that shinyness for a 5-10 fps boost.

Note: This tweak MAY not let you run Battlefield 2 Demo, which shouldn't even matter anyways. I believe that if you reset the settings to "no override", which is later discussed, it will fix the problem and you can automatically play with 1.4 shaders by default in the demo.

You will need a program called RivaTuner and bascially click on the button next to the word Customize:

A set of buttons will appear , so click the button with a big green X on it (second from the left)

Click on the shaders tab and on the drop down menu next to "Override pixel shader version" and select force 1.4. This reboot and this tweak is done.

SOME NOTES: This tweak might interfere with other games, but u can always revert it back safely. It will cause the in-game loading to say "Optimizing Shaders" so before starting the game, delete your cache files located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR NAME \My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache\{D7B71E3E-4062-11CF-7A53-B32100C2CB35}_2878_1

If you use 3dMark03, you will get a very low score since it will not be able to run all the tests since the you arent using 2.0 shaders, but it will help.

I repeat: The game might look worse, but there isn't much difference. Look HERE.

Also note: Having only 1.4 shaders will disable a few settings in your video settings in BF2. You will not be able to set a few settings like terrain, dynamic lighting, and dynamic shadows to medium or above, but that shouldn't matter since even if you could, that would half your fps. Some stuff you can still set to medium and above are geometry, textures, and effects, and view distance.

If you have texture problems where there seems to be too much fog (more than normal), a fresh reinstall with full 1.4 patch will fix it probably. (Thanks to KMT for this)

5) Now that you have RivaTuner, go back to where you were forcing the shaders and now click on the VSYNC tab. Put the prerender limit to 1 or 2 and make sure that VSYNC is off since it doesn't do much except take away from FPS. The prerender limit tells how many frames to predict ahead, and usually the higher the number, the more fps you will get, but the more mouse lag you will get, so this helps reduce some stuttering.

6) Overclocking. Not really recommended and I haven't seen a big difference, but you could always try a lil bit. I have mine clocked default at 250Mhz and 400Mhz memory speed and i overclocked it to 266Mhz for core and 424Mhz for memory speed.

Warning: Can cause major damage and by doing so, you are violating your warranty with the video card.

7) AGP Aperture. This is still a bit confusing for me, but I know that you should set it to either 128MB or 256MB. Basically this reserves some of your system RAM for Video RAM. . How to set it? First you must access your BIOS which is a little bit different for each motherboard/company, but basically look for something that says "Hit F2 to enter BIOS or SETUP". And then look around for AGP aperture. (As you can see I'm not 100% clear on this, so I'll look more into it later) This sortof made my game a lot less stuttering so I recommend looking for this.

8) Ok this is a bit off topic, but I really insist on this. Get a new video card. I would recommend at least a 6600gt. I myself just got a 6800gt which is pretty amazing. My 3DMark03 score went up 10X..seriously and playing bf2 is like a totally new game. The game is so much easier to play, and I find myself getting so many more kills than usual

9) I recommend going to http://www.bf2lag.com and following that guy's top ten tips as well.

10) THis isn't related to the 5200, but I recommend that if you have a decent card, disable AA and increase your resolution. Increasing your resolution won't have as much an impact on performance and it gets rid of some of the aliasing.

That's about it for now. If you have any comments/questions/suggestions please e-mail me at conscriptvirus@gmail.com or IM me via AIM @ "ConscriptVirus" without the quotes. I'll be happy to walk you through some of the steps if theyre confusing.

I don't take any responsibility to any damage caused to your system, but there should be none unless you overclock too much and fry your computer. But hey, if you do fry your video card, get a new one...any card is just about better than the 5200. (any card meaning geforce 6 series and above)

Extra Links: Since this guide doesnt cover a whole ton, I'm posting some links to other optimization guides

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