Battlefield 2: Stuttering / Frame skipping bug?

[Falkentyne]

Ok, if anyone has time, please test this out for me.

1) Set vsync on in your driver tweaks. It helps if you're using something for triplebuffering, but it's not mandatory (as long as you are getting good framerates by doing the below)

2) Start up Battlefield 2, turn off all AA and AF, set all details to low or off.

3) Set resolution to 800x600. refresh can be anything decent.

Now try the following: (you may need to restart BF2 first after changing settings above).

Go to any low detail area, and, WITHOUT MOVING, turn with the mouse, first slowly, then speeding up until you turn very fast. Turn SIDE TO SIDE. (everything seems fine when turning up/down)

Does anyone notice any _severe_ frame skipping when you begin to turn the mouse fast? The in-game framerate indicator doesn't really change, but it looks like the framerate goes from 85 fps to 10 fps or lower when this happens. It's VERY bad.


Follow this with doing the same test, but this time, moving forwards or backwards. (strafing only left to right does not fix it, for some reason.)

1) Were any of you getting frame skipping/stuttering during the first test? (when turning fast).
2) Did this frame skipping vanish completely, as long as you were moving forwards or backwards?

For those who were able to replicate this:
What sort of SCREWED UP BUG IS this??

***NOTE*** THIS BUG ONLY HAPPENS when you are turning LEFT to RIGHT or Right to Left. It does NOT happen when going up-down, etc. huh

FYI, I am using an X850XT-PE with 5.6 drivers, but I also tried the 4.12's (used the direct3d ati3duag.dll from it) with no change (except forcing AA through the Control panel works in 4.12 in this game).

I will try an x800xt-pe that's lying around to see if anything changes--but I doubt anything will change at all.

(Before anyone asks, I have 2 GB of RAM. and this has nothing to do with BF using all the video memory; it does it on lowest possible detail settings too).

Can anyone replicate this?

[Falkentyne]

Hi Spyre,

I'm using both 250 hz and 500 hz patches, with no change. I've been using those usb patches since last year.

It's definitely not related to the polling rate.
The game is glass smooth until I start turning at medium speed (while stationary), then it starts skipping massive frames--although there are some strange stutters (not frameskipping) when turning slow without moving forwards/back, but no frameskipping at slow turns, or if I am moving forward/backwards while turning, then its smooth no matter how fast i turn, just like any other game.

Wishmaster told me that this game has several bugs depending on chipset and video cards....


It could be a catalyst bug, but the way the bug acts makes me 90% sure its an engine bug. Why would the frame skipping happen when you're turning left/right, but NOT when you're turning up and down?

I've done about everything possible (except reinstalling windows-which is simply not an option).

[Falkentyne]

I Just woke up so I'm going to install my x800xtpe and see if it happens there.

[bhz9294]

You have a x800xtpe lying around?

[Falkentyne]

Yes, my XTPE died last month and I sent it to Giga-byte (which is only about a couple of miles from my room) for RMA, and I couldn't bear being without a decent video card (TI 4600 won't cut it) for 3+ weeks-month, so I bought an x850xt-pe. Call me crazy, I don't care. And the x800 came back (a new one; the old one was not repairable) from GB 3 days ago.....(in fact it came the same day BF2 came....)

Deciding whether to sell the x800 on Futuremark if my friends don't want to borrow it....anyway let's try to not derail the thread with OT.....

Still waiting for people to test the frameskip.....

[GoldenHawk]

I thouhgt its only me but what Falkentyne describes is EXACTLY what im
suffering from and i cant find a solution for it either... i even installed
windows complete new to rule out OS problems.

[bando]

well chaps

perhaps its me... i'm gettin alot of sluggish movement when i move left and right ingame forwards is not so bad even the ambiant battles around me but when it comes to actual combat i'm usualy dead because i just cannot react well enough because of this lag. i read spyre's post on this mouse polling thing which i tried ( just tried the 250 setting) i'm using the 5.6 cats with no ccc , btw is it adviseable to use the cat control centre? i mean are there any benefits to performance etc i'll list my pc hardware here to see if anyone might no what just the hell is the bottleneck or problem

amd 64 3400
k8vse deluxe mobo
2gb corsair xms ddr 400 2l
sapphire radeon 9800xt 256mb
audigy 2 soundcard ( not zs )
2x serial ata 120gb hdd
win xp sp1 home edition
5.6 cats non ccc
all other drivers etc are up to date

[Falkentyne]

@Goldenhawk:
What video card do you have?


@Spyre:

I was unable to test to see if this is an X850 specific bug or not, because..... /RANT ON: The X800XT-PE I got back from Gigabyte IS NOT WORKING. Windows locks up hard after you install the ATI drivers (any version), right before the Windows XP "loading" bar /screen is supposed to vanish and the screen is supposed to change resolution (to the "enter your password" screen. (of course safe mode works). Nothing I could do except remove the card and go back to my X850XTPE. (Yes I tried the good old driver cleaner method also... something is simply dead on that card. I don't know what the difference is between displaying in safe mode and in "Normal" windows, but the card simply won't initialize "2D accelerated mode". I tried 4.12 and 5.6 .....looks like I will have to RMA again. Thank god I didnt offer it for sale on FM without doing this test
No bluescreens or anything. Just lockup.
/RANT OFF

@ALL:

I haven't seen anyone with a Geforce card have this issue...(yet); I asked a 6800GT user to test it on my xfire, and.....he didnt encounter anything I described. hopefully someone with a Geforce card will post on the futuremark thread and say "Yes I have this exact problem". Otherwise....off to do a bug report...

Spyre: If you can reproduce this on any of your systems, can you help get this to ATI? It's a pretty important bug (For a new popular game

BTW: Are you using a LCD flatpanel monitor?
I suspect this 'afterimage' might be the same thing : But with my X800xtpe not working, I have no way to even begin to check that

Spyre: try this just to be sure:
Start turning VERY slowly. I would set the refresh rate to 60 hz, so you can be sure you are getting about 60 FPS, with the vsync ON. Triple buffering with DXT or ATT will help even more. Slowly increase your turning speed.

If this bug affects you, as soon as you hit a "medium" rate of turn (hard to describe), you will suddenly notice the game dropping lots of frames, but the actual framerate counter will not change to reflect that. Its like you went from 60 FPS to 10 FPS. The effect is a lot easier to see on a CRT than a LCD-- I played BF2 on a LCD with a 6800GT and the afterimages were pretty bad; I tried looking for that frameskipping effect, but the afterimages made it almost impossible to see (besides that I was already getting low FPS).


Spyre: another way to tell if you're getting the "frame skipping" at the medium turning, is to look at your rate of turn; when the frame skipping happens, it 'feels' like your mouse suddenly gained acceleration artificially (you will know exactly what I mean if this is happening to you).

[Nickoteen]

Wow.I came to this forum just to see if others are experiencing this.Im getting EXACTLY what you describe and I have an X800XT PE.

[GoldenHawk]

@falkentyne
x800 vivo pro @XT PE modded (16 pipes, full XT core mem speed)
AGP Aperture Size 256 (tried lower too)
Fastwrites OFF
Epox 8rda+ rev 1.1 nforce2
barton [email protected] mhz
1 gig twinmos @200 mhz dual channel
no PCI cards
USB mouse logitech mx500 (no it definetly not a polling rate problem)

5500 3dmarks 2005
10500 3dmark 2003

[Nickoteen]

just to note...this happened for me in BF vietnam aswell

[Falkentyne]

Does the same thing on my 5900FX (tested with latest Nvidia drivers) so case closed as far as im concerned, its probly the same thing you are describing as it only happens when moving the mouse horizontally

Roger, Spyre
Thanks for testing it out.
Yep its only for horizontal movement.


I'm betting that the people who said it didnt happen on their 6800's werent testing it right or they were already getting 40 FPS :P

Oddly enough,my friend with a 6800GT isn't getting it (well, he SAYS he isn't......)

[MechaIto]

I registered just to respond to this thread. ::laughs:: I thought maybe it was just me but now I see other people are getting this too. The same identical thing happens to me too ... if you stand still and move the mouse back and forth it will stutter. If you sit in a gun turret I can move and it's perfectly smooth, likewise if I turn while moving I don't notice.

This is specific issue with BF2. I tried FarCry, Halo and Doom 3 and they are just fine so I know my card is okay.

[GenTarkin]

I have a x800XL AGP and Athlon64 shuttlebox setup.
I must say Im experiencing this same type of frame skipping with every driver version I try, Im pretty sure its a bug in the game just coded crappy or something.
But my skipping seems to happen the first time I see a new area after Ive been there for a while it goes away and the game is totally smooth. The interesting thing is....I look down at my HDD light and its goin crazy the first time I get somewhere and I have 1GB memory. we all know this game likes a tad more then that, but check this out! once Im in the area for a while and everything is smooth and the HDD is not thrashing anymore...I will alt tab out of the game and then immediately go back into the game...the frame skipping is back again till I look around at everything the first time....BUT this time the hard drive is not thrashing.
Ive tried almost everything to make it smooth: adjust AGP voltage, adjust AGP speed, adjust Aperture, adjust pci latency setting, tried 4 different driver versions, forced refresh rate, and also 60, vsync on off, USB mouse rate at 500, different texture quality settings, different mobo driver versions....everything I try, I get the same results...
This does not happen in Doom3 cept for the timedemo which I heard the first time u run it it frame skips the 2nd time its smooth, on all cards. The gameplay itself is smooth and fast and beautiful with extreme texture settings.
Does not happen in HL2 at all, liquid smooth...smoother then my 6800 and much better looking.
Does not happen in any MMORPG's I play either.
another thing I notice about BF2 is if u use ATI tray tools and have the video memory status flash up there here and there, with BF2 it seems to never use all the 256MB, it uses most like 160MB....whats it doing with the rest?!?! odd....its like the engine is not optimized for 256MB cards or something.

-must be a crappy engine =(

Im curious, if anyone on this site is running an Intel set up and is experiencing the same problems or not. Post here please !

[GoldenHawk]

I managed to play for about 6 Hours in a row and the game got worse and worse
and worse the longer i kept playing :/ , i even lowered my sound accel one notch
but that lead to missing weapon sounds later in the game....

[Raffel]

My first guess it's just lacking of programming skills at EA. I've had this problem on BF 1942 with my 9700 Pro, didn't have it on BF:V with my X800XT, but DID have it again with the 9700 Pro. And now I have it on my X800XT (PE btw) in BF 2.

The stuttering seems to be worse in multiplayer games. Probably because there's more action going on. It's definetly a graphics issue though, because on some points of certain maps, you get it constantly. You can just force the hickups to appear. It doesn't matter for me if i turn all graphic settings all the way up or all the way down. It runs pretty much silky smooth until i turn around on my character or move to heavily detailed areas (not landscape wise, but more players) with high view distance. (also on low settings btw)

I'm running a P4 3,0ghz with 2gb of ram and an X800XT. (so I'm pretty sure more ram won't fix your problem)

On a sidenote: This game is ridiculous. I can't believe it needs both 1.5gb of ram and an above mid-range videocard for the details and performance you get. I've seen plenty of games now that use less resources and look similar or better. But I've always thought that way about the BF games, although gameplay is very enjoyable.

[GenTarkin]

@GenTarkin
Thats something different entirely to what this thread is about.

LOL no its not, its basic stuttering and bla bla bla that everyone is getting in this game. Im just pointing out a little bit different observation of this game in this situation that most of u are describing.

[squid]

it happens to me no matter what my settings are, and only increases when i am playing on some servers (if they have a high number of players or they are just a crappy server). i think this is just a game related issue, but hey, you can't expect something from EA to be coded properly.

[GenTarkin]

i think this is just a game related issue, but hey, you can't expect something from EA to be coded properly.

kinda like MS =P

[Nick666]

Same problems

I also have this problems.
Post #21 from Raffel perfectly describes my problems.
I alway thougt its getting even worse when playing for a longer period. But I'm not really sure.

Only diference, my specs:
Barton 3,2
1,5 Gb 400
Geforce 6800 (128Mb) !!
So, no Radeon.

From time to time, it's unplayable for me. Sound options giving no difference and I tried plenty of driver versions for all my hardware.
Have no further ideas.

[dreamz]

huhu

I have the same problem with my geforce 6800.....

[Wotan81]

My brother bought my old 9800XT and has a P4 3.2 and he also have a 6800GT (PCI Express) in an other system with a P4 3.2 and he has the same problem with both of his computers.

BTW in the computer with the Radeon he has 1 gig of RAM and in the 6800GT system he has 2 gig of RAM.

[Spazite]

I have this problem with BF2 and HL2..still.

[agentbad]

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951
http://forums.totalbf2.com/showthrea...hlight=latency

download this pci latency tool and change your agp latency to 64. this has helped me some with stuttering and popping noises from my sound.

[elchico]

hope that works

[kilmar]

It's definitely not an issue with lack of hardware performance as I get the same thing. Happens in the first 1-2 minutes of gameplay and it'll sometimes go away, sometimes not.

[Quench]

Its the game for sure, 3 of my mates on x800s have it, its perfectly smooth when in a vehicle but on foot its just jittery as anything.

[WiKiD]

maybe im just on crack, but i've been playing on the specs in my SIG and i haven't noticed anything u guys are describing ever since i upgraded my ram to OCZ 2x512 dual channel premier sticks

BTW, DICE is to blame, not EA... also, notice the NVIDIA logo at the beginning of the game? NVID has been suckin sum major bumholes these past few years to make sure everything is fine-tuned for their end-users :P

[UTA]

Why is it that ATI have only gone with one Major game that is HL2?

I dont see no ATI adverts in games like i do with nVidia?

[Quench]

who wants to pay money to put a stupid logo up on there? So stupid really.

[WiKiD]

i don't think its stupid at all, considering that everytime u play a video game u have ur vid card to thank for it. Best place for an ad IMHO.

[GoldenHawk]

Well changing latency didnt change anything at all as far as i can see....

well probably never find out what causes it unless its a code problem
that might be patched, one thing is for sure - the network code of BF2
sucks major ass compared to the smoothness you had in games like
tribes 2 , which supported servers with up to 100 players, including intense
fire fights with no choking at all.

In BF2 as soon as you sit in a vehicle 2ndary seat and someone else drives
you around its often almost impossible to aim cause your screen is shaking
like hell due to some client update problems i suppose.... and im not talking
about bad ping ..(15-30 with no packetloss should be excellent enuf).
Sometimes its better sometimes its worse...so its probably the bad prediction
routine of the game that will not smooth out the data stream needed to
synchronize the movement of 2 or more players in the same vehicle (just
a complete guess on my side of course and far from having any evidence)

The reason that you even experience problems in single player mode is
that even in single player mode you are spawning a server (locally)
that you host and join on your own client, so here too we have network
code envolved even if not playing with others. Btw its possible to join
a "single" player game and play coop in BF2 on a bot map.

[bigjohns97]

Has anyone tried disabling punkbuster and playing on a server where it's disabled?

I just tried it and the results were astounding, i got very constant fps and no jerkyness like before.

Of course the first thing i do when i get on a map is jerk my head around when i play this game.

[kilmar]

It's not just Punkbuster. Playing on a low pinging 64 man non-ranked server is smooth as silk.

[Miwo]

Upgrading to 2GB of RAM removed all stuttering for me...

but also wondering if the stuttering has anything to do with the Shaders being loaded on the fly? The 1.01 patch notes stated something about fixing this.

The patch will be out today supposedly, so we'll see if it helps fix these stuttering issues at all

[Quench]

You are talking about a totally differnent problem here, your problem is a result of HDD loading causing your stuttering , I dont have a ram issue , if you read the first post on this forum you will understand what going on.

[Falkentyne]

Agreed.
This isn't supposed to be a thread about people having HD thrashing/stuttering problems or stuttering at xxxx detail levels due to not enough Vram or system ram.

My first post explains this clearly.

The stuttering _I_ am describing happens REGARDLESS of detail settings, regardless of anything, under the conditions outlined.

You could set EVERYTHING down to low/none, no AA, no AF, 640x480, so the game uses less than 100MB of video ram, and a lot less than a gb of system RAM, and the stuttering I have described (which is not really stuttering, but frame skipping) still happens.

You guys need to pay attention. This could be a serious bug that could be submitted over to Dice/EA for fixing, if it werent from all the thread crapping about totally different stuttering problems

[Quench]

first patch hasnt address it, didnt think it would though. We can only hope for the future.

[Arachnid]

i also get the slight jerky [frame skip] when turning left to right(when im looking in the air or at a distance landscape) with my soldier and it is so small that i bairly notice it while im playing unless i look for it...

i want it fixed too... but imo its bairly noticable when ur actuly playing and dosnt affect my aiming at all... for those of u that are having a hard time turning when ur a gunner... try to increase the mouse sensitivity for land vehicals..

[lukilla]

Those guys at Dice can´t get a good performance game yet?

Bf1942 run poorly on decent hardware of its time.
Rallisport ch. had problems in a two or three tracks.
V8 sucked also
Vietnam was inconsistent from one level to the other.

After all these years, they pull out bf2 with even more problems!

Ea should have bought unreal or source engine instead...can u imagine how fantastic would have it been?