video cards / Battlefield 2

I

iHoudini

n00b
Joined
Feb 28, 2006
Messages
13
Well, I am trying to get Battlefield 2 to work on a friend's computer and I am not getting much luck. He is only going to need to play the game at bare minimum settings. The system he has is a Celeron 2.6 Ghz, 768mb RAM, and a Radeon 9250. The problem he is having is that once it gets to the login screen, the graphics card crashes and an error message says that the card is not accepting commands. Then after looking deeper I noticed that the 9250 wasn't under the list of graphics cards supported- even though the outside of the BF2 box says Radeon 8500 or greater. The problem is that he only has a PCI slot so the graphics card upgrade options are minimal. My question is if there are any PCI cards that would work w/ BF2. Thanks.
 
If you are using version 1.2, there are problems with ATi 1.4-shader cards (aka his 9250 and my 9000). It should be patched soon with 1.21...

However my problems start when I enter a game, not when I login. So we may have different issues here.
 
lol same thing happened to my friend, he ended up buying a new comp, with a 7800GTX haha, so the latest patch 1.21 will make the 9250 work with bf2?
 
So far I have read that they will "address" the video card problems, but since that card falls below the game requirements (which i think changed in one of the patches) that could easily mean they will code the game not to even start if you have that card.

I don't think BF2 would be at all playable with hardware that old anyhow, even on very lowest settings.
 
My old video card was a 9550 and I had the same problem (this was before patch 1.2). Once the login screen started to come up my pc would crash to the desktop. I figured my video card drivers were old so all I did was download the newest catalyst drivers (forget what they were tho :-/ ).
This fixed the problem perfectly. But since then, I got a 6800GS and dont know if this would work with the new 1.2 patch.

But like the others said when patch 1.21 come out this might fix the problem anyways

Yeah that video card is quite low end. With my 9550 i got around 60 fps on absolute lowest settings. Like Frosteh said, the processor and RAM are also very low end for BF2
 
i wouldn't even consider that low end anymore... it's just off the cliff. Low end is like a 6200TC or something, lol. Yeah, i wouldn't try to play anything that intensive. BF2's got horrible inefficient coding. You practically need 1.5GB of RAm to get max performance in BF2. Tell your friend to upgrade, becuase i think he's due for one. but if he wants to keep usin it (or has to), then just go upgrade catalyst
 
Yeah, I realize how outdated his computer is. I just installed the newest catalyst drivers on his machine and the problem is still the same...
 
iHoudini said:
Yeah, I realize how outdated his computer is. I just installed the newest catalyst drivers on his machine and the problem is still the same...
Click to expand...

Hmmm... maybe the computer just cant handle BF2 (it's such a demanding game). I took 512MB of RAM out of my pc just to see how BF2 would run on 1GB... HUGE difference. This game loves lots of RAM.

Obviously this doesn't explain the crashing, but it might just be a lost cause even if you get it running with that setup :(

If worst comes to worst you could just try installing different older Catalyst drivers here

Good Luck
 
u need at least 1 gig of mem

and a vid card of x800 or higher

or 7800 or higher.

ne thing lower isnt worth investing
 
sean2sean said:
u need at least 1 gig of mem

and a vid card of x800 or higher

or 7800 or higher.

ne thing lower isnt worth investing
Click to expand...

He doesn't need a 7800 or higher, a 6800 will play the game JUST fine. Look for people who can't throw down hundreds of dollars.
 
sean2sean said:
u need at least 1 gig of mem

and a vid card of x800 or higher

or 7800 or higher.

ne thing lower isnt worth investing
Click to expand...
1GB of RAM for sure.

But he said he only has a PCI slot. Not, not PCI-E, just PCI, so an X800 or 7800 isn't an option.

And honestly, I'm sick of people who say things like anything worse than a 7800/X1900 isn't worth getting, because not everyone is a rich spoiled 12-year-old punk ass brat. Not everyone spends $2000 on a computer every year you know.

In fact, I have a 6800GS and my friend has a 6600GT, and both of our cards play BF2 smoothly. It's not at max, but who the hell notices? Fact: Most people can't tell the difference if they change one setting from High down the Medium except if they are specifically looking for that one, tiny setting out of dozens of others.
 
yea sure u can play it with crappier cards but who wants to play with lag in 64 player maps?

our bf squad upgraded their comps mainly because of lag. from ati 9800, ati 9700, x800, nvidia 6800... to x1900, 7800gtx, x850xtpe, etc...

yea sure u can lay down 150-200 bucks to play bf, but once u start playin in 64 player maps, especially certain maps... ull experience the lag... and when u do... ull want to go return the card and spend another 50-100 bucks just to get a better card.

problem isnt about high, med, low, ultra high settings. its gettin the highest resolution. i rather play bf at 1900 by 1200 then at 800 by 600. u can see so much futher (ie. enemy) and gun em down. on avg, after upgrading everybodys pts increased by 30pts. on avg. each squad member gets 50-130 pts per round. and thats from avg. 20-30pts per round.

imo if ur gonna be hardcore playin bf 4-6 hrs a day... best if u invest a bit more money and get urself a better card... if u just play it once a while... then i guess u wouldnt mind playin bf at low quality with lag once a while.

if ur friend cant drop the cash to play bf, then i suggest dont play that game. cuz once u get started, especially with a low end system... ull end up upgradin like many of us... it gets addictive.

i spent 5000 just to play bf and other high end games. many of my friends spend 1000-3000 to play. main reason? cuz of lag.
 
sean2sean said:
yea sure u can play it with crappier cards but who wants to play with lag in 64 player maps?

our bf squad upgraded their comps mainly because of lag. from ati 9800, ati 9700, x800, nvidia 6800... to x1900, 7800gtx, x850xtpe, etc...


i spent 5000 just to play bf and other high end games. many of my friends spend 1000-3000 to play. main reason? cuz of lag.
Click to expand...


granted a system w/a pci vid card won't play bf2, but that doesn't mean he needs to drop the equivilant of a months rent to play a nice game at his leisure. Not everyone plays video games to the level others like to. Some people actually play just to merely have fun.


I would recommend that he upgrades his system, but he doesn't need top tier components to have an enjoyable experience. He could get buy with dropping $250-$500 for a mobo, cpu, memory, and vid card if he shops smart.
 
FreedomFGHTR said:
Some people actually play just to merely have fun.
Click to expand...
Whatever happened to the days when fun was ALL the games were about? Nowadays most people play games just to prove that they're better than someone else.

Sean2Sean:

Resolution? Not everyone has a 24" monitor. Most people play at 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

64 player maps; who wants to play them, anyways? Most of the lag comes from players' INTERNET CONNECTIONS. 64 players connected to a single server can cause a lot of stress on it. Sure, some of the lag will be on your graphics card trying to load different things, but a big chunk of it is also on the server.

$5000? You, sir, are a complete and total freaking moron. With $5000 you could have bought a used car, helped pay off the rent/house bills, and much, much more. So unless you go to gaming tournaments and win $100,000 each time, $5,000 just to play ONE GAME is a waste.

Don't discourage the guy not to play the game just because he doesn't have the best computer parts out there. I played BF2 for 6 months on an FX5700LE. Did I lag? No, not really. Could I run everything on high? No, I couldn't. Did I care? No, I didn't. Gamers today are forgetting what games are all about: Having FUN, not about eye candy. In my book, you shouldn't have to shell out over $1000 just to be able to play a game you want.
 
If he paid $5000 for the PC in his sig, I could have saved him a few grand and sold him mine. :cool:

Then I could have taken the money and built a hell of a nice PC (oh wait - all I need is a better video card and I would already have a hell of a PC) and had money left over for a few months of beer and an actual social life outside of video games.

I've played BF2 probably 70 hours since I bought it back in August and wouldn't ever consider letting a video game take up six hours a day of my life. You never get the time back, and it's just as important when you're 13 as when you're 65 years old.

I say play the game to have fun. No one knows who you are outside of the game anyway, so what's the big deal? I sure don't walk around in public gloating about my ranking in a video game.

*edited to make a little more sense*
 
hell, my friend had a 9800Pro stuck with an OC'd P4 northwood to 3.8Ghz and 1.5Gb of RAM. that RAM got him far. He ran like 1280x1024 at highest settings (like 0xAA or 2xAA, but still high everything at that res). No ram lag or anything. Amazing... maybe your friend could invest in something cheap like a 6200 or 6600GT n just off with a bunch of RAM to make up for the weaker graphic card performance
 
Hi.

You defintiely don't need a 7800GT or whatnot to play BF2.

Hell, I have an OC'd 6600GT that pays the game just fine at 1152x864 (Yea, yea, I know, odd res.. Blame my monitor.) with all else on high. And 2xAA. So uh.. Even a 6600GT cuts it. Anything higher is just icing on the cake.

But hey, I love my icing just as much as any other gamer here, so by all means get a better card if you can.
 
Of course it is pretty dumb to spend 5K to play BF2. Besides that, the game really looks like shit. Don't get me wrong, its a fun assed game, but it is not even about the eye candy. It didn't look good with my 6800GT and it doesn't look good with my x1900xt. I thought from day one when I saw screenies of it running on 7800GTX's that it was kind of ugly for the hype.

So, no, don't waste a lot of money on a card if you play this game. A x800/6800 or even a 6600 will take you a long way. Depending on where you get it, you can be zipping right along with $100 for a new card and $80 for another stick of ram. That's about a half of what some suggested spending on the card alone. It's about the mode of play, man!

Actually the idea of oc'ing your graphics card and cpu, and not having the top of the line is kinda what the whole enthusiast scene used to be about. Sure some of the other guys spent 5K, but you saved your money and enjoy the game like the rest of them.

Now, FEAR on the other hand... :p
 
StealthyFish said:
hell, my friend had a 9800Pro stuck with an OC'd P4 northwood to 3.8Ghz and 1.5Gb of RAM. that RAM got him far. He ran like 1280x1024 at highest settings (like 0xAA or 2xAA, but still high everything at that res). No ram lag or anything. Amazing... maybe your friend could invest in something cheap like a 6200 or 6600GT n just off with a bunch of RAM to make up for the weaker graphic card performance
Click to expand...
More RAM doesn't mean anything. Chances are most games don't use more than 256MB, anything more is too much.

BTW a 6200 is crap. NEVER get entry-level cards if you want to do gaming, you could spend $30-50 more and get something twice as better.
 
apHytHiaTe said:
Of course it is pretty dumb to spend 5K to play BF2. Besides that, the game really looks like shit. Don't get me wrong, its a fun assed game, but it is not even about the eye candy. It didn't look good with my 6800GT and it doesn't look good with my x1900xt. I thought from day one when I saw screenies of it running on 7800GTX's that it was kind of ugly for the hype.

So, no, don't waste a lot of money on a card if you play this game. A x800/6800 or even a 6600 will take you a long way. Depending on where you get it, you can be zipping right along with $100 for a new card and $80 for another stick of ram. That's about a half of what some suggested spending on the card alone. It's about the mode of play, man!

Actually the idea of oc'ing your graphics card and cpu, and not having the top of the line is kinda what the whole enthusiast scene used to be about. Sure some of the other guys spent 5K, but you saved your money and enjoy the game like the rest of them.

Now, FEAR on the other hand... :p
Click to expand...
You think BF2 looks like shit? LOL, you're smoking some good shit, and I want some.
 
uve gotta be shitting me...... u think that BF2 doesnt take up anymore RAM than 256mb... wow it usually takes up about 800mb....
 
StealthyFish said:
hell, my friend had a 9800Pro stuck with an OC'd P4 northwood to 3.8Ghz and 1.5Gb of RAM. that RAM got him far. He ran like 1280x1024 at highest settings (like 0xAA or 2xAA, but still high everything at that res). No ram lag or anything. Amazing... maybe your friend could invest in something cheap like a 6200 or 6600GT n just off with a bunch of RAM to make up for the weaker graphic card performance
Click to expand...

The problem is the PCI slot. I haven't found one PCI card that is listed under the compatible BF2 graphics cards. On the BF2 box, it says Radeon 8500 or higher, but under the detailed list of supported graphics cards, the 9250 isn't listed.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is the first computer game he's ever bought. However, if my friend actually gets it to work he might be a little bit dissappointed with his display quality, as he first saw the game on my computer with 2GB of RAM and a 7800GT. I showed him a real good deal at Best Buy with a 64 3400+ and 1GB of RAM for 500, and told him the best bet would be to get the new computer and upgrade with maybe a 6600GT or 6800.
 
yeah, if he's willing to spend 325 or w/e on a graphics card that he couldn't run, i'd just tell him to buy a whole new computer altogether. Just go aruond newegg and show him some stuff. He could start off low-end mobo or something to get started with PCIe slot and more RAM support and processor support. Get a mid-range processor, maybe like a Pentium 4 631 Cedar Mill and upgrade it later. He'll be better off and might have a possibility of running it fine with decent frames and decent graphic settings
 
sean2sean said:
problem isnt about high, med, low, ultra high settings. its gettin the highest resolution. i rather play bf at 1900 by 1200 then at 800 by 600. u can see so much futher (ie. enemy) and gun em down. on avg, after upgrading everybodys pts increased by 30pts. on avg. each squad member gets 50-130 pts per round. and thats from avg. 20-30pts per round.
Click to expand...

I guess I am the most hardcore guy to play BF2... I can get 70 pts easliy, with 11 kills/5 deaths (medic). 768MB of RAM, and that p.o.s. GPU with a 230w PSU?

It's undeniable! lol
 
When i first got bf2 i had a 5700U, i was able to play the game but it looked like crap and i honestly hated it(the game).I would rant to my friends on how it sucked and it had to look like shit for you to play it with a decent fps. I honestly tried to like the game, to have fun playing it. but why play Bf2 when i could play css which didn't look like crap on my comp? That was untill i got a x850. With the x850 i can run it on LCD res with almost everything on high (need more system ram) and 6xAA the game never lags unless it is loading stuff from the HD (errr...must have more ram). But other than that it runs fine and looks great! i really enjoy the game now because i got a good system that can play it. So my advice is that if your gonna play bf2 make sure you have a good enough system to run the game at a comfortable level for you.
 
Narius said:
uve gotta be shitting me...... u think that BF2 doesnt take up anymore RAM than 256mb... wow it usually takes up about 800mb....
Click to expand...

i'm pretty sure he's talking about the video card RAM...

i thought the same thing you did at first but after reading it again it's clear he's meaning the video RAM ;)

you can tell by reading what he quoted
 
some of the responses i find quite amusing.

theres no internet lag running pipe line with ping of 20-30 on avg. if u have high ping on bf, lot of the servers will kick u out. so ping isnt the issue for lag. its system hardware.

who ever said 64 player maps are boring, then they dont kno wut they are talkin about.

1 gig is good. but 2 gig is better.

dont hatethe ppl who can afford to drop 3-5k on computer parts. some ppl actually can afford stuff like that. unlike other ppl who talk crap about ppl who spend that much. keep in mind that its not "your" money... so dont worry... u should still be able to make ur house payment or car payment....

its funny how ppl can asume about other ppls lifestyle when they dont even know crap about it. they tend to jump to conclusions and stick with it... i pity those certain ppl that responded to my post... makin those quick assumptions.

if ppl dont want to spend the money to get quality stuff. then might as well get a xbox 360 and save urself the trouble of gettin an expensive computer to play games.
 
sean2sean said:
some of the responses i find quite amusing.

theres no internet lag running pipe line with ping of 20-30 on avg. if u have high ping on bf, lot of the servers will kick u out. so ping isnt the issue for lag. its system hardware.

who ever said 64 player maps are boring, then they dont kno wut they are talkin about.

1 gig is good. but 2 gig is better.

dont hatethe ppl who can afford to drop 3-5k on computer parts. some ppl actually can afford stuff like that. unlike other ppl who talk crap about ppl who spend that much. keep in mind that its not "your" money... so dont worry... u should still be able to make ur house payment or car payment....

its funny how ppl can asume about other ppls lifestyle when they dont even know crap about it. they tend to jump to conclusions and stick with it... i pity those certain ppl that responded to my post... makin those quick assumptions.

if ppl dont want to spend the money to get quality stuff. then might as well get a xbox 360 and save urself the trouble of gettin an expensive computer to play games.
Click to expand...

I think what you don't get is that people do not care what you spend or what you do, but it is that last line of ignorance quoted above that piss people off.
 
sean2sean said:
some of the responses i find quite amusing.

theres no internet lag running pipe line with ping of 20-30 on avg. if u have high ping on bf, lot of the servers will kick u out. so ping isnt the issue for lag. its system hardware.

who ever said 64 player maps are boring, then they dont kno wut they are talkin about.

1 gig is good. but 2 gig is better.

dont hatethe ppl who can afford to drop 3-5k on computer parts. some ppl actually can afford stuff like that. unlike other ppl who talk crap about ppl who spend that much. keep in mind that its not "your" money... so dont worry... u should still be able to make ur house payment or car payment....

its funny how ppl can asume about other ppls lifestyle when they dont even know crap about it. they tend to jump to conclusions and stick with it... i pity those certain ppl that responded to my post... makin those quick assumptions.

if ppl dont want to spend the money to get quality stuff. then might as well get a xbox 360 and save urself the trouble of gettin an expensive computer to play games.
Click to expand...
Yuck Fou.

Yes, it is your money, and yes, you can do whatever the hell you want with it, what most of us here are trying to point out is that it's a waste to spend that much money just for a game when 2 years later your system will be obsolete.

If you want to waste money, fine. But I'd advise you listen to the rest of us and think along the road for when you want that fancy new Benz or Porsche, or that new $1.5 million home and you can't afford it since you spent thousands of dollars on your computer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top