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Nations at War Performance Optimization
Updated 11/24/10
The Nations at War mod for Battlefield 2 pushes the BF2 engine to the limit, and as a result it requires a much beefier machine than BF2 does. If your machine is under-powered, you will get slow, choppy performance. This is often mistaken for "lag", which is choppy performance caused by network issues. But network lag is sporadic. If you have constant choppiness, then you are not experiencing lag. You are experiencing poor computer performance. You might be able to improve things with some in-game settings. But you might need new hardware.
In-Game Video Settings
Resolution: Resolution doesn't make as much of a performance difference as it used to. If you are using an LCD monitor, stick with the native resolution. For a CRT, you can try other resolutions. I recommend sticking with 60Hz as your refresh, even on a CRT, in order to improve performance. The 60Hz flicker on a CRT is not as noticable while gaming as it is while doing more productive stuff. I recommend at least 1024x768x60.
Terrain: This affects the amount of visible grass and other window dressing that appears in the game, and it affects the texture quality of the terrain objects. Low looks pretty ugly, barren and unrealistic. I recommend High. On Low and Medium, the textures on terrain objects are very blurry. I have not noticed any major performance hit for using High.
Effects: This affects the amount of dust that vehicles kick up, and the amount of fire and debris that results from explosions. Low removes bullet holes left on objects, removes dust, and significantly reduces debris, but it makes the game playable on older graphics cards, as long as you have a fast enough CPU. If you have a graphics card in the range of at least the 8800GTS 640MB, 9600GT, or GT 240, you should be able to use High, which looks much nicer.
Geometry: This effects the amount of polygons used to make up the objects in the game. You should be able to use High on most modern graphics cards. But if you still have slow-downs, and if you already have Effects set to Low, try setting this to Low as well.
Texture: This controls how sharp the textures look. If you have 512MB of graphics card memory, set this to High. If you have less graphics card RAM, you can try Medium or Low, but everything will look very blurry. I consider 512MB of graphics card RAM as a minimum for NAW.
Lighting: This controls the shadows cast by stationary objects in the game, such as buildings. You should use Medium. Low removes all of the shadows in the game, which looks very ugly and flat. High doesn't do anything except consume more resources and slow things down, so never use it. If you have a really slow computer with an old graphics card, Low is your only option.
Dynamic Shadows: This controls the shadows cast by moving objects. This should always be set to Low. Using higher settings doesn't look any better, but it consumes WAY more system resources, and it will lead to slow-downs even on bleeding-edge computers. If you set it to High, you will end up with some completely black textures in night maps!
Dynamic Lighting: This effect is barely noticeable. The only thing I've seen between Off and Low is on some night maps, there is a brighter glow underneath street lights, and anything in that glow lacks shadows (which frankly doesn't look quite right). Other than that, I don't think it does much. It should be set to Low.
Antialiasing: Don't bother turning on Antialiasing unless you have a nice graphics card with plenty of RAM, such as the GTS 250 512MB. If you have a lesser graphics card, leave this off. 2x doesn't look much better than Off. 4x looks very nice. 8x isn't much better than 4x, but if you have a high-end graphics card, you may as well turn it on.
Texture Filtering: This affects how blurry textures look as they are further away. You should be able to set this to High. Low uses trilinear filtering, which is very blurry. Medium uses 2x anisotropic filtering, which looks nicer. High uses 4x anisotropic filtering, which looks very sharp, even in the distance.
View Distance Scale: This should ALWAYS be set to 100%. In a game like NAW, you need to see vehicles and opponents in the distance. Lowering the distance scale reduces the distance you are able to see, which puts you at a disadvantage. If your computer can't handle 100% distance, then you need to upgrade.
Hardware Recommendations
CPU: NAW requires at least a dual-core CPU. You will get choppy performance on even the fastest single-core CPU. Your CPU should get a 3DMark06 CPU score of 2450 or higher in order to play NAW. I recommend 3000 or higher.
I have tried the following CPUs with great success:
If your CPU is slower than the above, you will get choppy gameplay, regardless of which graphics card you have or what in-game settings you use.
I have tried the following CPUs, and they were all too slow:
Graphics Card: You need a graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0c or the game won't even start. Your card must have at least 256MB of RAM, and I strongly recommend at least 512MB of graphics card RAM to prevent in-game studdering. You want a 3DMark06 SM2 score of at least 2600 and SM3/HDR score of at least 2800. I recommend over 4000 for each.
Here are some settings I've used with various cards that provide smooth results:
| Terrain | High |
| Effects | Low |
| Geometry | High |
| Texture | High |
| Lighting | Low |
| Dynamic Shadows | Off |
| Dynamic Lighting | Off |
| Texture Filtering | High |
| Antialiasing | Off |
| View Distance Scale | 100% |
These settings provided a playable game experience, but there are no shadows, no dust, no smoke, no bullet holes, and very little debris from explosions. The lack of shadows really makes the game look bad.
| Terrain | High |
| Effects | Low |
| Geometry | High |
| Texture | High |
| Lighting | Medium |
| Dynamic Shadows | Low |
| Dynamic Lighting | Low |
| Texture Filtering | High |
| Antialiasing | Off |
| View Distance Scale | 100% |
These settings provide a very playble experience. There are no bullet holes, no dust, and very little smoke and debris from explosions. But there are shadows, which is important for visual quality.
| Terrain | High |
| Effects | High |
| Geometry | High |
| Texture | High |
| Lighting | Medium |
| Dynamic Shadows | Low |
| Dynamic Lighting | Low |
| Texture Filtering | High |
| Antialiasing | Off |
| View Distance Scale | 100% |
These settings have all the effects and it looks very nice, but there is no antialiasing. I recommend the 8800 GTS 640MB, 9600GT 512MB and the GT 240 512MB as the least cards you should use for NAW. These cards all perform about the same. The GT 220 only works well with a very fast CPU, and the Quadro FX 1800 is not really a game card. I just happened to have one available to test.
| Terrain | High |
| Effects | High |
| Geometry | High |
| Texture | High |
| Lighting | Medium |
| Dynamic Shadows | Low |
| Dynamic Lighting | Low |
| Texture Filtering | High |
| Antialiasing | 8x |
| View Distance Scale | 100% |
These settings provide the highest-quality experience. The antialiasing makes everything look nice. These should be the highest settings that anyone uses for this game. Higher settings do not provide better image quality, but they do slow down the game considerably.
RAM: NAW really wants at least 3GB of RAM for a 32-bit OS, or at least 4GB of RAM for a 64-bit OS. With less RAM, you will experience hard-disk swapping, which will slow your game to a slideshow, regardless of the performance of your CPU and graphics card. If you have a 32-bit OS, you might be able to get away with 2GB most of the time, but some maps will use more than that.
Performance Testing
For testing NAW, I recommend running FRAPS. This program shows your current frames per second superimposed over the top of the game graphics. You can position this display in any of the four corners of the screen. FRAPS can also record minimum and maximum framerates, and it can be used to do screen captures or even video of your gaming session.
If you think you are experiencing lag, you can test this theory by starting up a single player game with bots. If your performance is a smooth and constant 60 frames per second in single player, but choppy in multiplayer, then you might be experiencing lag. When you experience lag, players and vehicles will appear jump around instead of moving smoothly, while your own machine is still displaying a steady 60 frames per second. This jumping around is caused by your game trying to compensate for the lack of information from the server by guessing which way things are moving. The next time it gets a packet from the server, if your game guessed wrong, things will appear to jump to their correct places.
BF2 is tuned to a 100ms ping. If you have a ping higher than 100ms, you can try editing your Usersettings.con file. This is found in "My Documents\Battlefield 2\profiles". Change "SettingsManager.U32Set GSInterpolationTime" to 200 (or something about 10% higher than your average ping) instead of 100. You can also try lowering it below 100 if you consistently get a lower ping.
To test if your hardware is powerful enough to play NAW smoothly most of the time, start a single-player game, and start the map called "A Bad Surprise". There is only one place to spawn as USMC. Start there, and head to the helipad. Walk to the back of the helicopter, walk past the propane tank, go about 1/3 of the way up the hill, and turn all the way around to face the helicopter with the propane tank between you and the helicopter (don't stand too close to the tank). Wait for a bot to get into the helicopter and start to take off. It causes dust to fly around. When the blades are up to speed and there is lots of dust, shoot the propane tank so it explodes. This particular spot in the map is hard on your CPU and graphics card, and when you add the dust from the helicopter and particle effects from the propane explosion, it really stresses both your CPU and graphics card. If your frames per second stays at 60 FPS (if you configured NAW to run at 60FPS), then you have a fast enough CPU and graphics card for this game.
If your frames per second drops below 60 FPS during this test, try lowering Effects to Low. You will need to shut down the game by pressing Disconnect, and then restart it after changing the setting. If it still slows down during the test, try lowering Lighting to Low and turning off Dynamic Shadows and Dynamic Lighting. If it still slows down, you will need to upgrade hardware. I would start with your CPU first, and then your graphics card.
Does your computer perform well when playing multiplayer, but slows down in single player? If so, that's an indication that you need to upgrade your CPU. In single player games, your CPU has to handle the bot AI. When you connect to a server, the server does all the bot AI, which leaves more of your CPU available to the other elements in the game.
Does your computer slow to a crawl at random times? This is likely an indication that you need more RAM. Go for a minimum of 3GB. It could also indicate that you are running some stuff in the background that you need to disable.