Bad Company 2 Performance Guide

Duality

The Dualyist of Dualys
Joined
Jun 5, 2007
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bf_performance.png

This guide is to help those who want to edge out those few extra frames per second, some will make a big impact and others not so much. With Bad Company 2 not supporting any in-game developer console, any tweaks outside of the in-game options menu have to be done via BC2's "Settings.ini" file. Now lets get to the breakdown...


DRIVERS:

Always make sure you have the most up to date drivers for your graphics card (gpu), sometimes just installing the most recent drivers can give you substantial performance gains or fix odd bugs/crashes. Click the image below for your respective gpu manufacturer:




FILE LOCATION:

Now you'll need to locate your settings file, its pretty easy. Goto "My Documents", then open the "BFBC2" folder and inside you'll see a file called "settings.ini". When you open it up, it should open in a text document (if not select text document as the default program).

performance_guide_settings.png


GRAPHIC SETTINGS:

Here's a list of a few settings you can try tweaking if you're having issues:


settingswin_text.png




Field of View (FOV):

As you may have noticed above, there's a setting to change your FOV. The default setting is 55, in the image above my setting for multiplayer is 75, thats just my personal taste and not the max settings. Below is an example of how the FOV angle (both horizontal and verticle) changes your perspective allowing you to see more without moving your mouse:

fov_settings.gif


Shadows:

This is a quick example showing the different levels of the shadows setting. Take note this does not show HSAO although you could imagine a slightly smoother high setting and proper realistic collision between shadows from different sources:

shadows_settings.gif


Water:

This is a quick example showing the different levels of the water setting. Take note this was taken in DX10, as you can see theres a minimal visual difference between "medium" and "high":

water_settings.gif


Bloom:

The below example shows the difference with Bloom turned on (true) and off (false). Take note this was taken in DX10 with identical settings except bloom, also be mindful of the random blowing snow I tried to compensate as best I could. Also different map's lighting will cause bloom to have a lesser or more dramatic effect, for example on Port Valdez some hills and sides of buildings can be blindingly bright with bloom set to "true".

bloom_settings.gif



More settings examples coming soon...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Wow! Awesome thread Duality! I loved the images, made everything much clearer. I might need this if my bro gets the game ;)
 
very nice. TY.

I get laggy parts on single player sometimes. using this has helped.
 
Does the FOV stretch your guns though to compensate for the zooming out that it does?
 
Great guide. I encourage almost everyone to disable HSAO, unless you have multiple beefy cards. I haven't noticed much visual differences with it on or off.

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2213/bfbc2game20100304174049.png

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/9531/bfbc2game20100304174434.png

Using the same exact settings with both.

I dont believe you activated it by looking at those pics, you have to restart the entire game before it takes effect. It is noticeable but definitely not worth it.

I've shown above the different shadow levels. Medium seems to be the best pick, not too much different from that and high plus you get a good fps increase over using the higher settings.
 
I dont believe you activated it by looking at those pics, you have to restart the entire game before it takes effect. It is noticeable but definitely not worth it.

I've shown above the different shadow levels. Medium seems to be the best pick, not too much different from that and high plus you get a good fps increase over using the higher settings.

Just edited it. Yeah, I changed the settings, then re-opened the game to take the screenshots. You can notice a slight difference like on the boxes and the bush, but the FPS gain is great.
 
Duality, if they have an older computer, they can always force the game to use directx 9, not automatically use 10 or 11 , whatever is newest, that could help too....

DxVersion=auto

but you can make it use whatever version of directx you like, 9 and up....

so it would look like this :

DxVersion=9

or

DxVersion=10
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Duality, if they have an older computer, they can always force the game to use directx 9, not automatically use 10 or 11 , whatever is newest, that could help too....

DxVersion=auto

but you can make it use whatever version of directx you like, 9 and up....

so it would look like this :

DxVersion=9

or

DxVersion=10

Its already in the post, read closer.
 
wait, wait, so would it be

DxVersion=9
or
DxCersion=Dx9

EDIT: I set it to Dx9, and I actually noticed a performance decrease, so I may set it back to auto.
 
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