Tip 1:
Reducing the number of punkbuster hard drive checks
How does this work?
Punkbuster, as you probably know, is the anti cheating software which comes bundled with BF2 and is required to play on all ranked servers and most public servers. Punkbuster scans your hard-drive for problems every 20 seconds. As you may have guessed, this causes a lot of lag. What we are going to do is to increase the amount of time in between punkbuster checks to 500 seconds (the maximum amount so don’t try anything higher lol). By the way, in case you were worried, this is 100% safe with punkbuster, and will NOT cause any problems with Punkbuster thinking you are a cheater. Punkbuster even recommends this on their website.
How do you do it?
Step 1: Ok, the first step is very simple, join any BF2 online server which is running punkbuster, preferably a ranked one.
Step 2: Once you are in, and respawned somewhere, press the ` key. This key is located on most keyboards above the tab key and to the left of the 1 key
Step 3: Once you have pressed this, a large white box should drop down with a load of text in it. Type “pb_sleep 500” (without the quotation marks) and hit the enter key
Step 4: Once you have done this, make sure the box is still up and type pb_writecfg to save your settings
Tip 2:
Renaming the BF2.exe File
How does this work?
Although the exact reason why this improves the gameplay is unknown, but it is probably that Ati and Nvidia recognise the program BF2.exe as one of their own, so by renaming the file, you turn the game into a normal program, not a resource hungry dinosaur! In 90% of cases this has been known to cause some increase in performance in-game.
This fix turns off any special optimisation by ATI or Nvidia which uses unecessary system resources.
How do you do it?
Step 1: The first thing you do is find your game directory, the default is C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2
Step 2: Once you have found the directory, locate the file BF2.exe, right click, and select properties
Step 3: You will then need to change the text in the white box which says “BF2”, above the directory on the general tab, you can change it to anything you want! for simplicity, I changed it to BF21.exe once you have done this, CLICK APPLY!
Step 4: This tip is now officially done, but the shortcut on your desktop will now no longer work. To change this, delete the shortcut on your desktop, goto the game directory, and right click on the newly renamed file. Click Send To, then Desktop (Create Shortcut) and you will now have a working link your desktop!
Additional Notes
* If you do this and use XFIRE, you may need to change your Xfire_games.config file to:
[4578]
LongName=Battlefield 2
ShortName=bf2
Icon=bf2.ico
LauncherDirKey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\InstallDir
LauncherExe=BF21.exe
- Some people doubt the validity of this because it is not changed in the registry, for those people, it doesn’t matter what it is called in the registry it just matters what the executable file is called when running it (look in task manager)
- When patching, it may be that you need to temporarily rename the file back to the original while you do it, temporarily rename it to BF2 and patch it, don’t bother about changing the shortcuts, when you’re done, just rename it back to your original name and all the shortcuts will be ok again
Tip 3:
Changing the size of the AGP aperture
How does this work?
For ME (everyone is different!) this made the biggest difference to my gameplay but it is quite hard to do. Read it through, see if your comfortable with it. If you have used BIOS before this’ll be a piece of cake. If you haven’t, don’t worry I’ll guide you through it. Basically the amount of memory on your graphics card determines how much graphics it can store for immediate use. If its there for immediate use it does not have to render it each time, and therefore it can access the data faster. By allowing some of your RAM to be used by the graphics card, this solves many in game issues. It is recommended you have over 1GB of ram for this. To do this, we have to change some of the settings in the computers memory, although this sounds daunting, it is very simple for someone to do. I might add that messing around with other things while your in the computers BIOS can cause system instability, so focus lol, and follow the steps and you should be fine!
How do you do it?
Step 1: If you have any computer/motherboard documentation it would be useful to have it at hand now in-case you need it. You may have problems if you own a computer that is a Dell or similar. First thing to do, is to restart your computer, so make a note of these points or print them off.
Step 2: As it is starting up, and I mean right at the start when it makes the funny noises, before the windows screen, you need to press the “Delete” key. It is different on some computers, but most of the time it is the “Delete” key. If you do not know what key your computer uses, either look in the documentation or look at the bottom of the screen and it should say something like “press … to enter setup”. If you find you can’t get into the setup, Restart, wait 1 to 2 seconds, then keep pressing delete in regular intervals until a setup fills the screen ( you’ll know when you see it)
Step 3: When you are in the setup (or BIOS) you will need to have a little scout around. Look at the instructions for getting around at the bottom and make yourself familiar with them. DO NOT CHANGE ANY OTHER SETTINGS! I cannot stress this enough! The setting you will need to find is called “AGP Aperture” or “AGP Aperture Size”. In most motherboards it will be under something like “Advanced Chipset Features” or “Advanced Memory Features”. Use your brain, have a look, and you are bound to find it. When you have located it there should be a figure next to it, in MB or megabytes. SEE BELOW
Step 4: You will need to change this number to 256MB, or as high as it will go up to 256MB. Although I might add try different settings and see what works best as depending on your video card and video memory this can sometimes make things worse but as most cards these days have 256mb of video memory it should be fine.
Step 5: When you have changed this, look at the bottom for the “Save changes and Exit” keys, In most cases, press F10 and then Esc to exit.
Step 6: When you have exited, it will automatically restart and your new setting will be effective immediately! Enjoy!
IF YOU CHANGE A SETTING IN THE BIOS BY ACCIDENT, DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING AND SIMPLY RESTART YOUR COMPUTER, THEN NOTHING WILL BE SAVED AND YOU CAN TRY AGAIN!
Tip 4:
Making Battlefield 2 automatically a High Priority Application
How does this work?
Windows shares out its resources and memory between its programs equally. It also runs its own background tasks using the “System Idle Process”. By Increasing the priority of an application, Windows provides more Memory to that application, and takes memory away from it’s own tasks such as the “System Idle Process”. You can change the priority of an application by going to ctrl+alt+delete and changing it manually, or you can set up this file to automatically launch the program as a High Priority Application, without you touching a thing!
How do you do it?
Step 1: FInd the BF2 directory again, the default is C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 the BF2 directory (common: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2)
Step 2: Right click anywhere in this folder and click New then Text Document
Step 3: Right click on the newly created file and rename it to bf2.bat, The file should then turn into a little cog. If it doesn’t, you will need to uncheck the ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ option checked in Tools > Folder options > View.
Step 4: Right click your newly created bf2.bat and click Edit
Step 5: Copy and paste the following into the notepad window that opens:
@echo off
cd /d “C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2”
start /high BF2.exe +menu 1 +fullscreen 1
If you have renamed your file in Tip 3 then you will need to paste the following code (if you have changed the BF2.exe to something different than BF21.exe, edit the BF21.exe to your filename)
@echo off
cd /d “C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2”
start /high BF21.exe +menu 1 +fullscreen 1
Don’t forget, if you installed BF2 to a different directory than C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 then adjust it accordingly.
Step 6: Save your changes and close the Notepad window.
Step 7: Right click the new bf2.bat and click Send To > Desktop (create shortcut)
Step 8: Goto your desktop, and right click the new shortcut, then click properties.
Step 9: Click on the “Change Icon” Button, and goto your game directory “C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2” and double click on your BF2.exe (or BF21.exe) This makes the shortcut have a real icon, not necessary, but makes it look way better.
Step 10: Right click on the shortcut and rename it to “Battlefield 2” or whatever you want really.
ADDITIONAL NOTE: For some putting it on high makes it worst performance, so try doing it on low as well if you encounter problems
Tip 5:
Updating your punkbuster
How does this work?
Instead of Battlefield 2 manually and time consumingly trying to do it in game, quickly do it with this easy fix (may not work if its already updated). This tweak will work for america’s army and also any other game that uses punkbuster. Punkbuster also changes issues in performance in their patches so it is well worth downloading the latest driver.
How do you do it?
Step 1: http://www.punkbuster.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php visit this site and scroll down to the pbsetup.exe link
Step 2: Either run or save the program
Step 3: Click add game and select “Battlefield 2” (and any other games you have on the list)
Step 4: Click Update
Tip 6:
Disable the intro movies
How does this work?
The intro movies in Battlefield 2 are cool the first time you watch them, but become very tedious after the hundredth time. The files also total up to about 250mb of memory. Loading these annoying battlefield 2 videos into the ram every time can seriously affect performance. To disable (NOT remove) these movies, follow the steps below, it’s really very simple, you don’t even have to go into the registry!
How do you do it?
Step 1: Navigate to your Battlefield 2 folder (default: C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2)
Step 2: Click on Mods then bf2 then Movies
Step 3: Right Click on each file and click Rename, then rename it to anything you want, as you can see below, I mainly just added “ky” to the extension. I reccomened that you dont rename the folder, as this can cause issues with punkbuster. I also suggest you keep welcome.bik intact, for the same reason.
If anything goes wrong, just rename them back to what they were.
Tip 7:
Downloading a Tweaked Forceware Driver
How does this work?
This one is very simple, but you do it at your own risk. Come to think of it, there’s probably not all that much risk actually involved, but anyways. Make sure you know what card you have, some manufacturers such as dell might hide the cards a little.
Below is a link to a 3rd Party Website to Download a Tweaked Driver. This Driver has been specially tweaked to make it better for Battlefield 2. Give it a try, should work. If it doesn’t just uninstall it again. I have noted that many people are worried that this driver will fry their cards but the driver itself is almost identical to the official driver, it has just had a couple of lines of code changed.
I have posted links for both Nvidia and Ati.
How do you do it?
Nvidia Cards
Step 1: Visit This Page http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&Itemid=41&gid=127&orderby=dmdate_published&ascdesc=DESC and click on the driver which is nearest the top
Step 2: Run the file and follow the onscreen instructions
Ati Cards
Step 1: Visit This Page http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=158&Itemid=41 and click on the most recent version, or the one which best suits your card
Step 2: Run the file and follow the onscreen instructions
(I suggest you upgrade your graphics card if you don’t have a very good one. Make sure you always have the latest drivers tweaked or not. Check out some hardware sites and consider purchasing some better parts. I recently bought a wester digital raptor [wd raptor] and it has proved very beneficial to my loading times and verifying client data times. The wd raptor is the fastest hard drive in the world, with a speed of 10,000 rpm. It is also a SATA [serial-ata] so it has much higher data transfer speeds.)
Tip 8:
Disabling the Paging Executive
How does this work?
When Windows XP does not have enough RAM it allocates some of the ram to the hard drive. You may think this is good because you get some extra memory but I’m afraid it’s not quite as simple as that. The hard drive does not load nearly as fast as the RAM does so it infact reduces the speed of your computer.
If you have at least a gigabyte of ram I suggest this. If you don’t I wouldn’t do it, as your computer may need the extra RAM on the hard drive to survive. What we are going to do is disable the “Page File”. Which is the file which puts files in it. To do this we are going to have to go into the registry, which is rather like the BIOS, but it’s in windows so it’s a lot easier. Remember, try this at your own risk! and only if you have enough RAM!
How do you do it?
Step 1: Goto Start->Run and type in the following “regedit” (without the quotation marks)
Step 2: You should then see a list of folders on the left-hand side. You will need to click on them in this order and navigate to this area: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\
Session Manager\Memory Management\
Step 3: On the right hand side you should now see something called DisablePagingExecutive. Double click on this and change the number inside to a “1” (from a 0)
You’ll need to restart to see any effect.
Tip 9:
Priotizing IRQ’s
How does this work?
The most important parts in your computer have a number called an IRQ. These include the graphics card and even the CMOS clock. With this tweak we can increase the priority given to any IRQ number, therefore improving the performance of that component. The most common component this tweak is used for is the System CMOS/real time clock, which improves performance across the board.
How do you do it?
Step 1: First of all, you will need to decide which component you want to give a performance boost to. I suggest, to start with you do this to the CMOS clock, as it increases performance in almost everything.
Step 2: Once you have decided, go to Control Panel, then open the System panel (You can also press the shortcut of Windows key+Break). Click the ‘Hardware’ tab, then on the ‘Device Manager’ button.
Step 3: Now, right click on the component you want to discover the IRQ for and click ‘Properties’, then click on the ‘Resources’ tab. If you want to change the CMOS clock, as I reccomended, click on the + next to “System devices” to open it up. After this, right click on System CMOS/Real time clock and click properites, after this click the resources tab, and then see what it says next to IRQ. (Mine says 0
. If there is no IRQ number for the device you chose then this won’t work for that component, so choose another.
Step 4: Take note of this number and then goto Start->Run and type regedit, and hit enter. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlPriorityControl in the registry.
Step 5: Now we must create a new value, right click anywhere in the right frame and click “New DWORD VALUE”. Name it IRQ#Priority (where ‘#’ is the IRQ number), then set the data to 1.
You’ll need to restart to see any effect.
Remember that you can have multiple IRQ prioritized, but it is fairly inefficient and can cause instability, I wouldn’t reccomend it. To remove this tweak, simply delete the value you created.Tip 10:
Tip 10:
Extra stuff, mostly OS related.
Install a spyware remover *- These are availble all over the internet. A good spyware remover is very important. Download the software, then run it regularly, every week or so. If you get infested with spyware or adware badly, download ewido at www.ewido.com in my experience this is the best adware remover if it gets really bad. Spyware can seriously slow down your computer and can make games run very slowly. Also get Mozilla Firefox, look below, as this is very good for preventing spyware.
Update your BIOS. Your motherboard controls everything, and a BIOS update can help greatly in some situations. Find your BIOS driver from the mobo website and download the latest version. Don’t get interrupted when flashing the chip though! or it can ruin your mobo! you have been warned lol!
Update all your drivers. I suggest for your video drivers you use the ones in tip 8, but make sure you regularly update the soundcard drivers etc.
Buy a bottle of compressed air at a computer store and clean out your PC once every 6 months or so! Some boards and chips will slow down if they get too hot. The dust makes more insulation, so get rid of it. Try and install efficient fans too. If they start to rattle, replace them! As they are not doing their job properly!
Consider Disabling Fancy XP menus and stuff. Consider changing to classic view in the start bar, as there will be less to load into the memory.
If your account is taking ages to connect, I found out that deleting it and retrieving it greatly decreases waiting times, you will need to apply your personal/video settings again though.
Make sure you have the latest anti virus installed. This is a bit of a stupid point though, everyone knows you need a good anti-virus. I reccomend to get a good one like norton, although avg is very good seeing as its free.
Disable the Performance Checker. Windows checks your PC performance regularly. You can see it in the task manager. This does however slow down in-game performance on most desktop pcs. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1: Visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&familyid=7FF99683-B7EC-4DA6-92AB-793193604BA4 and download. It says its for Win 2000 but it works on XP.
Step 2: Once installed Go to C:Program\FilesResource Kit and run Exctrlst.exe. Select each line in the “Extensible performance counters” window and clear the “performance counters enabled” button below. This must be done for each counter. When it’s finished, just exit the utility.
Consider a registry cleaner or optimizer. These are usually downloadable free or on a free trial but they can get rid of all the bad entries in the registry that can cause the computer to slow up. A clean and well functioning registry is the key to any stable and fast computer. Registry Mechanic is particulary good, but nowadays they basically all do the same so it doesn’t matter
If you don’t have it already, get Mozilla Firefox as it is much better than internet explorer. It is already starting to overtake IE due to its increased speed and easier functions. It’s totally free and well worth the download. The security in this browser is top notch, greatly reducing the chances of viruses, worms, spyware and adware being passed from the net. Try it, at least.
there is another BF 2 antilag tip which I think is good.
As most of you know operating systems like windows xp or 2000 run 99999999999 background tasks in the background. For example the spooler system for the printer or speed disk agent from norton systemworks rofl etc. etc., you cant even see some of these programs in an externally installed startup manager (or in windows xp if you type the command “msconfig” in the Start - exec line). The list of running background tasks is really ridiculous.
Even if you deactivate all stuff which you think is not necessary via an external startup manager and remove everything from autostart folder etc. etc., there still remain unbelievable amounts of crap (its really unbelievable 
) which still run.
There are 2 ways to get this stuff out:
1.) You can disable services manually via the operating system, but as many of them are interdependent chances are very very high that you completely ruin your operating system by disabling necessary services. The most funny thing is that you can even disable the service that runs the services menu, ROFL, thats really convenient for wrecking your computer. So simply dont do this, if you really want to try this, make a complete copy of your operating system partition first (!), you will surely need it (so you dont have to reinstall everything manually again, which usually takes a complete day, which is an absolute waste of time).
Its much better to use option 2., which is
2.) install the program “End it all” which lists every task which runs in the background and close and kill everything you think you dont need (thats a lot of stuff, at my place I can close or kill 18 useless programs or so).
If you marked everything to be closed or killed in the end it all program (except a few things the operating systems need, which are usually marked bold by End it all or important things like the firewall!) you can select close all and kill all from the menu the next time and end it all kills and closes all the stuff you selected automatically. The simplest thing is to go to kill all right from the start, then it closes all you marked and kills the rest of the stuff you marked.
Again, DONT KILL THE FIREWALL. Without a firewall, an average computer gets infected with viruses / trojans within a timespan of 30 - 60 seconds (thanks to all the scriptkiddies with their port scanners which instantly recognize unprotected computers that are in the internet and infect them with their “remote management” programs so that they can have fun with you ).
The good thing about End it all is that if you restart (or only logout and login, did not try this) your machine, every background crap you never wanted to know about is there again, so everything will work like it did before…so if you want to print something after playing BF2 then and you need the printer spooler service just restart the machine (or logout / login again, did not try this).
I think thats a very good tip and you should add it to your main tip list (this would be 11 tips then), but try it for yourself first. Feedback welcome.
Hm, another small tip…to make sure the battlefield 2 basic files remain unchanged (after all, BF 2 sometimes crashes even if everything is perfectly right, which may harm the BF2 files) you could use special backup software to make a backup of the BF2 folder. Well, I suppose it might also work if you simply copy and paste it, but dont be sure about this because the NTFS filesystem most people have installed has special security features that usually prevent this and if you copy it back it might not work anymore…but thats just an additional idea of me.
Writen By Ben and medicineman
=========== EDITED ===========
This was writen by Auqakuh2213 BF2s forums
Basically, it revolves around using the -heapsize command argument; this essentially dedicates a set amount of RAM to a given application (never more than half total system RAM - that will crash your machine!), in kilobytes. The advantage of this is that the software does not automatically use the maximum amount of available system RAM - naturally this means your hardware is not, effectively, being fully utilized. But if you tell it do so… well, it does!
So! An example, from my system which has 1gb of RAM.
Using the .bat file boris described as a base, simply because that’s easiest, we can alter the .bat file from:
Code:
@echo off
cd /d “C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2”
start /high BF21.exe +menu 1 +fullscreen 1
to:
Code:
@echo off
cd /d “C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2”
start /high BF21.exe +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 -heapsize 516096
516096 is not the maximum you can set it to with 1gb of RAM (I think), but is just an abitrary figure close to half of the system RAM. As I said, it should always be in kilobytes (1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte, etc), and should always be less than half. Your system will crash if you set it higher than half.
This should make map loading a little swifter. My machine is no beast but I’m still usually amongst the first six to spawn in a game.
Taken from here as I couldn’t find my original post on the same subject http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=22556
-------------------- Another few tips that are useful but with the registry one use at your own risk ---------------------
Deleting your textures so BF2 has to recreate them
Whenever making any changes to anything video related it is always a good idea to delete your pre-existing BF2 pre-processed texture files which then forces it to recreate them based on your new settings.
How do you do it?
They are located in your C:\Documents and Settings<insert profile name here>\My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache and the best way to get rid of them is to delete the whole cache folder. After time and with lots of changes to video settings it certainly starts to get quite big (mine is currently around the 200mb mark so I’m about to kill it for some video goodness). When you next start a map it will say “optimizing textures for best operation on your system” or something to that effect. It will take a while but you should certainly see some sort of difference with your video quality.
Disabling Windows 8.3 parallel file-system naming
Unless you plan to connect a MS-DOS or Windows 3.11 PC to your computer then for an instant 30% increase in your general disk access (when handling file names) this simple change is a good idea.
How do you do it?
Open up regedit (start --> run --> regedit)
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem and in it there will be a key called NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
Double-click it and change the value from 0 to 1 and click OK.
Exit regedit and reboot - all done.