Battlefield 1942 issues.

JoyStick

Yeah, it's an old game, but it's one of the classics that'll go down as "Revolutionaries of the Gaming World" Like Half-Life, and Splinter Cell did.


Anyway, I run a Dell P4 1.8 GHz 4 and a half year old PC. I sport 512 MB PC 800 (I think) DDR, and I run it on an ATI Radeon 9600 pro. My sound card is a "Soundblaster Audigy LS", and I think it may be the culprit, but I'll see what you all think...



I play the game on aboslute maximum graphics, with 22khz, no hardware acceleration (Because it absolutely destroys my framerate), and 32 channels.



In most cases, it runs decently. It hiccups when I fly over some semi-large area, or fly near a city, but, when I'm in a city, or I have vehicles and whatnot flying around me, I can hardly function.


Anyway, this is common for vanilla BF42, but if I try to run a mod for it (like Desert Combat), I can't do anything aside from attempt to move, and get killed.


BUT, If I turn the sound off, I see a significant improvement in vanilla BF42. There are hardly any hiccups, and the game runs like a well oiled machine.

DC doesn't do too well, though.

My friends computer, who is just a little bit younger than mine, but features the same specifications for the most part can run DC with everything on just fine.

I've reformatted both Harddrives, and freshly installed, but to no avail.

What do you recommend I do (aside from purchasing anything with a price of more than 50$)?

Jalle64

Wich Graphicscard do you have? And what drivers are you using? Also new drivers to your sound?

JoyStick

Radeon 9600 pro. Latest drivers (4.5 omegas I think)

Latest sound drivers, as well.

JoyStick

bump - Come on, you guys specialize in this stuff.. One of you knows, I know you do.

dj_stick

NO h/w acceleration on the sound card? you should have at least level 3 otherwise the entire load of the audio system is put onto the CPU instead of the chip in the audigy

Logla

have you used driver cleaner to remove your current sound drivers before reinstalling them?

Driver Cleaner can be found Here

Download the latest sound drivers and install them afterwards. It may be a good idea to do the same with your graphics drivers and I would strongly reccoment re-installing directx9.0b

After all that, re-install the game and see what happens then.

JoyStick

Hmm...

You know... I'm not sure if I'm uninstalling my drivers properly.

I use driver cleaner, remove em, reboot, and install. Is that all that's to it, or is there something else I'm not doing?


(I never boot into safemode)


If there IS something different, could you please tell me step-by-step, and in detail what I need to do?


Ex- BAD - "Ok, all ya gotta do is reboot, delete, then install, and bang, you're done"

Ex- GOOD - "Ok, start > turn off computer > restart - Wait a bit, at the screen hit f8 to enter safemode, etc etc"

Logla

Yep - better to do it in safe mode. That way, windows hasnt loaded all the drivers as it would when you start normally and will be removing them better.

The trick is to uninstall them normally -> then reboot into safe mode (using F8) and run driver cleaner there.

Remember to do only one driver set at a time and also when booting into safe mode, windows may ask you to install drivers for new hardware. It is important that you just cancel these dialog boxes and that when you did reboot, you are disconnected from the internet to stop windows searching the net for drivers.

JoyStick

Hmm.. I'll give that a try. Thanks, man.

Logla

np thats what we're here for after all.

Let us know how you get on.

jonis

JoyStick: I used to have massive issues w/ this game, and in the end I realized all of the performance issues were related to my Soundcard. In many games I've learned that enabling HW-acceleration cause performance to drop, but in this game its almost the trick to get it working properly! What you have to do, is to test each HW-acceleration together w/ all different options of channels. If i remember correctly, setting channels to 31 did the trick for me.

jonis

Logic would say you were right, but w/ the messed up Audigy cards, together w/ Creative's fuxed up drivers its not.

Enabling any kind of sound HW-acceleration in games like UT2k3-2k4, results in a peformance drop close to 30-40% of the average fps.

JoyStick

Yeah... Nah, enabling HW acceleration nukes my FPS.


Where I would be getting about 30 or so in homebase without moving, I get 18.

I can play at 18FPS, but I sure as hell don't like it. I tried properly removing/installing drivers, and re=installing BF42, and I still get the same problem...



My soundcard is only a few months old, but maybe it's crapping out on me.