FPS problem, but only online (BF:BC 2)

[The_Ish]

I get good smooth gameplay in the campaign, but as soon as I go online. I get terrible fps spikes. If I turn CF off, it solves it, but it sort of defeats the purpose of CF if you can't even use it. First, a couple of things. I use the latest drivers as of yesterday for my GPU's. They are 6950's with 70 bios. They are slightly OC'd (880/1400) but temps are good, and I'm having no issues in any other game what so ever, which i guess rules out hardware problems? Ping is excellent (around 15 on most server i play on), and it doesn't seem to matter if enter an empty one or a full on. Just being online is enough to kill the fps.

Anyway, as I first enter the server I will get some massive stutters when chosing gear.
I click to spawn and ig et even more massive lag. As it stabilizes at around 80 fps, i need to start playing right? Except everytime i turn i get massive drops in fps.

I can usually figure these things out, but now I feel I've tried everything google could turn up, and need some serious help

I would provide DxDiag and everything, but the game runs just fine in SP, even WITH crossfire enabled. but for some reason it doesn't online, regardless of ping, amount of players etc. It's not a matter of a low spec PC. That I do know.

edit/ I'm gonna open up some ports. Just because it shouldn't work makes me think it will.

 

[Flibolito]

BC2 multiplayer is very CPU heavy but you have essentially the perfect CPU for this game a 920@4GHz. Try turning off Hyper-threading just to test. Some people have issues with it on when running multiple video cards. Other than that hardware seems to be just fine it possibly is software related. But try the HT off and see what happens.

 

[The_Ish]

I think it's off already, but i'll check just in case. Opening the ports obviously did nothing
And after playing for about a minute the FPS actually stabilizes, but is still LOWER than with CF disabled. I'll check HT next.

 

[Flibolito]

Word, if HT does not change this then I would look into drivers since single card runs better that's usually an indication of a software issue after the HT is played with. Some older drivers might run BC2 better.

 

[The_Ish]

It didn't. And it was off to begin with, but just to be safe i reset the bios settings except HT and some other essentials like boot priority. Same thing. But how on earth does it only affect online play? That's what i can't get my head around.

edit/ I'm gonna try these http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3977545
Heard they were good for BC2.

edit/ Well that didn't do anything. Maybe the game just hates crossfire..

 

[The_Ish]

I installed RadeonPro, and it seems they cards are only being 20% used at best.

 

[Flibolito]

yeah could there be chipset drivers or additional crossfire drivers that might be needed. 20% load on GPUs is definitely a problem. But at least it narrowed now.

 

[The_Ish]

I'll try updating the bios. With Asus's EZ Flash system there is virtually nothing that can go wrong with trying anyway. Not that I think it will help, but i saw there was an update from around the time i stopped playing last year. I'll give it a go. Be back in like ten with the results.

No difference really. The laggy start is still there. Getting 60fps+ (70-100 usually) after it stabilzes on the Heavy Metal map though, so I guess it's not so bad. It might be placebo effect or whatever, but it does seem to stabliize a few seconds faster now.

 

[Horrux]

It didn't. And it was off to begin with, but just to be safe i reset the bios settings except HT and some other essentials like boot priority. Same thing. But how on earth does it only affect online play? That's what i can't get my head around.

edit/ I'm gonna try these http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3977545
Heard they were good for BC2.

edit/ Well that didn't do anything. Maybe the game just hates crossfire..

Weird, I have the exact same thing happening to me using SLI GTX 570s. Same thing, except completely different brand of cards... Might not be the GPU drivers...

Oh, here's my thread about it: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149908

EDIT: I ran the Metro 2033 benchmark which showed my SLI setup to be performing very well. Then I fired up BFBC2 in single player mode and lo and behold my SLI works perfectly offline. More details in my thread.

So it does appear to be something in the BFBC2 engine that doesn't like to combine online play and multi-GPU setups... The mystery deepens...

FROM THE ASUS WEBSITE:

LAN controllers on the P6: Dual Gigabit LAN controllers 2*Marvell88E8056® PCIe Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2

LAN controller on my mobo: Realtek® 8112 Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET 2

Hm... Compatibility problem between ASUS' AI NET 2 and BFBC2 online?

 

[The_Ish]

My FPS stabilizes after some time. Choosing 'home theatre' sound some times make it not to hang. Also i found graphics settings and sound settings don't really make a big difference in my fps. It's about the same irrespective of settings. Which is kind of weird.

 

[Horrux]

My FPS stabilizes after some time. Choosing 'home theatre' sound some times make it not to hang. Also i found graphics settings and sound settings don't really make a big difference in my fps. It's about the same irrespective of settings. Which is kind of weird.

Also I discovered that FRAPS caused some issues in my case, such as the game crashing my PC with looping sound, as well as, I believe, the famed big black artifacts. These were resolved by using MSI Afterburner which shows not only FPS but also GPU load. I'm sure there is one similar program for Radeons.

 

[xenocide]

These were resolved by using MSI Afterburner which shows not only FPS but also GPU load. I'm sure there is one similar program for Radeons.

Yes, it's called MSI Afterburner.

 

[The_Ish]

What I dont get is that ALL other games works flawlessly. So can it be a bad OC? Probably not.
Drivers? Well it works great in SP.. I'm really quite confused. A friend of mine with i7 and and old 4xxx series get's more fps than me :/

 

[gottistar]

Im having no problems , ive had CF running from the day i purchased BF2...the only issue i ever had was the awful "squeal of death noise, then a full system lock-up"......BF2 didnt like my onboard soundcard....replaced with X-Fi titanium..problem solved.....never experienced CF graphic lag...

See system specs for full details...
930 @ 4.1
12 gigs kingston hyperX 2000
6870 in CF
asus Xtreme III

 

[Horrux]

What I dont get is that ALL other games works flawlessly. So can it be a bad OC? Probably not.
Drivers? Well it works great in SP.. I'm really quite confused. A friend of mine with i7 and and old 4xxx series get's more fps than me :/

Hey I didn't have time to test it well yet (it's the middle of the night here), but yesterday looking into that AI Net 2 thing, I went into the BIOS and saw an option that looked a bit like "Peer-to-peer connection between VGA1 and VGA2: Disabled" I put this to "Enabled" and I think things are better.

Wanna give that a whirl?

I'm thinking it's because of Destruction, there is lots of data on the pci-express bus, and possibly online BFBC2 saturates it, especially if you have p2p disabled between your video cards.

 

[The_Ish]

I'll look into.

edit/ I could not find such an option.