You guys haven’t heard from me in a few days. That’s 99% the BF2 Demo’s fault. It’s good…. really good. Up until yesterday however I was having some issues running it. I know my system is no slow-poke, but BF2 had to be set really low, 1024×768 at “low” details/textures/etc with no AA, AF and with lighting and shadows turned off, to be exact. That just didn’t seem reasonable. I thought maybe it’s just a really intensive game. Thats until my boss had issues running it too. He has nearly the same rig I do with a slightly older graphics card. We should really be able to play the game at reasonable settings he says. I agreed and started digging.

First thing I did was run some benchmarks. I hate 3DMark and think it’s a bias piece of shit, so I settled on AquaMark. I love AquaMark. Not only is it a “real game scenerio”, it actually gives scores that might make sense, and then breaks them down into easy to understand chunks. Anyway, I ran it and got THIS. That’s a score of 36978 (representing – CPU: 3622, GFX: 7553). Not bad I think. Until I compare it to other systems in my range. Someone with the EXACT same hardware is getting over 60,000. Thats just not right.

So I start asking around. With the help of the fine lads in the AquaMark forums, we determine it’s my VIA drivers. A quick reinstall from the original CD that came with my mobo and now I’m getting THIS. 53396 is MUCH more in range with where I should be. And that’s stock. I haven’t tweaked anything yet. I’m hopinh to break 60,000 by the end of the week.

A little video card driver tweak here, a little RAM timing change there, and I should be cranking out the power.

Oh, and as for the BF2 demo. I went from 1024 at Low, to playing it at 1280 at Med/High with AA and lighting/shadows turned back on. Just goes to show you, sometimes drivers make all the difference.

Out.