Geometry, Texture, and Lighting.

Geometry

This setting definitely should do more in game than it does. Increasing the geometry only provides us with a bit of difference when going from the low to high setting, and even then the visual impact is minor. Geometry should make things like trees and buildings look more true to their natural form, and it should make these objects look sharper with more fine detail. Look at the pictures below and you will see only a slight difference between the two, even though the one is set to low and the other is set to high.

Notice how blocky and uniform everything looks

Things stand out here, not everything follows a straight line when drawn, and shapes look true to life

1024x768 Performance Analysis

As mentioned above, there is a very slight difference in actual visual quality from Low to Medium to High. Setting this lower will give you a few extra FPS and will not reduce the quality of the game in terms of looks. Performance gained by setting from High to Low: 5-10%

1280x960 Performance Analysis

Same thing can be said about Geometry at this resolution. Budget cards set to Low, Mainstream set to Low or Medium and High-end set to High.

Texture

This setting adjusts the size of the textures used within Battlefield 2. By changing texture quality to “High”, larger, higher quality textures will be used. This setting depends heavily on the amount and speed of the onboard memory your graphics cards possesses. The more video memory onboard, the more your card can store locally, thus improving fluidity of your gaming. The flip side to this is the bandwidth of your VRAM. Faster memory leads to better performance.

Cards with 256MB of high-speed (450MHz+) memory are definitely the big winners in this category.

Take a look closely to the surfaces of the smokestacks, the ground, and the building

Here things shoud be smoother looking, with more detail added to the surfaces of all 3d objects

1024x768 Performance Analysis

This setting is definitely influenced by the amount of memory on your graphics card. Setting this to Low for Budget cards is recommended. Some of the Mainstream cards may also want to set this to Medium or Low to improve gameplay. High-end cards ran very well at this setting (>65fps average with 2xAA).

1280x960 Performance Analysis

High-end cards need not worry about this resolution either. Mainstream cards except the X800 Pro and the 9800XT set this to Low. Budget cards set to Low.

Lighting

From Low to Medium to High, this setting virtually explains itself. This option sets lighting used on immovable objects like buildings and other inanimate things. Check out the screens below, with a smaller amount of light sources the building casts fewer shadows. As you can see, the difference is very noticeable!

Look at how bland the lighting is off the side of this building

Now look the the correct use of lighting.

1024x768 Performance Analysis

Loading times are greatly affected by setting this higher than Medium. Budget cards set to Low, Mainstream to Medium, and High-end cards set this to High.

1280x960 Performance Analysis

Since we are climbing up resolution more of the same applies. At this setting, Mainstream and Budget need to be set to Low except for the X800Pro. High-end set to maximum.