Recommended Settings

The recommended settings are based off of the performance analysis above and trying to get the best possible picture quality while maintaining a fluid frame rate. People with faster or slower systems will have different results than the ones described in this article. The focus was finding that perfect mix for every card.

Starting with...

High-end Cards: Sapphire Radeon X850XT PE, NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT

- Sapphire Radeon X850XT PE: No problems with this card running full quality and with 2xAA enabled. It has smooth gameplay and the game looked absolutely fantastic! Even when this card was maxed out at our monitor’s 1280x960 resolution it still ran flawlessly. Those with displays capable of higher resolutions should be able to run 1600x1200 without AA with few slowdowns, and enabling 2xAA may be possible depending on your desired framerate.

- NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT: The 6800GT had its ups and downs more due to kicking me out of the game during loading. Of course, that was an occasional downer. The 6800GT put up a good fight with the X850XT, but had occasional jerkiness at 1280x960 in screens where many explosions were occurring and when being set at 2xAA. At 1024x768, go ahead and set everything High and enable full 2xAA (around 60fps). At 1280x960, set everything to High and disable 2xAA (58fps).



Mainstream Cards: Gigabyte GV-R80P256D, ATI Radeon 9800XT, Sapphire Radeon X700Pro 256MB, e-GeForce 6600GT, MSI Radeon RX600XT-TD128E

- Gigabyte GV-R80P256D: A very solid performer overall. At 1024x768 the X800 Pro ran smooth at around 50-53 fps on average with everything set to High. 1280x960 resulted in around 48-50fps.

- ATI Radeon 9800XT: Smooth running at 1024x768 averaging out around 48fps with all settings at High. To maintain this framerate at 1280x960, set dynamic lights to Medium.

- Sapphire Radeon X700Pro 256MB: This card put up a good fight with the 9800XT. At 1024x768 it was edged out by an average of 2fps. The 9800XT pulled a bit farther away at 1280x960 by around 5fps (43).

- e-GeForce 6600GT: With a fan blowing on it and after multiple reboots and crashes, the card finally got through testing. Hopefully, our problems were caused by the specific card and are not representative of what others will experience. At 1024x768 Terrain, Geometry, Dynamic Lighting, and Dynamic Shadows were set to High and the result was about 34fps averaged out. At 1280x960, we had playable results with Terrain, Geometry, and Effects set to High.

- MSI Radeon RX600XT-TD128E: For an XT card we would think this card would do more for the average gamer. Handled Terrain and Geometry set to High and still shot out around 31-35fps at 1024x768. At 1280x960, the 128MB of GPU memory started to weigh the card down, and so Textures needed to be set to Low to maintain the 31-35fps average.

Budget Cards: ATI Radeon 8500, GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

- ATI Radeon 8500: At 1024x768 medium settings should be used across the board, except for Texture Filtering set to High to catch those enemies from afar. This should put you at a steady 27-29fps on average. 1280x960 we start to see great lag and jerkiness with these same settings. Set Dynamic Lights, Dynamic Shadows, and Textures to Medium or Low if needed to give you a boost in framerate.

- GeForce FX 5700 Ultra: Performed a bit better than the 8500 overall. Provided us with and average of 32fps at 1024x768 with Terrain set to High. At 1280x960, the 5700Ultra pumped out around 30fps with all settings at Medium.

*Remember some of these game settings are not GPU dependent, so a faster machine than the ones used in these tests will provide better results. Battlefield 2 runs flawlessly with more memory. 2GB is what you should think about to run with no jerkiness or lag. 1GB is a decent amount but you will still get choppy occasionally even with the fastest graphics card.