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Posted by: kermit Mar 11 2010, 12:40 AM

Hi All

Can anyone tell me what a really good graphics card would be for BC2. Im currently running a AMD quad core 3.0ghz 8gigs of ram with a nivida 8600 card. Any useful would be great

Posted by: MonkeyFiend Mar 11 2010, 01:19 AM

Depending on budget am fairly sure anything 8800 or above, probably worth looking at GTX260/280/285/295 for higher end graphics. Not sure of the equiv ATI cards but I have seen 8800gt's running the game on medium settings with decent framerates

Posted by: Kadey Mar 11 2010, 08:42 AM

Yeah, from the sound of things as long as its got a reasonable amount of memory and is relatively recent the game seems to be running very well for people.

Its the CPU that has the bigger effect it seems - and you've got a quad so that'll be fine.

Posted by: Magik5 Mar 11 2010, 10:16 AM

higher end of the market id say ati 5850 - can be overclocked to be just as fast as the 5870

an in betweener id recommend an ati 4870 - ive got the 1gb version of this and its ran every game very smoothly (althought with bc2 i have to turn aa to 2x or below otherwise i get some epic black squares floating around - i assume a driver update will fix this)

and lower end id say a second hand 8800gt

* awaits the ati fanboy comments :| *

Posted by: kermit Mar 11 2010, 10:31 AM

Thanks guys now i have a idea of what to get thanks again

Posted by: Kadey Mar 11 2010, 11:05 AM

Just to provide a bit of balance - the GTX 260 is (still) a fantastic card, although it does vary as to whether it or the ATi equivalents are better bang/buck.

Though personally, I'd buy the 5850. In fact, I probably am going to.

Posted by: fido77 Mar 11 2010, 12:46 PM

i use the GTS250 and it seems to be playing the game really well on high settings. tho i have been wondering what temp other peoples cards run while in or out of game. mine seems to be running 80 in game and 60 out of game. thats celsius because the tool i use to check it only has C

Posted by: Magik5 Mar 11 2010, 12:55 PM

sounds about right, not sure if the nvidia drivers nowadays let you set manual fan control - in which you could set the fan speed to say 60% whilst gaming if your worried about it... if not, a program called rivatuner lets you do this, it also has the ability to overclock if your that way inclined

Posted by: fido77 Mar 11 2010, 01:34 PM

i have evga, and the fan is set to always be at 100%. not sure if it should be lower or higher at certain times.

Posted by: K. Mar 11 2010, 01:40 PM

maybe people should post cpu,eme and gfx card then your fps in multiplayer on a full server ie 32 to got a good idea of what were looking at

1 persons running fine can differ from anothers .................

c2d 3.00Ghz
4gig ram
4890 1GB

ingame at 1440x900 16bit colour all settings on low fraps gives me 30-40 low up to 50-55ish it seems pretty acceptable like this

Posted by: MonkeyFiend Mar 11 2010, 02:53 PM

ePenis alert!

CPU: Core i7 3.0g clocked to around 3.6ghz
Mobo : Asus Rampage Gene 2
Mem: 6gb ocz ddr3
GFX: gtx295 1.8gb

On Principle, everything on high

The lowest spec I've seen the game running smoothly is a dual core AMD x6000 (essentially 2x3ghz cores) with 2gb ram on an 8800gt gfx card... judging by fps, am guessing this was the very bare minimum on the CPU front.

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 11 2010, 03:05 PM

I was trying to overclock my cpu to get a better fps but everytime the computer restarted i would get the blue screen during start up, just wondering if this is a result of having a stock fan on my mobo? I'm unsure how much of a difference this would if I replaced it or if its more about the settings I used to OC.

Posted by: MonkeyFiend Mar 11 2010, 03:10 PM

depends on what you're clocking from/to and what cpu/mobo you've got. My first attempt at overclocking failed (as some of you may remember) as although my CPU is liquid cooled and was nice and cold, the northbridge practically melted down. Probably worth looking into hardware temp monitors too (a lot of the new mobo's have them in the bios so after a restart you can usually see if something is amiss). btw were you tinkering around with the voltages and memory too?

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 11 2010, 03:22 PM

I'm overclocking a Q6600 to 3.0ghz which I understand to be easily achieved, my mobo is an asus commando. I only changed the voltage on the cpu, changed the speed on the memory down to cope but not the voltage, left that on automatic.

Posted by: MonkeyFiend Mar 11 2010, 03:38 PM

urggh ignore me if this becomes too nerdy... you'll be pushing it from a temperature perspective to get to 3.00ghz on a stock cooler. (the exception being if you have the G0 stepping Q6600)

If you're still wanting to try, probably just leave most settings stock and up the front side bus to 333 (mem timings etc., auto)

However I'll assume if i's crashing from cold pretty quickly, it's probably not overheating. More likely under-voltaged. Ideally you want the voltage as low as possible for it to work though

CPU FSB - 333

PLEASE CHECK THE FOLLOWING AS I'M GOING FROM MEMORY HERE AND IF WRONG COULD BURN OUT THE CPU ;D

CPU Voltage - I believe 1.325 is stock, I wouldn't go higher than 1.34 personally although I hear of people using 1.4

Dram Voltage - 2.1v standard for corsair but check with your memory supplier

If you do go down this route, I'd be very careful about frying you chips :s

mmm, chips...

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 11 2010, 04:39 PM

Yeah that is one thing I'm affraid of, not in a position to splash out on quality parts either. I figure its running atm so I would be ok leaving it, more curious than anything to see what I could get if I oc'd.

Posted by: 'aL Mar 11 2010, 05:44 PM

i get pretty decent fps on my rig ( which is similar to yours kermit , apart from the gfx card) :

Phenom 2 x4 955 ( @3.8 ghz )
4 Gig DDR2 1066
EVGA GTX 260 ( the oldskool version with 196 cores not 216 )
1920 x 1080 res , all settings on high ( no AA or AF as stoopid game wont let me set any more than 1x for each )


get around 60 fps average , occasionally dips to high 30s low 40s




@ 6 , BSOD's at windows boot are unlikely to be down to overheating, it is either the cpu or the memory, most probably the memory. ( overheating tends to cause BSOD's during heavy load or extended load such as gaming, usually at the worst possible time )

you can check the temps at boot in the bios ( c2ds are good up to around 85- 90 and the stock cooler is normally pretty capable of cooling the cpu pretty well , just a bit loud )

I have always had AMD cpu's ( as they are much easier to overclock ) but the principles are the same :

i would suggest that you lower your memory divider before increasing the fsb , as increasing the fsb will automatically overclock your ram ( as ram speed is a multiple of the FSB in core 2 setups ) , so underclocking your ram before you increase the fsb gives you a bit of breathing space to oc the cpu without overclokign the ram at the same time.

if you are not playing with voltage clocking your cpu is pretty safe as they will auto shut off if they get too hot, but you would be lucky to get it from 2.4ghz to over 3 ghz without some extra juice

Posted by: Magik5 Mar 11 2010, 06:03 PM

i get about 45-50 fps at 1920x1200

Q6600 G0 @ 3.00ghz
8gb pc6400 @ 834mhz
4870 1gb - not tried overclocking it for bc2 as its smooth enough for me



as for 6 highly doubt he will fry his chip at 3.00ghz - 1.35v at 333x9 is what i recommend, but there are other factors involved as well like disabling speedstepping etc. anyway ive given him my input so just have to wait and see whether he tried it or not.

Posted by: kermit Mar 11 2010, 08:57 PM

From what i can read that everyone post comp good and graphics card suck the bag. i guess its time to get a better one. I just better not tell the wife

Posted by: Kung Mar 11 2010, 10:07 PM

Kermit , i see that you are looking for grafic card i have th ati radeon 5770 myself but the radeon 5800 and 5700 serie and more seems to have prb with grey screens, My got fixed by catalyst 10.2 but some people still got prb. Read on forums before you bye anything.

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 11 2010, 11:03 PM

Ok an update on my situation. I tried to OC again but this time it was once the windows loading screen first appreared reading 'starting windows' (using W7 btw) before the 4 colours do a morris dance around each other to form the windows logo the pc would freeze. After setting the changes back to default the BSOD would then appear at the end of the 'starting windows' screen which was solved by a system restore, things aren't looking good

the only settings I changed are as follows:

CPU FSB: 333
CPU Voltage: the setting just below 1.34
Dram speed: just below 1066 (using ddr2 pc8500)
Dram Voltage: 2.1
Intel step thingy: disabled
PCI express frequency: 100
PCI clock sync: 33.3

Any help is much appreciated , Cheers, 6

Posted by: Magik5 Mar 11 2010, 11:21 PM

like i said try updating your bios and see if that helps

Posted by: fido77 Mar 12 2010, 03:41 AM

this is what i'm workin with:

Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Processor: Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E5400 @ 2.70GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Hard Drive: 400 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250
Sound Card: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Keyboard: USB Root Hub
Mouse: USB Root Hub
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_rtm.090713-1255)

settings set on high, forgot what the resolution was(1366xsomething i think)
no overclocking or anything special, and i just couldn't see how the game could be any better. besides it minimizing on me sometimes(usually when i am about to be shot by magik5 )

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 12 2010, 12:28 PM

Tried to OC again after updating the bios and the same error occured any ideas anyone?

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 12 2010, 12:28 PM

Double post

Posted by: McJaffa Mar 17 2010, 12:41 PM

If you post some more specs: motherboard model/cpu/Ram/temperatures,etc I might be able to help. I would personally run a Memtest session before even attempting to boot into Windows after any overclock changes though.

My Current system:
Asus P5e mobo
Intel e6750@2.66GHz - OC to 3.2GHz
2 x 2Gb OCZ Reaper 8500 DDR2
GTX275 XXX

Overclocked by changing FSB from 333 to 400 MHz, disabled speedstep etc set PCIE freq to 100 and left voltages on all AUTO as manual voltage settings can be unpredictable.
Stable at 3.2 GHz, idle temps around 30-32 and under full orthos load around 50-52 (ingame around mid 40s)
CPU-z reports core voltage as 1.287-1.304 ( manually setting voltage produces weird results and erratic problems)

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 17 2010, 01:02 PM

Cheers dude, I'll post the spec when I get back home.

Posted by: McJaffa Mar 17 2010, 02:22 PM

No probs. From personal experience cooling may be a limiting factor for you. I was previously unable to get much above 350MHz FSB stable until I ditched my old, cheap, crappy case for a nice sexy Antec P183. The Antec plus an extra chassis fan on the front dropped my system temperatures a lot, I think that lead to the motherboard being able to run cooler and hence stable at much higher clocks.

Me & Harkin both have similar setups, he has a e6850, mine e6750 and we both manage to get 100% stable at 400MHz FSB from the stock 333. We don't use the stock coolers though so that will have a say in how far yours can go. I use a Zalman 9700 as it runs nice & quiet while still managing to cool it well enough.

Get something like CoreTemp running to see what your temps are at stock speeds, then try overclocking a bit at a time to see the effect. Run a decent stress test to make sure everything is fine before you increase any speeds and I would start by simply leaving everything except FSB speed on auto at first until you find the limit of how high you can push your FSB without voltage tweaks.

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 17 2010, 03:11 PM

I run my pc with its case open so cooling in the respect shouldn't be an issue, I am however using a stock CPU fan. Got cpuz for readings too. I'm not desperate to get it oc'd but it would be nice to see what I could get out of it.

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 17 2010, 07:02 PM

Mobo: Asus Commando
CPU: Intel Q6600 (not the GO model, using stock fan)
RAM: Some budget OCUK stuff (2gb pc-8500) and a crucial stick (1gb pc-8500)
GFX: 8800 GTS (512mb version)

Temps etc etc

Posted by: McJaffa Mar 17 2010, 10:30 PM

Well, I spot 2 things first off:

1) It looks like you may still have Speedstep or C1E setting still ON, as your multiplier seems to be 6x = 1600MHz? Is the Q6600 not meant to be 9x = 2400 MHz. So it has dropped your multiplier(6) and your core voltage (1.12v) to reduce speed/power. This should be turned off for stable overclocks.

2) Am I right in seeing 3 x sticks of DDR2? 2 x 1G pair and 1 x 1G extra? If so this can also be a limiting factor in overclocking. 2 sticks will always be easier than 3/4 as it is less strain on the memory chipset. You can confirm this by taking it back 2 the 2G pair just to test it. That's why I went with 2 x 2G instead of 4 x 1G.
From the screenshots it seems to say slot 1 is 1GB cas5 and slot 2 is 1GB cas7. You would need to check to make sure it is all running at the lower setting or its a recipe for disaster. If you only have those 2 sticks then things don't look promising TBH, if you have 2 of the cas5 good ones, I would personally remove the cheap cas7 one.

Easy way to see what your cpu/mobo is capable of is:
Take it down to matched pair of dimms, or just a single if you dont have a pair
Turn off C1E/speedstep in bios
Turn on Auto core voltage
Turn down memory speed (to remove the ram as a possible cause of errors) ie: run the 1066 ram at 800 maybe.
Lock the pcie freq to 100
disable any boost settings
Turn frequency up in steps of maybe 20MHz at a time, testing as you go with orthos or prime
** Keep an eye on temps & voltages as you go and don't forget as you increase the FSB to check that your ram doesn't go above its rating by lowering its divider if necessary.

Posted by: McJaffa Mar 17 2010, 10:34 PM

Oh, and install coretemp, you may think your case is cooled, but you would be surprised. My cheap case had the side off and was still way hotter than my new one with proper front-back airflow. Leaving the door off can reduce cpu temps, but can also increase motherboard temps due to the air not circulating properly.

** Oooops I also just squinted at your fuzzy cpu-z shots and you have the B3 version of the Q6600 chip. Bad news is that is the old version of the chip, not the one that gets ninja-like overclocks. The revised chip is revision G0 which generates a lot less heat than the early B3. Heat = limit on speed so you will never be able to clock as high as one of the good Q6600s.

Posted by: McJaffa Mar 22 2010, 06:02 PM

Off topic: Do you always wear all the elbow/knee pads and full face, and if so is it cos:

a) You are bad and fall off a lot
You are a nutter and constantly do irrational jumps
c) You are a pussy/ your mum won't let you ride without them
d) They just look cool
e) They make sense, and I need to keep my knees un-scabbed for the catalogue photoshoots

Which is it?
Oh, and what is the bike? Cant see from the pics

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 22 2010, 06:20 PM

I do have problems with my knees, its a hereditary thing so I benefit from that, I have so many little scars on my right leg because its my chocolate foot and pedal slips have been known to cause a deadly smack of the knee to the frame so that also contributed to me deciding to buy a pair. I stack it as much as 5 does though, we're as good/bad as each other, so naturally he has a pair of pads too . Those 661 pads are awesome too, wouldn't change them for anything but the evo ones. The bike itself is a specialized P2 but there are very few things that are stock on it, got rid of the shit marzocchis and replaced them with a pair of fox so much better for it too. I take it you ride?

Posted by: McJaffa Mar 22 2010, 07:03 PM

Not as often as I should, what with being a lazy old fart. I'm not into the jump bikes though, more of a trail/single-track, etc type. Im too old to jump I think, if I damaged something it would never recover. Got a spesh myself though, a FSR. Used to havea spesh hardtail which kicked bottom but this new one is as light as that was.

Posted by: Magik6 Mar 22 2010, 07:22 PM

We went on a holiday to Afan (where the pic was taken) made me really get the taste for single track, would love a full sus specialized, something like the new pitch would be perfect for starting out, but ideally the enduro would be a sick bike to have, or the demos. We used to do a lot of jumps in Brighton but once I get my next job and settle in I'll be looking for more of an all mountain/downhill rush