Battlefield Vietnam performance tweaks

Battlefield Vietnam performance tweaks (Graphics, sound, mouse lag, crash to desktop etc.)

Updated 2004-07-29

News: Patch 1.1 released

Remove swapfile

61.36 forceware drivers for Nvidia cards recommended by author

This text is meant to help people that have performance problems with Battlefield Vietnam and those who want the game to run better until it’s patched up some more. This is just some simple tips that helped me a lot, and it's NOT sure it will help on your system. Also try different settings for best performance on your system. Also remember to backup your register before making any changes in it.

Graphics Performance

1. First of all install the latest patch. Currently it is v1.1. Get it here or here.

2. Download and install alternative drivers for your video card. For example Forceware drivers for Nvidia cards (I use this) or Catalyst drivers for ATI cards. This drivers can be found here. This gave me much better FPS in the game. I can personally recommend the 61.36 drivers for Nvidia because they gave me the best performance in Battlefield Vietnam. Get them here!

3. Try to lower the graphics settings a bit, especially graphics quality and texture quality. I know this is not a "tweak" but there can be a great difference between medium and high settings and the difference in the graphics quality is almost none.

4. Turn of antialiasing and anisotropic filtering in your video card settings.

5. Add this line to your "Battlefield Vietnam/Mods/BfVietnam/settings/Default.con" file: Game.SoundBuffersize 400. The file should look like this:

rem *** for BC
   Game.GameLevelPath BFVietnam/Levels/Operation_Irving/
   Game.useMenu 1
   Game.useHud 1
   Game.menuMain BattlefieldMenu
   Game.menuInGame InGame
   Game.menuMap Map
   Game.DebugCallbackDisabled 0
   Game.SoundBuffersize 400   <--- Any higher number can also be used like 1000

   run AliasedCommands.con

   softRun ../../../Tools/Editors/Editors.con

6 .Edit your "Battlefield Vietnam/Mods/BfVietnam/settings/VideoDefault.con" file and make it look like this:

   rem * TEMP *
   renderer.FullScreen 1
   console.showStats 0
   renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1
   renderer.useTrilinearFiltering 0
   renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 6
   renderer.globalLodRadius 1
   renderer.mipmapbias -3
   renderer.lockfps 250
   renderer.fieldOfView 1

7. Overclock your video card. Download RivaTuner from here. It works for both ATI and Nvidia based video cards. This can really boost the performance of the game.

8. Change sound settings in DirectX. Choose "Run". Type "dxdiag.exe". Choose "Sound". Reduce the sound acceleration a bit. Try different settings.

Sound

1. I have a Soundblaster card and have, together with many more, experienced that some sounds disappear when using EAX in the game. To solve this you can download and install Kx drivers from here. Uninstall your old Soundblaster drivers before installing this.

Mouse lag

1. Do this mouse tweak:

   Permanent Acceleration Fix

   It seems that even without pointer precision disabled, the mouse under XP is still
   influenced by an acceleration curve. This is especially noticeable in games. To
   completely remove mouse acceleration from XP, you will need to go into the registry
   and adjust the SmoothmouseXYCurve values. Here is how its done.

   1. Click Start button
   2. Select Run
   3. Type 'regedit' in the open textbox
   4. Open the tree 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER', select control panel, then select mouse
   5. Right clicking, modify the SmoothMouseXCurve and SmoothMouseYCurve hexidecimal values to the following:

   SmoothMouseXCurve:
   00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
   00,a0,00,00,00,00,00,00
   00,40,01,00,00,00,00,00
   00,80,02,00,00,00,00,00
   00,00,05,00,00,00,00,00

   SmoothMouseYCurve:
   00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
   66,a6,02,00,00,00,00,00
   cd,4c,05,00,00,00,00,00
   a0,99,0a,00,00,00,00,00
   38,33,15,00,00,00,00,00

   If done correctly, you will notice you are holding a markedly more responsive mouse.

Download this fix in a file. Just click here. Download, unzip, right click on the file and chose "paste into registry".

2. Turn off mouse acceleration in the control panel.

3. Edit max frames to render ahead to 1. Can be done in your video card settings (at least for Nvidia cards).

4. Edit properties for your mouse in the control panel. Go to "advanced settings" and change sampling frequency to 200.

Crash to desktop

Not yet reported since patch 1.1.

Long loading times

I you run this game on a system with much RAM (1024 mb or more) you should try to run your system without a swapfile to force the computer to use the RAM instead. Do this: Press Start/Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance/Advanced/Edit(Change?). Choose "No swapfile" for all partitions. Reboot.

Also defrag your harddrives to decrease loading times.