This is an outtake from the Total BF2 Forums.

 

Edited by -=T^A^=-Regent on Feb 16 2006 3:43PM (5 times)

 

There's been a lot of speculation regarding the amount of time it takes for Verifying Client Data in BF2. Let's separate fact from fiction, shall we?

 

First of all, it has nothing to do with Punkbuster. BF2 is running an MD5 hash check on the game files on your hard drive to make sure none of them have been altered. This has been verified by punksbusted.com:

 

http://www.punksbusted.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17456&hl=

 

Secondly, since this is a disk intensive process, the speed of your hard drive has everything to do with how long it takes to get the job done. Slower 5400 RPM drives, (common in laptops and older computers) are going to take forever to verify. 7200 RPM drives will perform better, and 10,000 RPM drives will verify even faster.

 

Here are some suggestions that will help to reduce the amount of time it takes to verify:

 

Defrag your hard drive!

 

During verification, BF2 is reading files from your hard drive. Do yourself a favor and defrag your drive so BF2 doesn't have to search all over the place to find them. Programs like Perfect Disk may do a better job of defragging your hard drive than the utility included in Windows, as they move most frequently accessed files to the outer edge of the disk where they can be read more quickly. Keep in mind that you need at least 15% free space on your hard rive to do a proper defrag!

 

Get a faster hard drive!

 

You should have a 7200 RPM hard drive for a gaming machine, at the very least! 5400 RPM drives just don't cut it any longer, and drives with a 16 Mb cache will perform better than drives with an 8 Mb cache. 10,000 RPM drives speed up almost every process including booting Windows, defragging your drive, anti-virus scans, searches, and loading games and maps. If you can afford one, you'll be very pleased with the improvement in game performance, and the increase in performance of your computer overall. The Western Digital Raptor is considered to be the fastest SATA hard drive on the market today. Of course, the performance of a faster hard drive is somewhat dependant on a reasonably fast processor. A P3 400 with a Raptor isn't going to perform as well verifying as a P4.

 

Get more RAM!

 

BF2 will use as much as 1.3 Gb of RAM all by itself, and Windows XP likes to have 512 Mb to run like it should. Therefore, 1.5 Gb of RAM is pretty much baseline for optimal performance in BF2, and 2Gb doesn't hurt. 2 Gb of RAM can be had for less than 200 USD these days, so start saving! While the time it takes to verify is primarily a function of hard drive speed, every aspect of BF2 will run better given a sufficient amount of RAM.

 

Make proper use of your page file if you lack RAM!

 

Tweakguides.com has a guide to help you set your machine up properly for gaming, including tweaking your page file. I'd strongly recommend that you read it, and put it to good use. They have a free version for download in PDF format, or an advanced version for sale at a reasonable price:

 

TweakGuides

 

Finally, a sure-fire way to avoid having to wait forever for the game to verify is to play on servers that don't verify at all!

 

Servers that run Linux, or Linux 64 bit operating systems don't have the capability to verify client data, while servers that run Windows OS do. Check the icon second from the left in the server browser:

 

Penguin Icon:

 

Server is running Linux. No verification process.

 

64 Icon:

 

Server is running Linux 64 bit OS. No verification process.

 

Bar icon:

 

Server is running Windows OS. Server will run the verification process.

 

http://support.ea.com/cgi-bin/ea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=11030&p_created=1130280434

Good find Klink. I've noticed a step up in the verifaction process since my recent upgrade from ata to sata.

Hey, thanks alot for the kind klink that is my biggest problem with bf2...i load lightening fast but then i spend about 3 hours verifying :cool: but with this info i should be able to speed it up :cool:

Wow. Tanks Klink. As suggested by many here including Mac, seems our pcs need 1st at least cost, upgrade of ram from 512 to double or triple.

Thanks Klink...now I can use less "harsh" language towards my screen as its loading. :cool:

For Win XP users.....

 

Schedule this as a task nightly.

 

defrag.exe c: -v

 

Also you can....

 

Go to http://www.sysinternals.com and download contig.exe. Schedule a task to defrag the BF2 folders nightly.

 

Run CHKDSK /F or /R if you can spare some time. Make sure no disk errors are present.

 

Try a hardware based RAID 0 array.

 

Put virus scan exclusions for all BF2 related folders. Watch out for temp file scanning.

 

Fix pagefile.sys to 1.5 times your RAM on alternate partition or if you have a huge amount of RAM try making it small.

 

If you have a fast CPU but slow disk drives compress your BF2 folders and allow the CPU to take over decompression duties. This will allow smaller disk reads offset by the system's CPU processing power compensating. You may process data a little more but there should be a perfomance savings for not having to read as much data off the slower drive.

 

Don't be left on the carrier tarmac!!!

So, JPenns uber machine loads up in 109 seconds and it takes mine 118 seconds. Not bad for a P4 2.4 with 2 G RAM and 7200 RPM HD. I can be happy with that for the 9 seconds longer it takes me.

Yeah mine was 115 seconds. Computers are moody though and it was Operation Clean Sweep 64 player size, which I think is the largest map. Try that map.

 

Also if you can disable pagefiles. The last thing you want is your computer requesting files from your HDD during game play. Once loaded your RAM is over 100 times faster.

I will try that and I already have page files disabled.

I'm usually in the game before most and its pritty much dependent on your entire computer. I have an AMD 3700 OCd to 2.64ghz with my 2GB PC3200 running at 220 (thus 440mhz) and my HDD is a raptor 10k rpm and with this I can load up a map from scratch in 109 seconds as compared to my native specs with takes about 115 seconds.

 

Also something that takes the time to load is the geometries, my computer always gets stuck on that for the longest time. So the fewer the geometries the better for loading.

 

Here's what I've done to optimize my computer:

 

*Ultimately it depends on your hardware which I recommend a SATA HDD and 1.5 GB of memory.

 

1- Run > "msconfig" > Startup > disable all (or at least as many as you can); this will allow your computer to boot up faster and your memory will be in less use and your processor wont be running as many background programs

 

2- Clean Disk, Empty trash can, change of drivers, etc equals a defrag for the HDD.

 

3- Furthermore, anytime you change the video specs and your computer will have to go through the "optimizing shaders" you need to erase the old cache My Documents > Battlefield 2 > BF2 > Mods > cache (I think this is right) and then defrag.

 

4- Make sure you have Windows "Framework" installed from "Windows Update Custom".

 

5- Install/update all your drivers, like your mobo and video cards (ATI and Nvidia have come out with new ones recently)

I fixed tigerhawk problem by deleting contents of just the following, leaving the profiles folder alone :

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Cam Gibb\My Documents\Battlefield 2\LogoCache

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Cam Gibb\My Documents\Battlefield 2\dmp

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Cam Gibb\My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache

 

That's all i did and it solved the blue screen error about display driver and the join server error that i had modified version abd should revert it to official version.

I'm usually in the game before most and its pritty much dependent on your entire computer. I have an AMD 3700 OCd to 2.64ghz with my 2GB PC3200 running at 220 (thus 440mhz) and my HDD is a raptor 10k rpm and with this I can load up a map from scratch in 109 seconds as compared to my native specs with takes about 115 seconds.

 

Also something that takes the time to load is the geometries, my computer always gets stuck on that for the longest time. So the fewer the geometries the better for loading.

 

Here's what I've done to optimize my computer:

 

*Ultimately it depends on your hardware which I recommend a SATA HDD and 1.5 GB of memory.

 

1- Run > "msconfig" > Startup > disable all (or at least as many as you can); this will allow your computer to boot up faster and your memory will be in less use and your processor wont be running as many background programs

 

2- Clean Disk, Empty trash can, change of drivers, etc equals a defrag for the HDD.

 

3- Furthermore, anytime you change the video specs and your computer will have to go through the "optimizing shaders" you need to erase the old cache My Documents > Battlefield 2 > BF2 > Mods > cache (I think this is right) and then defrag.

 

4- Make sure you have Windows "Framework" installed from "Windows Update Custom".

 

5- Install/update all your drivers, like your mobo and video cards (ATI and Nvidia have come out with new ones recently)

I fixed tigerhawk problem by deleting contents of just the following, leaving the profiles folder alone :

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Cam Gibb\My Documents\Battlefield 2\LogoCache

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Cam Gibb\My Documents\Battlefield 2\dmp

 

C:\Documents and Settings\Cam Gibb\My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache

 

That's all i did and it solved the blue screen error about display driver and the join server error that i had modified version abd should revert it to official version.

Nice guys!

Egidio.

Nice guys!

Egidio.