Settings
Changing the in-game graphical settings is a surefire way to improve performance without having to run out and buy new hardware. We tested each setting one by one to determine which settings you could enable to get the highest possible frame rate while still maintaining decent image quality. As with most games, lowering the resolution will improve performance considerably. Aside from the usual anisotropic filtering and antialiasing frame rate killers, the only setting that seemed to have any meaningful effect on frame rate was shadows.
Call of Duty gives you the option of running the game under the DirectX 7 path, but playing under DirectX 7 is almost like playing a different game--you might as well play the first Call of Duty. All the details present in DirectX 9 completely disappear when the game runs under DirectX 7. Choosing this will kill many of the graphical effects that help make Call of Duty 2 one of the most aesthetically pleasing games to date. With that little disclaimer out of the way, running under DirectX 7 will do miracles for your computer's performance. Expect to see your frame rate double, if not triple.
If you've been looking across the Web for ways to improve the game's performance, you might have come across two commands in particular (r_applypicmips and r_multigpu) that people have had some success using. We contacted some of the developers at Infinity Ward to see if these commands actually help, and this is what they had to say with respect to the two commands.
r_applypicmips: "This basically gets the drivers to reload the textures. It doesn't make the game faster on our machines, but it is theoretically possible. Nvidia released a new driver that they said makes COD2 faster--so maybe this was related."
r_multigpu: "When used with single GPU cards, this will increase the FPS number. But it will introduce the "mouse lag" that many D3D games have. Basically, the driver will buffer up several frames to give an artificially high FPS count, at the expense of responsiveness (because what is drawn to the screen may be three frames behind "now")."
Settings Performance Test
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Resolution Settings Performance Test
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Direct X 7 Path
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 CPU, Asus A8N SLI Deluxe, 1GB (512MB x 2) Corsair XMS Memory, 250GB Maxtor Maxline III SATA Hard Disk Drive, Windows XP Professional.
Graphics Card: GeForce 7800 GTX, GeForce 6800 GS, Radeon X1800XT, Radeon X1600, Radeon X300SE.
Graphics Drivers: Nvidia ForceWare 81.85, ATI Catalyst 5.10, beta.
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