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Home » How to Use Battefield 2142 to Benchmark your PC

Installing and Running Hardware Secrets BF2142 Demo

Contents

Installation

  • Install Battlefield 2142
  • Download and Install the latest available patch
  • Download our Battlefield 2142 demo and support files package and uncompress it
  • Copy hs_demo-def.bf2cam and hs_demo.bf2142demo to C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142modsbf2142Demos (you will need to create this folder). You will have to change “Program Files” to the appropriate name if you are not using an English-based Windows version.
  • Copy init.com to C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142modsbf2142
  • Copy 1024×768.tmp, 1024×768.bat, 1600×1200.tmp and 1600×1200.bat to C:Program FilesElectronic ArtsBattlefield 2142
  • In order to speed up the benchmarking process, create a shortcut to 1024×768.bat and 1600×1200.bat on your desktop (drag and drop these two files pressing the right mouse button and choose “Create Shortcuts Here”).
  • Ignore the Demo.cmd file included in our package (this file is used to create your own demo).
  • Download and install FRAPS. Make sure to create a desktop shortcut in order to speed up the benchmarking process.
  • You may want to defragment your hard disk drive before continuing.

We included automated files for 1024×768 and 1600×1200 resolutions. If you want to benchmark Battlefield 2142 in other resolutions, copy 1024×768.tmp and 1024×768.bat and rename the copies to the name of the resolution you want (e.g., 1280×1024.bat and 1280×1024.tmp). Edit the new .bat file with Notepad (right click it and choose Edit) and change where is 1024×768.tmp inside that file to the name of the file you created (e.g., 1280×1024.tmp) and change the resolution after +szx and +szy parameters (e.g., +szx 1280 +szy 1024). Edit the new .tmp file with Notepad and configure the resolution you want on demo.renderwidth and demo.renderheight options (to 1280×1024 you should change 1024 to 1280 at demo.renderwidth and 768 to 1024 at demo.renderheight).

Benchmarking

  • Run Battlefield 2142 and configure image quality settings you’d like to use. Keep in mind that when comparing different systems or video cards, the image quality settings must be the same on both systems. This is done in Options, Video, after logging in to Battlefield 2142.
  • Exit
  • Run FRAPS. Make sure to check MinMaxAvg option under FPS tab. Minimize it. You can also check the option Start Fraps Minimized on its main screen to speed up future takes.
  • Now click on the .bat file that corresponds with the resolution you want to benchmark. This will load Battlefield 2142. You will notice a yellow number on the upper left corner generated by FRAPS. This number will vanish as soon as you tell FRAPS to start measuring the number of frames per second. After loading the map and demo, Battlefield 2142 will wait for your action, by showing “Join Game”.
  • Click Join Game and, right after that, hit the F11 key. The yellow number will vanish, but before that it will glow green for a while, showing you that FRAPS started benchmarking the demo.
  • At the end of the demo (after arriving at the opposite side of the map, where the red Titan is located), hit the F11 key. FRAPS will stop benchmarking the demo and to show you that it stopped, it will show the yellow numbers back again, this time glowing them red for a brief moment.
  • Exit the demo by pressing ` and entering the command “quit” (without the quotes).
  • On C:FrapsFRAPSLOG.TXT you will find the maximum, the minimum and the average number of frames per second generated during the demo. Usually we use the average to compare systems. You can write down this number or simply leave it there, as new runs will only add new lines to this text file, not deleting its contents.
  • In order to speed up the benchmarking process, we recommend you to create a shortcut to FRAPSLOG.TXT on your desktop (drag and drop it while pressing the right mouse button and choose “Create Shortcut Here”).
  • You may want to run the demo three times at the chosen resolution to confirm the results. Then you can get the three results (i.e., average number of frames per second) and make an arithmetic average (add them up and divide by the number of runs – three in this case).

One final important remark: Battlefield 2142 has an internal 100 frames per second lock. We disabled this lock with a command inside our Init.con file. If you do not copy this file, your results will be wrong, since the game will easily reach 100 FPS and then the average number of frames per second will be compromised.

That’s it. We think our demo is quite satisfactory for almost all situations, but if you want to create your own demo, read on.