The PC beta client has been updated, and according to DICE, quite a few improvements have been made, chief of which centers around reducing lag (which a lot of players have complained about, and which reflects our own experience with the beta). The full list of changes, according to DICE:

• Reduced input “lag”
  On machines where the CPU would out-run the GPU, sometimes the GPU would queue up several frames’ worth of rendering commands.
  This could lead to the game having a high framerate, but input still feeling very sluggish.

Now there’s a limiter on how many frames the CPU is allowed to be “ahead” of the GPU.
Control this setting via Settings.ini. Default setting: RenderAheadLimit=2

• Performance optimizations with biggest improvements on dual-core machines
• Fixed black “masks”
  • The soot on buildings with holes in them had a bugged renderpath. We switched that over to a more well-tested renderpath.
• Improved hit-detection
  • We’ve gone through the hit detection logic, and client+server will now give more consistent results.
• Fix for some “rubberbanding” issues
  • C4 should stay attached to vehicles and not rubberband around
• Reduced spikes/dips in framerate
• Various fixes for alt+tab related CTD on Dx9
• More fixes for random CTD on Dx9
• Fix for crash when you’re in a vehicle that gets destroyed

The PC beta has been distributed among 100,000 players, and the feedback has been pouring in for DICE since the beta started. Now a post from DICE on the EA UK Forums reveals that the second major update for the beta will be pushed out later today. No news on what has been updated specifically.

In case you’re not part of the BC2 PC Beta, here 8 good minutes of gameplay footage for you. You’ll see a lot of what there is to see, although you won’t experience the crashes and hick-ups

The ongoing beta for the PC version of Bad Company 2 is in such demand that tens of thousands of keys have already been given out, and lots and lots of players are actively testing playing the game. Here are some BC” Beta stats, according to CVG:

• Over 1 million page views to Multiplay over night
• Over 100,000 new Multiplay Member Accounts created
• Over 10,000 user connections per second at peak
• 10,000 keys distributed in under 3 hours
• 30,000 files served over night (45 Terabytes of data so approx 5000 DVDs)
• 6,000 player slots on our European Game servers solidly full.
• Multiplay quadrupled Fileplay’s web serving capacity in under 2 hours to deal with the huge surge in demand.

The beta will be available until February 25, while the game will be in stores on March 3.