After days of confusion and frame rate drops well into the sub 20's which makes playing not fun and flying damn near impossible I have finally fixed my bf2 issues. Turns out I was using some old Nforce3 chipset drivers and bf2 did not like that so if anyone else is having similar issues, worth checking. I must have forgotten to put the new ones on after my latest HDD crashes (plural - both at once ). I am now back running at 80+ fps YAY!

Rather pointless post but felt like sharing...