Which one will improve my BF2 experience more?

[General Lee]

The specs for my rig are in my sig. I know its not the greatest but I have awful lag/stuttering problems when I am looking at alot of action. Last night this happened to me quite a few times & resulted in my death everytime.

Basically, if there is alot of stuff happening nearby (lots of vehicles/planes or an artillery strike) my FPS goes down to less than 10. But this only happens if I look directly at the mass of activity - if I look at the ground or the sky my FPS goes back up to 30 or 40 (not great but playable). As soon as I look directly at the action again - boom - FPS goes down to 2 or something.

Question: Which would have the more dramatic effect on my problem, more RAM or a new graphichs card with 256MB of memory? Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[jfk]

I'd say you would benefit most from a new graphics card. With that said, what settings are you playing the game at now? If you are trying high, you might try medium or low to improve framerate/playability.

Joe

[doctorgonzo]

A new graphics card will help. Upgrading your memory to more than 1 GB of isn't really going to improve things. But it does sound like your video card is bogging down when drawing multiple objects. Invest some money in that.

[General Lee]

Thanks for the advise guys, I appreciate it.

jfk, I am running everything on medium - have dynamic light/shadows off, AA is off & texture filtering is low.

Any more wisdom out there...?

[kram 2.0]

Hard Drive - a 10k WD Raptor would run worlds faster.

kram

[jfk]

General Lee,

Based on your response, I would definately go for a better video card. I am currently running a 9800Pro, and thought it's a nice card, the demands of BF2 will take it to it's limits. I would upgrade the video card followed by increasing memory (if necessary).

Joe

[spyder003]

If you want to play the game with all the eye candy, you'll need more than 1GB of RAM. 1GB will play it nicely on medium, in most standard cases.

[speeddude2000]

Your memory is fine, dont spend money on that.

Video card seems to be the main problem. Have you tried closing other programs when running Bf2?

Aside from that, I'm pretty sure that Caviar hard drive is ATA100? At least get SATA150 if you dont want to spend a lot on a raptor.

[General Lee]

Originally Posted by speeddude2000 Your memory is fine, dont spend money on that. Video card seems to be the main problem. Have you tried closing other programs when running Bf2? Aside from that, I'm pretty sure that Caviar hard drive is ATA100? At least get SATA150 if you dont want to spend a lot on a raptor.

I have a SATA drive but just use it for storage of audio/video files. I know its lazyness but I don't feel like going through the joy of uninstalling / reinstalling Windows to have the SATA drive run the system. BTW the SATA drive is Maxtor 7200rpm 160GB - not sure about the 150 thing. How would I check that?

Also, would a faster hard drive really improve my BF2 performance? Seems like if I had a better video card and/or more RAM my hard drive should not really be accessed during gameplay (pagefile swapping).

Am I just showing my ignorance now?

[Yuanji]

BF2 will pagefile swap even when you have 1g. 2G is needed to run it all high without stuttering. However, the textures in BF2 are also big so an upgrade to a 256mb card will help. Have you also tried increasing your AGP aperture to 256? I've heard that it improves performance over 128 for BF2

[spyder003]

Originally Posted by General Lee Also, would a faster hard drive really improve my BF2 performance? Seems like if I had a better video card and/or more RAM my hard drive should not really be accessed during gameplay (pagefile swapping).

No. It would help when loading maps, but that's about it.

I would say a video card upgrade would be the first order of business, then more RAM if you still weren't happy with performance.

Do have any video cards in mind?

[General Lee]

^ Yes.

Here are the two I am considering:
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_...asterid=5323796
http://www.pricegrabber.com/p__MSI_..._Card,__6717835

What do you think?

[General Lee]

^ Yes.

Here are the two I am considering:
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_g...sterid=5323796
http://www.pricegrabber.com/p__MSI_..._Card,__6717835

What do you think?

Sorry for the double post. Could a mod delete #12?

[Yuanji]

i would definately get the X800 Pro as it is a notch higher then a 6800

[tomster2300]

Video card is looking like the key. You have the settings too high for a 9800 pro -- that kind of card just can't run this game at those settings. The hard drive upgrade has nothing to do with gameplay, it would just help in your loading time. Yes, yes fileswapping is an issue with this game, but I doubt you would see much actual gaming performance increase by upgrading your HD.

Your problem is definately your video card. This game is so graphically intense that it literally makes mince meat out of anything below a 6600 GT. Mince meat is somewhat playable, but nothing you'd want to fool with.

I play with a 6800 GT and a gig of pc3200 ram and I can run everything on medium with 4xAA at a forced resolution of 1280 x 1024 at 50-100 fps. It stays within 50-70 fps and jumps to around 100 when looking at the sky. This game is not cpu intensive, your cpu is just fine for this game. My AMD 2500+ is overclocked to 2 ghz and from the many questions I've asked (since I had tons of problem with this game for a month) this is more than adequate.

You will also want to tweak your rig as much as possible -- it will significantly improve your gaming performance. Everybody has different results, but turning AGP fastwrite off in bios, changing my AGP aperture to 256 (I can do this since I have a 256 mb card and a gig of ram) really, really helped me for some reason. I uninstalled my resource hogging Norton Antivirus 2005, ran a virus check, multiple spybot checks, then defragged and rebooted. You must go to the link below and follow this guide and the video card tweak guide which applies to your video card. Also look for their Windows XP tweaking guide and follow that (I followed them all). This will greatly increase your performance in not only BF2, but everything you do on a computer.

http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_1.html

Good luck and pm me if you need anymore help.