Battlefield 2 + x850xtpe (Need Help)

[Corbett]

Hey guys, I have a pretty decent system setup here and I run BF2 @ 1600x1200@85hz. I have all the settings on "high" and the AA turned off. Here are my specs :

Asus P4C800 Deluxe
Intel P4 3.4e HT 800mhz FSB
2GB Ram (Not sure what speed)
Sapphire ATI x850xtpe AGP8X
21" Trinitron
AGP Aperature set to 256

So when I am in BF2 the game hits a low of 15fps quite often, depending on how heavy the action. Now, i dont think with these specs it should run that slow on my machine. In normal action it will run around 25-30fps but shouldnt it be higher with these specs?

My GPU was running at 70c when in game and the fan never kicked in to 100% so I installed the ATITool and now ahve the fan running at 100% when it reaches 50c and over.

Anyways, besides getting an AMD like most of you would suggest, is there anything you guys can think of that would be causing it to run so slow? Thanks!

Edit: Is there a program to fins what speed my memory is? I would like to find out so I could buy 2gb of PC3200 if its not 3200. Thanks

 

[mOeeOm]

The processor and the ram(unless it is good, post what kind it is). You should get an AMD64 or X2 processor and some quality 2GB ram. That should help.

 

[Corbett]

Thanks but like I said, I am not going to AMD. I just got this processor and it is a great one. I dont think your solution would solve my problem one bit. For the specs I have listed I dont think it should be running so slow.

 

[wasserkool]

corbett, you are just a member with 9 post yet you balantly said: "I dont think your solution would solve my problem one bit. For the specs I have listed I dont think it should be running so slow."

in this forum, there are many highly technical proficient members giving you advice, yet chose not to follow. So why ask here?

I play BF2 too with the specs in my sign and it never slows down with everything maxed except for terrain due to my 1GB of RAM.

AMD are the king of gaming processor, it will wipe your 3.4HT P4 anytime, anyday and anywhere.

 

[Corbett]

Thanks moron but you've been here less than I have. You have more posts but big deal. Anways I could care less about your AMD. Do you honestly think that my processor and ram are causing me to get 15fps? Give me a break. Go toot your horn somewhere else.

I doubt you or moeeom are highly profficient in anything other than giving lame advice to switch over my whole system and still get the same fps. Give me a break.

55 posts in 4 days. Thats some life you got there.

 

[wasserkool]

ok, so you are calling moron...fine

lets see who is the moron first by using an intel processor in the first place for gaming. There is no point argueing with you, i'll just let the other members here give a better education

 

[Corbett]

Gaming takes up maybe 5% of what I do on my machine so I went with Intel thanks again for your proving my point. Besides, I was not interested in getting a new motherboard as well.

 

[SlitheryDee]

That is a bit low. You should be geting results at least comparable to these.

The only possible bottleneck I see is your processor, though that seems unlikely. Did you remember to plug the extra molex into the card?

 

[mOeeOm]

Hmmm...if you won't agree that AMD is better for gaming...then I don't know how we can help you.

 

[Corbett]

I never said Intel was better than AMD for gaming idiot. I just said I was not interested in changing over my motherboard and cpu to AMD. And if you think that is what is causing my problem then you ar ejust showing how little you actually know.

Now, can someone knowledgeable help me out? Thanks!

 

[Corbett]

Originally posted by: SlitheryDee
That is a bit low. You should be geting results at least comparable to these.

The only possible bottleneck I see is your processor, though that seems unlikely. Did you remember to plug the extra molex into the card?

Yeha I've got the molex plugged in. Thanks.

 

[viivo]

You didn't supply the information in your post, so I will ask:

What drivers are you using for the Radeon?
Are the motherboard drivers up to date?
What sound card and settings are you using?
You installed the drivers yourself for the big components (vid, sound, mobo) or did you let Windows autoinstall them?

 

[Corbett]

I tried both the 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 catalyst from ATI as well as the latest Omega drivers. All left me with the same problem.
Motherboard drivers are latest and greatest.
Sound card is Turtle Beach Catalina. Settings are harware rendered on high. Have tried software and lower settings. Didnt notice a difference.
I installed all of the drivers myself.

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: Corbett
Gaming takes up maybe 5% of what I do on my machine so I went with Intel thanks again for your proving my point. Besides, I was not interested in getting a new motherboard as well.

now now, children...

okay, honest advice here now. First of all, turn down the agp aperture. Basically, what this is (I don't wanna talk down to you, but don't know where you stand with this stuff) is a buffer to fill stuff into if it overloads your videocards memory. Think of it as the equivalent of your pagefile. Now, the higher you set this, the more likely it will actually be used, hurting performance. From everything I've read, on cards with 128mb+ memory, lower is actually better, with 128mb aperture being the highest, and some people saying 64mb is fine. Might wanna give it a shot, would only take a few seconds to check out.

As far as memory goes, check out in your bios what you are running at. Most mobos by default clock 1gb sticks (I'm assuming you are using a pair of 1gb sticks) to very conservative settings. Setting the cas lower would make a world of difference in your case. As for programs to test this, Sisoft SANDRA can tell you this, and also tell you your memory bandwith compared to other rigs with similar specs.

Also, try running the 3dmark series and checking out the online result browser compared to other users, and let us know which tests you are running lower then average in. this may or may not shed some lgiht on what is going on here.

Hope this helps!

*edit* your soundcard is hurting you a lot too. The envy24 chipset is a cpu hog, it's the same chipset used in the chaintek 710, and has great quality but isn't efficent. Might want to consider and audigy 2zs. Also, what are your power supply specs?

 

[Corbett]

Thank you for your suggestion. I will try all of that out. You are the kind of person i was looking for answers from, not just some idiot saying "SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT AMD I'M BETTER THAN YOU" Thanks again mate!

 

[Jeff7181]

I turned lighting and shadowing down to medium in the demo... it improved frame rates, but I can't see any effect on image quality.

 

[Corbett]

I think I WILL pick up that Audigy 2 ZS. Thanks, I've heard a lot of great things about it. Also, my Power Supply is only an Antec 350w PSU. I was wondering if maybe that card is not getting enough power? I have 2 hard drives, 4 case fans, 2 cd roms. Could that cause it to slow down?

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: Corbett
I think I WILL pick up that Audigy 2 ZS. Thanks, I've heard a lot of great things about it. Also, my Power Supply is only an Antec 350w PSU. I was wondering if maybe that card is not getting enough power? I have 2 hard drives, 4 case fans, 2 cd roms. Could that cause it to slow down?

I think this is likely it, and was what I was hinting at. I ALSO believe (and I may be wrong on this to be honest) that the new p4's slow performance when underpowered, as opposed to just not working at all

I'm running an antec 350w here as well, and I'm running an athlonXP 3200+, a radeon 9700pro, 3 optical drives, a 120gb hard drive, and thats about it, and I've been thinking of upgrading. Keep in mind almost everything runs off the 12v rail now, so get something high on that end.

Now, the tricky thing is where do we go from here if this DOESN'T solve your speed problems? I don;t want to be a downer, but keep in mind this MIGHT be the case.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Fixed link

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Corbett
I think I WILL pick up that Audigy 2 ZS. Thanks, I've heard a lot of great things about it. Also, my Power Supply is only an Antec 350w PSU. I was wondering if maybe that card is not getting enough power? I have 2 hard drives, 4 case fans, 2 cd roms. Could that cause it to slow down?

I think you'd see other problems first, like artifacts or lockups... or rebooting by itself a couple times when you do a cold boot.

That does seem like an aweful lot for that PSU though... powerful video card and power hungry processor. You could check the 12V and 5V fairly easily at any molex connector if you have a digital volt meter. Motherboard readings aren't accurate enough.

 

[dk1m]

hm im no pro with hardware but my suggestion would be to jus turn down ur resolution cuz i think the agp 8x mite have slightly lower performance over 16x pci e

unless u have a really huge monitor i think 1024x768 or 1280x1024 will be ok, maybe with 2x aa (if it doesnt hurt ur performance 2 much id go with that

i also noticed some people here are very arrogant and unpolite (jus based on a some threads i read), while others are very helpful and supply good info, but because i personally don like dealing with people like that i prefer to get help elsewhere (extreme overclocking forums, ard Forum have some nice people )

 

[Corbett]

Well I dont have a volt meter unfortunately and I'm not that handy with one anyways. I hate to just go buy more stuff to just have it not solve the problem. However, if i were to get pick up a PSU, what would yo all suggest?

 

[Corbett]

I did scale down to 1280x960 but I just cant stand to look at it in that resolution. Its just too big. The monitor is like 1' from my face lol.

And i know what you are saying about people being eliteists. I think some have already displayed that in this thread. Thanks for your help!

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Corbett
Well I dont have a volt meter unfortunately and I'm not that handy with one anyways. I hate to just go buy more stuff to just have it not solve the problem. However, if i were to get pick up a PSU, what would yo all suggest?

If I had my choice I'd buy a PC Power and Cooling. The Silencer 410 (450 watts max) should be adequate and quiet. The Turbo-Cool 425 (500 watts max) Deluxe would be a bit more futureproof with dual core processors in the future. And then of course there's the Turbo-Cool 510 SLI, should you ever decide to use SLI or Crossfire.

 

[Varun]

What kind of Heat Sink and fan do you have on your CPU? If the CPU gets really hot it will throttle itself which could be your issue. Run a game that takes a lot of juice, CPU gets hot, CPU throttles, game gets really slow.

Check it out and maybe get that nice Zalman with the 120mm fan and copper fins. You can use Everest Home Edition to check your CPU temps.