SOLID hardware, poor ut2003 performance HELP

[Renegade226]

Hey guys,

I really need you help badly. I saved my money for over a year to build a
nice PC and my favorite game is
ut2003 and the game is running poorly framerate wise and its really pissing me
off...

This is my hardware:

Asus A7N8X nForce2 Ultra 400
1024mb PC2700 (1x512, 2x256's in dual channel)
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
Athlon XP 2700 @2.2Ghz
430watt Enermax PSU
Soundblaster Live 5.1 OEM
--

This is my software:

UT2003 version 2555 or whatever (latest version)
Latest detonators
Latest nForce drivers
Quality settings, 2x AA, NO AF, NO hardware 3d Sound (normal old software sound)
--

These are my benchmarks (1024x768, 2x AA, Quality, NO AF):

Botmatch: 56.5 fps (with the original version of the game botmatch got high
60s)
Flyby: 162 fps
--

I have tweaked my UT2003 settings as follows:

12 channels of sound
Cache megs to 256mb instead of 32mb
Min desired framerate to 99 fps instead of 35.00000

I like to run ut2003 at 1280x1024, bilenear, max details/physics, 32 bit
color...I mean my video card can
handle that, it's a frickin 5900 Ultra, my gosh! But in maps like Tokara Forest
(15 bots), Flux2(7 bots), Plunge
(11 bots)...it slows down to an annoying extent, and I swear it shouldn't slow
down as much as it does. My
friend with a 2400+, Radeon 9700, Asus A7V8X mobo seems to run the game a lot
smoother at my
settings! I swear the performance I'm getting isn't what my hardware is capable
of. This is really frusturating
me, ANY advice insight, explanation would help me out a lot. Thank you so much.

Renegade

 

[MikeMike]

drop down the oc on your athlon to default speeds, and come back with wat happens. some maps are more cpu intensive, and thus can cause problems if your cpu is to far outta spec causing miscalculations.

of course a lot of what i said was bullsh!t but try it and let us know.

MIKE