Damn stuttering in Battlefield 2

[mrSHEiK124]

Ach! Battlefield 2 is driving me crazy, its always trying to access the pagefile, it gobbles up 800 MB of free RAM and MORE in a matter of seconds. Right now, I have 1 GB of OCZ Plat Rev 2 (2-2-2) in dual channel. Would I be better off with adding another 512 MB stick of PR2, giving me 1.5 GB at 2-2-2, but in single channel mode, or getting 2 GB (1 GB x 2) but at 2-3-2. AFAIK, didn't running in single channel have a neglible impact on nForce 2 boards?

How do you all deal with the stuttering, do you even have to?

 

[WyteWatt]

Originally posted by: sheik124
Ach! Battlefield 2 is driving me crazy, its always trying to access the pagefile, it gobbles up 800 MB of free RAM and MORE in a matter of seconds. Right now, I have 1 GB of OCZ Plat Rev 2 (2-2-2) in dual channel. Would I be better off with adding another 512 MB stick of PR2, giving me 1.5 GB at 2-2-2, but in single channel mode, or getting 2 GB (1 GB x 2) but at 2-3-2. AFAIK, didn't running in single channel have a neglible impact on nForce 2 boards?

How do you all deal with the stuttering, do you even have to?

I just use 4 gigs of ram.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: imtim83

Originally posted by: sheik124
Ach! Battlefield 2 is driving me crazy, its always trying to access the pagefile, it gobbles up 800 MB of free RAM and MORE in a matter of seconds. Right now, I have 1 GB of OCZ Plat Rev 2 (2-2-2) in dual channel. Would I be better off with adding another 512 MB stick of PR2, giving me 1.5 GB at 2-2-2, but in single channel mode, or getting 2 GB (1 GB x 2) but at 2-3-2. AFAIK, didn't running in single channel have a neglible impact on nForce 2 boards?

How do you all deal with the stuttering, do you even have to?

I just use 4 gigs of ram.

I'm trying to do this WITHOUT breaking the bank. If I'm gonna be dropping enough $$$ on 4 GB of RAM, I'd go all out, get an Athlon 64 X2, GeForce 7800GT, and 2 GB of RAM. 4 is overkill.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Alrighty so it got moved, anyone?

 

[Sforsyth]

I have a XP3200, X800XL and 1 GB of Ram and the default is everything meduim and Textures High and it stutters, I have to turn everything down to meduim before it plays good, another thing that coused my stuttering real bad with my on-board sound in BF2 and CS:S I had to but in an old PCI sound card to fix that.


BY THE WAY I have a nForce 2 MOBO aslwell I'd say get a PCI sound card.

 

[DRAGoNX515]

I wonder why Battlefield 2 doesn't shutter for me?
I got: XP2800, 1GB of RAM (at like PC2100 speeds), 9800XT, Audigy sound card, and 2x200GB WD HD in RAID0.

Am I just lucky? And almost everything is on high too. (no AA or Antroscopic filtering though).

-dragonx

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: DRAGoNX515
I wonder why Battlefield 2 doesn't shutter for me?
I got: XP2800, 1GB of RAM (at like PC2100 speeds), 9800XT, Audigy sound card, and 2x200GB WD HD in RAID0.

Am I just lucky? And almost everything is on high too. (no AA or Antroscopic filtering though).

-dragonx

I think it might be the Audigy. I DO know however, that the stuttering is somewhat pagefile related, because the stuttering only starts when my hard drive starts going mad, and I'm running out of RAM. I think I'd rather have more RAM, than slightly faster accesible RAM, yet with lower bandwidth, I mean, is there much of a noticeable difference between 2-2-2 in single channel and 2-3-2 in dual channel?

 

[DRAGoNX515]

Originally posted by: sheik124

I think it might be the Audigy. I DO know however, that the stuttering is somewhat pagefile related, because the stuttering only starts when my hard drive starts going mad, and I'm running out of RAM. I think I'd rather have more RAM, than slightly faster accesible RAM, yet with lower bandwidth, I mean, is there much of a noticeable difference between 2-2-2 in single channel and 2-3-2 in dual channel?

Go dual channle, it's faster. I got PC2100 speed RAM in my computer running at 2-2-2-5 in dual channle, and it does ok. I would have liked to have DDR400 RAM at 2-2-2-5, but that will have to wait.

EDIT:
IF you are going to get more RAM, get another GB of it (2x512) so you can keep dual channle mode. Get like Value RAM and OC it.

You might have to drop to a 2T command rate though, which is what really hit performence sometimes.

Don't take my word for it, wait for someone else.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: DRAGoNX515

Originally posted by: sheik124

I think it might be the Audigy. I DO know however, that the stuttering is somewhat pagefile related, because the stuttering only starts when my hard drive starts going mad, and I'm running out of RAM. I think I'd rather have more RAM, than slightly faster accesible RAM, yet with lower bandwidth, I mean, is there much of a noticeable difference between 2-2-2 in single channel and 2-3-2 in dual channel?

Go dual channle, it's faster. I got PC2100 speed RAM in my computer running at 2-2-2-5 in dual channle, and it does ok. I would have liked to have DDR400 RAM at 2-2-2-5, but that will have to wait.

EDIT:
IF you are going to get more RAM, get another GB of it (2x512) so you can keep dual channle mode. Get like Value RAM and OC it.

You might have to drop to a 2T command rate though, which is what really hit performence sometimes.

Don't take my word for it, wait for someone else.

Only 3 mem slots on this motherboard, BUT, I may be doing some form of upgrade to a 939 board and an Athlon X2 in the near future, gonna wait and see how that pans out, cause then, I'd just add another pair like the one I have. Now, what's better, 4 x 512 MB (2-2-2) or 2 x 1 GB (2-3-2), both configs in dual channel on an ASUS A8N-E. I understand that if I run 4 sticks, I'll have to go to 2T command rate, and I'd much rather have 2-3-2-1T instead of 2-2-2-2T

 

[DRAGoNX515]

Use the 2x1GB for sure! 1T faster even though it's 2-3-2.

If you go 939 then get a Opteron 165 and OC like mad (with a better HSF of corse).
or
Get a better chip and OC less if you have the money.

OC the RAM too, I like OCZ's new fast 1GB stick that anandtech just reviewed. 3-3-2-7 at DDR550! Thats fast.
You can probably get that 165 up to about 289x9=2600mhz. Thats with 1MB of cache per core.

-dragonx

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: DRAGoNX515
Use the 2x1GB for sure! 1T faster even though it's 2-3-2.

If you go 939 then get a Opteron 165 and OC like mad (with a better HSF of corse).
or
Get a better chip and OC less if you have the money.

OC the RAM too, I like OCZ's new fast 1GB stick that anandtech just reviewed. 3-3-2-7 at DDR550! Thats fast.
You can probably get that 165 up to about 289x9=2600mhz. Thats with 1MB of cache per core.

-dragonx

Do the 939 Opterons really OC better than the A64 X2s?

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Also, is there much of a difference between the X2s with 512 KB L2 per core and 1 MB L2 per core?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

BF2 is a memory hog. 2GB is recommended, but 1GB will play fine

Just set everything to medium except dynamic shows (Off or Low) and Anti-Aliasing (off).

Dynamic Shadows always brought my Barton, 9800 pro, 1GB rig to a crawl.

There really is no noticeable difference in quality between high and medium.

The Opteron 165 (Dual Core, 1.8GHz, 1MBx2 cache) is, as far as I know, now a discontinued product.

If it makes you feel better, timings don't matter

 

[WyteWatt]

Originally posted by: sheik124

Originally posted by: imtim83

Originally posted by: sheik124
Ach! Battlefield 2 is driving me crazy, its always trying to access the pagefile, it gobbles up 800 MB of free RAM and MORE in a matter of seconds. Right now, I have 1 GB of OCZ Plat Rev 2 (2-2-2) in dual channel. Would I be better off with adding another 512 MB stick of PR2, giving me 1.5 GB at 2-2-2, but in single channel mode, or getting 2 GB (1 GB x 2) but at 2-3-2. AFAIK, didn't running in single channel have a neglible impact on nForce 2 boards?

How do you all deal with the stuttering, do you even have to?

I just use 4 gigs of ram.

I'm trying to do this WITHOUT breaking the bank. If I'm gonna be dropping enough $$$ on 4 GB of RAM, I'd go all out, get an Athlon 64 X2, GeForce 7800GT, and 2 GB of RAM. 4 is overkill.

Do you remember when 1 gig and 1.5 gigs was overkill ? 4 gigs of ram will not be overkill in a few months

 

[gorcorps]

For 1 gig of ram textures have to be medium. If you want to go high you need at least 2gigs as well as a decent system all around.

 

[duragezic]

Anyone else think onboard sound could be causing stutters? I have XP3200+, 1GB dual-channel (doesn't matter, neither do timings, consider them last of importance), and a 9800Pro but I get a lot of stuttering at 1024x768 mid-details. I didn't remember it being that bad before, but I had a long break of BF2 since I got it and now. Plus, I used to have a SB Live! value in there, so I might've been playing previously with that, while now I took it out and am using onboard NForce2/AC97 sound. So it seems people with the same setup get stutters like I do, but the sound card may be key here... Yes faster everything and more RAM would help, but I'm not looking to spend money, so I'll have to try out the SB Live! again when I head back to school.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

I do think the nForce2 SoundStorm APU is eating up alot of CPU. I'm still contemplating getting an Athlon 64 X2, 2 GB of RAM, and a 7800GT, as well as an X-Fi or an X-Mystique. Quick question, when's the estimated timeframe on Socket M2?

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Originally posted by: sheik124
I'm still contemplating getting an Athlon 64 X2, 2 GB of RAM, and a 7800GT, as well as an X-Fi or an X-Mystique. Quick question, when's the estimated timeframe on Socket M2?

I just bought an Opteron 165, 2GB, 7800GT system this week. Runs great

Rang up to around $1300 including software.

 

[Spacecomber]

Adding more RAM will help with the stuttering problem. The problem I ran into with wanting to upgrade my 3 DIMM slot nforce2 motherboard was that if I fill all three slots the motherboard will still be running in dual channel mode; so, I would need a third DIMM that would match my other two. Even if I did this, I'm not sure how having 1GB on one channel and 512MB on another would work.

The ideal solution would be to buy 2 X 1GB modules, only use two slots, and have 2GB of memory. Being cheap, I pulled one of my 512MB modules and added a 1GB module, which I run single channel for a total of 1.5GB of memory. This is just enough to meet the needs to of the game. There is very little performance loss going to single channel on an nforce2 board, as you noted (less than 5% in the benchmarks I tried, as I recall off-hand).

As others noted, you can probably get away with turning your ingame options down. Textures set to medium seems to make the biggest difference in terms of how much system memory you need.

Most of the people who report that they are able to run the game with the higher settings and only 1GB of system memory are using a 128MB video card. I think that the game adjusts for this and uses smaller textures (less to be stored); so, they require less system memory than those with 256mb cards.

 

[MrBaseball]

I get lots of studdering if I select x-fi mode in the sound options. ive reinstalled the game and the sound card multiple times without fixing the stuttering.

im using this system to play it:
amd64 3700+
2 gb ram
x-fi
74gb raptor
x800xt

 

[Spacecomber]

I can't remember the details on this (and I don't have an X-Fi card), but I think there is an option in the control panel for the x-fi card, itself, that needs to be set to "games" instead of to "music". Hopefully, someone who has this card will know what I'm trying to recall here and set me straight on this. I think this has something to do with the fact that some of the x-fi cards have a bunch of onboard memory and others (less expensive) don't.

 

[bob4432]

take a look at my site in my sig for bf2 ram usage. don't worry, it is a site i have on my home server so there are no popups or any b.s. on it, just facts. enjoy and hope this helps

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Update time! Just finished upgrading my comp, now its an Athlon 64 X2 4200+, GeForce 7800GT, 2 GB of RAM setup, and daaamn, I can play it with everything on high and AA on 2x, WOOT!

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: sheik124
Update time! Just finished upgrading my comp, now its an Athlon 64 X2 4200+, GeForce 7800GT, 2 GB of RAM setup, and daaamn, I can play it with everything on high and AA on 2x, WOOT!

congrats

 

[gk1998]

I have 1.5 gig and no stuttering