Sluggish BF2142 Performance

[Snakexor]

My Rig:

Sempron 2800+ @ 2.36 ghz
1.5gb ram (3x512)
DFI 250gb Lanparty Board
x1950pro AGP @ 611/776
Sound Blaster Live!

I play at 1280x960 75hz and medium settings with 2x AA. Sound config is to hardware and medium. In servers i get 17-30fps. Whats the deal? Ive tried different drivers, upgrading the ram, disabling backround cpus and nothing seems to get my fps above the 30 mark. Any ideas?

 

[mike420]

I'm a rookie too, but I would start by turning off AA!!
I play BF2 with an AMD 4000+ and I turn AA off. It should help. Plus turn down the view distance. Or maybe through-out your Sempron and AGP mobo.... not to sound like a snob....

 

[Snakexor]

lol it is "throw out". ill try turning down the AA, but i really dont think i should have to with this card or am i wrong?

 

[AirForceElite]

ye something is wrong.

if one is required to turn off AA/AF and lessen view distance and uses almost the best card available, then why are those options even there. whats the point of them if novideo card canhandle

 

[mike420]

But he's using an AGP card, it has less pipes than PCI-e. I think that that is the prob...?

 

[Kromis]

Originally posted by: mike420
But he's using an AGP card, it has less pipes than PCI-e. I think that that is the prob...?

Pipes? There are no pipes for slots...unless you mean lanes...

The AGP and PCI-E version are virtually identical.

 

[mike420]

Oh. I'm pretty new to all this but I thought PCI-e was faster.

 

[Ruptga]

The interface (between card and system) is faster, yes, but it's not terribly important yet, cards haven't quite developed so far that they need that bandwidth.

Anyway, I dunno, malware?

 

[oynaz]

I believe your CPU is the bottleneck.

 

[Snakexor]

anyone else have any thoughts/ideas? i basically am running a 3200+ cpu a64 w/ that sempron at that speed.

 

[Auric]

The soundcard is not supported by the game's hardware mode so set it to software. Prolly something else going on too though. Disable Vsync and test by creating a game rather than joining so as to preclude network issues.

 

[OSX]

More RAM. If you are using three sticks, then IIRC, you also drop down to 2T command mode.

 

[Snakexor]

1.5gbs isnt enough?!?

 

[coolpurplefan]

Usually Semprons don't have that much cache. There is a sale on the Athlon 4000+ socket 939 at the U.S. and Canadian tigerdirect websites.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...asp?EdpNo=1366749&Sku=CP2-A64-4000%20E

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/...asp?EdpNo=1366749&Sku=CP2-A64-4000%20E

And yeah, adding 512MB would help but in general, people say 2X1GB is better since you can still use 1T command rate and don't have to power down to 333MHz instead of 400MHz.

 

[Grimner]

Nice rig, but that Sempron is sticking out like a sore thumb. Good CPU for most things, but BF is peculiar.
And if you have to run the sound in software, better get a new sound card - that really makes a difference.

Leave the memory for now - you have plenty and adding more or consolidating to two sticks shouldn't make much of a difference.

 

[mike420]

I can say that my amd4000+ runs BF2 pretty well without overclocking. I luv the chip. So long as you're only running one application at a time that is.

 

[Roguestar]

BF2 and BF2142 are hella expensive on CPU cycles. I think it is probably your CPU holding you back. Try turning off AA and see if that helps rule out the graphics card.


By the way, are there any threads in these forums for getting people who play games together? I play BF2142 too and I would be happy to take your dog tags . Pity that server locality plays such a big part in playability; I get pings of like 25-40 on european servers (I'm in the UK) but yesterday I was kicked from a game on a canadian server (realised after I was kicked why) for having an average ping of 175.

 

[AstroGuardian]

BF is hungry for CPU and RAM bandwidth. Try with 1Gb in dual channel, disable AA.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: AstroGuardian
BF is hungry for CPU and RAM bandwidth. Try with 1Gb in dual channel, disable AA.

If it's a Skt754 Sempron, no dual channel: single channel only.

 

[AstroGuardian]

aha.. didn't see that. Right, s754 are single channel. But i think that i came across s754 nForce4 from GigaByte once and i had dual channel support...

 

[Snakexor]

ill probably upgrade the sound card then go from there.

ill update the thread when i do!

 

[mike420]

Great idea. I just updated my sound card on this thread's advice and it helped a fair bit. My rig's running BF2 with full settings with no AA. Nice... cheap upgrade too.

 

[Oxaqata]

Im pretty sure his Sempron aint the problem. My craptastic Celeron D can do medium settings @ 40fps. Id be checking for background processes & stuff??

 

[Snakexor]

i ordered a c2d and a asrock vsta so well see how that goes

 

[mike420]

Jealous!! Have fun. See ya on the battle field