strange frame rate problem

[nordicfireman]

i have a pentium 4, 2.8ghz processor, an asus P4SD-VX mobo, 1.5 gigs of ram (512 mb unknown pc2700 that came with my comp, 1 gig kingston value ram pc 3200, i read that it was fine to mix them) and a geforce 6800gs agp card. i have the 4 extra pixel pipelines and vertex shader unlocked, and i'm slightly overclocked to 380/1080. my 3dmark05 score is about 5000.

i have a weird problem with battlefield 2. i've been playing with most settings at medium and AA on 4x, and i get frame rates of anywhere from about 30 to about 70, and most of the time it's around 40.

if i put my settings on high, the game slows down and jerks when i look side to side at something i haven't looked at before (i run out of a building, look left, it lags for a sec, look right, it lags for a sec, and then i can look around and it's smooth)

also, once every game or two, my fps will suddenly drop to maybe 5-10. the weird part is, when i look away from where all the players are, it usually goes smooth again. most of the time, as soon as i get another player on my screen, my fps drops again. it can be a tank, a foot soldier, anything. also, i don't have to be able to see them directly, just their user name (they can be on the other side of a wall or something).

i first thought it was something to do with my wireless internet connection lagging, but i noticed that the problem also happens in single player if my settings are on high. what happens then is i'll be getting about 40 fps no matter what's happening if i'm looking in one direction, but if i look quickly to the left or right it slows for a second, and then sometimes it will just randomly start the 5-10 fps thing. again, if i look away from everyone it usually smooths out.

i have the 83.40 drivers for my card, which from what i've heard are the latest that work with it.

any help on this would be much appreciated.

 

[xXgambitXx]

It sounds to me like it's totally a problem w/ the memory speeds.

Two things, it's not running at PC3200, that odd stick is downclocking everything to PC2700. Also they're not paired up so it's not Dual-Channel.

The best thing to do would be to sell/trade/whatever the odd 512MB PC2700 stick and replace it w/ another PC3200 1GB stick. It'll bump up the memory speed a lot b/c they'll be at PC3200 and running in dual-channel.

 

[evilsaint]

Originally posted by: xXgambitXx
It sounds to me like it's totally a problem w/ the memory speeds.

Two things, it's not running at PC3200, that odd stick is downclocking everything to PC2700. Also they're not paired up so it's not Dual-Channel.

The best thing to do would be to sell/trade/whatever the odd 512MB PC2700 stick and replace it w/ another PC3200 1GB stick. It'll bump up the memory speed a lot b/c they'll be at PC3200 and running in dual-channel.

QFT. I had the *EXACT* same problem before I upgraded my memory (specs in the clicky in my sig) and I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the hell the problem was. It happened occasionally in Quake4/Doom3/etc... too. Now, all of them run like melted butta

 

[evilsaint]

Heh, I even use a WISP too... you're like my Pentium/Nvidia equivalent

 

[nordicfireman]

ok, thanks for the advice. one thing though, is that i don't have 1 stick of 512 and 1 stick of a gig, it's two 256's and two 512's.

 

[xXgambitXx]

oh, well i'm assuming that the 2 512 sticks are the pc3200 stuff.

I'd actually recommend trying to pull the 2 256's and see what effect that has.

If it doesn't clear it up than you'd have to either replace the 2 256's with another 2 512's or just scrap what you have and get 2 nice 1gig sticks.

Let us know what effect just running w/ the 2 512MB sticks has.

 

[nordicfireman]

yeah, the 512 sticks are pc3200.

i just took out the 256 sticks, and there was no improvement. it actually seemed to be a little worse, although it's hard to tell.

i've also noticed a couple more details about the problem: it sometimes depends on if i'm scoped/zoomed in with my gun in bf2, or if i'm prone, or if i'm in laser guided missle mode or machine gun mode in a plane or weird little things like that.

also it happens in silent hunter 3 (submarine game) when i turn the time compression to 1024X (you have to travel long distances, so you can speed up time) - the frame rate drops extremely low and then sometimes comes back randomly, most commonly when the map i'm looking at lights up due to it becoming daytime in the game.

it has never happened in FEAR, far cry, psychonauts or max payne.

now that i've checked to see if there was a compatibility problem between the two different kinds of ram, i don't see how it could be a problem with my memory because i still have double the minimum requirement for bf2 with just the 512 sticks...unless they're defective? could there be a problem with them that would be causing this? maybe i should try just using the 256 sticks, eww.

anyway, feedback would be appreciated, thanks for helping out on this.


*EDIT*

I tried with just the 2 sticks of 256 and the game was basically unplayable, jerking and stuttering and lagging and locking up and every other horrible thing. since you're supposed to be able to play with just 512 , it seems to me like i must have a problem with something else in my computer. however, it must be something that depends on ram because the problem does get better the more ram i have in the computer, although it still exists at 3 times the minimum requirement...grrr...

 

[nordicfireman]

peoples please help me on this...

 

[ta8689]

sell your memory and buy 2x1 gig dual channel. Thats what i did

 

[nordicfireman]

can someone who knows a lot about hardware and performance please comment on this, i've tried the reasonable suggestions so far and have had no luck

 

[GOREGRINDER]

with that vid/sys i wouldnt be throwin 4xAA at it in the latest and greatest games...especially online

and a full 2gb of memory would help as well with modern games as others have stated

myself i use 84.20b forceware

 

[imported_rod]

Originally posted by: nordicfireman
yeah, the 512 sticks are pc3200.

i just took out the 256 sticks, and there was no improvement. it actually seemed to be a little worse, although it's hard to tell.

Are you sure they are now running at PC3200 in dual channel? You might need to change some settings in BIOS...

RoD

 

[dguy6789]

Perhaps your machine is swapping. Here is my recommendation. Run all the sticks in your pc. Having 1.5GB of slower memory is always better than 1GB of faster memory for games. Make sure you are running all of it at pc2700 speeds in dual channel mode. Have a 512MB and a 256MB stick in each channel(768MB in one channel, 768MB in the other, for a total of 1536MB dual channel). Turn off anti aliasing. Set the resolution to something like 1024x768. Set all in game graphical settings to medium, while having draw distance at maximum. Tell me if this fixes your problem.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Yeah, those are pretty high settings for your rig. Maybe it just can't handle it.

 

[nordicfireman]

ok, here's a small update, thanks a ton for the posts.

i have actually been using 2x AA since my first post, not 4x (i have now edited it so there won't be any more confusion on that, also, the problem seems no different from 4x)

the problem actually seems to be getting slightly worse, as it now will often not go away until i die, exit the server, or restart my comp. also, it now happens in silent hunter at 512x time compression as well as 1024x, whereas before it only happened at 1024x, and only sometimes.

as for my comp not being able to handle BF2, i get average frame rates of 40-50 normally, with settings on medium and AA on 2x, so my computer can apparently handle it fine except when the problem is happening. also, i get about 30fps in FEAR with all settings on high except i think volumetric lighting. same (~30 fps) with far cry maxed out, although that's just my approximation since i don't have fraps or anything and i haven't found a way to tell fps in that game.

i'd really like to stress that my comp should be able to handle BF2 on all high settings with no major problems. in all reviews i read of my video card people say that they run BF2 maxed out, posts i've read by people who get around 5000 on 3dmark 05, like i got, say they run it maxed out. i have triple the minimum ram. i have double the minimum processor speed.

right now i am running all the sticks in my pc. i don't know enough about memory speeds, BIOS, etc to know whether they're all running at pc2700 or in dual channel or what. below is a link to an image i made of the information CPU-Z gave me about my pc.

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/5567/cpuzinfo2ua.jpg

thanks very much for all the help, if someone can tell me a bit about BIOS and stuff, i'll set the channels or whatever i need to do and try that.

 

[dguy6789]

Your memory appears to be set up correctly. I recommend downloading Memtest x86, the iso version, burning it to a cd, and booting up off of it. Let it run a few passes. We want to make sure that your memory is not causing the problem. If any errors appear, then your memory settings need to be examined again.

http://www.memtest86.com/#download0

You need a tool to moniter temperatures. Use speedfan. Google Speedfan and download it from the first site that comes up.(Cannot link to it as my school pc(the one I am on at the moment) has it blocked for some unknown reason.



Have you ran Prime 95 on your machine before? If not, here is a link:

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm

Install Prime 95, and run the torture test at small ftt for 12 hours or more straight. Run speedfan and leave it on while you run Prime 95. Pay close attention to the temperatures that it reads. I recommend documenting what the temperature of your cpu is when it is idle, and after 12 hours, what the temp is at maximum load.

What I normally do, is just run it overnight while I am sleeping. If the computer is still on, and Prime 95 is still running when I wake up with no errors, then the cpu is fine.

If your cpu supports hyper threading, which I suspect it does, then there is one more thing you need to do before you run Prime 95. Make sure you have a shortcut to prime95 somewhere. Then click on it, copy, then paste. Right click on the copied Prime 95 shortcut and in the target line, add a space, then -a1. Click ok. Then open up both shortcuts. If you did it correctly, two separate instances of Prime 95 should open up. Run both of them in torture test small ftt for 12 hours or more.

I also recommend running another intensive 3D game for multiple hours on end. Report back on what the game is, as well as how it played, what settings you ran at, and whether or not it crashed.


Make sure you have all Windows Updates, the latest official gpu drivers, and the latest official mainboard drivers.

If your machine passes all of these tests, then we can say with moderate certainty that the hardware is not the problem. We will then look into the software aspect of it.

 

[nordicfireman]

i just read a little about memory and virtual memory and stuff, at http://www.tech-hounds.com/article12/ArticlesPage1.html, and it said

In this situation, the processor will be able to quickly process the data in memory, but it may have to wait until the rest of the data (in virtual memory) is swapped from the hard disk - the hard disk is much slower than RAM. That's when you'll notice a sharp drop in frame rates - a 'stutter'. Frame rates will go back up once the hard disk finished reading (or writing) and all the data processed. With larger amounts of data, the hard disk will have to spend more time accessing data, so the 'stutter' can take more time. The worst scenario in this case will be if the game needs to access all these data all the time, then the operating system must continually swap data between RAM and virtual memory.

which seems very much like my problem, so before i do all those nice tests you recommended i would like to show you this:

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/1763/memoryinfo9uh.png

*bf2 is running on high settings in that, and it was giving me all the regular problems

could you please take a look at that and tell me if there's a problem or something i can change that has to do with virtual memory or something? also, it seems like i have a ton of processes running, but i don't know if it's ok to end "system" ones or which ones to end. bf2 is taking up about 800,000 k (which would be 800 megs, right?), and that's only about half of my ram, so why does it need to be using all that virtual memory? please help, i'm so confused.

 

[dguy6789]

Programs will always use some virtual memory even if you have enough ram. It is just how they are programmed.

Have you tried running all medium settings? See if the issue persists even when running all settings on medium.

 

[pcman83]

its a buggy game. Does the same thing to me. I would try more ram.

 

[nordicfireman]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Programs will always use some virtual memory even if you have enough ram. It is just how they are programmed.

Have you tried running all medium settings? See if the issue persists even when running all settings on medium.

everything works fine on medium settings....it's just not beautiful

 

[nordicfireman]

OMG!!! i borrowed some ram, i now have TWO GIGS of pc3200 ram in my computer, in the form of 4 512 sticks, and IT STILL HAPPENS!

i am so sick of my retarded-ass computer

i guess i better do all those tests now