There's absolutely no critical need for 2GB of RAM, so if you're on a budget, 1GB is the sweet spot.
OP:
You're approaching the point where system upgrades will be similar to the cost of a new system. You could upgrade to a gig or so of memory today, then find out your CPU bottlenecks you tomorrow. Then you could realize that your processor is inadequate for one or two games. Then you could lose your 9800 to an overclocking failure while trying to keep up with a game's requirements a few months from now.
You're approaching the point where system upgrades will be similar to the cost of a new system. You could upgrade to a gig or so of memory today, then find out your CPU bottlenecks you tomorrow. Then you could realize that your processor is inadequate for one or two games. Then you could lose your 9800 to an overclocking failure while trying to keep up with a game's requirements a few months from now.
From personal experience, 1GB will do it for BF2, but you're going to have a few minutes of occasional choppiness spread out each highly-populated map. Not willing to spend much more money on this system, I bit the bullet and put in another GB of a different kind of memory that I had sitting in a drawer. It now runs at DDR333, and the close proximity of 4 DIMMs generates an insane amount of heat, but there is no denying that BF now runs better, provided I don't try to go up to straight high quality (which is where the slower memory settings will choke me out).mikkel wrote:
There's absolutely no critical need for 2GB of RAM, so if you're on a budget, 1GB is the sweet spot.
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2006-05-22 06:59:33)
I got this card aswell, 256 mb version and I run it with 1 GB of RAM works fineSupern00b wrote:
BF 2 sucks with the 9800 pro.
Can anyone help?
I have 640 MB SDRAM and a 1.99 GHz P4 processor.
I found some very good settings at this forum (can't find the original post) which works perfect with my Radeon 9800 Pro (AMD XP 2600+, 1 Gig Ram):
terrain - high
effects - medium
geometry - high
texture - medium
lighting - medium
dynamic lighting - off
dynamic shadows - off
AA -off
I ran BF2 with a draw distance at 100%, and a resolution at 1280 x 1024 without lag
I think you should have at least 1 gig ram, otherwise you'll have horrible loading times.
terrain - high
effects - medium
geometry - high
texture - medium
lighting - medium
dynamic lighting - off
dynamic shadows - off
AA -off
I ran BF2 with a draw distance at 100%, and a resolution at 1280 x 1024 without lag
I think you should have at least 1 gig ram, otherwise you'll have horrible loading times.
Last edited by captain-a (2006-05-22 07:28:28)
Do you guys even know what SDRAM is... its RAMBUS, its EXPENSIVE even still for those dinasaur Pentiums.Naughty_Om wrote:
Run low....get more ram.
the radeon9800 pro was a great card for its time. But is now severly outdated in what only seems to be 2 years past. It's pretty sad actually.
What's popularly called "RAMBUS RAM" is RDRAM, which is significantly faster and significantly newer than SDRAM. SDRAM is expensive because very few plants, if any, still manufacture it.137[CSi] wrote:
Do you guys even know what SDRAM is... its RAMBUS, its EXPENSIVE even still for those dinasaur Pentiums.Naughty_Om wrote:
Run low....get more ram.
the radeon9800 pro was a great card for its time. But is now severly outdated in what only seems to be 2 years past. It's pretty sad actually.
SDRAM = Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory137[CSi] wrote:
Do you guys even know what SDRAM is... its RAMBUS, its EXPENSIVE even still for those dinasaur Pentiums.Naughty_Om wrote:
Run low....get more ram.
the radeon9800 pro was a great card for its time. But is now severly outdated in what only seems to be 2 years past. It's pretty sad actually.
Rambus is called RDRAM. Standard SDRAM is the older RAM type that carried information on only one side of the signal, and was offered in PC66, PC100, and PC133 versions. DDR-SDRAM is double data rate RAM, and doubles the theoretical throughput of the RAM by carrying information on both the leading and trailing edges of the signal. It is offered in PC1600 (100MHz operation), PC2700 (166MHz operation), and PC3200 (200MHz operation; although there are DDR-SDRAM offered outside of these speeds, they are not recognized by JEDEC.
DDR2-SDRAM is the next ovolution of DDR-SDRAM. It has higher latencies, but benefits from being able to run higher clock speeds, has a 4-bit pre-fetch, Vs. 2-bit for DDR-SDRAM, and uses less power. It also has better singaling characteristics and on-die termination, where DDR and standard SDRAM require termination to be part of the motherboard circuitry.
Got a 256mb ATi Radeon 9800Pro, Athlon 64 3000+ and a gig of rather slow RAM. I can't live without AA, so I have it set to 2x I think, everything on medium, only textures to the max, as 256mb of my video memory allow that.
There's a 256 MB version?! UGH! I got ripped off! I have a 128 version and I'm suffering!
wack your ram up to a gig, then give your agp apiture size an increase =512mb. Instant increase
Ram will help a little. But your computer is pretty outdated. Time for an upgrade if you can afford it.