Having diagnosed my friends computer for BF2 I can concur that RAM truely is king, more specifically RAM in dual channel.
First, I'll tell you this before I continue the story above:
You need more ram, hopefully in dual channel, and if you're HD is 5400 RPM/older IDE drive then you're load times will suffer brutally. You need a 7,200RPM IDE or preferrably SATA HD, and more HD's if you want to setup RAID. Grab the 76GB WD Raptor 10,400 RPM HD if you can get one, they are always sold out here lmao. You're 512MB is severly hampering your ability to play BF2 - I'm suprised you even try with that low of ram considering XP chews up 150-200MB of ram with processes depending on what you require running. This leaves you with your OS constantly paging to your slow HD's pagefile while you play, nevermind the brutal loading times while it verifies your data from said slow HD and small amount of RAM available.
Friends comp:
Geforce 6800 w/ 16 pipelines unlocked (it's the standard version that comes with 12 unlocked)
AMD 64 3200 2.2Ghz
440W PSU
2GB value ram in single channel 512x2 1024x1
Mine:
Radeon x800 Pro /w Ati tool (overclock and unlock the fan speed lockout)
~400W PSU
2.8GHz @ 3.1Ghz P4
1GB ram 256x4 in dual channel
My system is pushing 2 years old now, and my friends computer is spanking new, but he was getting 25-33 FPS regardless of the scenario while I was getting 45FPS in 64 player lag fests and 71-85FPS in 32 player servers. Something was clearly wrong so I updated his windows from SP0 -> SP2 then set to work running some diagnostics.
We both run BF2 with medium settings, except low shadows and shadow shaders, and high geometry. Medium Texture filtering (2x AF) and Low (2x) AA. He runs 1024x768 while I run 1280x1024 because I use an LCD.
What came back suprised me, while AMD and P4 showed their difference in CPU arithmetic and video arithmetic, his HD's were clearly accessing faster at 37,000 KB/s which is normal for IDE, my drives were acessing at a ghastly 17,000 - 25,000 KB/s w/ 18-25 ms seek. This explained my long load times which I was struggling with but not his problems... I switched to SATA and instantly my load time problems were gone, 51,000 KB/s and 17ms seek.
However, his whole system was bottlenecked with his RAM in single channel. He was getting 2000MB/s with PC3200 value 3-3-3-8 ram in single channel. It's a pretty reasonable speed for default ram in single channel. I was getting 4900MB/s with 3-3-3-8 samsung ram in dual channel. The difference is staggering when compared with this fact though, almost 2.5x more bandwidth in dual channel! I suggested he go back to 1gb ram 512x2 in dual channel until he can afford a fourth stick of 1gb to make 512x2 1024x2 for 3gb in dual channel.
Problem solved!
Last edited by [CANADA]_Zenmaster (2005-12-10 13:00:24)