Max performance on an older system?

[inthecode]

Hey all, I'm trying to squeeze as much BF2 performance as I can get from a secondary PC that I run for family and friends that gets hand-me-down parts from my main machine. It's pretty lean with just and install of WinXP Pro, AVG antivirus, BF2, and racing games for my kid.

Its specs are:
-Abit NF7S nForce2 motherboard socketA/462
-AMD 2500+ Barton core that doesn't want to overclock, grrr .
-512meg of cas2 ram
-BFG 6800GT-OC vidcard with 84.21 drivers, IQ set to High Performance

I'm handing down 1gig of RAM to this machine soon, so I suspect that the CPU will be the weakest link in this system. It appears that Dynamic Light and Dynamic Shadows kill fps; are there other BF2 settings that are cpu-intensive? Which settings don't hit the cpu much, Textures and Lighting?

I've seen some custom performance drivers out there like XtremeG; are these worth a try or are they unstable or kill eye candy?

Thanks for any advice!!!

[sackynut]

Re: Max performance on an older system?

well the one gig of ram will definitly help greatly,and will give you an FPS boost and let you run a couple more settings on high (possibly, maybe more medium). as for the xtremg drivers, I would worry about those. Those are mainly for people with a SUPER GOOD COMPUTER (usually) looking to squeez some more FPS or performance out of their video card. here, your CPU [and used to be your ram] is the bottleneck. If you cant overclock it, theres not much else you can do except buy a new better CPU.

are you sure you know how to overclock correctly because that might be the problem?

[inthecode]

Re: Max performance on an older system?

Honestly my oc knowledge could use some refreshing, which I can do at some other sites. Back when this machine was my primary pc, I could oc it by multiplier (the 2500+ is unlocked) to 2800+ and run prime95 on it all day. Recently I tried just 2600+ and it would lock up but not set off the 65C overheat alarm. Its current RAM is Corsair XMS.

It has an old slk800 copper heatsink with an 80mm fan, which ought to be decent. My NF7S is rev1.2 so it has a 333 fsb. I could reseat the heatsink with some fresh Arctic Silver and try again. I ordered 2gig of RAM for my s939 system so the 1gig that is going to the secondary pc will be DDR400 (Corsair ValueSelect) and I'd assume not get in the way of any oc-ing by fsb if I try it.

My big limiting factor with this rig is that I don't want to throw any money at it directly, which makes for an interesting challenge.
thanks.