Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

[chalkspray]

I'm experiencing intermittent sluggishness (lag) while playing BF2 online. I don't experience any problems while playing in first person mode. If I am driving a vehicle like the transport or flying a plane it is more likely to occur than when walking, however. Sometimes I don't experience any problems, but 95% of the time the first 3 minutes of play on a new server or new map is virtually unplayable for me. My position when moving will stop and jump several seconds ahead suddenly.

I defrag every couple nights with diskeeper so that's not an issue. The system is pretty clean and I don't like background tasks so that's not an issue. I connect via 3MB down/256K up (cable) (speed checks fine), through a netgear router (but I'm connected through the switch, not wireless, while playing BF2) so that's not an issue.

Here's the specs of the system:

Dell Inspiron 9400
Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66Ghz/667 FSB)
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 667Mhz (two 512's)
256MB NVidia GeForce Go 7800
80GB 5400RPM SATA (I believe with an 8MB cache)
Windows XP Pro

I'm running BF2 in 1600x1200 with medium graphics. The display is a 17" widescreen UXGA with a native res of 1920x1600. Battlefield 1.3 patch is installed.

My initial thinking was the problem was with the hard drive being 5400RPM and not 7200RPM, especially since defragging on a regular basis has seemed to help some. (I do a lot of video editing and the drive gets fragmented quickly so thats why I defrag so often.) Now after seeing the Performance FAQ on this site it seems like it might be a RAM issue.

I haven't tried the processor infinity trick yet though I had heard about that before and I haven't changed the PB checks, so I will do both of those tonight.

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[Verzili]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

at that res i would defanatly say ram is youre problem.

i have 2gb now and get no lag at all,and run a few things on high on my old gforce 6600gt(agp)

[thelast500]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

umm i think tht they are both of ur problems might want to upgrade to 2 gigs and a hard drive wit atleast 16mb cache

[chalkspray]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

Ordered two gigs today, should be here tomorrow. Thanks. Anyone interested in one or two sticks of 512MB DDR2-667 PC5300 200PIN??? I will be posting on ebay tonight.

[mlkmnz]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

I think your issue is the high resolution. The UXGA is the screen on the laptop? Cause running it at 1600 x 1200 is crippling for your graphics card, not to mention the game probably wont look its best unless you're running at native resolution.

If I were you, I'd get a mid range 17" LCD that runs at 1280 x 1024, then you'd be able to play the game at the screens resolution with all settings at high.

[jdrou]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

Dell Inspiron 9400
Intel Core Duo T2300 (1.66Ghz/667 FSB)
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 667Mhz (two 512's)
256MB NVidia GeForce Go 7800
80GB 5400RPM SATA (I believe with an 8MB cache)
Windows XP Pro

I'm running BF2 in 1600x1200 with medium graphics. The display is a 17" widescreen UXGA with a native res of 1920x1600.

I usually run BF2 on an Inspiron 9200 (Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB w/1920x1200 LCD, P-M 2GHz/400FSB) with 1.5 GB DDR RAM and a 5400rpm drive. I really don't think the disk is a significant bottleneck; probably slows the initial game load but no major effect after that. I'd say with that high res it's your RAM with your CPU being the next bottleneck. Unfortunately the dual core doesn't help you much with BF2 so basically you are running the equivalent to a 3 or 3.2 GHz P4.

If I were you, I'd get a mid range 17" LCD that runs at 1280 x 1024, then you'd be able to play the game at the screens resolution with all settings at high.

Or just run at a lower res on the current screen and accept the slightly reduced visual quality.

[mlkmnz]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

Or just run at a lower res on the current screen and accept the slightly reduced visual quality.

Yeah but LCDs just dont look right running outside of their native resolution. Would have been cheaper to get a 17" monitor than buy that RAM from DELL I woulda thought...

[jdrou]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

Yeah but LCDs just dont look right running outside of their native resolution. Would have been cheaper to get a 17" monitor than buy that RAM from DELL I woulda thought...

Probably true especially if he bought from Dell; 2 GB of DDR2-5300 SODIMMs from Crucial is $263. (And he may get quite a bit of that back from selling his old RAM; people pay way too much for RAM on eBay). Not sure what LCD monitors are going for now. He may not have the space for an external monitor or he may want to stay easily portable. Also, the RAM will help speed up level loading times and help other applications too.

[chalkspray]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

This laptop screen actually looks great running that resolution. Actually its the best screen I've ever seen. This is the 17" UXGA Ultrasharp Widescreen with TrueLife. I paid a pretty penny for the screen upgrades. (but I got it all back when I got 900.00 off the cost of the laptop with coupons; and this was back in April)

Also I bought the RAM from newegg at 87.00 per 1GB, and there's also a 8.00 rebate off each. Never buy your upgrades straight from Dell. So obviously a screen would cost more, and the screen is clearly not the issue here anyway.

The video card has 256MB on-board memory; this is not shared memory, this is on board. I play COD2 and other games in full res with no issue. Only BF2 has problems, and only intermittently. The graphics card is not the problem.

The dual core does help too; I set the processor affinity to 0 and not 0 & 1 and the game slows down drastically. Setting it back to using both cores is like night and day.

It may be a laptop, but this system still plays BF2 much better (and at higher resolution) than my previous desktop which was a Athlon64 3200+ 2Ghz Winchester, 1GB (2x512) DDR-400 Corsair TWINX RAM (3333 timings), x800XT PCIE 256MB video card, and 7200RPM 16MB cache 200GB hard drive. So this is one hell of a laptop. The old system wouldn't even run this resolution to where it was even slightly playable, and it loaded the game MUCH slower.

[mlkmnz]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

I'm sure it does at that resolution. All I'm saying is your issues would most likely dissapear at 1280 x 1024. Any other game apart from BF2 will be fine at your higher resolution though.

[chalkspray]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

I'm sure it does at that resolution. All I'm saying is your issues would most likely dissapear at 1280 x 1024. Any other game apart from BF2 will be fine at your higher resolution though.

Yes, if I lower the resolution the game would play great; but why would I want to do that? Higher resolution usually means you get a better, wider view in addition to better detail. For me this usually means a better score and definitely more enjoyment.

165.00 for 2GB of RAM on this laptop (minus the cost of selling the existing RAM and the 16.00 in rebates) is not bad at all. My videos will probably render a little faster, too!

Thanks.

[tonedog1]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

im suffering a similar problem. question- in single player i can run it at high settings and the game rus great, online its a different story. as soon as i join a server the screen will jump every few seconds. does this mean its an internet issue? i have an 8mb connection

my spec is athlon 2800mhz
1gb ram
radeon 256mb 9600

i have 40gb on my hard drive but only 10gb free, would this affect things?

any advice would be great

ps im using patch 1.3 and have tryed turning of back app like virus checkers and firewall

[chalkspray]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

Well the new RAM is in, and the problem is gone; so it was the memory.

Tonedog, that was exactly my situation. The game played fine in single player, but online it was sluggish at times. If you're using DSL or Cable I really dont think its your internet connection (unless you've got multiple computers online or a bittorrent download going at the same time) Since you only have 1GB of RAM like I did, I'd bet RAM is your issue too.

What I find really interesting is, when I was playing BF2 with 1GB of RAM and exited to the Task Manager, BF2.exe would be using 500MB to 700MB of RAM by itself. Now with 2GB of RAM, it only uses 100MB when not in game, and 300MB when in game. Very interesting. I guess there was some sort of constant bottleneck that kept the memory usage high before.

Btw, like I said before, don't believe the statements about processor affinity causing problems with BF2. When I change processor affinity for BF2 it slows down A LOT, you can definitely notice the difference. Not only in game, but while loading, while going through menus, everything. Dual-core makes a BIG difference for me. I am also able to compare this to my old system which was using the Athlon 64 3200+ cpu.

i have 40gb on my hard drive but only 10gb free, would this affect things?

Thats 25% free, so no, its not a problem. Systems only start having issues when they drop below 10% free, but that's not true when you're talking 200GB drives, as you'd still have 20GB free. Generally when you get below 3GB free you start noticing a major slowdown as you're probably experiencing some good fragmentation and a lot of page file swapping.

Just make sure you defrag often, I've noticed that really helps these games. I'd recommend a program like Diskeeper. Windows defrag just doesn't cut it.

[munkeypants]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

Get another GB of ram.

I had a 7800GT, 3.0Ghz P4, 1GB DDR2
I was getting the exact same problems, lag whenever you first enter a map, whenever you fire a weapon for the first time in the map, getting into vehicles, turning, etc. Had to run at low/medium settings to avoid the graphics lag.
Of course I knew this was my RAM, just a matter of time till I got some extra cash.

Got another gig, making 2GB DDR2, now it runs at max everything at 50+ fps.

[tonedog1]

Re: Performance problem (is it the RAM or the hard disk?)

gettin more ram is outa the question right now. so if its a ram issue how come i can play single player at full settings then?