Let's talk turkey...BF2 and system RAM

[straywolf]

I've got an Athlon64 3000 sitting in a ShuttleXPC system (home built) I threw in for company 1GB Corsair XMS RAM along with a GeForce 6800GT 256MG DDR3 vid card.
I've had this box for about 9 months now and its been a screamer in all my games (Doom3, Half-Life 2, etc).
BF2 comes along...and well, we all know what a joy it is to run Load times are sluggish IMHO and they could be better.

The question that I have is: should I max out my board's RAM limit to 2GB and would it really have an impact on texture load up? I have already increased the AGP Aperature in the BIOS to 256MB (and its helped with the "stuttering").
Anybody out there using 2GBs? What is your experience?

Sorry, but I haven't run and FPS test under BF2 but I can say that its "smooth".

[lcplsickoll]

I have 2 gigs and load maps and verify data in under 30 sec. The only time I have to wait is when "Optimizing Shaders". I load in 10-15 sec and verify in 15. It also reduced my initial studder when entering the game. It's usually non-existant now but if I do get it, it'll last only a sec or 2.

[straywolf]

Did you upgrade from 1GB or have you always had 2GB? If you upgraded, did you see a marked improvement?

[ZiRo]

that 6900gt is a great overclocker...

[lcplsickoll]

Did you upgrade from 1GB or have you always had 2GB? If you upgraded, did you see a marked improvement?

I upgraded from 1gig for the hell of it since I was building a new machine for my cousin to use for BF2. I did see a marked improvement in loading times and initial studdering, but that's just with my specific setup. Different components will respond differently so I can't say for sure you'll see a marked improvement in game play, but you should see atleast faster loading times.

P.S. I made sure I got the exact same memory I had before. I firmly believe in matching all your memory sticks to get the biggest return

[Talus]

I went from 1GB to 2GB and the improvement was OUTSTANDING!!!

No more stuttering.

The only option I had to remove the stuttering was to reduce my graphics options..and I wasn't about to do that

[Remy X.O.]

Man i thought people were exaggerating when they said getting RAM for this game improved THAT much until i bought myself another gig of ram (2x512 dual channel kingston value series) from my 512 and goddamn it helped my game out by 10 times. And im not exaggerating!

I think the rule of thumb is to have at minimum 1.3 gigs of ram to play on high

[lcplsickoll]

You know those Kingston and Corsair VS DDR kits really perform pretty well. The Corsair stuff OC's pretty well to, surprisingly enough. You can get 2 gigs for under $200. 2x 1gig(2x512) kits @ $90 ea. from Newegg.

I want to add that eventually somebody will come in here and say that when they check their resources that it's only using 900 megs of RAM and you don't need it.....but that maybe true on their system and that's terrific but it can't hurt to get more memory and I believe there's alot more people that have upgraded and are very very happy they did.

[imported_Disturbed]

I stuck another 1GB chip in my 2nd pc last night and noticed a HUGE
differance in loading times, and overall BF2 performance..

sadly I had to return the 1GB chip to my 1st PC.. so I will definately be
buying a couple more 1GB chips soon..

[HavanaAffair]

I've got 512MB at the mo but tomorrow I'll be getting 2 Gig (2 1gig sticks). I'll tell you what improvment i get, at the moment the game takes 3-4 minutes to load, and i get crappy gameplay for the first 10 seconds.

[Nitemare]

that 6900gt is a great overclocker...

Hmm my thoughts exactly..

[Propeck]

I thought I was already in decent shape hardware-wish when I bought the game with my setup.

Barton 3200+
1gig Mushkin pc3200 Black Line
Shuttle AN35(N)-Ultra [Nforce2]
BFG 6600GT OC (AGP) 128MB

BF2 made my system feel like a 5yr old Compaq. Maps loaded up just fine, but I'd get huge system lag in the game as I noticed my hard drive activity light was almost a continuous solid red. So I added another stick of 512, upped my AGP aperture to 128MB and enabled Video Cachable in the BIOS. It's a heck of alot better now, for the most part smooth as glass. Every great once in awhile in game things slow down to 10-15 FPS for 10 seconds or so, usually happens immediately and right after spawning. No appreciable hard disk activity when it happens, then the lag is gone as if somebody just flipped a switch or something and everything is fine again. I suspect it may be the amount of video RAM I have, or maybe a heat issue, I really don't know.

Overall though, given the size of the maps and everything that's going on in a 64-player server, I think I see pretty good performance outta this old rig. I run the game at 1280x960 2xAA and all the settings to medium.

[rombaft]

you need min 2gig for bf 2 lol

[straywolf]

I guess so...especially at higher eye candy levels.

[Jah]

you need min 2gig for bf 2 lol

Not true, 1.5 gigs is enough to run the game completely stutter free.