Help a poor college kid addicted to BF2142!

[sailormonz]

Hello everyone, I am absolutely addicted to a game called Battlefield 2142 however when i play (even with lowest graphical setting but max draw distance) I get horrible lag when lots of players are close to each other but my roommate doesnt which makes me believe my pc is the problem here. Im not a pc dummy but I want your opinion on an upgrade as cheap as possible.

Stats:
p4 northwood 3.0ghz (800mhz fsb) slightly overclocked
2x512 corsair 2-2-2-5
XFX 6800GT AGP
SB audigy 2

Thanks for the input ahead of time!

 

[SEALBoy]

Budget? Motherboard?

You might want to run your P4 at stock just in case it's overheating under load.

 

[zdvil]

-add another 1 GB of ram

-and/or find a graphics card suitable for your price range.

 

[NamelessMC]

Hello everyone, I am absolutely addicted to a game called Battlefield 2142 however when i play (even with lowest graphical setting but max draw distance) I get horrible lag when lots of players are close to each other but my roommate doesnt which makes me believe my pc is the problem here. Im not a pc dummy but I want your opinion on an upgrade as cheap as possible.

Stats:
p4 northwood 3.0ghz (800mhz fsb) slightly overclocked
2x512 corsair 2-2-2-5
XFX 6800GT AGP
SB audigy 2

Thanks for the input ahead of time!

The weird thing is that's actually not that bad of a PC.

You should download/install another game with the same range of graphic power. AKA FEAR/ Half Life 2/ Prey / Far Cry and see how it runs with those settings. If you still experience video lag, it seems like your video card is on its last leg.

Another thing is, download PC Mark, on google research "Pentium 4 Northwood benchmark" and find a site that compares Pentium 4's to each other. If your system is getting a considerably low PCMark compared to other 3.0 Pentium 4's then your CPU might be on its last leg from the over-clock.

You have to find out what part of your system is hanging in order to upgrade. If you go out and spend the big bucks on an upgrade and then find out the lag still isn't fixed, you could be back to square one.

 

[NaDa]

I think it's the CPU. The game is really bottlenecked with the CPU. When you are playing on a map with 64 players it just brings your CPU to its knees.
I have an Athlon x2 3800 and I can see a big difference when its running at stock and overclocked to 2.5Ghz.
Overclocking the GPU didnt boost the game at all.

What CPU does you roommate have ??

 

[NamelessMC]

Be funny if his room-mate had an Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 and dual 8800GTX's lol.

"We can't help you match that kind of performance buddy, sorry"

But yeah, I think we're all in consensus that it's the processor.

Even over-clocked, you have to remember those old P4 Northwood's got their butts handed to them by the Athlon 64 equivalents.

I mean the 3000+ Athlon 64 Venice is entry-level and it brings P4 Northwood's to their knees.

P4 Northwood's don't have 64-bit architecture.

I would recommend Craigslist/Ebaying your rig and building new. Sure it sounds extreme, but things are only gonna get worse for that rig when you start playing newer games.

 

[apache_lives]

Internet connection?

 

[NaDa]

You can get a A64 3000 or 3200 for cheap and oc it really nice. This way you can reuse your video card and your memory.

I play the BF2142 a lot and I can tell you it is the CPU thats bottlenecking.

Try and overclock your northwood to 3.6-3.8 if possible and give it a try. I dont think northwoods oc that high but push it and the memory to their limits. You will see better FPS.

 

[diabloazul126]

Oddly, I play BF2142 on a worse setup. So like others have said; a transition to a S939 setup might be enough to dominate your current setup only having to replace the mobo and the cpu(and RAM if you wanted 2GB). My setup on the otherhand, is a lost cause. (Athlon XP 2800+, ATi 9800Pro 128mb and 1GB DDR333.. all on a beat up Abit VIA KT400 board)

 

[NaDa]

If you play on smaller servers even your setup will be fine but if you play with 64 playes then your setup will crawl.

I think it's badly optimized code and is plaguing all battlefields ever since 1942. And yes the battlefield engine cant use 2 cores so haveing an athlon x2 doesnt help at all.

 

[Scougs]

As a free improvement, you could try to overclock some more. I have the 2.8GHz version of your Pentium 4 and it runs fine at 3.5GHz with stock core voltage. Granted it won't buy you a huge difference, but it should help some.

 

[gilamran]

I had the same problem, it is something to do with the AGP aparture size in the bios... run a google on this

 

[darkstar782]

Also a BF2142 player

Yeah, EA/DICE have coded it really badly. It is a CPU hog, and it is one of the few games (along with, unsurprisingly, BF2) that do run much better with 2GB RAM.

Without throwing money at it, I'd agree that a new CPU is in order. My personal feeling would be that you want to go C2D, in which case you could try:

ASrock 775DUAL-Vista (needed to keep Gfx and RAM while supporting C2D)
C2D e4300.

Total cost £160, probably about $200 knowing the way you americans get things cheaper.

Then whack the FSB to 266, which e4300s tend to cope with at stock voltage no problem, and this board will be ok with, and yout have a 2.4GHz C2D, with PCI-E and DDR2 slots ready for future upgrades.

 

[Sabo]

Are you sure you don't have a virus or trojan or somthing like that? Your rig should play bf2142 fine on medium (you'll need 2 gigs of ram to play it on high, I think. BF2 is like that. I don't play 2142.)

 

[sailormonz]

thanks for the responses all! No i definitely dont have a virus or trojan i use firefox with adblock, dont visit 'explicit' sites, and have avast (only because trend micro charges) and avg anti spyware on. ^_~. My motherboard is a MSI neo2 which was the best motherboard out at the time. My roommate has a athalon 3500+ X2, 1 GB of ddr533 and a geforce 7600GT pci-express. Funny enough my pc is 3.5 years old and competes with his new one, just not in battlefield for some reason.

P.S. Half-life 2 with cinematic mod (1600x1200 res textures) with 2xffaa and HDR looks and runs fine!

P.P.S. its not overheating its only slightly overclocked and i have an adequate watercooling system.

also Ive built a pc with a gigabyte DS3 and an asus p5b-e for friends but apparently alot of budget buyers are going towards the asrock, is it that good?

 

[ph33rgear]

I play BF2142 alot, and up until about 4 days ago I was using only 1GIG of ram, then I found another gig laying around the house ( lol, i had been looking at it for months... and it didnt even cross my mind that it would work in my pc, i was thinking it was older) and threw it in my computer... \

the difference from 1gig ram to 2gig ram was unbeleivable... the game runs 100% better, no exaggeration(sp?) either!

I know your roommate is only using 1gig as well but this will help you out ALOT if you were to add 1gig more.

 

[h2oman]

Are you guys using a router and sharing a connection? Maybe your roomate tweeked some QOS settings so he is getting all the bandwidth. Just cant trust them.

 

[rubix_1011]

My roommate has a athalon 3500+ X2, 1 GB of ddr533 and a geforce 7600GT pci-express. Funny enough my pc is 3.5 years old and competes with his new one, just not in battlefield for some reason.

This should tell you a lot, right off the bat. If you really want to find out, run 3Dmark06 on both machines and see what you get. If you are seeing very similar gameplay on both machines EXCEPT BF2142, then you have an issue with your settings playing it and/or need more RAM. I play 2142 with several guys with P4 2.8's and <2gb RAM, and they run it quite well. In fact, my brother runs a 2.8 with 1.5gb RAM and a 6800gt AGP...and it runs very well.

 

[TurdBurglar]

Your video card is ok, but keep in mind you can get a 7600GT for about $95 after rebate.

Unfortunately, that is pretty irrelevant in this case as a 7600GT performs almost identically to a 6800Ultra, which is not really a worthwhile upgrade from a 6800GT in my opinion. (2-6 more frames per second in most games with common settings :? )

 

[Hameedo]

First of all .. 6800GT is still a decent card .. many have managed to play BF2142 at higer visual settings than you .

Secondly , your CPU speed will not affect the game performance unless you play with 32 or 64 (bots ) in single player .. but if you're playing with other human players that will tax your GPU not your CPU !

return your CPU to it's original clockspeed first and make sure you're using the latest Nvidia driver (93.71) .

you sould also know that Titan mode has usually huge amount of lags .. especially with 512KB-bit or 256KB-bit DSL ! it's a bug in the game and it's not fixed yet !

I just want to know how much RAM do you have in that 6800GT ? 128MB ? or 256MN ?

BF2142 is very senitive to your amount of memory (video or system) it will run better with 256MB video cards and with system that have 2GB of memory .. but this is in the case of using high video settings .. like High textures and terrain .

All I can say mate is that your system doesn't have any reason to lag in that game with the lowest video settings .. I severely suggest a software issue !

 

[fredgiblet]

FEAR, with is a resource hog, with much more advanced graphics than BF2142, did play nicely at 1280x1024 with most settings at max, except AA. Again, I blame the poor coding techniques of the guys who made BF 2142.

FEAR (at least as far as I saw in the demo), doesn't have wide open spaces like the Battlefield series does. That makes a huge difference.

For the OP, I would say another gig of RAM is probably your best bet for bang for buck, with a newer video card coming in second.

 

[PJ101]

He would need and agp card... so no he cant

 

[bb1ood]

I have an old nforce3 with a 3200+ A64 and the same 6800GT with 256mb ram. 1 gig system ram.

I play BF2 at 1600X1200 max detail no overclocks...it gets a little chunky if there are a lot of explosions and stuff but otherwise plays well. I have only played the 2142 demo and I think I played 1280X1024 max detail. The performance was better than BF2.

I get around 12500 3dmark03
5400....I think, in 3dmark05

try benching your system to see how it stacks up.
Make sure you don't have any peer to peer software running ANYWHERE on your lan

check the pings of the other players in the game...if even one player's ping is high (over maybe 175) the whole game will get laggy.

When in doubt, FORMAT C: ......Reinstall winXP

gl

 

[mars_THoC]

I go for ram myself.
My laptop has a 6800 in it and the BF games ran ok but not great. Then I added two matched 1gig strips and that was the difference.
Bring up the task manager during the game and look at physical memory under "performance". I bet its maxed out and sceaming more ram!

 

[AdamBomb42]

You can get a A64 3000 or 3200 for cheap and oc it really nice. This way you can reuse your video card and your memory.

I play the BF2142 a lot and I can tell you it is the CPU thats bottlenecking.

Try and overclock your northwood to 3.6-3.8 if possible and give it a try. I dont think northwoods oc that high but push it and the memory to their limits. You will see better FPS.

Yeah that's what I thought, except my 3200 won't go over 2.3! :x