Hardware not good enough?

I was going to put this in the games section, but really what I am asking is about my hardware.

(The rig I am talking about is Lithicus which can be viewed in my sig)

I am completly aware that BF2 takes a beating on any system. But I got it last night and started playing single player.

At default video settings it is great. I have that FPS counter thing set on my x800 pro and I get like 30-50 FPS, which is not bad I guess. ITs mostly closer to 50 but every now and then wheren there is like 20 people on screen with like helicoptors and 5 vehicles all shooting it drops down.

but I set it to 1280x960 (I think) and the refresh rate at70 hz. I also put AA on 2x just to see if i could run it. With details on high I tried it out and soon realized i couldn't play at those settings.

The game wasn't choppy or laggy or slow. IT ran at like 50 FPS still, but about every 3-4 seconds it would slow down to a halt for maybe a second and then continue as fast as it was before.

I had this issue with UT2k4 back in the day and I just opened up my memory bandwidth and it worked, but I am running at an FSB of 245 I believe and my CPU is running at 2450 mhz. So why am I lagging? I don't exactly have an ancient system. Aside from the obvious OCs, what could I do to improve it's speed?


Oh and one last thing. I OC my x800 pro to 500/1000 and it helps a tad at the settings mentioned above.


Thanks guys

Not sure what to tell except make sure you have the vid driver updated and see if there is a game patch available yet. You might have to back off the vid card eye candy settings a tad.

I took them down and with AA off it works quite well. But it is just annoying that its laggy. Its not even my VC which I could OC more, it just seems to be my ram. Should I tighten the timmings?