whats the problem?

hey,

I'm asking this question (i know my computer sucks) because my friend does better than I in BF2.

Here is all the info i know about his computer:

I dont know his graphics card, he knows its a 128MB though ATi card though. He has a P4 2.0GHz, he can play battlefield 2 with no lag on medium settings. 1GB ram

I'm wondering whats wrong with my system:

Celeron 2.0GHz nVidia GeForce FX 5200 (256MB). 40GB master + 160GB slave, Imperial GV motherboard (sucks). 1GB ram

I'm wondering...if my graphics card is better than his why should it run faster...

I know celeron's suck, im wondering what i can replace to make my system run any faster. I get lag with all settings on like low, not too bad, but it ****es me off when i lag in a middle of a firefight, thats usually where it lags.

your video card is not neccesarily better than your friend's because your's has 256MG and his has 128MB(a 5200 with 256MB wouldn't outperform a 7800 with 128MB). I haven't played BF2, but i suspect that your card isn't good enough to play it (I'm at work and i can't check their website for min requirements). It could also be a RAM problem. Is your RAM PC3200?

svnrd said:

your video card is not neccesarily better than your friend's because your's has 256MG and his has 128MB(a 5200 with 256MB wouldn't outperform a 7800 with 128MB). I haven't played BF2, but i suspect that your card isn't good enough to play it (I'm at work and i can't check their website for min requirements). It could also be a RAM problem. Is your RAM PC3200?

Click to expand...

no idea...... ill look on the ram i think it is, but i dont know.

where else would i find out lol

Your CPU is the holding you back severly. A 2GHz Pentium 4 might be barely good enough to get by ok on medium settings, but a Celeron is a crippled Pentium 4 and the loss of this critical cache really hurts the performance, especially in the older Netburst processors (basically all Pentium 4s and all celerons above 1.3GHz).

Your GPU is also holding you back. The GeForce FX 5200 is a very low end card. The 256MB of memory does little to help you performance wise. This in combination with the celeron is your main problem.

If you have less than 512MB of RAM, then you should not be running BF2. 512MB is enough to run the game, but expect longer load times. Increasing your RAM to 1GB will significantly lower your load times for the game and for new levels. 2GB has been shown to improve load times even more (although i would focus on upgrading other components instead of getting 2GB of RAM).

This isnt going to be news you will like to hear, but given the number of components of your computer that need upgrading in order to get decent performance, I would recommend building an entirely new system. This can be done for as little as $600. Find a budget S939 motherboard wtih PCI-E support, the cheapest Athlon 64 you can find, 1GB of value RAM (dont go with a generic brand tho), and a midrange PCI-E video card on clearance (like the nvidia 6800s that you can find, look in the video card section). Get a power supply that supports at leas 400W, and recycle your optical drives.

This may not build you a blazing fast gaming machine, but it will leave you with a machine that you can be proud of till you can afford upgrades.

If you are really on a tight budget and do not want to build a new computer, you can find Radeon 9700 Pro's for under $75 and check ebay for upgrades for your CPU. Upgrading to a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 would be worthwhile. You can easily add another 512MB of RAM to your system for ~$50 if you look hard enough and do some research.

Sorry for the crazy long post, let me know if this helped you at all.

Both your CPU and VGA are among the absolute minimum specs for BF2.

BF2 leans heavily on cache and RAM, and as said your celeron only has 128k cache.

I would consider two upgrades:

1) upgrade the CPU to the fastest pentium 4 model you can afford for your socket. (probably a 2.8 or 3.06 533FSB)

2) upgrade the VGA to a 6600 / x700 min. spec.


Or, alternatively, if you have the money, consider a complete upgrade to A64 or LGA775, because your system is definetly outdated and even the upgrades listed above will be obsolete in a year.