Here are my specs

AMD Athlon 64 Venice Core 3200+ @ 2.7 ghz
OCZ 2x1gb Gold DDR500 @ DDR 540 1:1 with CPU
EVGA 7800GTX @ 490 ,1.3ghz
Hitatchi 80gb SATA 2x80gb HDD
DFI NF4 Ultra-D Mobo

Hopefully someone can help me out because in any city map my FPS are dropping to 30-40 even with cleared shader cache. I even turned some of the settings down to Medium. AA is only at 2x. All of my Nvidia Control Panel settings are on Application controlled so it's not that. Hopefully someone can provide some insight.

Im sure someone here will be able to help you. 2GB's of RAM is good to have.

I had a similar problem with one of my other machines.  There is no reason you shouldnt be able to run everything at max with that system.

Run memtest86, and see if there are any errors.  Make sure you run it for at least 12 hours.

Thats what was causing the framerate problems with my old system, memory errors.  Once I replaced the ram, everything worked smoothly.

If you do get errors, get rid of the overclock and try it again.  If it then still is throwing errors, time to start shopping for new RAM.  Testing the sticks one at a time will make the test go faster, and narrow down whether or not they both have errors or just one has a problem.

If it doesnt give errors on the first pass, dont pay attention.  Sometimes you wont get errors until the 14th, 30th or whatever pass.

what is your agp apeture size in the bios.  with a 1gb of ram is should be at at least 256

check your motherboard manual for instructions

.

That is bizarre.

I have a comparable system.

3700+ San Diego
2gigs Crucial PC3200
Geforce6800GS
Seagate SATAII harddrive

I rarely ever dip down below 50fps and I'm running 1600x1200, low dyn lighting/shadows, everything else turned to high with 2x A/A.

Your machine should be blowing things out of the water.    I'd consider taking things down to stock clock rates if anything was overclocked.    Only thing my machine boosted is the XFX graphics card and that came from the factory that way.

7800GTX should be sitting around with it's thumb up it's ass waiting for the rest of the system to catch up, shouldn't break a sweat playing BF2.

Quoted: what is your agp apeture size in the bios.  with a 1gb of ram is should be at at least 256 check your motherboard manual for instructions

PCI-E board so no AGP Aperture. I'll run memtest tonight and see what comes up but the thing is this overclock is  8+ hours Prime 95 Blend Stable and SuperPi 32m stable. Right now I'll take down my overclock on my RAM and GTX and see how it does.

Quoted: Quoted: what is your agp apeture size in the bios.  with a 1gb of ram is should be at at least 256 check your motherboard manual for instructions PCI-E board so no AGP Aperture. I'll run memtest tonight and see what comes up but the thing is this overclock is  8+ hours Prime 95 Blend Stable and SuperPi 32m stable. Right now I'll take down my overclock on my RAM and GTX and see how it does.

make sure to run the memtest.  If the memory is throwing errors, prime95 and SuperPi really dont have much to do with that.

You were right, just got done running a round of memtest just to check things out and sure enough at my previous settings they were throwing errors the first trip through Test #5 which I've heard is suceptible to generating errors. So I turned down my volts hearing that my RAM doesn't like volts, well it made it through one pass fine, then second through errors. So I ran a divider so now my RAM is running at 245.5 mhz while (Rated 250) while my Venice sits happily at 2.7.

I'm going to load up BF2 and see how it does.

Seems a little better, I played Strike at Karkand and was dipping into 40s occasionally with Dynamic Shadows/Lights set to Medium as well as textures and Vsync on. Also had AA at 2x. Went to 4x AA and everything to high with Vsync off and I'm hittings 40s probably 20s and 30s on Mashtuur city. Something still isn't right.

Hey, how do I check my FPS in BF2?

Quoted: Hey, how do I check my FPS in BF2?

I use FRAPS myself.

Quoted: Seems a little better, I played Strike at Karkand and was dipping into 40s occasionally with Dynamic Shadows/Lights set to Medium as well as textures and Vsync on. Also had AA at 2x. Went to 4x AA and everything to high with Vsync off and I'm hittings 40s probably 20s and 30s on Mashtuur city. Something still isn't right.

Yeah, something is still up.  I force 16x ansio and 8x AA on my LAN party system (A64 4000+. 7800GTX, 2 gigs of crucial), and it runs 50-60 for me.

try reseating the video card.    have you tried different drivers?  

Quoted: try reseating the video card.    have you tried different drivers?

I actually have moved it from an 8x slot (when you enable the SLI jumper changes top and bottom slot to both 8x) so I was making sure that wasn't makign a difference even though there were countless tests to show it doesn't so I pulled it and moved it to the top slot with SLI disabled (16x) so it's been unseated and reseated multiple times. Plus my 3dmark 2005 scrore is normal, I don't know why it's just BF2........

CS:Source and DoD:Source both run great with HDR on and 4x 8x on and 1024x768.

I'd turn off the AA and try it. Awhile ago I had a problem with some Nvidia drivers... if I used any of the newer drivers since 78.01, BF2 gave me all sorts of performance issues and CTD's. I reverted back to 78.01 and I can with those drivers with no problem.

Might try an older driver or turn AA off.

-d

I'd turn Dyn lighting/shadows down before I fiddled around with A/A.

Try low for dyn lighting/shadows and 2x for A/A then see what that does to performance.

1 thing you should know by now.... EA games fucking sucks !

Ok, with that out of the way.... I even have certain city maps that I lag in from time to time (not due to connection, just the fucked up issues with the game and the server).

There are really so many different factors that could be effecting your game. I will just give you
an example of a problem I had a few years ago. Take it for what it's worth.


I know this will sound crazy, but your MOBO bios may need to be updated.

I say this because a few years ago I had some serious issues playing RTCW and running a GeForce 4 ti

I had downloaded newer drivers for the card and it all went to shit. It took me about a week of searching
and contacting the mobo & vid card people to figure out that my vid drivers were not compatible with
the older bios of my mobo.

Now most compuer geeks like myself would think that this is bullshit, but since it happened to me I can
say that it can and does happen. So, 30 bucks and a fried BIOS chip later ( I cannot Flash for shit)
.... I got my game running smooth.

Computers are all about a system of communication. If your system BIOS has an update you might want to read
up on it and then decide whether or not to flash ( or for newer boards it will automatically update with the appropriate
software intalled, Thank God for this option )

Seems like your communication of components "might" not be working out.

Go check out the BIOS and Driver compatibility.  I have a feeling you will find your answer there ( the hard way )
If not, then your problem lies with EA and "X" server.

Worst case scenerio... you can roll back your vid card drivers and go from there.

Good luck. I know how this stuff and be a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS.

Yeah I haven't had a chance to work on it all evening because I've been installing a new SI-120 heatsink and a Arctic Cooling NV5 Silencer for the GTX. These things are amazing. Both of them put together dropped my idle and load temps tremendously, though they werne't high before just not as cool as I'd like them to be and didn't leave me much overhead to increase CPU voltage.

I have a new BIOS but I may want to check out a different one or maybe look back on how I flashed it. Maybe I should clear my CMOS. I'm not too keen on BIOS flashing either to be completely honest.

Oh, one other thing.

Sound card, there was either an Audigy 2 or XiFI driver/slow down issue.

If you are using either of those, it could be an issue.

I have DFI Onboard sound. I turned down my sound quality though to see if that had any bearing because I wasn't sure what my onboard supports or what kind of driver it uses so I turned it to software rendering and medium quality. I forgot I had all of my settings jacked up at x4 x4 and it seemed better so I'm going to Turn them back to acceptable levels and see how it's running.

For any overclockers out there, I highly reccomend the SI-120 Just got done running BF2 at 2.9ghz on my AMD 3200+ and temps never rose above 38 degrees fahrenheit with a Panaflow medium output fan which is running quiet as can be. I can't even hear my system run over my roommates.