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Bottleneck hunting...

F

Fisofo

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 4, 2003
Messages
139
Roommate recently bought BF1942 to play DC, but glitchiness has prevented gameplay, despite AA & AF off, settings on low, and res at 800x600. However, he can run GTA3 (non-vice city) and Rainbow Six 3 just fine with stuff all the way up. I've run DC on systems with worse specs than his, and they've run just fine, so I'm wondering what the culprit is. First off, here's the system specs(taken from Sandra):

->1.2Ghz (thunderbird, not overclocked, temp at 54C not under load)
->Mobo is Via VT8363, FSB 2x133Mhz, w/ max memory speed of 1x133Mhz, supports AGP up to 4x (or 4x66Mhz)
->384Mb of SDRAM
->C drive is NTFS with 5Gb free, D drive is FAT32 with 2.5Gb free
->Platinum Audigy sound card (1st, not 2nd)
->Other notes: The system is clean in that there is no spyware or viruses on it(except for quicktime and MSN messenger :rolleyes: ). Also, There's nothing else running when we run a game.

That should be good for specs, now here's my questions:

1. He has two hard drives, one FAT32 and one NTFS, windows on NTFS with 5gb free, games on FAT32 with 2.5gb free. Is this bad? My intuition says yes, but anyone have experience with this? Page File is on the NTFS with a 576 to 1152 range (yeah, this could be set up better, but it shouldn't be the root/huge part of the issue)

2. His motherboard only supports up to 4x AGP, he has a Gigabyte 9600XT, would Battlefield really stress this part of the system (the AGP size) compared to some other game (Ex: GTA3, Rainbow Six 3, both of which he can run)?

3. How about CPU temps, BIOS listed cpu at 57C, that seems really high to me, thoughts?

4. Seems to me the motherboard is probably at fault (maybe), with AGP 4x, SDRAM, and FSB 2x133Mhz, but I'm want to know what the [H] thinks :D
 
it certainly sounds *capable* of playing DC, though obviously not on very high settings.
First off, move the page file to the secondary drive. It's faster.
Fat32 shouldn't make *that* big of a difference, but try to convince him to go NTFS all around. It's better is soooo many ways.

temperatures do seem a bit high. Try running the computer with the cover off and a big fan blowing into it. If that doesn't change anything, it's probably not the issue, though I would still try to get more cooling.

Umm...
I really can't think of much else...did he do a clean install of the ATI drivers?
 
I think the bottleneck would be the memory bandwidth. Also size (doesnt BF use up a gig easy?)

But cpu should be fine, 9600xt yeah.
 
Trying to play BF1942 or DC on a system with 384 MB of memory means you will be paging like crazy.
 
Thanks for the info guys, I'll be trying some of this stuff out. Oh, and on a funny note, I had him open up his case.... and it turns out the CPU fan was backwards (blowing air out, not towards cpu) and also starting to die. So that helped the temps a bit :D

edit: and yes, the ATI drivers are a clean install
 
Amount of RAM... Bandwidth too, but especially ammount... Bf1942 can eat up 384 megs in one bite. It likes a gig +...
 
Won't be much help, but I guess it is because of the RAM bandwitch and perhaps size. I would also clear harddrives to around 7GB min if nothing else works. Worth a shot if you are really into it.
 
Page File is on the NTFS with a 576 to 1152 range (yeah, this could be set up better, but it shouldn't be the root/huge part of the issue)
Click to expand...
Bad assumption. With the PF setup like that it's going to increase every time you need more RAM. That's going to cause the PF to get fragments, a lot of them. Download a decent defrag programs like O&O defrag (something that will defrag the page file). Then set the PF min and max to the same number, probably +10-15% of what it's currently at.
 
that whole system looks like one giant bottleneck. in order of what should be upgraded:

* ram (you need at least 512 to even think about playing BF1942 realistically)
* mobo (KT133 is quite possibly the slowest chipset still avaiable.
* processor
* soundcard: get an nforce2 board and sell that POS. having a sound blaster is bad luck :D
 
Well, this post is getting old, but just thought I'd let you contributors know: My roommate just got a job with a local tech company (he's a Comp. Sci. major), so with the extra income he said he's on the path to upgrading the mobo, cpu, ram, etc... so no more glitchies!
...And on a side note, setting the PF to a absolute value on the FAT32 drive did seem to give a bit of a performance rise, albeit not much, but a bit.
Thanks again!
 
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