AMD64 3700+ with 2x 7800GT, why doesn´t it eat the graphics?

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Is 2x GeForce 7800GT in SLI better than one 7800GTX?

  • Yes

    Votes: 34 57.6%
  • No

    Votes: 23 39.0%
  • The same

    Votes: 2 3.4%

  • Total voters
    59
Umm, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to run everything on high settings with 2gb of ram, with no overclocking. I have an athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) with 1gig of value ram and a geforce 6600GT, and I run 1280x1024 with everything on high except I have 2x AA and medium textures. I get a solid 40+ FPS with the only hiccups being in the first 20 seconds of a map.

2gb should definately get rid of your hiccups though :) 3700+ is plenty powerful, and 2x 7800GT's is DEFINATELY not holding you back.

EDIT: I just turned textures to high, and it got really f#$cking laggy. With the amount and size of textures used in BF2, you definately need 2gb of ram. And for pete's sake, leave the clocks alone. 3700+ is plenty.
 
BF2 realy needs 1.2GB of free ram to work ok

2x1gb sticks (not 4x512mb as there is an performace hit for doing that but then agane as you will no longer be pageing off the hdd it would not matter)

2x7800GT should be alot faster then the 7800GTX

messing with Every thing els WILL not Rid the laggy game performace as the game is useing your HDDs as Ram (pageing in and out) 2gb ram is your fix

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on an other topic i have an asus 7800GTX TOPs on just about any video setting i get ingame performace loss
FPS goes Very low and the latency goes up to about 20 from 10
(press` (next to the 1 button) and type renderer.drawfps 1 and it will show 100/10 norm (FPS/latency) it only happens in Battlefield 2 Special Forces addon mostly on The Iron Gator but does it more so when there is Alot of activety in one spot
BF2 i can run on max setings but set 2xAntialiasing (AS) and Texture Filtering (AF Anisotropic Filtering) on Med i think performace drops alot with them on (should not be an problem with 2x VGA cards)

allso thinking it may be cpu limited when alot is going on but i am running at 2.5ghz and ram is going at ddr500 (but i think its still the same when its runing at stock speeds)

hmm an little longer then i guess heh
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Keep in mind that he lives in Sweeden. The prices tend to be higher there.
Not all of us can get stuff cheap New Egg prices.
7800 GT in my country are all above 370(taxes included) and you can find them even at 900$(talking about a bad deal) at some local stores.
7800GTX? All at above 600$!
 
I did a quick reboot and stoped into the bios settings.

I found:
PCI Express Clock - could be set to Normal or 100<MHz
PCI Clock Synchronization Mode - could be set to Auto, To CPU or 33,33MHz

I didn´t find anything with locking SATA ports, but I turned on the Silicon SATA Controller that has control over SATA ports 5,6,7 and 8.

I am going to try to put my harddrive in one of those ports and see if it is locked then... I have it in port 1 now and that is the nForce4 chips port.

What is S/W Dram over 4G Remapping and H/W Dram over 4G Remapping ? Should they be enabled or disabled?

---------

To get my graphics right I changed SLI from Auto to Dual Video Card so now it forces SLI to show up in Windows.

In Windows I turned off SLI and also changed the profile for Battlefield 2 from Quality to High Perfomance. (I cannot see any difference in the game)
In Battlefield 2 I turned on show FPS with the command|| renderer.drawfps 1 ||and it showed that with one card (no SLI) I got about 20-55 fps all the time and some drops to 10... With SLI turned on it boosted up the perfomance. I now got about 30-110 fps!!!

So for the first try on one server with everything on the max and 64 players running by I got the first place!!! That was so nice, because there were no lag at all!

----------

Back to the overclocking stuff. If i want to go from 2,2GHz (standard for my 3700+) to about 2,6-2,8GHz, what should I do? If my harddrives sata is locked...

Should I turn the CPU frequency to 237MHz and the multiplier to the maximum and turn down the HTT to 4x?
CPU Speed: 237 * 11 = 2607MHz
Ram Speed: 237 * 2 = 474MHz
HTT Speed: 237 * 4 = 948MHz

Am I thinking the right way?








Wehn you start BF2 do you have any other programs running? Well, you'll have the NIC, Firewall, etc. If you have any windows with Flash that's your problem (it was a problem I had). Turn off Firefox or IE with Flash.
EDIT: I also turned the Cool & Quiet off.

I think that was my problem too... Now when I don´t have anything except for my Nod32 antivirus program running it works fine!!!
 
Keep in mind that he lives in Sweeden. The prices tend to be higher there.
Not all of us can get stuff cheap New Egg prices.
7800 GT in my country are all above 370(taxes included) and you can find them even at 900$(talking about a bad deal) at some local stores.
7800GTX? All at above 600$!

I am always buying from the internet, but only stores in the scandinavian... Because the prices are so high in a normal store! Where do you live?
 
Have it your way then.
2 GB memory for a memory hungry game. It should make the game runing well on max.
When in the game press Ctrl alt del and look at CPU percentage and memory usage. That should give you a clear view on what you have to upgrade.

Okay does it matter if I don´t buy the same ram that I already have?
 
You don't necessarly have to, but having all of your ram identical would keep the performance on par. Just make sure that if your running dual channel, that they are paired up exactly, or that could cause problems.

Like everyone else said also, but needs to have 2GB ram in order to run effiecently. If you alt-tabbed out of the game, you'd prolly see it taking at least 800MB of ram. I've heard of it taking 1.2GB if you have the settings high enough.
 
regardin the bf2 issue, take alook at my system specs... and I run bf2 at max settings very smoothly no lag at all... it is ok to check ur temps its more a driver's problem than a hardware problem
 
I am going to test BF2 today again later, because I have trimmed up my memory.

Normal settings for my memory are:
tCL - tRAS - tRCD - tRP - tRP - tRC - tRFC - tRWT - tWR - Timing
2.5 - 8 - 4 - 4 - 11 - 14 - 4 - 3 - 2

I am now running them at:
2 - 5 - 2 - 2 - 7 - 9 - 1 - 2 - 1

No problems at all, can handle Memtest86 stable. And yes it goes quicker with apps loaded into the ram!
 
And there will always be room for upgrade:
now memory (as most sugested)
tomorrow CPU (3700 needs a 7800GT/GTX to run at full potential in most games, better gfx cards will get slowed down)
2 days after tomorrow GFX
and again ram
It's a never ending circle. That's what you pay for playing games i guess.
 
I have 1 gb of Corsair XMS (2x512) in dual channel, with a 3.0ghz P4 and a 6600GT at 540/1080 and don't get lag running BF2 at 1024x768 on high settings with no AA or AF. I remember reading some THG charts showing that BF2 does not require more than 1gb of RAM at most resolutions and no AA or AF, confirming my setup's performance. Anyway, the video card is the number one limiting factor in BF2, followed by RAM. BF2 relies far less on the CPU than other games such as HL2. A 3700+ is more than sufficient, as is a 7800GT. The problem sounds more driver/software related to me. IMHO, RAM is not the problem.
 
BF2's main executable (BF2.exe) consumes slightly over 1 GB by itself on the larger maps (on my system at least and I have the first expansion pack) ... if you only have 1 GB of system memory, you can bet your a$$ it's paging to the hard drive and that is going to cause performance hickups. BF2 smoothed out considerably once I added a 2nd GB of RAM.
 
its definately a ram problem mate, even just doing a google search for "BF2 2gig" without the "" turns up numerous results agreeing
 
I was just referring to:
"Battlefield 2 was reputed to see large benefits from more system memory. While that surely is the case when comparing 512 MB to 1 GB, we didn't really notice much of a difference between 1 and 2 GB in the demo we used."

I don't seem to have problems playing with 1 gb and THG sees negligible gains from an increase from 1 gb to 2 gb. This is why I suspect more RAM is not the answer. I'm not saying anyone else is right or wrong...just my thoughts.
 
😀 FWIW, I'm running a 3700+ (San Diego) and SLi eVGA 7800GT's (model 518) and have NO issues running BF2 at maxed settings, though I prefer running in 1280X1024. None of my components are overclocked--no need at this time, given it's performance.

All components currently at stock speeds
3700+ (San Diego)
2X1gb OCZ Platinum
eVGA NF4 SLi
2XeVGA 7800GT in SLi
2X 36Gb Raptors (RAID0), running BF2 (no BF2 difference with RAID0, BTW)
2X 80Gb 7200.7 Hitachi SATA (RAID0)
Creative Audigy2 ZS Gamer

In BF2 I am averaging 65 fps [clean and smooth--no ripping/tearing/bleeding] with the settings maxed (including AA)...My "out of the box" 3DMark05 score is 10,480 with no AA @ 1280X1024 including CPU tests. That's more than enough to surpass the limits of any existing game!

Ensuring that no other applications are running is the most essential element in providing smooth game play in BF2. And the 2Gb RAM make a huge difference, too, as well as ensuring your drivers are up-to-date. I was running 2X512 (very low-latency Kingston Hyper-X RAM) and the difference is more than noticeable, especially for smooth game play. Sure, I could max the settings, but the play suffered with only 1Gb. I would greatly recommend upgrading your RAM to 2X1Gb DDR400 (can't say enough good things about the OCZ Platinum for stability, though latency suffers a tad, as with most 1Gb dimms).

I have o/c'd my CPU, GPU's, and RAM, and have found very little, if no, NOTICEABLE gaming improvement. FPS and 3DMark scores over that point are just for shear bragging rights. Sure, your fps will improve, but really, anything over 50 fps just isn't noticeable--especially if it's rendering flawlessly.

Happy fragging. :twisted:
 
yes i did see that, im just saying that 2gb sorted it for me, and i cant see him having problems with any of his other components, ofcourse thats assuming he hasnt got any software issues as you mentioned
 
Apparently, many other people have seen noticeable performance gains in BF2 after increasing their system RAM from 1 to 2gb. More RAM is rarely a bad thing (unless more chips are used and speeds are reduced) and would likely be beneficial in future gaming as well. I'd say it's probably worth it to upgrade at this point.