Author Topic: Need PC Parts Upgrade, Please Help (Read 886 times)

Clutz · « **on:** July 02, 2006, 02:59:54 PM »

Rubber bullets are a thing with me I believe. Last week I flew about 10 sorties and got 1 kill and 1 assist. So I spent all weekend on my system tweaking this and tweaking that. Then I fly 3 sorties and get 9 kills. Not only did I get the kills, I'm watching pieces of planes fall off and explode. This is a fun game when u get to see this sort of stuff happen.

Then the next day I get hardly anything and never seen any damage to the planes I shoot. Last night I flew a sortie and got 6 kills. The most I ever got before was 3. It seems to go from one extreme to the other. I have learned a lot from reading the forums and learning the tweaks that need to be done. But I figure first things first, which leads me to my question. Can u guys give me some advice on my system. I can spend maybe 3 or 4 hundred, or even more if its really necessary, but I would like to make use of what I think is a pretty good system and just add on to it what needs to be added. What I'm guessing is a better video card and a sound card. In fact, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. TY very much, This game rocks.

System is:

P4 3.4 PRESSCOTT socket 478 cpu -800hmz bus hyperthreading, 1MB cache
ABIT IC7 MOBO
1 GB DDR433 PC3500 Dual Channel Memory
Maxtor 160 GB 7200rpm w/ 8MB cache
128 MB GeForce Fx5700 AGP
On board sound 6 channel, Realtek Ac97, I dont have a card for sound.
Intel PRO/1000 MT Ethernet
16X DVD+RW, DVD-ROM
DSL connection and Windows XP Pro.
Monitor is an old piece of junk, but im going to get a new one.

scottydawg · « **Reply #1 on:** July 02, 2006, 03:55:21 PM »

Get a better video card. Do you have PCI-e or just AGP?

scottydawg · « **Reply #2 on:** July 02, 2006, 03:57:31 PM »

ANother thing to note is to kill all non-essential processes such as virus scanners before starting the game.

There is some util FSsomething, I can't remember what it's called that you can automate killing of services and processes before you run the game...

Clutz · « **Reply #3 on:** July 02, 2006, 05:40:30 PM »

Scottydawg, ty: I think my mobo is just AGP PCI. Not PCI-e. Is this real important? Important enough I should get another MOBO rather than getting a card for this MOBO and throwing good money after bad so to speak? And yes I am using the FSAutoStart program to kill processes. Thanks again:)

The Fugitive · « **Reply #4 on:** July 02, 2006, 06:38:20 PM »

Your system is pretty good, another gig of ram never hurt any one

Rubber bullets are more of a lag issue than anything else. You said you have DSL, are you running through a network cable or a USB port? I hear USB is bad.

I would also run a ping plot to the main arena server. PingPlotter is a free program that give good info. Google it to find the site, install it then type in the address to the server 206.16.60.39 then hit trace. Mine from New England are a steady 40-50 most times, but on Sundays its all over the place and just isn't worth flying, you could have the same trouble.

scottydawg · « **Reply #5 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:22:32 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Clutz
Scottydawg, ty: I think my mobo is just AGP PCI. Not PCI-e. Is this real important? Important enough I should get another MOBO rather than getting a card for this MOBO and throwing good money after bad so to speak? And yes I am using the FSAutoStart program to kill processes. Thanks again:)

Agp bandwidth is considerably narrower and slower than the new PCI-E standard.

Not sure about the rubber bullets... hope you're not using bittorrent or any other P2P program, the sheer number of connections those programs make simultaneously can ruin online anything.

I get a solid 31 ms ping from my comcast connection, every time. One time I forgot to shut off uTorrent and my pings were like 300 ms.

Another thing for the Realtek chip. Get the latest drivers off the Realtek site, and turn down DX accelleration to none. I was having MAJOR problems with my PC until I did that.

What ingame settings are you using, i.e. resolution, tex, etc.

Tumor · « **Reply #6 on:** July 02, 2006, 07:33:43 PM »

Stick another Gig of RAM in and ditch the onboard sound. There's plenty of old creative cards that will do'ya fine.

Clean up your disk

Defrag

go here http://www.pcpitstop.com and run through the tests

scottydawg · « **Reply #7 on:** July 02, 2006, 08:33:23 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Tumor
Stick another Gig of RAM in and ditch the onboard sound. There's plenty of old creative cards that will do'ya fine.

Clean up your disk

Defrag

go here http://www.pcpitstop.com and run through the tests

I still think he could do with a better vid card, but the AGP deal kinda puts a damp on that... I'll tell ya, with the 1024 textures and everything maxed out, this game is pretty great looking.

I've been digging through my old crap for two weeks looking for my old SB live card. I'll find it eventually!

DAVENRINO · « **Reply #8 on:** July 02, 2006, 08:58:04 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by scottydawg
Agp bandwidth is considerably narrower and slower than the new PCI-E standard.

AGP bandwith is not a bottleneck for today's cards. However, it is a tough choice whether it is worth investing in another AGP card that definitely will not work in your next major upgrade. Although; I did read that the new Conroe CPU is going to work with existing motherboards.

scottydawg · « **Reply #9 on:** July 02, 2006, 09:00:23 PM »

Maybe not the bandwidth, but def the clock speed, don't you think?

Clutz · « **Reply #10 on:** July 02, 2006, 09:02:37 PM »

Wow, this is way cool u guys helping me out. Why didn't I just ask before? Duh. Scottydawg, I was looking at this on the net for a card. It says this and I wonder if it will work. "Nvidia dIdn't make an AGP 7900GT so Gainward have taken a PCI-E model + used a 'Bridge' chip to convert one to AGP. So as not to annoy Nvidia, they still refer to it as a '7800GS' but it is in fact *definitely* an (underclocked) 7900GT with 24 pipelines. It is *not* the same as other manufacturer's 7800GS AGP models. Just trust Gainward, look at their website!" My pc is running clean and lean, as far as I know. I'm still working on that too. I'm using 800x600 cause it said 1024 might have issues with the game. Max texture size is 512, Unlimited frame rate if checked, Preload in system mem. is checked, Hardware vertex processing is checked, Optimize objects is checked, and optimize terrain is checked. Any suggestions having to do with ingame setting would be appreciated. I don't know what to check, lol. Ping plotter is about 30 but I get a spike every minute or so that goes to about 150 or so, and I get a packet loss about every few minutes but it then goes away. A lot of this stuff takes me time to learn but if u guys keep throwing me some ideas, I'll sort threw them all one by one. These ideas so far are really encouraging.
TY.

Tumor · « **Reply #11 on:** July 02, 2006, 09:03:30 PM »

Ya, forgot that... a new Vid card would be nice. I "think" the Prescott may be a bit of the problem. They run slower than Northwoods, has something to do with the instuction-set being allot more than Northwood (not a techie here, but a bud of mine is and explained it).

I ran a Prescott 3.0 w/1G RAM and a 6600GT... NEVER got the performance in terms of FPS I thought I should. I've since moved to AMD... something I swore I'd never do years ago, but... I couldn't be happier.

Tumor

scottydawg · « **Reply #12 on:** July 02, 2006, 09:12:16 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Clutz
Wow, this is way cool u guys helping me out. Why didn't I just ask before? Duh. Scottydawg, I was looking at this on the net for a card. It says this and I wonder if it will work. "Nvidia dIdn't make an AGP 7900GT so Gainward have taken a PCI-E model + used a 'Bridge' chip to convert one to AGP. So as not to annoy Nvidia, they still refer to it as a '7800GS' but it is in fact *definitely* an (underclocked) 7900GT with 24 pipelines. It is *not* the same as other manufacturer's 7800GS AGP models. Just trust Gainward, look at their website!" My pc is running clean and lean, as far as I know. I'm still working on that too. I'm using 800x600 cause it said 1024 might have issues with the game. Max texture size is 512, Unlimited frame rate if checked, Preload in system mem. is checked, Hardware vertex processing is checked, Optimize objects is checked, and optimize terrain is checked. Any suggestions having to do with ingame setting would be appreciated. I don't know what to check, lol. Ping plotter is about 30 but I get a spike every minute or so that goes to about 150 or so, and I get a packet loss about every few minutes but it then goes away. A lot of this stuff takes me time to learn but if u guys keep throwing me some ideas, I'll sort threw them all one by one. These ideas so far are really encouraging.
TY.

I believe that Skuzzy recommends that you not preload in system memory if you have 1gb or less...

Also if you go to the vid options ingame and move the sliders around for the detail ranges, that might speed things up.

All in all you have a decent system. I'd run SiSoft Sandra on it to make sure you don't have any glaring problems and also there are a TON of optimization advice sites around (just don't install anything questionable).

I don't know about that AGP-PCIe thing, sounds weird, might even be slower than your current card, there's no telling...

Tumor, I don't know if his cpu is a bottleneck, it is a 3.4Ghz, which should make up for any instruction set problems. Although, Skuzzy has said on here that he thinks the Prescotts are the worst designed chips he's ever seen, and he would know.

That packet loss could definitely cause you problems with rubber bulleting... you shoudl investigate that. Perhaps run a process trace (Procexp download) or a packet sniffer to see if something is calling home or mucking with your netcard.

Tumor · « **Reply #13 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:11:16 PM »

....as I understand it, the Prescott would be the bees knees if they could get it up to 5ghz lol

Clutz · « **Reply #14 on:** July 02, 2006, 10:27:46 PM »

Wheeeew, I looked at that Procexp download scottydawg, and that program is going to take a liiiiiiitle bit of time to sink in, lol. I'll look it over. Hehehe. Tumor, whats bees knees mean? lol. Is that a Jed Clampit type of thing one might say? Hehehe, funny funny. Tell u the truth, I like these forums as much as I like the game, maybe even more.