System Requirements Problem

[Ace Card Jones]

I bought Battlefield 1942 for my pc
And when there is a lot going on in the game when your playing it it runs a good bit slower and is quite jumpy and slow to react to movement
Which is weird because my machine FAR exceeds the minimum requirements
Just for your convenience here are the min requirements

Operating System windows 98/2000/me/XP (I have XP)
Processor 500Mhz (I have 662Mhz)
Memory 128 Ram (I have 256 And will be getting another 256 later this week)
Hard Drive 2.8 Gb (I have 90 Gb memory about 80 of which is free after installation)
Cd-DvD drive speed 4Speed (I have 48Speed)
Video Card 32 Mb (I have 128Mb Ati card)
Direct X 8.1 comes on disk (I got 9.0 anyway)

Can anyone tell me what is wrong and what i have to do?
And has anyone else encountered this problem?And what did you do?

[saphalline]

Which specific vid card do you have? "ATI 128MB" tells me only that your vid card was made within the last 3-4 years, and narrows the selection down to about 15 different VPU's.

Also, what resolution & settings are you using? BF 1942 (much like BF2) is a real system-killer, and I'd like to see the min specs run that game in an outdoor map! That would be a good laugh! :p I used a 128MB GeForce4 Ti 4400 when I first got BF 1942, and the rest of my specs were far above yours (P4 2.26GHz, 1GB dual-channel DDR333). Even so, I had difficulty keeping the frame rate above 30 when I played at 1024 x 768 w/medium details.

[Ace Card Jones]

Ive got the Ati Radeon 9200 SE Atlantis Fueled by sapphire
And my screen is at 1024x768 too

[saphalline]

Ahh, that would be your problem. The 9200 in general isn't powerful enough to play BF 1942 at 1024 x 768, and the "SE" version is even less powerful (half the RAM bandwidth and slower clock speeds). 800 x 600 would be the max resolution that I would attempt with that vid card, maybe even 640 x 480 if the game is still slow and jerky.

To give you an idea, my old GeForce4 Ti 4400 is about 3-4 times as powerful as the Radeon 9200SE. If my old vid card couldn't keep BF 1942 happy at 1024 x 768, yours doesn't have a chance.

[Ace Card Jones]

OH GOD i couldnt have my resolution at that id go mad!!!
One icon practicaly takes up the whole screen lol
And how do you half the bandwith?

But the weird thing about this is that my friebds graphics card is only 96Mb and his computer plays it well.
His computer itself has 512 Mb ram so could it just be that when i upgrade my ram it will play better?

[hockey man]

What MOBO chipset do you have? That is the most important. Please download Belarc Advisor (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html). Then tell us what it finds for your MOBO.

[saphalline]

Well, doubling your RAM to 512MB would most definitely help, but the vid card is still a sore spot. And the fact that you don't have a more modern platform. I'm guessing you probably have either the i440BX chipset or one of the i815 series chipsets. Moving to a Sempron platform or something like that would do a world of good.

As for the vid card, here are the specs:

Radeon 9200 (regular)
4 pipes (4 x 1 design)
250 MHz core
200 MHz DDR RAM
128-bit bus width
6.4 GB/s RAM bandwidth

Radeon 9200 SE
4 pipes (4 x 1 design)
200 MHz core
166 MHz DDR RAM
64-bit bus width
2.6 GB/s RAM bandwidth

By lowering the clock speeds as well as cutting the RAM bus width in half, the 9200 SE actually has less than half the RAM bandwidth of the 9200. If you've got a chipset that supports AGP 4X (very likely considering the 9200 SE you have now) you can get yourself a cheap but very good upgrade for about $70 - Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102409). The 9600 Pro's specs are even better:

Radeon 9600 Pro
4 pipes (4 x 1 design)
400 MHz core
300 MHz DDR RAM
128-bit bus width
9.6 GB/s RAM bandwidth

That would be a worthwhile upgrade, and would let you run BF 1942 at 1024 x 768.

[Ace Card Jones]

Ordered and everything
Thanks Il let you know

[OATS]

I play at 640x480 32bit colour.

Too many mad gamers out there wanting hardcore screen resolutions like that. What do you prefer performance and good graphics, or great graphics and crap performance? Are those cards like PSU hungry (9600)?

[saphalline]

As you get better and more powerful vid cards, you can play at higher resolutions and still get awesome performance. The high-end vid cards of today, like the GeForce 7800 GTX and the ATI Radeon X1800 XT can both easily play BF 1942 at 1280 x 1024, 32-bit color, with 8X AA & AS - and still keep the frame rate up around 70-90 fps. So with the latest vid cards, you don't make any sacrifices. Well, except for the cost! :D

The Radeon 9600 series are actually very easy on the power, just like the GeForce 6600 series (as an example). Higher-end vid cards like the Radeon 9700/9800 series, and the GeForce FX 5800/5900 series, and the Radeon X800 series, etc - are all power-hungry little buggers!

[odannyboy000]

Ya, all I have is an outdated 9800 pro 256MB and I can run BF2 max settings and get 200 frames indoors. Out doors easily 100. But I do have a lot of RAM, and an overclocked processor running at 3.25GHz

[i an not a nerd]

OATS, well you see, alot of us high-performance game players like to see all the eye candy that the devs. put into the the game. Not everyone is content with min settings and 640*480 res. With my computer (you can see the specs in my signature) i can run most any game 1280*1024 max settings and average 70-100 fps. So 'lagging' at high settings is not a problem for me. :)