ut2k3 problem not enough ram?

[pigfukerd]

my specs are:

radeon 9500(wizards drivers 8 pipelines) 330/317 mhz
athlon 2000+
biostar m7vig
256mb pc133
maxtor 40 gig 7200rom ata 100
tb santa cruz



i get good framrates in ut2k3, but my prob is, my hard drive light goes nuts for about a minute and the game stutters so bad i cant play it, but after the hd light stops flashing the game runs great, on some of the big levels like facing worlds, the ligh never stops flashing and i get chop chop chop(any resolution it does the same thing), do i need more memory for this game? i never thought i would see a game that needs more then 256mb of ram:p , or do i need a new cpu or what? i dont think its the radeon because the framrates are fine after the level has like 60 seconds to get loaded and the hd light stops going nutz:confused:
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[The Baron]

it's that it's PC133. UT2k3 needs fast RAM and lots of it.

[Chalnoth]

Close out everything before starting the game.

Other than that, yeah, you need more RAM.

But I wouldn't upgrade the memory on that motherboard: I'd get a new mobo first. PC133 is quite dated.

[Needa916]

512 is recommended right? But game runs just awesome with a gig or RAM.

[Chalnoth]

I think so. Seems to work just fine on my 512MB system.

[The Baron]

RAM or video cards are usually not the bottleneck--it's the CPU 99 times out of 100.

[Chalnoth]

Originally posted by The Baron
RAM or video cards are usually not the bottleneck--it's the CPU 99 times out of 100.
Unless it's poor drivers, the problem he described is most likely RAM.

CPU or video cards will usually cause performance problems throughout the game.

But if the hard drive is lighting up in-game, it's either poor video card drivers, poor game writing, or you don't have enough system RAM. In either case, getting more system RAM will usually solve the problem.

In the meantime, it's often possible to reduce current system RAM usage. The easiest thing to try is simply to first close out all programs before playing the game. The next thing to attempt may be to reduce detail in-game, though that probably won't have as much effect.

[St Lobus]

If he's running Windows XP, Chalnoth hit it on the head. I had my system up and running with just 256 megs of ram when I first upgraded, and this thing chugged badly. UT2K3 was partially playable, but it took FOREVER for it to quit out. I upgraded my ram, nothing else, and it worked great.

I've got no clue which "service" it is that windows xp likes to run in the background, but I do know it likes to take that memory and not share anything.

[stncttr908]

Interesting you should mention this. Just got another 256MB OCZ PC2700 for my bro's rig FedEx'd to me home today, and the difference is night and day with new games. No pagefile craziness. A worthy investment, especially with RAM prices so low.

EDIT
Post 666!

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

[silence]

Originally posted by stncttr908
Interesting you should mention this. Just got another 256MB OCZ PC2700 for my bro's rig FedEx'd to me home today, and the difference is night and day with new games. No pagefile craziness. A worthy investment, especially with RAM prices so low.

EDIT
Post 666!

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang:

ya...it's prolly RAM.i had friend coming to LAN parties with celeron 600 running 64 megs of RAM. by the time he booted comp and moaded MOH:aa rest of us would already finish 2 rounds.......

u can't have too much RAM...ever.....and 256 pc133 for new games is simply not nuff....winXP needs 128 just to work (if u can call work what M$ OS does)

[pigfukerd]

thanks for the input, i guess i will be ordering 2 512meg sticks off ddr real soon:afro2:
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[stncttr908]

Originally posted by pigfukerd
thanks for the input, i guess i will be ordering 2 512meg sticks off ddr real soon:afro2: Yeah, PC2100 is dirt cheap. If you're not going to be overclocking you can just settle for that. I can't believe you stuck it out with SDRAM on that board for this long!

[Pafet]

I noticed the same problems like a month ago with Unreal2 not being very playable. I tried it on win98 and - huge difference!!

winXP just takes too much ram. Most current games can still do without but it seems more and more games get to be ram hungry on high quality settings.

BTW whats better - DDR333 for stability and overclocking
or DDR266 but CAS2 ?

both about the same price, and my mobo is 266Mhz anyway. Plus, my current DDR266 module is pretty unstable over 280 so...
what'ya think?

[saturnotaku]

A friend of mine used Win XP with 256 mb of RAM. He got acceptable performance out of UT2003 with his GF3 Ti200. But getting another 256 mb stick boosted his UT2003 performance by about 20 fps.

I wouldn't try to run Windows XP on less than 512. If you have 256 and that's all you're using, I would tell people to drop down to Windows 2000. I've always said Win 2k does with 256 mb of RAM what XP can do with 512.

But I have 1 GB in my desktop so it doesn't matter a lick anyway. :p

[|JuiceZ|]

512meg is the sweet spot, grab a stick ;)

[Kruno]

RAM or video cards are usually not the bottleneck--it's the CPU 99 times out of 100.
-----------

VCARD if you use 6xAA and 16x AF at 1280x960...

[silence]

Originally posted by pigfukerd
thanks for the input, i guess i will be ordering 2 512meg sticks off ddr real soon:afro2:

i just upgraded to 2 x 512 ddr 333....man,that rox:cool:

[Pafet]

what comes after DDR400??? and when??

[stncttr908]

PC3500 is already out (DDR 433) and I've even seen some PC3700 surfacing at pricewatch I believe. However, I wouldn't get any sticks of that until later revisions, since they'll be able to do lower timings and probably OC better.

As for Win98 using less memory, that may be true, but XP uses what it has much better. I've had > 330 out of my 384MB used in 98, but in XP I find it hard to ever have less than 200MB free at any time, with mozilla, 4 IE windows, AIM, Word, and a bunch of other software open.

[The Baron]

And 9x can't go above 512 megs EVER.

Therefore, XP wins.

[Chalnoth]

I'm still liking Windows 2000. All the stability, without the bloat...well, there's still a little bloat, but not as much...

[Pafet]

never said 98 was better... nor that it worse :)
thats why I still have them both

[yoladude]

Originally posted by The Baron
RAM or video cards are usually not the bottleneck--it's the CPU 99 times out of 100.
more true in the original UT.....graphics cards and ram have much more of an impact then they originally did.....and yea, the PC133 ram is wayyyyy slow. lol, my step brother has 128 megs of it and trying to run windows xp....poor bastard. newayz, i have 512 megs of pc2100, and each level loads in about 20-30 seconds MAX, and i have no stuttering of any kind like u seem to have...so yea, its probably ram, cause the rest of ur system looks very good.

edit: o yea, pc 2100 is REALLY cheap right now, as is most all lower speed DDR ram chips....i got 256 extra over the stock 256 in my system for 30 bucks. 512 was another 20-30 bucks, but i figured it wasnt worth it.
ram is so damn cheap....i remember when it was 100 bucks for 256 or some crap like that. gaa.

[The Baron]

Nope, definitely CPU in UT2k3. You can have a gig of PC3500 and a Radeon 9800 Pro and using liquid nitrogen cooling overclock them to levels previously unknown by mankind, and it won't make a damn bit of difference. The physics engine makes UT2k3 VERY CPU dependent.

[yoladude]

alrighty...statement retracted. i was going by personal opinion and inference, not experience