My order for my new Gigabyte K8NSC-939; Athlon64 3500+ Venice; and 2 Gigs of Mushkin SPC3200 ram came yesterday. They are not TOP hardware but right after installing it (and a fresh re-install of my OS) - I played battlefield and I was beyond words.
My old computer was an ASROCK k7vt2 motherboard with an Athlon XP 2400+ CPU and 1GB of cheap 2700Mhz RAM (non dual channel) and BF2 ran like crap. Choppy at most times; and almost unplayable on laggy servers. I'd have to keep my settings to medium, dynamic* to low, and sometimes, I had to play with textures on low.
Oh.. I also had to downgrade the sound quality in order to keep myself from getting shot all the time.
After installing my new hardware, BF2 flew! literally. I can run it at 1280x1024 - default settings - high sounds - and I get wayyy over 60 fps. It's so smooth I had to relearn how to aim because everything was so fluid it was wonderful.
Those hardware I got set me back around 550-600 bucks but well worth the upgrade. It's very stable with lots of room for overclocks. I also think that having the extra 1Gig of ram boosts BF2 bigtime. That game loves ram.
