Is this normal?

[Mudflap]

Hey everybody! I started PS about a week ago, and have had some strange issues. I'm wondering if it's normal. First, let me give system specs.

P4-2.53 w/ Abit SA7
512MB PC 3200 Corsair CL2
Geforce4 Ti4600 128MB

Basically, I was flying a Reaver into a battle, and when I got to the facility the battle was at, everything stopped for about 20 secs while my harddrive spun like mad, and then it said I was dead.
Is it loading textures on demand or what? Is there a way to improve performance when you come across large numbers of people like this? I've set my graphics to medium and still see the issue. Any suggestions?

[pauljar1]

Flying in a reaver always caused a problem for me. Until I upgraded to a Gig of RDRAM and shelled out the cash for the higher end vid card. Don't think the vid card is your problem.

Were there ALOT of soldiers in the battle you were entering? I mean was it a zerg against a zerg? If so, that may be eating up at your RAM and running up against your HD (i.e. paging file) which is why it would thrash the HD.

RAM is the only thing that I can think of. Also, what kind of ISP are you using (Cable, DSL, Dial-up, etc.)

And, if I'm not mistaken, Planetside is notorius for loading up textures that aren't even on your screen. If you face a wall with 20 soldiers on the other side, your computer will render the wall as well as the soldiers that you can't even see. (At least I think it's this way).

Hope this helps!

Later dude.

[Mudflap]

Yeah, that battle was freakin insane. I got almost 6k xp when we finally capped the base. But I would like to enter a battle without so much lag that I get shot down before I'm over the facility. I have cable-modem btw, and the speedtests I run show speeds of 700-1800k. My ping doesn't vary much on most the games I play, but seems to go crazy on PS. I don't notice negative effects from ping in gameplay though.

[pauljar1]

I know what you mean. Insane sized battles sometimes bog down even the most high-end systems. I would try additional RAM. An additional 512 should make a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE!

All your other specs seems top notch, so the only thing I can think of is additional RAM.

[Mudflap]

I appreciate your feedback. I was hesitant to get more RAM because Corsair isn't exactly cheap, and I had trouble finding CL2.0 to begin with, and I don't think it has gotten easier. I just wanted to make sure that this is not expected performance at this stage in the game's development.

[Strygun]

I usually preload my textures (all of them), however I have 1 gig of RAM...