Hmm I seem to be having a lag problem in Unreal Tournament 2003, here are my PC specs:

Pentium 4 1.5 GHz
256 MB PC133 SDRAM
Gainward GeForce 4 Ti4200 128 MB
On Board Sound
Seagate 40 GB Hard Drive
Windows XP Professional

Now I think this makes a good machine (still needs a few upgrades here and there though) but well above UT2k3's recommended specs!

But UT2k3 doesn’t seem to agree with me, it runs with lag constantly with few programs running in the background, in order to play a TDM with 7 bots (single player) I have to set resolution to 800x600 with 16 bit color and normal for all detail settings and I still sometimes experience lag when I start levels sometimes for 30-40 seconds till it evens out.

Any help/advice?

If I was to guess, I'd say it was due in part to the amount of RAM and the speed of the RAM. UT2003 is a RAM HOG. I have a 1.3 Ghz. Athlon, 512 megs of ram, SB Live! sound card, Geforce Ti 4200, etc. etc. It still lags a bit when the action get heavy. I have Highest world detail and everything else on normal. Ah well, must be time to upgrade to the 3.0 Ghz P4

yeah, I wish I could build me a new rig and keep a few choice parts but lo, I am too poor to afford such things, c'est la vie. Maybe I'll just get a bunch of RAM later on.

Your system is as fast as an Athlon 900 about, at best, when using memory intensive applications. More memory won't help. Pentium 4 and SD-RAM is something you shouldn't combine.

Good point, but more ram wouldn't hurt. I toasted one of my 256 Meg sticks of PC133 and brought my total down to 256 from 512. MAN! I could tell a difference. Needless to say, I went out the same day and bought a replacement stick.

I would say however, that I whole heartedly agree with alexnoe. PC133 ram and P4 play well together but you aren't going to win the Olympics.

or the elementary school track meet.

While I know this is true, my computer was originally an eMachine T4150 that was a present from my parents. Although I got a much better video card and cd burner, it still needs *some* work. But since I'm only a lowly high school student and am very low on funds I have to make due with what I have... (sigh)

I'm thinking for a nifty little upgrade I'll get a Cheiftec Server Case (only 80 or so on newegg.com), a new motherboard/processor upgrade and some DDR 333 memory. Still not sure wither to go for AMD or Intel though. Any thoughts?

depends on what you want to do with your pc....if you can somehow get a nestegg up, consider RDRAM on an p4

fly, baby fly

I have not seen one single owner of an e-machine who did not have poblems with them. Sorry to be ranting but IMNSHO this machine was meant for word processing only.

In other words, have yourself made a better machine. Or at least get a better motherboard for starters. I have a five year old machine that still kicks pretty good a$$ in games, based on an Abit BH6. I simply replaced the CPU (Celeron 566@876), added RAM, replaced the HD and the video card, added a DVD-ROM and two burners (If I had a larger case zI'd still have my 5"1/4 drive in for comfort ) It runs generally very well, as long as I avoid M$ software as much as possible and in fact it runs much better than quite a few contemporray, supposedly more powerfull (1.4 and 1.7GHz P4s) I've seen in terms of perceptible speed. Of course, I am still refusing to run XP (98SE, 98micro on the portable). That by itself may explain a lot in terms of performance.

Yeah but as I said before, it was a gift from my (cheap) parents so I didn't have a choice really. For people that aren't hardcore gamers like myself, its a nice PC. But I'm a gamer like myself so I need to get myself a better PC for me... I think, I'm confused. Meh a new motherboard, processor, ram and sound card. Looking to "downgrade" soon from XP Pro to 2k pro, more stable and much faster IMO. If you got the cash, its a good investment, more stable than 98 and faster than XP.

actually, fully updated 98 runs just as stable as w2k. the problem is that neither is very stable, because they are microsoft....you have to change your definition of stable when referring to a windows machine.

Well as of yet all I've ever used is Microsoft OS'es, 56k is too slow to download Red Hat and I'm currently jobless so I can't buy it in stores.

ut2k3 - 50 $ plus

red hat - 40 $

i call shenanigans on your poorness

UT2k3 - 30 (its cheap over here)
Red Hat - 40
Car- 600

I think that puts my funds into order.

You have one up on me. My funds are never in order.

weird - 3 disc games rarely go so cheaply when they are so new. and over here is ....1200 miles east?

Scratch that, WAS 30, seems to have risen. There was a local store that had it for 30 a little while ago.