Hey all,
I installed BF2 and have the 77.24 drivers installed from dell on my system.
I ran 3dMark05 and scored 5200 which is about average I guess for my XPS2.

So I went to play BF2 and noticed only 3 resolutions were avilable for me to select. 800X600 1024X768 1600X1200.

Now thats not a huge issue although its wierd since I hear of people playing on 1920X1200.

THE BIG ISSUE is that it runs ABSOLUTLY terrible on all 3 of the resolutions even on the lowest settings. By terrible I mean REAL BAD, not even playable.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
I just ordered a second 512MB Kingston DDR2 dimm which will make my have 2X512MB ddr2 533mhz dimms, hopefully this helps?

If you only have 512Mb of ram on BF2 it will lag ALOT.. what I have heard and seen.
The extra 512Mb will give u some less lag and more playble BF2 on low/mid settings (I think) There is much about this in the forum it the search button and gogogo

Honestly, for $50 more you should have just gotten the GB stick and been done with it. 1.5GB will let you play the game with no lag at all.

i dont have any lag in bf with most of the settings on medium...however i also have only 2 options for screen resolution and they both have a refresh rate of 60...found this pretty wierd.

Thats weird, but the extra RAM you ordered should fix the problem.

Really? My vaio with only a 9700 mr and 512 ram ran bf2 with lowest settings at 70+ fps. After I got a new hdd and 1 more gig of ram, it was playable on higher resolutions and settings. Although ram does help, maybe it isn't just the ram...

Also, if I recall correctly, if you ordered your XPS2 with 512mb then it comes with 2x256 (and it only has two slots). So you may only be getting 756mb total instead of 1 gig. Just a thought.

You can run the game on low fine with 512MB+ RAM. The problem lies with in loading times and in game pauses. Be aware that low textures don't take up alot of RAM, but you need 1GB to play medium textures and 1.5+ to play with high (in my experience). Our LCD's are locked at 60Hz because, well, they're LCDs . Since your display is 1440x900, you can play at 800x600 or 1024x768, since BF2 only supports 4:3 resolutions. To enable wide screen, you need to type in the resolution manually as a launch command. Here are the directions at TweakGuides: http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_7.html

A few other issues that case pauses and lag.

Sound....choose Hardware/medium NO EAX!!!

Turn OFF yes OFF the games VOIP it causes major lag problems, use team speak or something.

Select cable/dsl or whatever the option is, NOT T-1.

With textures on High the game uses almost 1.3gigs of ram, 1.28 or something like that.

I have High, High, High, High, Medium, low, low, off, low, 100% on my 9300 with 2gigs of ram, 2ghz cpu and 6800 go OC to 340/700 at 1440x900 I get 50fps on average. IMHO the first 4 settings give you 98% of your visual splendor, the rest are cool but honestly dont add all that much.

Dynamic lighting and shadows on low look just as good as on HIGH...or my eyes can see a difference. They add enough to make them worth it.

You can get the widescreen resolution through a modification to the shortcut command line that launches BF2. Also, I would say that your RAM probably isn't high enough to run medium or high textures comfortably. Or even low textures, although it seems to be getting pretty good on my 512MB of RAM when I play the BF2 demo. I seem to be getting way too much connection trouble, though. Maybe that's actually a result of my HD taking too long to serve up the virtual memory (but I don't really notice the HD light going on at that time). My WMP music in the background cuts out at those lag periods, though.

FIY

I know every system is slightly different even on exact config's

but I run 1600*1200
terrain = high
effects= medium
geometry = high
texture=medium
lighting = low
d. shadows = medium
d. light = medium
aa =4x
text filt = high
view distance = 100x

now the only problem for me is that the maps take like 1-2 min to load and another 3-5 secs of terrible lag (multiplayer). BUt after that everything runs great

Now sometimes I have a high ping & that will make me lag.

In any case, the point I'm trying to make is that your system should not be BAD, & we also need to know your config

I have the 1 dimm of 512MB of Infinion, I just checked.
Thanks for the thoughts and opinions.
I am going to try the suggestions before the ram comes in and I will give you an update.
Then once the ram come sin Friday, I will let you know.
Thanks a ton!

Update:
Changed a few settings, not much of a difference but it was playable with a few suggested tweaks.

Update #2: Got my new Kingston DDR2 in. 512MB
Added it to my already 1X512 Infineon, they run dual channel at 533mhz AND WOW BATTLEFIELD 2 RUNS PERFECT as well as ALL my other games.
The difference, I cant even describe, HUGE difference with doubling the ram for anyone thats thinking about it!
Thanks!