The EA servers are so much crap.

Last week I still had my Geforce2 GTS 64MB DDR card. I had to play the game at 800x600 (which still looks great and was perfectly fine to me) with effects at LOW and detail at MEDIUM and textures at 60% with 100%viewable range. Ran great, looked great.

Now I have the GEFORCE 4 ti4600 and am playing the game at 1024x768 with all settings CRANKED and it runs smooth as silk and looks great, the water now looks amazing where as before it was functional. I never play games at higher resolutions than 1024x768 because then it starts gettng difficult for me to make out text and such and always hits performance. To me the graphics difference between, say 1024x768 and 1280x1024 is minute and not worth it.

It is tough to find a good server, look for one with a good CPU and a green dot on the in game browser. Even though the EA servers show as having good status I have always lagged very very badly on them. I don't bother with those servers any more.