B4 i have posted that i was experancing terrible frame rates unplayable infact, and that was with a Duron 800@1GHz 384MB DDR & Geforce4 TI4400!

At the time I had to send off my DEAD IBM Deskstar GXP60 & had to rely on my GXP35. I received my replacement GXP60 awhile back, but only just recently installed SOF II only because I now have lots of space & looked back at b4 how the same thing made a big diffrence to HL anyway I can say it made a MASSIVE amount of difference it runs smooth now, it's great. That’s a 10GB DS GXP35 7200rpm 2MB ATA66 Vs a 40GB DS GXP60 7200rpm 2MB ATA100. Who would think it would make such a difference, the frame rates have more then doubled!!!!

So....getting a slower drive will make the game run better? No thank you.....or was it the faster drive that made it smooth? I have an ATA-133 and SOF2 runs like crap.

NO the faster one made the diffrence from the slower one but spec wise there an't much diffrence.

The game doesn't "run" from the HD. It loads into memory from the HD. Maybe your load times will be faster, but it should have no impact on fps.

Perhaps it could be explained by the fresh setup of your system?

Nope i do a fresh install of Windows XP about every month. Can't say i have noticed any speed in loading time still slow as ever, but i know that b4 the first level was unplayble with the standard setting and runs allright now. Whats the code to test your frame rates again? b4 it was 27FPS.
I thought it was cg_draw FPS 1 ?

<-------have IBM ultrastar scsi 10,000rpm 36.4gig hella cooled.....fresh install of xp, 3dmark2001se and sof2.  All the symptoms are still here. Tried playing with no sound by uninstalling the audigy platinum.....still crashes.

In order to have SoF2 run smooth, you need two things:

1) A properly configured system; and

2) Reasonable expectations.