ok here is the scoup. i just got an extra 1024 ram. so now my system is as follows.

p4 1.5
1.28 gig's  rrd ram
ati aiw 9700 (128 mb) (new cat drivers)
dsl 1700 down / 256 up
XP corparate  w service packs
DX 9x

the game runs perfectly smooth on all high settings. i have notice a 90% difference. however while not nearly as bad, i still rail on fools and bullets just wander off. this is a pb problem, with 256 ram before pb i did not have any problems. with my 256 when pb came out i got horible delay. now i hve more ram that overcomes most of the delay but its still off. i have not played like i use to in 1-2 months. and now when i was playing yesterday, there are cheaters like crazzy. all types of wallhacks. whats up?

I have this "lag" issue of bullets going into la-la land constantly.  I don't seem to remember it being this way at the start - maybe it's PB, maybe not.  There was one time that I was able to play without this lag - it was on Hexapalooza of all servers - it was at the beginning of the game, and for about 5 minutes I was a killer, I mean I aimed, shot and people dropped.  Then as more people started logging on, it started - laggy play and well-aimed shots not hitting their target.  It wasn't me just starting to suck, I could tell the moment it started.  Maybe the server was just overloaded, maybe punkbuster is doing too many checks, I dunno.

So as a experiement today I turned off impact prediction, and was surprised to hear a (to me) looong delay between when I shot and when the bullet impacted the wall.  I recorded it and it turns out to be around 200 ms of delay, on a server that was reading 94 ping in the in-game browser.  Does this make sense?  Anyone else tried this?

I know that SOF2 is a line-of-sight system that does not model bullet travel time, so this seems a little long to me.

yea i know for a fact that pb is doign some funky stuff that is lagging. just my from tests , read up a little i know there is a ton of junk to read but you can see some of the test that i did, and i even think i have a couple of demos that realy shows it. with all this ram i cant see it as plain but its still there. i duno. i dont know how to get the actual data on when the bullets left and my end how long pb takes to do what ever it does and what the server is saying, but some where there are issues.

Last night I was doing well for me... 27-10.  Tons of people on the server.  

Then, suddenly people weren't dropping.  My ping was still around 50... But I started to get shot and get no kills.

This struck an old nerve.  At spawn I fired a shot into the wall and sure enough... shot..<pause> ... shot hits the wall.

My ping was still in the 50 range.

It happens...  Its a game...  I admit I lost my fun and left but that is part of online gaming (which is why the "I ownz chu" stuff is meaningless).

i never had this problem like this untill pb came out. not like this. i am not talking about regulag lag that you can get. i am talking about lag that is beeing cuased by pb. i did the test and its very clear.

i think its over for me, shooting perfectly at people they dont die, and it takes less then half of that to kill me. others complain about it also. i think i am gona retire from sof2. i love playing sof2 but this is rediculas. i am allready playing less and less, maybe it time to make it official.

its strange....some people get it, some not...

i think is prob down to cpu useage, taking ss's sending them cvar checks etc.

it bound to have an affect...

y dont you turn it off and play in a non PB server?

no i cant play only on non pb servers. here is a little history, i am a network admin, i have alot of down time at work. i use to play allmost all day at work, and i never got tired. 4 hours at  time easily. even before i got good. i have not found a non pb ctf server witch hooks me in. i have never found a non pb server that is allways full, had good players, with descent pings and no stupid mods. at times you can find descent non pb servers but there is nothing consistant. at least not that i have found. fec's server like i said before was pretty good but its inf / dem  and it just up and cut off every couple of hours it seems. i have done every thing i could think of to try to stick with this game, and got little help from staff and pb people. think its time to hang up my coat. and its not just me, alot of people get this. the only reason why i notice it so much is because i know how it was when it did not happen. and when the lag dies how i can actualy hit an idle camper and kill them before they turn around and evade or kill me. right now i shoot at people and just wait for the server to tell me i killed them. right now i can be aimed at some one head start shooting way before they even know whats happening. keeping my aim on the dot, and they start to shoot all late and just take me out on the spot. bam dead, no head shot just me dead. i know wierd stuff happned some times, but this is a constant thing. there would have been no posible way for them to get a shoot off period, it was my kill period, close enough to see that i aimed perfectly and for me to know that they had not shoot yet. if i was not as skilled in the game i would just write it off. but i know there is no posible way. i turn on peopel all the time who get the jump on me and kill them. this is not like this, i had a head shot, period, nothing in the world would have stoped this from beeing a head shot. but for some reason they just rail me down. this has not only happned once. other times i am just shooting peopel all over the head single shots /  light burst / bursts/ auto, and they just back peddle there way out of sight, or i get killed. know i know that these are clear death shots, if not headies. i am just sitting here railing on this guy untill the server decides ok hes dead now. then all of a sudden i make a lousy shot running around in transition, barely grazes some dudes head and i get a head shot. no consistantsy.i can blab on about this crap all day. so i will stop here. i dotn know what else to do but hang it up.

Hey purewrath - do you normally run the game with a bunch of extra stuff in the base folder, such as maps?  If so, here's something else for you to try.  I went through my base folder and realized I had like 20 user-created maps (some of which I have never even seen run on a server) and I figured maybe PB was having fits rifling through them all.  So I deleted the ones I never use, and also deleted some large mp3 files I was using as in-game music.  I may be crazy, but the game seems to have improved.  I don't know if it is the # of files, or a specific pk3 file, but the game seems to be a little better.  I've run for 3 nights on a variety of servers, and while normal lag is still present, the disappearing bullets act seems to have died down, at least for me.

i have did many many thing to try to resolve this. read a little up in the post and you see, i know its alot. i have did alot, i recently install my OS from scratch. i ran the game after a clean install before i even installed one thing. (this is before i got my new ram and card). then i ran it after i installed service packs more drivers, and every thing just building up to see if it would change.i ran the game on every poisble setting that i know of.