NS2 Bi-polar frame rate.

Greetings all! Love the game design and concept of NS2... not too crazy about the engine. Maybe you guys can help me get past my excessive frame rate drops so I can better enjoy the game. I'd be super grateful!

I built a new computer about 2 months ago:

i5 4670k
8 Gigs of RAM
and two GTX 760s running in SLI
Windows 7 Ultimate x64


Most of the time (when running around with my marine buddies) my frame rate is well above 100 (usually between 130 and 170), but as soon as we enter a battle (depending on the number of players), my frame rate can drop all the way down to the 50s. I'm playing at the lowest possible in-game quality settings (almost) and at my monitor's native resolution of 1080p (required for 144hz). My NVidia settings are also set to "best performance." .... The great majority of the time (almost always) r_stats is giving me 0ms for waiting on the GPU, so that tells me my CPU is the bottleneck. Is this normal? My CPU's not THAT bad is it?

I've also tried overclocking my CPU to 4.5ghz... This gives me about a 20% increase to my frame rate. Do I need to get a new CPU? Because I'll probably do it, as I really enjoy playing NS2. Secondly, what CPU do I need to get in order to maintain a steady 140+ frame rate?

Are there any tests or logs I can post to help my case?

Thank you all who took the time to read my post. I really hope we can figure this one out.


Thanks again,

DemoNn