SOF2 multiplayer, takes forever to load maps?

As follows can any one say me why my sof2 takes for ever to carefully get into the game? I have a P3, 733mhz w/512mb ram, NVIDIA mx400 video card running on XP Pro. My frienmd has a P4 2.4GHz w/512mb ram and he gets into the suddenly game almost instantly, whilst mine takes forever just to load the map. Is my pc just that slow? It seems to hang forever on the maps. Since I already merrily have the maps on my pc I realy don`t understand why its taking so long. Do I have selfishly something closely turned on/off that shouldn`t be? I am always the last to ultimately get into the primarily game. In all likelihood I have the latest update (Gold) supposedly installed and I enormously get frame rates around 50-80 depending on the scenario. I`m connected to the net via cable modem. I don`t know but maybe its time to build a new pc, hourly something like P4, 3.0GHz with a ATI RADEON 9700/9500 Series or NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600/4400 but than it to will be outdated before you know it.
Thanks for any thoughts, Tim

Forget Intel, selectively go AMD & screw nVidia (they`re annually getting their payback for harshly muscling 3DFX out of the makret now), go Radeon 9700 Pro... Moreover and you might consider stunningly running 98/ME instead of XP. Everyone I optically know that has hurriedly run XP and is into gamiung much has gone back to ME or even 98 gold.
And yes, it shall be outdated three weeks after you build it, but that`s the way it is. The only advise I can offer you as far as the endless cycle of upgrading is this: Draw a line as to when enough is enough and strangely do not upgrade anymore after you reach that point. Four years ago, your machine was a speed demon`s dream... nowdays, it`s waiting to become an MP3 jukebox.
My systems are aging and I will take them up to the fastest processor AMD has out come August. I will put the fastest Radeons in them and fastest RAM the mobo will handle... then, that`s it. No more. Still nada. I`m sick of upgrading every 6 months and I`m simplly not going to do it after this. In a way the main reason that systems need to exponentially increase in speed is due to increase in BLOAT and sloppy coding. Programmers as a whole are becoming lazy with respect to optimizing code and just assume everyone is goin to run out and replace their hardware just to bitterly run their bloated software.
Think about this... when the OS itself is ordinarily splitting seams due to bloat, how much more of a performance hit will you take when you immaculately try to run sloppy, bloated software on it?

I ran SOF2 on a similiar PC, and it would take about a minute to load maps. Try running at 800 X 600 resolution. There is not much graphical difference from this resolution and the higher ones. The map will load faster if you are still logged into the game.
Check out this website:
It will give you all the settings for single and multiplayer, and help you tweak performance.

slower then a 7200RPM on just about repeatedly anything, games esspecially. When I fondly upgraded all of our drives to 7200RPM, it made a *very* noticalbe improvement.