CS:S.. all choppy for me the past month.. other games run fine.. wtf?

[brxndxn]

I have a Radeon 9500 hardmodded to a 9700 and use the latest Omega drivers. After a long-ass update (hadn't played CS:S for a few months), CS:S is running sh!tty for me.

It takes 2-3 minutes to join a server - used to take like 10 seconds. And, the game runs choppy - despite the framerate saying it's 40-70fps..

I don't know what to do about it.. I've tried disabling all running software and services - and it still runs choppy. I tried disabling and enabling HDR..

How can I fix it?

 

[AsianriceX]

See if you can force the game to use DX8 shaders by adding -dxlevel 81 to the command line...
Maybe that'll help you out.

 

[PseudoKnight]

Defrag.

 

[Injury]

Does it run choppy when you lower the settings?

How are the temps on your card? Could it be that since you last played dust has stopped up a fan's exhaust?

Any bulging caps or anything of the sort?

Defiantely try defrag and ensure there is no malware on your PC that could be stealing processing power.

 

[brxndxn]

Originally posted by: Injury
Does it run choppy when you lower the settings?

How are the temps on your card? Could it be that since you last played dust has stopped up a fan's exhaust?

Any bulging caps or anything of the sort?

Defiantely try defrag and ensure there is no malware on your PC that could be stealing processing power.

there's like no dust in my pc.. I cleaned it a month ago. Also, I changed out the fan and sinks on the graphics card - works perfect.

If I lower the settings, it's still choppy.. But either way, I always ran it at 1280/1024 and it ran great.. now, choppy.

gonna try the adding -dxlevel 81 command..

 

[PseudoKnight]

This isn't a graphical issue. Defrag and check your rates.

 

[juiio]

If you have a dual proc system or a hyperthreading system, you must change process affinity, or you're doomed.

You can test this out by:
- Start CS:S
- Go to task manager
- Right-click on the process and choose "Set affinity"
- Change it so that only "CPU 0" is checked and click OK

You can make this a little more permanent with imagecfg.exe:
- Quit CS:S and Steam
- Download imagecfg from http://www.robpol86.com/Pages/imagecfg.php
- Run this: "imagecfg.exe -a 0x1 C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steam.exe"
- Note that you have to redo this after a Steam update.

 

[brxndxn]

Originally posted by: PseudoKnight
This isn't a graphical issue. Defrag and check your rates.

I defrag like once a week.. I have a 300GB SATA ncq drive and a 200gb ide drive. CS:S is on the 300GB SATA drive. I have 1gb ram.. so it really shouldn't depend on the hard drive anyway.

 

[ShOcKwAvE827]

I had a really strange problem like this on my laptop where it would take forever to load a map and then like 10 minutes to quit the game. Gameplay would be so choppy because it would try loading sounds using 100% hard drive utilization. Dunno it was weird. I tried reinstalling just the CS:source part, but I would load up 1 map and it would come back on the map change. I then just uninstalled Steam totally and reinstalled, worked like a charm. You might try that even though its a pita.