TF2 - Poor Frame Rate?

[Mr Pickles]

I'm really mad. I can't explain why it happens, but my framerate drops to absolutely nothing when I jump into the heat of battle in TF2 now. Is it because of the updates or something that this is happening? Maybe I'm paranoid, but I think I can remember a time when my frame rate was good even when I was in a high pop server spamming the crap out of the blue entrance at dustbowls first level.

I don't have a horrible system, ATI Radeon 800x Series card, 2 gig of ram, P4 3.4. I did some experimenting with the video settings and put them as low as they could go and my frame rate still sucks when it gets really busy. My lag doesn't spike, it stays at 25-30 when I hop into servers close to me.

I can't explain it and I'm pretty frustrated; so much so that I can't really play right now. Has anyone else noticed this performance drop or is it just me? Are there any console commands that can lighten the load? Even when I use -dxlevel 80 it sucks...

EDIT: and what do you guys use to show your FPS? I'd like something that shows me how shitty it is.

 

[BassBomb]

x800 would be the limiting factor their

cpu also but a lesser extent

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
EDIT: and what do you guys use to show your FPS? I'd like something that shows me how shitty it is.

I use fraps for most games, though, IIRC, there is a console command to show FPS in TF2..

I could be mistaken, though.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
EDIT: and what do you guys use to show your FPS? I'd like something that shows me how shitty it is.

cl_showfps 1 in console should work, or you could use the net_graph commands. I find the first one is best though.

Do you have anything running in the background that could be killing your frames?

KT

 

[schneiderguy]

There was an update in november that affected the game performance for some people. Here is the 150 page thread on the steam forums about the issue, there isn't any fix at the moment. Something in the TF2 code is using too many CPU cycles causing people to become CPU limited like you are:

I did some experimenting with the video settings and put them as low as they could go and my frame rate still sucks when it gets really busy.

If you have a dual/quad core you can set mat_queue_mode to 2 which boosts performance at the cost of reduced stability of the game, but it looks like you're on a single core.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Originally posted by: schneiderguy
There was an update in november that affected the game performance for some people. Here is the 150 page thread on the steam forums about the issue, there isn't any fix at the moment. Something in the TF2 code is using too many CPU cycles causing people to become CPU limited like you are:

I did some experimenting with the video settings and put them as low as they could go and my frame rate still sucks when it gets really busy.

If you have a dual/quad core you can set mat_queue_mode to 2 which boosts performance at the cost of reduced stability of the game, but it looks like you're on a single core.

Yeah, I seem to have the same problem. OC'ing my e2200 to 3.0 ghz did nothing.

 

[Mr Pickles]

Its really bad. I did cl_showfps 2 and sure and my fps is great when I'm not around people. stable at something liek 70fps, but when there are a lot of people around and I get into the heat of battle it will drop as low as 10fps... deemed unplayable conditions. I'm pretty mad. I love TF2 but I can't afford to run out and upgrade.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
Its really bad. I did cl_showfps 2 and sure and my fps is great when I'm not around people. stable at something liek 70fps, but when there are a lot of people around and I get into the heat of battle it will drop as low as 10fps... deemed unplayable conditions. I'm pretty mad. I love TF2 but I can't afford to run out and upgrade.

An upgrade may not even solve the problem, so unfortunately it looks like we have to continue waiting for a fix.

 

[Scouzer]

The low FPS problem is one of the reasons I do not often play TF2