Team Fortress 2 low framerate

[mizzl]

Hello lads at TPU! Please help me out here.
I love playing TF2, and I'm sure some of you do too. However, I have one quite annoying problem.
You see, I have very low framerate at times of much action (nades everywhere, rockets everywhere, people everywhere etc.), sometimes even as low as 30-20fps.
Now this would not be a big problem were it not for that I own one of the best videocards out there, namely an ATI HD5850. I reckon paired with a Core i7 920 it should not reach framerates that low.
Mind you I have all settings on max and 8xMSAA with multicore rendering enabled. However, lowering all settings seems to have no effect whatsoever on the fps.
Does this sound strange to you or am I just overreacting and does this sound normal

 

[erocker]

Have you tried disabling multicore rendering?

 

[Reefer86]

virtical sync also can lower your frames alot or give the illusion of it. that does sound very strange i max the games on a x550 (amd dual) and 4890

 

[mizzl]

Disabling multicore doesn't help a bit. Vsync is also off. This is very odd.

 

[erocker]

Drivers and DirectX up to date?

DirectX: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3

 

[mizzl]

Yeh both. Catalyst is now at v9.12 I think.
BTW the review of the HD5850 says that it should get around 80fps. What am I missing here?

 

[IINexusII]

and what resolution?

 

[erocker]

Well, when a lot of things are going on things become CPU dependant. Pehaps try raising the voltage on your CPU a bit and test it out. Games like TF2 can be harder on a system than something like LinX or OCCT.

 

[MK4512]

Yes, TF2 is CPU dependant, but I can run it on all highest settings (and beyond with tweaks) with no issues. (60+ fps) there is no reason that your i7 shouldn't do much much better.

 

[TheMailMan78]

How many processes do you have running in the background?

 

[Mussels]

what soundcard?

 

[patheticcockroach]

However, lowering all settings seems to have no effect whatsoever on the fps.

Interesting. I have the same problem although this is probably due to my laptop not being too powerful: around 30 FPS no matter how I lower the settings (always at 1440x900). So I just configured all settings back to max, so it remains slow but at least I don't have poor graphics

 

[Mussels]

make sure Vsync is off, too

 

[patheticcockroach]

Yeah, vsync off, vsync on (triple buffering, I've got plenty too much of VRAM), I tried all possible settings (except lowering the resolution) and it didn't really make a difference (well, maybe I moved from 30 to 35 FPS but that's all). Even tried reinstalling the whole game, same. Then I just gave up because 30 FPS isn't so bad after all.

 

[Soylent Joe]

Are you reading the FPS using cl_showfps or by using FRAPS?

 

[patheticcockroach]

FRAPS... right, I suppose I should try cl_showfps too. Will do tonight.

 

[mizzl]

Yes, I'm checking with cl_showfps and still the same. Funny thing is, I overclocked my i7 to 3.8ghz so cpu speed should be the last of my worries. I wonder if changing the affinity to two cores changes anything..

 

[Mussels]

Yes, I'm checking with cl_showfps and still the same. Funny thing is, I overclocked my i7 to 3.8ghz so cpu speed should be the last of my worries. I wonder if changing the affinity to two cores changes anything..

hell, its possible the games being a tard and trying to run off a virtual core. that'd screw with performance.


You dont run F@H or anything in the background do you?

 

[mizzl]

hell, its possible the games being a tard and trying to run off a virtual core. that'd screw with performance.


You dont run F@H or anything in the background do you?

Nopes. Also, I haven't enabled HyperThreading, so no virtual cores either. What the hell is going on here?

 

[patheticcockroach]

FRAPS... right, I suppose I should try cl_showfps too. Will do tonight.

Results with cl_showfps are a bit different: I tend to remain around 30-35 FPS as a base, but quite often hit in the 60s for a few milliseconds. Oh, well, it's smooth enough anyway.

 

[selway89]

Hey all, I have exactly the same problem...
Radeon 5850 with a Core2Duo E4500 @ 3.4GHz 4GB RAM and I'm getting 30fps and lower, which it hasn't done before. Changing the settings etc. has had no effect. Even disabled my anti virus active scanning etc. and still nothing. Updated to cats 9.12 too.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[oli_ramsay]

Are you playing on 32 man servers?

The game is designed for 24 man servers and the framerate drops a lot after that.

 

[SUPERREDDEVIL]

this is normal when you get into a full players server (32 for example) and all r battling at the same time, the engine needs to do a lot of work, and much more adecuatting this to your system specs. so don´t worry, even on fastest machines this happens. of course background processes and other software affects the performance of gaming, and Vsync but it´s a normal stuff on online multiplayer games

 

[patheticcockroach]

so don´t worry, even on fastest machines this happens. of course background processes and other software affects the performance of gaming, and Vsync but it´s a normal stuff on online multiplayer games

Well, Enemy Territory runs perfectly on an Athlon 64 3500+ with a GeForce 6600 GT with 45+ players on the server, so I don't think that just because it's an online game it shouldn't run smoothly on a completely overpowered computer like the OP's PC.

 

[SUPERREDDEVIL]

Well, Enemy Territory runs perfectly on an Athlon 64 3500+ with a GeForce 6600 GT with 45+ players on the server, so I don't think that just because it's an online game it shouldn't run smoothly on a completely overpowered computer like the OP's PC.

but it´s a different game engine