Team Fortress 2 Help

[ThirdEye95]

Well I just tried the game again, and it's still having the same lag issues. I don't think there's anything left that I can do really :/ I'll probably just have to leave it, thanks for the help anyway guys

 

[NorthernTrooper]

If your playing over a wireless connection, try using VAL (Vista Anti Lag) Fixed my problems immediately.

 

[Pandora92]

Hm, I can think of 2 things of the top of my head that could be causing this, one is your anti-virus doesn't like TF2 writing to a certain stats file constantly, or it's the issue where Windows Vista/7 throttles your network traffic to 10 packets per ms which can cause stuttering.

More information and the fixes both for issues here [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=d7edc86f46287307d53d1aa27294334e&t=1093560] and here [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1043281] but for the second one you need to be comfortable with editing your registry, otherwise I wouldn't attempt it.

Also as others have said you should always make sure you leave roughly 10% of your HDD free on smaller HDDs for the OS to use for the swap/paging file, otherwise you could run into issues.

Vista is also pretty resource intensive, used to cause me issues on a few games and it also takes up a fair amount of HDD space, worst case scenario formatting and swapping to XP would probably help you but that's obviously a major step to take for game performance and a last resort depending on how much you wanna play TF2 smoothly.

And a hair-dryer would work similarly to a can of compressed air, just make sure you have one that can blow COLD air without heating it up, and don't get it too close to any components because it can bend transistors if the airflow is too strong, also the EM field from motor creating the blowing can cause problems if you get the back near enough to the circuitry.

You could also try some of the suggestions in this [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1059495] thread, we've covered some of them already but the others could help, especially the FPS configs, although I would REALLY recommend you use CCleaner rather than the primary one recommended there, much more reliable and less likely to cause issues in my experience (it's also good for cleaning out temp and crap files on your computer to free up disk space, it manages to find much more than Windows Disk Cleanup does usually).

 

[Steve the Pocket]

These are the recommended specs for TF2:

Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0GHz, or better), 1GB RAM, DirectX® 9 level Graphics Card, Windows® Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection.

You cover everything aside from the Processor power, because your total Processing power is 2.89 GHz, and even though that TF2 supports Multicore processors, 2.89 GHz simply isn't enough to handle everything that's going on, including all the Particle Effects and Physics, coupled with your quite low graphics card. All I can suggest again is turning everything down graphics wise, including your DirectX level (Just google TF2 DirectX 8 and you'll see some helpful links) Or just getting a new computer altogether.

Bull. The 3GHz stat is for Pentium 4's only; any modern processors should be able to top that. Most new processors are well under 3GHz. An entire second core should be quite enough to make up for the missing .11 GHz of speed, even if the multi-threading isn't that great.

I am concerned about that hard drive though. Only 30 gigs? I didn't think they even made them that small after Vista came out. Get that thing replaced, man! 300 GB ones are like 50 bucks on Newegg; trust me, it'll be worth it. And if you bought a laptop that soon after Vista came out, you're lucky the damn thing can run at all. I was asked to take a look at a problem laptop once in early 2007 that literally couldn't boot up all the way because Vista was trying to use more RAM than it actually had.

Come to think of it, how much RAM do you have? That could well be it.

 

[ThirdEye95]

These are the recommended specs for TF2:

Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0GHz, or better), 1GB RAM, DirectX® 9 level Graphics Card, Windows® Vista/XP/2000, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection.

You cover everything aside from the Processor power, because your total Processing power is 2.89 GHz, and even though that TF2 supports Multicore processors, 2.89 GHz simply isn't enough to handle everything that's going on, including all the Particle Effects and Physics, coupled with your quite low graphics card. All I can suggest again is turning everything down graphics wise, including your DirectX level (Just google TF2 DirectX 8 and you'll see some helpful links) Or just getting a new computer altogether.

Bull. The 3GHz stat is for Pentium 4's only; any modern processors should be able to top that. Most new processors are well under 3GHz. An entire second core should be quite enough to make up for the missing .11 GHz of speed, even if the multi-threading isn't that great.

I am concerned about that hard drive though. Only 30 gigs? I didn't think they even made them that small after Vista came out. Get that thing replaced, man! 300 GB ones are like 50 bucks on Newegg; trust me, it'll be worth it. And if you bought a laptop that soon after Vista came out, you're lucky the damn thing can run at all. I was asked to take a look at a problem laptop once in early 2007 that literally couldn't boot up all the way because Vista was trying to use more RAM than it actually had.

Come to think of it, how much RAM do you have? That could well be it.

I know, it's ridiculous. I have got a 500gb external hard drive, but that still isn't the main drive. I do have about 3Gbs of RAM, so I'm sure that isn't the problem...

 

[ThirdEye95]

If your playing over a wireless connection, try using VAL (Vista Anti Lag) Fixed my problems immediately.

How do you do that?

 

[ThirdEye95]

Hm, I can think of 2 things of the top of my head that could be causing this, one is your anti-virus doesn't like TF2 writing to a certain stats file constantly, or it's the issue where Windows Vista/7 throttles your network traffic to 10 packets per ms which can cause stuttering.

More information and the fixes both for issues here [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?s=d7edc86f46287307d53d1aa27294334e&t=1093560] and here [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1043281] but for the second one you need to be comfortable with editing your registry, otherwise I wouldn't attempt it.

Also as others have said you should always make sure you leave roughly 10% of your HDD free on smaller HDDs for the OS to use for the swap/paging file, otherwise you could run into issues.

Vista is also pretty resource intensive, used to cause me issues on a few games and it also takes up a fair amount of HDD space, worst case scenario formatting and swapping to XP would probably help you but that's obviously a major step to take for game performance and a last resort depending on how much you wanna play TF2 smoothly.

And a hair-dryer would work similarly to a can of compressed air, just make sure you have one that can blow COLD air without heating it up, and don't get it too close to any components because it can bend transistors if the airflow is too strong, also the EM field from motor creating the blowing can cause problems if you get the back near enough to the circuitry.

You could also try some of the suggestions in this [http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1059495] thread, we've covered some of them already but the others could help, especially the FPS configs, although I would REALLY recommend you use CCleaner rather than the primary one recommended there, much more reliable and less likely to cause issues in my experience (it's also good for cleaning out temp and crap files on your computer to free up disk space, it manages to find much more than Windows Disk Cleanup does usually).

Thanks for the advise, I'll try these things out ;D I have considered swapping to XP, but yeah, that is a pretty big step to take

 

[Corpse XxX]

Try other servers, and put graphic settings lower.. Or buy a brand new gaming computer just for TF2..
Thats what i did..

I bought a super Pc just so i could play TF2 on full settings, thats how awesome that game is.

Pc set me back 1500 dollars, Icore 7, 6 giga ram, 1,5 TB HDD.. So worth it!

 

[el sparko]

There is a really big section in the Steam Forums about lag issues in tf2, you should have a look there

 

[ThirdEye95]

When you say "lag," do you mean actual lag in the online gameplay, or do you mean a drop in frame rate?

If you mean a drop in frame rate, I have a similar problem if I set Multicore Rendering to "Enabled" in the advanced video settings section. When I play with it disabled, My game stops stuttering. Try turning that off, if it isn't already.

Yeah, I'm sure that the lag is a drop in frame rate. I'll make sure the Multicore rendering is turned off next time I go on.

 

[ActionDan]

Alright, the graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce 7000M / nForce 610M, and the internet connection is usually fine, works well when I play online on my Xbox 360. One problem I have found though, is that I have 20.9 mb of space left on my C: drive :S do you think that might be a problem?

Well the graphics isn't too bad, but the Hard drive is definetely going to be struggling with the lack of space. Are you running on a laptop by any chance? Also still waiting for what your Processor model is.

Have you tried doing a Disk cleanup? Vista and 7 makes a lot of System Restores, which can take up a lot of memory. Once I did a Disk Cleanup and It cleared about 30 Gb's of useless stuff.

Yeah, it's a laptop. I've tried clearing space many times, but I'm finding it hard to find things to delete to free up space

I've done Disk cleanups before, so I only got rid of about 18 MB this time. I think the main problem is Vista being so large and taking up most of the space on the drive.

When you next do one (I suggest now) that when it comes up with all the bits that are taking up space, click on the "More options" tab at the top of the window, and click on the "Clean up" button of the "System Restores and Shadows Copies" section.

Just tried that, but when I clicked it just said are you sure you want to get rid of this, etc and then nothing happened.

Yea that's fine. It does that, but there now should be more free space left.