Any clues on my mysterious lag problem?

Ida

deer
aa
Jan 6, 2008
2,289
1,372
So, I've had this problem since I TF2 was released. Well, actually, my old laptop sucked so much that I had constant lag, but then I bought a new laptop that's supposed to handle gaming quite well. And as far as I know, Source games aren't particularly resource-hogging.

Now, on to the problem - Lag. Lag that I can't possibly explain, which is why I'm begging for help. I've made a topic on this before (maybe a year ago or something), but no one replied, so I'm going to make one more attempt. The lag I'm experiencing is your typical low fps, made worse by large numbers of players and effects and whatnot (usually around 20 fps when nothing is happening, gets down to nearly 10 fps when some action is going on), resulting in slow, choppy movements on my part and attacks that are impossible to anticipate because when I see it and react, the game has already decided the outcome. You get the idea.

What makes this strange is that when I turned down all graphics setting to the absolute minimum (not counting console commands to decrease graphics further), my fps went from an average of ~15 to an average of ~25, which is still far below what I know I can get (60~80 fps). It's also worth noting that my fps is pretty much not affected by my ping. At all.
Ok, so I also had burninggibs and high resolution, but the point is that I can get high fps with decent graphics on a good day.

This lag usually comes in "waves" that last some days (if I first start lagging, it takes a while before things are normal), which is especially weird as I can't think of an explanation as to why it comes and goes like that. It's just weird. Sorry, I know it seems stupid to make a new topic about such a common problem, but I'm convinced this is not normal - and I'm desperate to know what I can do. And no, I don't want fps configs - if you paid attention, this should be obvious.
 
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J4CK8

L11: Posh Member
Mar 4, 2009
820
243
I had a major fps problem with TF2 that came after the spy/sniper update. It was dropping my fps into the 20's at its highest and 10 at most whenever a pyro was nearby. The classless update though appears to have fixed this problem now, but I did manage to increase it before hand by fiddleing with the aspect ratio, and wierdly turning widescreen off seemed to have the ebst result.

I'm not saying this will fix your problem but it's worth a try to mess around with all your settings and try diferent combinations.
 

Rikka

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 10, 2009
208
388
I'm having a different problem, but similar problem. About every 30 seconds my FPS tanks. As time goes on my normal FPS gets worse, the intervals between tanks shortens, and the amount it tanks increases.
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
aa
Jul 31, 2009
1,590
410
I have high FPS, my lag spikes are probably some sort of [ame=http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=824905]freaky network send-blocking error[/ame].

One time I got crap FPS, but it was because Steam.exe was doing something weird and hogging 40% CPU.
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
aa
Jul 31, 2009
1,590
410
Apparently a workaround for the "high quality models all the time" bug is to set r_lod to use only low-poly models.