Re: need to get more fps

**Kerostasis** · 11-22-2006, 08:26 PM

You're probably on to something. I'll keep an eye out, and try that next time.

**lagarto** · 11-26-2006, 06:15 PM

I'll take the chance to ask you guys something now that there's a thread for this.

First, these are my specs:

AMD Sempron 2400+
ATI Radeon 9800SE 256-bit
512MB Ram 333Mhz

So, lately I've been noticing low fps when there's some action on screen, or even in Marine Start with a lot of buildings, without people. As far as I can recall, I used to get mostly above 70fps before, and I still get em sometimes, but they drop as low as 30 or so, which I don't think happened before.

Now, I thought about it and I think it all started with the last Steam update, which forced me to make hl.exe a low priority process because of mouse lag, but I'm not really sure if that was the starting point.

I'm also trying to watch for overheating. Right after I closed Natural Selection, my CPU was at 59°C, after a while it came back to 53°C. I had overheating problems like a year ago, which I solved with a case fan. But I think I'm still in the border with temperature.

So, what do you guys think it's more likely ? Either I've been playing like this forever and just now realized (I dont think so because I know about fps since like 5 years ago), either the low priority thing is affecting me, or my CPU is overheating slightly ?

**bentring** · 11-27-2006, 01:39 AM

The temp increase could be dust or something else blocking part of the airflow if it's been a year since you've opened the case. I don't see how a hot cpu could be causing fps drop though.

I'm more curious about the mouse lag part. Did making hl.exe low priority help? I've had mouse (and kb) lag for a bit and it gets quite frustrating.

**lagarto** · 11-27-2006, 04:29 PM

Yep, the keyboard / mouse lag is totally gone when I make hl.exe low priority. I'd still love to see this fixed by Valve though, it's annoying to do it everytime I open NS, not to mention that I suspect it's lowering my fps.

There's lots of forum posts in Steampowered.com about this input lag, and there's even a topic in this forum itself, you should check them out.

EDIT:

About my FPS. For some reason, yesterday I desperately decided to post here before even running tests myself. I just loaded ns_veil, turned sv_cheats 1 and built random stuff. I kept an eye on my fps, everything seemed fine, then I made hl.exe "below normal" priority and my fps indeed dropped a lot. I took a screenshot, and with normal priority I get 87.5fps, with low only 61.2fps.

If anyone else tries "below normal" priority, let me know what did you observe.

**Iceberg** · 11-28-2006, 12:45 PM

More fps, here's what you need to do:

When you have 100+ FPS on your screen (no action/entities) you should store about 25 of your frames in an FPS vault. Over time you will increase your spare FPS stored in this FPS vault. Then when you finally do get into a situation where your FPS is taking a hit due to the action on screen, just open up the FPS vault and start using the spare frames to increase your framerate.

**Wyzcrak** · 11-28-2006, 12:49 PM

squeak for president

**Kittamaru** · 11-28-2006, 12:55 PM

If you want a big fps increase, try this (**WARNING**) Expensive

Get a SATA hard drive. SATA is much faster than IDE.
Get Dual Channel memory + a MoBo that can handle it. I went from 2 gigs in single channel to 2 gigs dual channel and holy hannah it's awsome.

Freebie- download TweakXP. It helps. Don't ask me why, it just did

That and having your PC shutdown or boot in like, 10 seconds is nice

Make sure your vid/sound/mobo drivers are up to date.

To fix the low priority thing- try setting it to above normal. It might help

Also, be sure to delete Norton or McAffe from your PC and install AVG AntiVirus and SpyBot Search and Destroy. both are free and I've had wonderful times with both

Never had a virus get in, manage to catch and remove any spyware that slips by the resident shield, and I only had one worm, and it was caught, quarantiened, and deleted before I could say holy ****, I have a worm

**Annie** · 11-30-2006, 12:59 AM

I've been asked by a number of people to post my config, since I get easily 100 FPS with an R9200 Mobility 32mb (laptops suck) so here it is:

The bit about GL_TEXTUREMODE I copied into my config from another topic on these forums, because I didn't have all the possible settings for it.

All of these settings are CAL/competitive legal as far as I know. If this is not the case, please tell me and I'll take appropriate action.

//general game config

// makes tracers easier to see
tracerred "0"
tracergreen "240"
tracerblue "0"
traceralpha "50"
tracerlength "750"
traceroffset "0.1"
tracerspeed "1000"

//following settings are listed in order of speed , first being fastest but poorest
//quality , last being best quality but slowest.
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_NEAREST"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_LINEAR"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"
//GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_NEAREST"
GL_TEXTUREMODE "GL_NEAREST"

//graphics settings

fps_max "100"
gl_affinemodels "0"
gl_alphamin "0.25"
gl_clear "0"
gl_cull "1"
gl_dither "1"
gl_keeptjunctions "0"
gl_lightholes "0"
gl_max_size "256" // this should never go under 128 (looks like crap)
gl_monolights "0"
gl_palette_tex "0"
gl_picmip "0"
gl_playermip "2"
gl_polyoffset "0.1"
gl_reporttjunctions "0"
gl_round_down "3"
gl_texsort "1"
gl_wateramp "0"
gl_ztrick "1"
cl_download_ingame "0" // no downloading in game (duh)
cl_dynamiclights "0" // disable dynamic lights
cl_forcedefaultfov "1"
cl_gammaramp "1"
cl_highdetail "0" // high detail particle systems on/off
cl_himodels "0"
cl_particleinfo "0"
ati_subdiv "0"
ati_npatch "0"
r_detailtextures "0"
r_dynamic "0" // disable dynamic lights (again)
r_lightmap "0"
r_mirroralpha "0"
r_mmx "1"
r_norefresh "0"
r_traceglow "0"
viewsize "120"
gl_spriteblend "1" // makes blood and stuff easier to see, at least IME (ymmv though)
d_spriteskip "0"
cl_bob "0"
cl_bobup "0"
cl_bobcycle "0"
r_decals "80" // (0-4096) maximum number of decals (explosions, blood splatters, bulletholes (MORE == LAG))
mp_decals "80" // see above (

// sound settings

loadas8bit "0" // load 8bit sounds, slight performance increase but a lot of sounds are weird or even unpleasant to the ears
s_refdelay "4"
s_refgain "0.4"
s_rolloff "1.0"
s_verbwet "0.25"
s_automax_distance "60.0"
s_automin_distance "6.0"
s_bloat "2.0"
s_distance "240"
s_doppler "10"
s_eax "1" // enable EAX for 3d sound goodness, mmmm
s_leafnum "0"
s_max_distance "20000"
s_min_distance "5"
s_numpolys "100"
s_polykeep "1000000000"
s_polysize "10000000"
cl_musicenabled "0"
cl_musicdelay "0.000000"
cl_musicdirectory ""
cl_musicvolume "0.000000"

// interp/cmdrate

cl_smoothtime 0 // the amount of smoothing time
ex_extrapmax "2"
ex_interp "0.035" // low interp for more 'real' positions
cl_cmdrate "100"
cl_updaterate "50"
cl_rate "9999" // command is depricated but it keeps me company at night
rate "21000"

// misc

joystick "0" // joysticks blow
sv_aim "0" // lol
developer "0" // 100 fps limit
cl_allowdownload "0" // don't download other decals
cl_allowupload "1" // allow others to see your spray
cl_dlmax "128" // maximum download speed, not sure of unit
cl_upspeed "64" // maximum upload speed, not sure of unit
cl_timeout "600"
room_type "0" // reset the room type (fixes maps with an 'echo' or if room_type doesn't reset after digestion)
waterroom_type "0" // same as above but for water, I guess
con_notifytime "0" // changes the time it takes for an item to appear in your console, set to 0 for immediate, 4 is default
cl_musicenabled "0"
cl_musicdirectory ""
cl_musicvolume "0.0"
cl_showerror "0"

**degamer106** · 12-07-2006, 02:01 PM

Annie, I tried your config but I don't see much of a difference during firefights (that is my FPS drops a bit). I can get consistent FPS while walking down a hallway but if I walk into a room with 10+ marines and a skulk walks in, there's no way I can track him.

**Kerostasis** · 12-08-2006, 01:40 PM

I solved my FPS problem though. Turned out, my Anti-virus program had mysteriously activated automatic-updates while I wasnt looking, and it was running its updates during games. I turned it off, but you can never be sure it wont turn itself back on. But I've got a backup plan! My subscription runs out tomorrow, and I'm not renewing, so it can't download anything at all anymore.

**Flarfignuggen** · 12-09-2006, 11:28 AM

Antivirus is overrated, just don't be stupid on where you go and you'll be fine... The only times it is really nice is when you run into something that hooked into an advertisement on a website.
Otherwise, I just use those things as a timer for "hey, time to reformat!" if I happen to run into something.
Not like Norton did ANY good against coolwebsearch... ugh... that took me days to figure out how to eradicate and it took like 30 required registry keys with it... granted, it was funny when it got on my win98 PC, it was configured for winxp and it couldn't install itself... lol.
----------------------------------------------------------------
What was I talking about? Oh yes.

Annie's config made my game run worse. It also made it look worse. I don't know how that works in logic, but still, results are results. Granted, my computer isn't exactly the best test for this. (Don't mock me, this was a good PC... back in the day.)

1200mhz p3, 512mb ram, gforce fx5700 which is newer than the computer, but runs at 2xAGP because of P.O.S. ASUS tuv4x motherboard (where, humorously enough, the "4x" was supposed to be the selling point that it could run the "ultrafast, brand-new" AGP 4x... when it can't...), and a dying... I want to say... Creative EMU10k1 soundcard. Couple other factors, but eh.

**xtcmen** · 12-09-2006, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by lagarto

I'll take the chance to ask you guys something now that there's a thread for this.

First, these are my specs:

AMD Sempron 2400+
ATI Radeon 9800SE 256-bit
512MB Ram 333Mhz

So, lately I've been noticing low fps when there's some action on screen, or even in Marine Start with a lot of buildings, without people. As far as I can recall, I used to get mostly above 70fps before, and I still get em sometimes, but they drop as low as 30 or so, which I don't think happened before.

Now, I thought about it and I think it all started with the last Steam update, which forced me to make hl.exe a low priority process because of mouse lag, but I'm not really sure if that was the starting point.

I'm also trying to watch for overheating. Right after I closed Natural Selection, my CPU was at 59°C, after a while it came back to 53°C. I had overheating problems like a year ago, which I solved with a case fan. But I think I'm still in the border with temperature.

So, what do you guys think it's more likely ? Either I've been playing like this forever and just now realized (I dont think so because I know about fps since like 5 years ago), either the low priority thing is affecting me, or my CPU is overheating slightly ?

ALL ATI CARDS suck balls in big rooms. I use the same except a radeon 9800 pro 128 and an AMD athlon 3200+ and I get like 70-80 in MS and hive rooms in scrimms.

Just deal with it imo.

**Satertek** · 12-11-2006, 09:18 PM

LCD monitors are capped at 60Hz, so if your framerate is over 60 it can cause tearing and actually look worse. My CRT can reasonably go to 85Hz, 120Hz at lower resolutions, so anything over that dosn't do anything at all...except make you "feel" better, heh. (This is what VSync does, caps the game's FPS to your refresh rate)

**1Stop|Beowulf** · 12-12-2006, 10:10 PM

yeah, unless you can get to 120 fps reliably, you'll experience nasty tearing.

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