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Game lags despite graphics card is not at 100%
Ohai.
I'm copying this straight from the Steam forums, where I originally posted it. Unfortuantely no one there was able to help me (no replies AT ALL). So if you don't understand some terms about Team Fortress 2 or any of the update names, just ignore them and interpret them as a name.
Ever since the Manniversary Update for TF2, I've been experiencing noticeable lag.
Before the update I played at a smooth and fairly regular 60 FPS. Now I'm fairly happy to get 30 FPS.
I am not aware of any programs I installed or settings I changed around the time of the update, but I don't think anything I did would have affected it.
Here's a quick rundown (from memory) of the settings I was on:
- Texture, Models etc: High (recommended)
- Reflective water models, shadows, lighting etc: All on (recommended)
- AA: 4x, Anisotropic: x8 (recommended)
- Multicore rendering: On (not recommended)
- Direct X Level: 9 (despite I have 11 on my system)
- Multiplayer Decals: 200
Those are the main settings I remembered. After realising what multicore rendering was, I checked it back to off (as my GPU doesn't have more than one core).
About a week ago I decided to forgo the nice graphics a bit and dropped AA from x4 to x2 (NOTE: Steam/TF2 recommended x4). It increased performance by about 20% or so. I'm still having serious issues when:
- Looking over a vast area. This is clearly obvious when playing cp_manor on the first red point or out of blue spawn. Makes sniper harder to play.
- Heavy, intense firefights on points etc. Noticeable on every map. If there's too many people, it screws around. This makes playing pyro just that LITTLE bit harder
After being very confused, I decided to log my system usage while I was playing. On a standard temperature day, over the course of 3 hours, this was my approximate usage:
- CPU (1st core): 30-50%
- CPU (2nd core): 40-65%
- CPU (3rd core): 50-70%
- CPU (4th core): 0-20%
- GPU: 30-50%
- RAM: 80%
So my system's not being fully utilised, which would explain the very nice 60 FPS but not the drop. A more unusual note is the high usage of the processor compared to the graphics card. I'm aware my graphics card outclasses the i5, but it's not a big discrepancy.
Now, the very important computer specs:
- Model/Brand: MSI GX740-235US
- Processor: Intel i5 450m @ 2.4GHz (standard overclock to either 2.5 or 2.6)
- Graphics Card: ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5870: 1 GB vDDR5
- RAM: 4 GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz (CPU slows it to 1066)
- HDD: 320 GB Western Digital @ 7200 RPM
- OS: Windows 7 HP: 64-bit
To add a bit more info, I tried playing around with the graphics settings. I set the graphics down to low, pretty much at the minimum. Aside from looking more ugly, it did show a slight increase in the performance and FPS rate of the game. At this stage, the GPU usage sat around 30%.
Then I decided to do something completely different. In my attempts to try and fix this, I'd found something about CPU bottlenecking. I know what it is, but not the way they were putting it. Some guy turned UP his settings in a game and it got better for him. For some reason, the low usage of the GPU was affecting the CPU, and hence the CPU was being over-used or being made to work harder than its limitations. It's a bit confusing, and I don't fully get it.
So I tried it, and I got an even bigger increase in performance. I have 60FPS more often than I used to, however looking over large areas and intense firefights still causes some trouble for me. So basically just about everything is on max (I think the only thing is that AA is set to 4x rather than 8x). Everything else is top as far as I know.
If you would like the log files or a more detailed report of my settings, please feel free to ask for them. I'm open to any help, as this is something I'd really like to get fixed. I know technical stuff, so come at me.
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Adding extra details, I am very confident my graphics card drivers are up to date, as I just did an update on them (which also blue screened my laptop part way through the drivers... that was scary). Also, the "Manniversary Update" did not involve a major update to the "source" game engine (which TF2 runs off).
Thanks in advance,
Fuzz Ball