[CS:S] Something is Lagging

[xane]

Apologies in advance if there is a specific CS:S forum, I haven't been here for a while and the forums have changed again !

I am getting an intermittant problem playing CS:S, I'm not the best player in the world but sometimes it all seems a little strange, for example:

1. Often I see blood on my target confirming my hits, yet when I die the console reports no hits at all to anyone, this happens in situations which are one-on-one where no-one else could have been firing at my target.

2. Often I seem to instantly die from an immediate shot, but the console reports 4, 5 even 6 hits from my attacker, there is no way enough time passed between me seeing the that many shots and death, no damage warning splashes etc.

3. Recently, on one game, I was the last remaining CT, I chose the lame tactic of camping the dropped bomb, a T announced his arrival with a grenade and I lined up a shot for when he appears round the corner, then I got headshot, and _then_ I see the T appear in front of me, I hear others who were viewing me saying "wtf you doing" as if I just sat there waiting to be hit, but I did not see the T until after he kills me !

4. Similarly, plenty of enemies suddenly appearing in the room or from round a corner, without seeing them beforehand.

5. Totally wierd fluke hits happen all the time, in my favour, I have managed to headshot an enemy running past even though I am clearly aiming in the air after him, not before as you would lead a shot normally. Shots that I would blatently mark as wide will hit.

I get the feeling I am running a fraction of a second beyond everyone else, and even those spectating through me, my ping is fine and no obvious lagging is happening. I did have one problem of lagging (stuttering) which was linked to sound, solved by turning off audio hardware acceleration and later solved by a patch, but other than that the game seems to run smooth.

The only thing I can think of is I am still running a lowly GeForce 4 Ti4400, a non-DirectX9 card, and this has some inherant lag in the graphics.

Any help would be appreciated, I want to become a better player but if I can't determine if I hit anything then how do I practise aiming ?

TIA

[Trem]

Pop into our irc channel Xane(#xatrix) and pester throddy for his world famous config. It sorted my CS:S out a treat.

[throdgrain]

What rates are you using xane ? The standard ones are pretty low. For adsl I use rate 20000
cl_cmdrate 70
cl_updaterate 70

Also dont forget that cl_smooth 0 i told you about, if you dont have an autoexec you should add that every time you fire up the game, as it changes back to 1 otherwise.
Your graphics card is a bit pony ,but just keep an eye on the fps and assuming it doesnt often go below say 40 or even 35 I shouldnt think this would cause a problem.

Oh one more thing.

Camping a dropped bomb as Ct is NOT LAME. It is EXACTLY WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. This is NOT QUAKE !!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest

[xane]

throd, you did help me out in-game, at that point I had some choke, I did do cl_smooth 0 and the others and it solved the choke and its all in my autoexec now, but this is an ongoing problem.

I'm considering a Radeon 9800 Pro right now.

[throdgrain]

Well, of course other peoples rates are to be considered in this , though theres of course nothing you can do about that!
My choice in such circumstances is generally fire a few more bullets
Oh yeah, a 9800pro is what I have presently, my fps still dips below 40 occasionally, for example when fighting outside in the snow on cs_office, but most of the time the fps is between 60 and 100.
For smoothness I swear by keeping vertical sync ON in-game, together with a 100hz refresh rate on my monitor and fps_max 100 I think that although I lose a few fps its so much better than vsync off it doesnt even compare

[xane]

Right, just checked my autoexec which says:

rate 20000
cl_updaterate 60
cl_cmdrate 60
cl_smooth 0

[throdgrain]

Nothing wrong with that really

[Wij]

xan0r !!!1




Throd - can I have some config goodness tonight too ? I seem to get some similar problems to xane.






NO - I AM NOT JUST SHIT !!!!!!!1







(unless I am )

[xane]

Bleh

Just when I stumbled across cl_interp and thinking that would be the answer, then one game I rush into a room and unload about 20 rounds into an enemy with blood splattering all up the wall, only to have him turn around and kill me instantly, result: 2 hits against him and 5 hits against me !!!

Bollocks to this, I've ordered a 9800 Pro. I'll let you know if this solves my problem.

[Moving Target]

I've been getting problems recently where the game pauses for 1 and 2 seconds, then I can play again after getting a huge lag spike and lots of loss. Although it doesn't last long it's pretty annoying and I often end up dead after recovering from one. I've used all the update cfg settings (rate 25000 etc) but to no avail...is this me or Steam in general? Any help would be appreciated

[throdgrain]

I dont care.