Exasperated

[~Lazarus~]

Folk, hopefully someone can help me with this pain in the arse that Im going through.

Suffering from an unbelievable fps. Wondering who can help :

System Specs:

AMD Duron 900Mhz
640 MB SDRAM 100Mhz
Abit Siluro Geforce 4 Ti4200 128 mb
56k Hayes Accura V92 internal modem.
Latest Detonator Drivers.
Win2K


When playing some maps (like Dust) the fps is sufferable - 50is)

However, playing some of the other maps, it drops to 20's

Any one else play on a similar rig - any advice on increasing.

Config has been tweaked to death to try and raise it. Vsync on/off makes no difference.

 

[mank!]

Does it slow down noticably when you're outdoors on maps or in fire fights?

I had a similar problem with my old PC, CS used to run fine on it until suddenly my FPS used to drop majorly on some maps, especially if outdoors. However, my old PC was a Celeron 366 with 128mb RAM and a Voodoo 3 I'm not sure how I fixed it in the end, I think I just bought a new PC

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by mank!
Does it slow down noticably when you're outdoors on maps or in fire fights?

yes - big time

 

[throdgrain]

Just to let you know, I had a p3 1000mhz with gf3 ti 200, and the fps was pretty much steady at 60 .
My son uses it these days with a modem to play cs, and mostly its still 60 fps, same as the refresh rate.
I know that dont help too much, but at least you know there is something wrong

 

[mank!]

Probably what happened with me then, try completely reinstalling HL and CS, and if that doesn't fix it then a format should do the trick.

Unfortunately, if I recall correctly I never managed to fix it and just stopped playing CS for a long time I can't see it being down to your PC spec, because with the exception of the CPU it's a pretty good system. If you're that desperate, you could always try getting a new CPU?

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by mank!
you could always try getting a new CPU?

lol. Tried that one. "Discussed" with the other half.
Made enquiries to certain people, (Thanks Will, Xavier, Wilier and BlindFool) and was politely told

"no Fking chance"

As for the reformat - it was only recently that I installed Win2000

What I may do is install the older set of drivers to see (~29.83) I think

 

[mank!]

Bugger :/

Dunno what else you could try then mate, sorry.

 

[Lester]

No help here either Laz. But I have half your ram, half the gfx card and the same processor and 60fps

I used to have problems with smoke and stuff and knocked off the anti aliasing and generally messed around and it's ok now.

God that was pathetic. I should delete it really for all the help that was.

 

[1tchy trigger]

DO you get performance problems with any other FPS games ? Have you tried running HL sinlge player? Have you tried a reinstall of HL and CS?

 

[-adz-]

Get ye the high-fps models and see how much that helps

http://www.clanbase.com/miscdl.php?did=577

 

[Trem]

Absolutely nowt wrong with your pc Laz, it surely can't be that whats the problem, we run CS/Half Life/Command+Conquer Generals/Unreal on our pc's at work and they are at least half your spec yet they run fine.

The only thing I can think where yours is different is that you are on modem.

 

[~Lazarus~]

tbh, i think tremor (for once) is close to the root of the problem.

Found out that the modem, sound and gfx are all sharing the same IRQ - nede to try and fix that (dunn how - any ideas?)

What I do notice is that when the ping goes UP, then the FPS usually goes down.

Need to try uninstalling and reinstalling all the hardware (physically and logically)

 

[mank!]

Originally posted by -adz-
Get ye the high-fps models and see how much that helps

http://www.clanbase.com/miscdl.php?did=577

I used them, they did help a bit.

 

[~Lazarus~]

well, for those that are interested :

1. Downloaded the VIA 4in1 bios for the mobo
2. Installed the older Dets. 29.83
3. Moved (physically) the modem to a different slot.
4. Changed the IRQ for the modem to be different than the GFX Card.

Generally "fiddled" with the pc and managed to get a whole (on average) 10fps higher.

Still fiddling (trying to find exactly what MOBO is on my PC to identify the right drivers.

Will try the low fps models too (only need 2 models [leet and SAS])

May also try to remove a stick of RAM and see if that makes a difference.

Other than that, Im at a loos on what to do.

 

[leggy]

remove the offending parts and reinstall them 1 by1 between alternate reboots.

This happened to me... this fixed it for me.

 

[Mr Flibble]

nobody's inserted the standard turn off vsync option so I thought I'd mention it...although on that spec I wouldn't have thought it would matter.

(btw u could get a 1.3/4 ghz duron for about £30 (I know because I bough one), which would undoubtedly work on ur mother board and would probably improve performance a significant margin - it did for me going from 700mhz athlon to 1.3ghz duron - although it's very unlikely that this is your problem in HL/CS, it would improve other games where your cpu is a bottleneck on that GFX card, but HL shouldn't be taxing your gfx card that much. For reference I can pretty much get 20-50 fps on a 1.3ghz Duron with a *cough* TNT2 M64 *cough* )

 

[throdgrain]

Turning vsynch off is the last the you want to do imo.
When I say last, I mean only do it after you have chucked your pc out of the window.

/edit
Btw Laz, something occurs to me. Have you tried playing cs with bots and no internet connection. I ask because there's no doubt you can lose fps when lagging really badly.
Try downloading real bot or something and playing the same map that you lose frames on online, and see how it is with no lag. It could be you're just getting a bad connection.
To illustrate this, when playing DoD on the 32 man servers I sometimes get fps down to 40 or 50 (from 85) , when I look around a corner into a large open space with a lot of people in it.
I have an Athlon XP2.0+ / GF4 4400 / 512 DDR pc, so its up to the job, but my ISDN connection seems to run out of bandwidth with that many people on ancient HL games. It doesnt really happen on more modern stuff like BF1942 , so theres a thought for you.
Also, what other games do you play, and what performance do you get ? ie is this a HL problem or a "your PC"problem ?

 

[Mr Flibble]

Originally posted by throdgrain
Turning vsynch off is the last the you want to do imo.

Just out of interest, why?

vsynch off probably doubles my fps, maybe it's different on high end systems or summat, would like to know though please.

In general even if you have a killer setup it isn't going to guarantee that HL will run well because it's so chuffing old and doesn't take advantage of some of the stuff which makes new gfx cards run well.

 

[throdgrain]

Vsynch can only cause image tearing if the game runs at a higher fps than the refresh rate of the monitor m8.
By far the best thing is to set ur maxfps to the same value as your refresh rate, be that 60 , 95, 100 or whatever. I set mine on 85 fps max for all my games, the same as my refresh rate, and i get no tearing. As soon as I turn vsynch off you just have to look at the floor when running in cs for example to see wavy lines running all over the ground. This is the result of vsynch off
Some games , q3 based for example, turn vsynch off by default , thus people strive to find commands to turn it back on again in-game. RtCW and MoH are just to examples of this.

 

[leggy]

Vsync is my hero.

When it's off i get tearing even if my framerate is lower than my refresh rate.

With it on I get the smoothest graphics ever .. smoother than a new born wombat pup.

 

[Ulysses777]

You can also check if you haven't accidentally got FSAA ridiculously high or something...

 

[Mr Flibble]

Originally posted by throdgrain
Vsynch can only cause image tearing if the game runs at a higher fps than the refresh rate of the monitor m8.
By far the best thing is to set ur maxfps to the same value as your refresh rate, be that 60 , 95, 100 or whatever. I set mine on 85 fps max for all my games, the same as my refresh rate, and i get no tearing. As soon as I turn vsynch off you just have to look at the floor when running in cs for example to see wavy lines running all over the ground. This is the result of vsynch off
Some games , q3 based for example, turn vsynch off by default , thus people strive to find commands to turn it back on again in-game. RtCW and MoH are just to examples of this.

Cool cheers for that info, I was actually aware it could cause tearing but I've never actually had any problems - maybe because my refresh rate is well over double my fps.

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
nobody's inserted the standard turn off vsync option so I thought I'd mention it...although on that spec I wouldn't have thought it would matter.

Originally posted by ~Lazarus~
Vsync on/off makes no difference.

But - i may be reduced to purchasing a new processor. Had looked at upgrading the whole machine, but im tight

The settings on the gfx card are aimed to give the best results antialiasing is on the lowest setting.

Throd - dont really play much else than CS on the machine - kids play Goofy / Harry Potter and others but lack of fps means nothing to them.

Apparently the board supports up to AMD Athlon TBird 1.3Ghz@200FSB, so I might go the cheap route and slap in a new processor to give it some ooommppff. As to bot - yeah, ill try that too. I did try running around on office by myself, but my manager told me to stop it . On office, i was getting a better fps offline than on, but there were not bots to give a better comparison.

Thanks for the advice so far fellas.