Gaming Trouble with L4D

[Guest Adellwu78]

[color=#333333][font=arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif][size=2]Alright, I did a scan or something to see if my computer could run L4D 2. I already got it, and it was running just a little slowly with some lag. I turned down all the settings to low and things like that, but it still had lag when there was a lot of zombies.. The scan told me I had everything needed except for a 3.0 GHZ. I had 2.8GHZ I can't upgrade because I don't have enough money, does anyone know a way for me to reduce lag and make it more smooth?[/size][/font][/color]

[CaNz]

Lower the resolution!
If you are in full screen you are adding a lot of pixels. If your scan is getting all the facts, you are gonna need to buy a processor in order to play on the minimum settings... this is waaaaay too expensive.

Check the options for a way to lower the resolution, or if you can, just make it a window, or even lower your screen resolution as a whole. If the screen is small, and you just can't take it anymore, buy a VGA/HDMI cable and hook it up to your TV. They will run you about 20$ or less, and you can use it for more than just gaming. Edited November 2, 2011 by CaNz

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]Is your CPU usage actually getting maxed out when you play the game? (Keep Task Manager running in the background and after you get some bad slowdown, Alt+Tab out of the game and check the CPU graph.) Your CPU may not even be the bottleneck here, or at least not the worst one. 3D games like L4D are much more reliant on a powerful graphics card than a powerful CPU.

Also, 3.0 GHz what? Single core? Dual core? This is important, since even a 2.5 GHz dual core is much faster than a 3.0 GHz single core CPU.

Playing in windowed mode is probably going to give worse performance than running at a reduced resolution but still in full screen. When in full screen, all the background Windows stuff isn't having to be rendered at the same time as the game.[/color]

[CaNz]

[quote name='Desbreko' timestamp='1320295310' post='710100'][color="#4B0082"]
Playing in windowed mode is probably going to give worse performance than running at a reduced resolution but still in full screen. When in full screen, all the background Windows stuff isn't having to be rendered at the same time as the game.[/color]
[/quote]
Very true, I am just not sure if its in the options, (though I fully expect it to be) and it is just one of the workarounds.


I guess one other thing that might help is making sure that not many programs are running in the background. An internet browser with a few tabs, media players, and those IM services can be kinda taxing on your computer usage. You can open up task manager and check the processes. Just make sure you don't turn off any vital programs.

[Brasil]

This thread still sort of around?

What I find most peculiar is that you're hitting visual slowdown in a Source engine game, on a 2.8GHz processor. Unless you, like Des said, are on a single core CPU...you shouldn't have any issues at all on your processor side. I mean, the Source engine scales [b]absurdly[/b] well. It's actually pretty ridiculous. I was able to actually play HL2 waaaay back on my old PC, the one running with a mid-range AMD CPU and a Radeon 9200. Was it pretty? Nope. Was it flashy? Hell no. Did it play well, at least, at 1024x768? Oh you betcha.

Now, granted, L4D2 has [b]a lot[/b] going on that may push your system harder than most other Source games, but at its core, it's still Source, and still L4D. Slowdown and lag sound more like a video card issue than anything processor-related, because unless you, again like Des said, have a bunch of other crap running while you play...a 2.8GHz processor is perfectly adequate for L4D2.

Plus, here's the thing. Don't trust the hardware spec analysis that comes with L4D2. It tells me my video card may not be up to snuff and that I may suffer degraded performance blah blah blah. But I throw it up to almost max settings (a few of the little graphical flourishes disabled) and it's perfectly fine. And hell, my current CPU is a Core i5 750, at 2.66GHz...it's a slower quad-core processor and there are no issues with L4D1/2.

How current is your graphics card? Based on what you've described, it sounds like your GPU is somehow the issue.

Maybe a driver update is required?