I think a lot of people are unaware of this. Mumble overlay and big HUDs will lower your fps. I personally do not use mumble overlay and I have a self-made HUD that is fairly simple looking (compared to the ones with HUGE numbers). I gained probably 15-20 average fps because of this. I also turn off steam friends and in-game community. In my experience, this has greatly reduced fps spikes.

Anyways, the main point of this thread is to ask if you guys are aware of random things that affect fps (ones that most people probably aren't aware of).

Having the Flash plugin active in your browser in the background (kill plugin-container.exe in Task Manager if you use Firefox).

google chrome is notorious for being a resource-whore. make sure you close every instance of that fat piece of shit before you start up tf2.

atmo wrote:

Having the Flash plugin active in your browser in the background (kill plugin-container.exe in Task Manager if you use Firefox).

firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe DP's your tf2... its unplayable if you forget about it lol

Recently, I've noticed sidebar.exe has been taking up upwards of 800MB of memory, and it affects my FPS greatly. Make sure its not happening to you too, must be some sort of memory leak.

vile wrote:

atmo wrote:

Having the Flash plugin active in your browser in the background (kill plugin-container.exe in Task Manager if you use Firefox).

firefox.exe and plugin-container.exe DP's your tf2... its unplayable if you forget about it lol

well that really depends on your cpu and ram.. I can run firefox fine without noticing but if I'm streaming and have the twitch page open at the same time it can be a bit laggy

Some people are in school.

Setting the priority of hl2.exe to "above normal" has helped to keep my fps stable. The default task manager doesn't save priority settings so you'd have to set it every time. Or you can use a program to save it: http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

having windows aero turned on drains fps

if your antivirus is turned on, it might be scanning your C:\Program Files\Steam\appcache\stats repeatedly and giving you lower fps

seacows wrote:

having windows aero turned on drains fps

oh yeah this
http://fcmikey.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/auto-disable-aero/

technosex wrote:

Setting the priority of hl2.exe to "above normal" has helped to keep my fps stable. The default task manager doesn't save priority settings so you'd have to set it every time. Or you can use a program to save it: http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

Prio didn't work for me on Win 7 64 Bit. So I had to use this

http://bitsum.com/prolasso.php

Make sure your anti-virus has an exception for your steam directory or it'll be a counter-productive piece of shit that bogs your fps down.
SPOILER

marisa wrote:

u guys should get a job and get a good computer so you dont have to worry about low fps

says the GUY who was "willing to be someones sex slave for a place to live". by the way u say get a job im guessing you recently found a real job? i remember the first week i was working, i wen around telling everyone to get a job hahaha

for some people video games might not be the biggest priority in life like it is for you, so finding ways to help fps instead of dropping hundreds of dollars on new computer shit to play a 5 year old game is a much more reasonable way to go.

technosex wrote:

also: http://www.gotfrag.com/tf2/forums/thread/427083/

right-click your mumble shortcut, click properties, and change the target line to

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Mumble" /affinity 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mumble\mumble.exe"

(i think you need to change Program Files (x86) to just Program Files if you're not on a 64 bit OS)

that forces mumble to run on only one of your cores when it starts up. mumble automatically gives itself a high cpu priority and it caused weird mouse problems for me as well, limiting it to only one core solved that (big thanks to smaka for this fix)

technosex wrote:

Setting the priority of hl2.exe to "above normal" has helped to keep my fps stable. The default task manager doesn't save priority settings so you'd have to set it every time. Or you can use a program to save it: http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

Any idea if the launch option -high functions the same as setting priority to high? I added it a while ago and never actually looked into if its changing the priority to high. (My music used to stutter when ingame was crunching sometimes with -high in launch options, so I'm guessing its working)

  wrote:

technosex wrote:

also: http://www.gotfrag.com/tf2/forums/thread/427083/

right-click your mumble shortcut, click properties, and change the target line to

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Mumble" /affinity 1 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mumble\mumble.exe"

(i think you need to change Program Files (x86) to just Program Files if you're not on a 64 bit OS)

that forces mumble to run on only one of your cores when it starts up. mumble automatically gives itself a high cpu priority and it caused weird mouse problems for me as well, limiting it to only one core solved that (big thanks to smaka for this fix)

might as well put this here too

Thank you Tang, this is exactly the issue I've been facing.

For streamers: Make your Xsplit preview window as small as possible when your stream is live. Use IRC to monitor your stream chat instead of a web browser.

that isn't very lady like marisa

Lange wrote:

For streamers: Make your Xsplit preview window as small as possible when your stream is live. Use IRC to monitor your stream chat instead of a web browser.

seacows wrote:

having windows aero turned on drains fps

i was under the impression tf2 had an inbuilt feature that turns off aero while it was running, at least in fullscreen mode

also (this never used to happen) i seem to lose 20-30 fps just for having utorrent open in the bg, even if its just seeding shit. anyone know why it does this?

noser wrote:

seacows wrote:

having windows aero turned on drains fps

i was under the impression tf2 had an inbuilt feature that turns off aero while it was running, at least in fullscreen mode

It does, but *only* for fullscreen. Most people run in windowed no border to alt+tab, but if you do that you have to disable aero (to maximize fps).

but they fixed the alt-tab issue, if you mean the whole 15 seconds to tab in/out and then having to record a demo for invis models?

i used to use windowed mode for that reason, but theyve changed it, so why use windowed mode (as i was under the impression it gives you slightly less fps compared to fullscreen)

#29 Windowed mode is still pretty much a necessity for streamers, at least those who only have one monitor, as it lets you alt tab away while still having the game be displayed on the stream.

Does having Skype on lower fps? I always have it running.