skype rapes your performance mj

-- wrote:

skype rapes your performance mj

Does skype itself hurt performance or is it merely the pop-up notifications? I have the pop-up notifications disabled and while I've never really tested it, I can't say I've ever noticed skype hurting my performance.

EDIT: Just ran some timedemos with skype on and off, there was zero change. Avg 266.5 fps with it on, Avg 266.5 fps with it off (averages from 3 timedemo runs in each scenario).

Hey Lange do you know how to disable the xsplit popup that appears when you start broadcasting? That damn thing wrecks my FPS for a good five or ten seconds.

is marisa a shemale?

atmo wrote:

Hey Lange do you know how to disable the xsplit popup that appears when you start broadcasting? That damn thing wrecks my FPS for a good five or ten seconds.

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

You don't have to use that program, techno. Source engine has its own prioritization commands for the launch options.

Dave_ wrote:

You don't have to use that program, techno. Source engine has its own prioritization commands for the launch options.

Right, but you can't set the priority to Above Normal, which achieves the same fps as high, practically, while still maintaining system stability. Setting the priority to high could even lead to mouse lag as well as other bad things.

dam I never knew when I had a crap computer useful post though lol thanksss

Whatisausername wrote:

  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.

Something else that can be added in here is how the affinity command line switch works. Aside from simply setting a program to only use 1 cpu, you can actually force it to use a certain cpu or set.

Affinity accepts a HEX value to determine the exact CPU(s) to use.

Quoting a reply in this article

CPU3 CPU2 CPU1 CPU0 Bin Hex
================================
OFF OFF OFF ON = 0001 = 1
OFF OFF ON OFF = 0010 = 2
OFF OFF ON ON = 0011 = 3
OFF ON OFF OFF = 0100 = 4
OFF ON OFF ON = 0101 = 5 confirmed via task manager
OFF ON ON OFF = 0110 = 6
OFF ON ON ON = 0111 = 7
ON OFF OFF OFF = 1000 = 8
ON OFF OFF ON = 1001 = 9
ON OFF ON OFF = 1010 = A confirmed via task manager
ON OFF ON ON = 1011 = B
ON ON OFF OFF = 1100 = C
ON ON OFF ON = 1101 = D
ON ON ON OFF = 1110 = E confirmed via task manager
ON ON ON ON = 1111 = F

The HEX value, when read in binary from right to left, directly relates to the CPUs present in the system.

Examples
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Mumble" /affinity 8 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mumble\mumble.exe" -m <-- This will load up Mumble and force it to only use CPU3 (using affinity 8).

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "Mumble" /affinity D "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mumble\mumble.exe" -m <-- This will make Mumble use CPU0, CPU2, and CPU3 (using affinity D).

I'm assuming this would also work with Hyper-Threaded and 6 core machines, but with only a quad core I can't confirm. Using this method might actually help streamers since they can make a custom shortcut to load xplit/fmle/etc on cores not being used by TF2.

The bad news is you can't use this method to launch TF2 with and set it to specific cores. When Steam launches a game it goes by the system default (which is enabled on all cores) and no amount of voodoo batch file/shortcut tricks will work (only a custom program will work). If you do make a shortcut to load TF2 and force it to certain cores, the only thing you can do is watch demos since launching directly with "hl2.exe -game tf" bypasses the steam authentication system (you can't even start a lan game).

***EDIT***
Ok, I might have found a solution but there are no guarantees on what it will do for system stability and game performance. Core Affinity Resident is a small tray tool that let's you set what cores a program will run on and remember for the next time. So far it seems to be working for me, can anyone else confirms that it works for them?

Speaking of affinities, when I'm streaming, HL2 + Xsplit somehow don't distribute themselves evenly over my cores. I have an i7 so its 4 physical cores but 8 virtual cores. When streaming its totally common to have 3 virtual cores parked @ 0% utilization. Aside from using something like Process Lasso (which I don't entirely trust), are there good ways to better distribute the workload?

The only thing I can suggest is to test different affinity setups and see which ones works the best. Try using only 1 core for TF2 and the rest for Xsplit, and work from there. From what you're describing it sounds like Xsplit isn't optimized for Hyper-Threading (which isn't a big surprise) and can't properly use the 4 virtual cores.

Yeah xsplit is horrible in that regard - nothing but constant issues

Great colection of tips here people I am impressed

In regards to -high iirc valve has dropped that command I believe it doesn't do anything anymore.

The mumble one is a common one and as someone else said Chrome is an absolute shocker, I usually have 20 or so tabs open at one time with various content so close that bitch up and watch your system fly.

Also for those with multi-monitor setups, I heard recently if you have screens with different resolutions it can slow things down considerably - I don't know if its correct but might be worth looking into if you are having issues after trying various fixes from this thread.

If you are streaming using xsplit please make sure you have automatically record local disabled if you don't need it, I had someone with a 920 who couldnt maintain a stable fps who had this on recently - twice the work yo

I did a bunch of timedemo tests last night and came out even more confused than before.

With no affinities while streaming: 127.12 fps
Middle-split affinities (xsplit + dxtory on cores 0-3, TF2 on cores 4-7): 127.79 fps
Xsplit + dxotry on cores 4-7, TF2 on all cores (0-7): 124.26 fps

I also did tests with local record on vs local record off and on average I had 1.2 fps more with local record on. It doesn't make any sense.

I think I'm going to try this again with a longer timedemo, the one I used was only about 90 seconds long.

what about xsplit + gamesource?

the handful of times I put -high in my launch commands all it did was make my ping double for no reason. Literally as soon as I took it off my connection was fine.

Drew wrote:

the handful of times I put -high in my launch commands all it did was make my ping double for no reason. Literally as soon as I took it off my connection was fine.

has to do with Windows putting TF2 at a higher priority than core windows applications.

http://natf2.com/topics/1034-if-anyone-s-interested

download prio and save your tf2 priority to "above normal"

After dicking around with affinities some more I've come to the same conclusion that SizzlingCalamari did in this thread: http://natf2.com/topics/4206-low-fps-textures-mods?page=1

Basically: Give TF2 all cores, block every other .exe from using the first core.

timedemo wrote:

Not streaming, default affinities:
8527 frames 35.845 seconds 237.88 fps ( 4.20 ms/f) 35.684 fps variability

Not streaming, prolasso affinities:
8527 frames 33.431 seconds 255.06 fps ( 3.92 ms/f) 27.632 fps variability

Streaming, default affinities:
127 fps (from memory)

Streaming, prolasso affinities:
8527 frames 64.983 seconds 131.22 fps ( 7.62 ms/f) 32.757 fps variability

Its not only important to note that overall the framerate is slightly higher, but the variability is SIGNIFICANTLY improved.

Lange wrote:

After dicking around with affinities some more I've come to the same conclusion that SizzlingCalamari did in this thread: http://natf2.com/topics/4206-low-fps-textures-mods?page=1

Basically: Give TF2 all cores, block every other .exe from using the first core.

timedemo wrote:

Not streaming, default affinities:
8527 frames 35.845 seconds 237.88 fps ( 4.20 ms/f) 35.684 fps variability

Not streaming, prolasso affinities:
8527 frames 33.431 seconds 255.06 fps ( 3.92 ms/f) 27.632 fps variability

Streaming, default affinities:
127 fps (from memory)

Streaming, prolasso affinities:
8527 frames 64.983 seconds 131.22 fps ( 7.62 ms/f) 32.757 fps variability

Its not only important to note that overall the framerate is slightly higher, but the variability is SIGNIFICANTLY improved.

thanks for confirming this, i am also using prolasso and so far so good

Okay just found this out, if you use the processlasso method, VMware (and most likely other virtual machines) will not work unless you also add a "*vmware*" path rule that lets VMWare use all cores.

Another quirk of this processlasso setup: Chrome fucking HATES it. It's not noticeable in Chrome itself, but if Chrome is open at all while I'm playing TF2 (maybe other games), the game becomes very choppy. If you have to have both open, consider allowing Chrome to access all cores as well.

EDIT: Upon closer inspection this may be an issue local to my system, but hey it can't hurt to put this out there just in case.

Prolasso also means prolapse in Italian...I would recommend setting your search engine results to English only if you're looking to download it.

I'm having some FPS problems (I've noticed on Hoodoo and Barnblitz, just mentioning in case it's map-related). Lowering the quality options does nothing. Lowering the resolution does a little, but not enough to make the blurriness worth it.

This is my autoexec:

fps_max "0"
cl_new_impact_effects "1"
cl_forcepreload "1"
//PREC - AUTOMATICALLY RECORDS POV DEMO WHEN TOURNAMENT MODE STARTS. SEE TF/ADDONS FOLDER FOR MORE INFO
prec_check_update 1
prec_log 1
prec_notify 2
prec_min_streak 3
prec_mode 2
prec_sound 1
PREC_delete_useless_demo 0

I'm guessing making my HUD extremely minimal would help a lot, but I don't have the patience to mess with this stuff now.

hookyboysb wrote:

I'm having some FPS problems (I've noticed on Hoodoo and Barnblitz, just mentioning in case it's map-related). Lowering the quality options does nothing. Lowering the resolution does a little, but not enough to make the blurriness worth it.

This is my autoexec:

fps_max "0"
cl_new_impact_effects "1"
cl_forcepreload "1"
//PREC - AUTOMATICALLY RECORDS POV DEMO WHEN TOURNAMENT MODE STARTS. SEE TF/ADDONS FOLDER FOR MORE INFO
prec_check_update 1
prec_log 1
prec_notify 2
prec_min_streak 3
prec_mode 2
prec_sound 1
PREC_delete_useless_demo 0

I'm guessing making my HUD extremely minimal would help a lot, but I don't have the patience to mess with this stuff now.

Did that, and it seems to go from 150-400 generally now rather than 50-200. I just wish I could have it look nicer with a FPS of 75+ (My monitor's refresh rate is 75 Hz, yeah, I'm stuck in 2007 with my non-120Hz monitor). Is this possible?

Edit: Seems his maxquality config does a good job at that, only occasionally does it seem to drop below 75 and only in a certain spot on Hoodoo when turning quickly.

Lange wrote:

EDIT: Upon closer inspection this may be an issue local to my system, but hey it can't hurt to put this out there just in case.

i'm using chrome + process lasso, and I dont believe i've been getting fps drops because of it. However I try to only have 1 tab open when i'm playing tf2.

Hoodoo is poorly optimized and also a bad map.

btw, the LODs that got added yesterday were simply for the ghastly gibus.

Still waiting on almost every other hat, and the majority of weapons. Oh well.

Anybody else getting a lower fps with the latest update? Getting 70fps max in pro viaduct scrims now, even with my config. Before was much better especially after I overclocked and reformatted to 64bit.

Does changing your FOV affect FPS?

atmo wrote:

Does changing your FOV affect FPS?