Graphical stuttering in Route Kanal on high end system

[gavlarn]

Hey!

I just bought Orange Box and am on my first playthrough of Half-Life 2.
However, when entering the Route Kanal part of the game, more specifically the first stretch of water and the train wagon containing a human and a Vortigaunt, I get severly reduced FPS for seemingly no reason. Before this part I ran the game flawlessly fully maxed out and at 1280x1024 resolution with 4 MS Anti-Aliasing. When I gott here it was nearly unplayable at seemingly about 3-5 FPS, and even when I reduced almost all settings to minimum my FPS seemingly barely got over 10.

I got a high-end system with all the latest drivers

Windows 7 64-bit
AMD Phenom 2 X4 955 3,2 GHz, not overclocked
Raden HD5850 1GB, not overclocked
4 GB RAM

What could be the reason and is there any fix/workaround so, in case I encounter more passages in the game plagued by the same problem, I don't have to restart the game with all settings on minimum? Kinda detracts from the experience of an otherwise already excellent game

 

[MorganFreeman911]

That's weird, because you have a better computer than I do, and I run it flawlessly... Have you tried verifying the game cache, or defragmenting your harddrive / defragmenting the game files?
(The defrag of the files and the game cache verifying can be done if you right click the game and press Properties)

 

[MuToiD_MaN]

Did you notice an undue amount of disk activity while this was going on? I'm wondering if maybe there's another process on your system hogging the resources (virus scan, for example?). Yeah with those specs I wouldn't think you'd get anything less than a hojillion frames per second anywhere in the game, aside from loading points of course.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Not even a virus scan would lower the FPS by about 100... That's really bizarre... Try defragging and verifying.
EDIT: I've had a virus scan, iTunes, and some other stuff open, and I only lost about 20 - 30 FPS >.<

 

[gavlarn]

That's weird, because you have a better computer than I do, and I run it flawlessly... Have you tried verifying the game cache, or defragmenting your harddrive / defragmenting the game files?
(The defrag of the files and the game cache verifying can be done if you right click the game and press Properties)

My harddrive shouldn't need a defrag yet since I've had this computer for 2-3 weeks only.

But a small update: I haven't had this problem since that part. It was only the first stretch of water in the Route Kanal and the train wagon with the human and vortigaunt. Once I continued and got to the next loading point (beneath all the wreckage close to the fire) I got normal performance again and the game has run flawlessly since then (I've reached Black Mesa East now). So I guess the problem is resolved, sort of. Will have to play through again later and see if that section of Route Kanal gives me trouble again.

Thanks for the quick replies!

 

[JoFish19]

The same thing is happening to me in the same place. As soon as I got on top of the box car, everything slowed down heavily. The FPS slowed, the audio was echoing. I haven't gone further. I saved the game and exited, came back, and as soon as the game loaded it continued to stutter. I guess I'll try to push through it, if that worked for the last guy. It's definitely not a coincidence though, or some other program suddenly running in the background, as it is in the exact same spot for me as well.