Half-Life 2 Episode 1 slowdowns

[fortran80]

Hi guys,

Recently purchased Episode One through Steam, however im having some problems. 70% odd percent of the time, everything is fairly fine...getting consistant 30fps in most areas, even outdoors and mostly nice and smooth. However, as soon as certain sprite appears on the screen (ie. lightning, fire etc etc) the game crawls down to less than 1fps making it unplayable!!! The most noticeable places this has occured so far are:

The first chapter, in the area where you have to fix the last reactor field containment system to make it operational.

train ride

and

The first indoor room after exiting the underground station of "Urban Flight" (i think its called that) where the 2 combine that are setting up laser mines then the room fills with fire then you have to stack things to balance the beam to exit the room.

I have tried pretty much everything, swapped all settings to lowest possible, tried switching in a PCI soundBlaster just incase it was an audio issue causing it, but still no joy, everytime fire or lightning appears on the screen, everything just lags out.

My system spec is as follows:

Athlon +2600XP
1 GIG DDR RAM
Nvidia OnBoard Audio
XFX GeForce 6200 256MB
Windows XP home edition

I have also tried raising the Heap to 512MB which, as recommended is a 1/4 of my overall system ram.

Any help at all would be appreciated, as is, the areas where this occur, make it almost impossible to continue with the game.

 

[Beerdude26]

Try running the game in DirectX 8.1. mode:

Left-click on the Steam tray icon.
Select "Games".
Click on the "My Games" tab.
Right-click on the game that you want to activate the console of.
Select "Properties".
Click on the "General" tab.
Click on the "Set Launch Options" button.
Put in the window box: -dxlevel 81
Click "OK".
Click "Close".

If this doesn't work, try it with -dxlevel 70.

A word of warning: The graphical quality of your game will decrease greatly (probably), but if it is the only way to get past that part, then do it.

 

[fortran80]

Thanks man, it helped enough to get me past that section...now the game is back up on 30+fps at all times lol...weeeird!