HL2 pauses or hesitates now

S

sholmes01

Guest
I played the whole game and finished earlier in the year. It played quite well then on my ATI AIW 9800Pro. I upgraded my video card to an ATI AIW X800 XT and thought I would try the game again to see how it looked at higher settings. I did this with a bunch of my other games and they all play really nice at 1600x1200 with all settings on high. I even played Doom 3 and COD 2 Demo with all settings on high at 1600 with no problems at all. Now HL2 seems to pause or hesitate (although slight) from time to time. It never noticed this before. It does not matter if I have it on the highest settings or on the lowest settings. It seems to do the same thing. Anyone else notice this?

I uninstalled and deleted all traces of HL2 on my computer. I reinstalled (from DVD) and it does the same thing. I did not try it with my OLD video card before installing new, but I have no problem with any other game. I also cleaned the machine of all traces of the old drivers before installing. The other difference might have been the drivers. I had Catalyst 4.10 with the old card and now have 5.9.

Intel D875PBZ Mother board - 3Ghz P4
1GB RAM
ATI AIW X800 XT
SB Audigy 2
350GB HD Space
 
Lahire149 said:
do u have any background applications running?
Click to expand...
I have the same things running in the background as was running before. I have Norton AV 2005. I can try booting with no un-needed services.

Is there a way to play with no sound and see if that is causing a problem? I can't imagine that a better video card is the problem.
 
Have you been defragging your hard drive regularly?
Also, increase the heapsize for HL2. (The standard is 128mb, but you can easily do half of your RAM) Go in to Steam and the properties of HL2. Click on Launch Options and type the command -heapsize 256000.
 
I did defrag right after installing HL2 again.

I played with sound normal (high) and all video setting on lowest and no change. I turned video setting back up to recommended (very high) and it played the same as with video on lowest setting. I played with no sound and it was real smooth. I played on "low" sound and it was much smoother. I think the sound is the problem. I did try - heapsize 256000 and it had no change. Are there any other sound tweaks? I have an Audigy 2 sound card. Anyone try the new Creative X-Fi? Think that might speed up sound processing?
 
sholmes01,
You're getting the infamous HL2 Stutter - welcome to the club!

There are many things you can try to help the problem (do a search for "HL2 stutter"), but there is no definitive solution. Here may help, although it hasn't been updated in quite some time, but there are many tips.

I don't think there is anything wrong with your system or sound card - it happens to all sorts of different computer set-ups. Turning your sound to low and textures to medium seems to help a lot, but it's understandable that you want to get the most out of your new video card...

Also do try turning off Norton completely, or you could make a new user account in Windows with just the bare minimum loaded up...good luck!
 
I am in a very similar position, and i'm really pissed off about it. It's the new patch that came out on 9/23 that screwed everything up.

they've got somthing on it on steams support page. here's the link

I'm pissed off that steam forces me to download a patch that makes the game not work, and not have any way to roll back the patch. This is absolutely ridiculous and im pissed
 
I'm with you, it is very annoying that the bug still exists nearly a year after it came out...
 
I too am upset about the problem. Dugweb...I also think it got worse with new updates. I used to play pretty good on my old vid card, but I have to tweak the sound to make it smooth on the new one. Video is NOT the problem. Sound is the issue. I would think they want to fix this before HL2-Aftermath and other things come out. With the problem the way it is I don't feel like playing the game. SgtSpamBoy....I have not tried your tips yet. I will see, but it would be nice if I didn't have to do that now because I never did before.

Thanks...
 
that's the thing - the first 1 or 2 play throughs of the game are flawless but then the problem which i still have in a small way arises as if playing the game rips up the game files on the hd
just maximise your ram and hope for the best
 
Now this is only a rumor, but I have heard that HL2 copies downloaded from Steam and also pirated versions run a bit smoother than the standard retail version on the multiple CDs - maybe because of some error when it combines all of the files from the CDs... I have the retail version, so I can't confirm this, but it's interesting.
 
I have the DVD version too and all played fine until recently.

Anyone ever try tweaking the Virtual Memory for this? Maybe put it on another HD?
 
Maybe the junk files build up or something. My HL2 single player is still skippy in areas - it was almost unplayable at first, but I did several things to make it better. My HL2 DM, CS, CTF, Dystopia (and any other mod but Substance) all play flawlessly...
 
This might help:

In your BIOS settings, try to find an option called "AGP aperture", and set that to the maximum level (probably 256MB).
 
I fixed my Half-Life 2 stuttering problem using this Tool (Download link is on the first page of the thread):

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?threadid=121190

I changed the gfx card latency from 255 to 64 and it fixed the pauses, give it a go but use at your own risk. BTW, don't set the latency to anything less than 32 because it'll stress the Bus too much.
 
sholmes01 said:
I too am upset about the problem. Dugweb...I also think it got worse with new updates. I used to play pretty good on my old vid card, but I have to tweak the sound to make it smooth on the new one. Video is NOT the problem. Sound is the issue. I would think they want to fix this before HL2-Aftermath and other things come out. With the problem the way it is I don't feel like playing the game. SgtSpamBoy....I have not tried your tips yet. I will see, but it would be nice if I didn't have to do that now because I never did before.

Thanks...
Click to expand...


My computer ran the game beautifully at 1280x1024 resolution with max effects. The only thing that has changed between now and then is the patch valve released. The thing I'm so frustrated about is the "solutions" from valve pretty much say "turn down your effects" or "lower the resolution".

No WAY! Im pissed, If they would have just left well enough alone all would be well in zion, but no they force me to download a patch that makes my game run like crap (not even playable, and the video settings have nothing to do with it, it's purely software) And then the only thing we hear from valve is to turn down our effects?! That's laughable. and it's obvious that I'm not the only one having the problem. It looks like lots of people are in the same boat as me.
 
dugweb, that is totally messed up and unacceptable...this has been going on for some time and they always sing the same tune of "just turn down your settings."

They've had nearly a year now...and I'm not even sure they've even formally admitted that there's a problem. At some point they said that a "small percentage of people" were experiencing a slight stuttering problem....but they still haven't fixed it...and now they make new people have problems!!!

You should send Valve an error report - I think there's a place on steampowered.com to do that....all the good it will do, but at least it's something.
 
I have to agree with dugweb. It is something they did last month in a patch. I was able to play the whole game with barely a pause/stutter, but now it is not enjoyable at all with the same settings. I can lower setting to play, but why should I have to? Lowering the texture depth to medium helps a lot. I got better vid card, but that did not help. Went from 128mb to 256mb vid card (X800 XT).

I did write a problem report to steampowered.com. It would be nice to get a fix besides lowering setting, but I am not holding my breath. I guess I might be buying from places that make PLAYABLE games if the problem can't be fixed.
 
I BELIEVE YOU!!! i have had the sam eproblem, and every other memebr on this forum has told me to reinstall drivers and check the validity and whatnot, but many do not believe that the problem is not at my end simply because their version works fine!!! i had everything running weet as before with my rig and whe the steam change came in it stuffed it all up. My halflife2 is pausing now and again and the water is changed to a yellowy colour and the water line is now a visible LINE!! not like before wahen it blended nicely with the sand or ground. The wuestion is: will valve fix the problem? because i dont want to buy a new 1000 dollar gfx card to run a game that ran perfectly before valve stuffed it!!!
 
my specs:

AMD athlon 64bit 3000+
Gigabyte motherboard
Maxtor HDD
1.5 gig Geil DDR Ram
Gexcube Radeon 9800XT 256MB

and i ran HL2 perfectly before the whole change for "DOD source", the whole "STEAM update" that was necessary.
 
I hear your pain....same here. They messed it up good. I don't think that Valve or Steampowered read this or many of the other forums that we are writing in.

I wrote a game problem report to: http://support.steampowered.com

If everyone with this issue writes to them, maybe they will see it is not a limited problem and fix it.
 
sholmes01 said:
I hear your pain....same here. They messed it up good. I don't think that Valve or Steampowered read this or many of the other forums that we are writing in.

I wrote a game problem report to: http://support.steampowered.com

If everyone with this issue writes to them, maybe they will see it is not a limited problem and fix it.
Click to expand...

just send them a link to this thread :farmer:
 
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