Steam is slowing HL2 ! Benchmarks here

[footsteps]

Can we start talking less about EULAs and more about steam performance issues? How much of a performance hit does steam entail? Does it actually affect ingame framerate? Is there a way to bypass steam without using a crack (shutting the process whilst hl2 is running is not a good idea)? Why does it take up so much RAM?

 

[Cons Himself]

ok try this:

load up steam, open up a few steam windows.

check steam memory usage.

minimize all steam windows then right click them on the start bar and click close.

now check memory usage - should be much lower. ok? now let us continue our discussion lol

 

[czrsink]

johnbames:

All this could have been avoided if you just disconnected from the Internet completely and played HL2 in offline mode...no need for any dodgy cracks either then. I'm sure that most of the delays caused by Steam are when it's accessing the Internet.

 

[oldagerocker]

I just opened all the steam windows and watched it's RAM and CPU usage. When all the windows were open, it used 100% CPU and Ram went from 18mb to 24.5mb. I closed the windows with the X button, and Ram has not changed.... I am alittle disturbed by that. They should have removed a bug such as that by now.

I have enough RAM not to worry about what Steam uses, afterall, what is 25megs to the 1000 i have? HL2 only uses just over 100megs.

 

[doomed - uk]

It might explain, though, why such the seemingly common stuttering and memory bugs got past Valve and Vivendi if it was partly Steam's fault all along and their game testers weren't forced to use Steam...

But doesn't that Vampire game using the Source engine also suffer from the same stuttering problem?

Also, Valve would be stupid to try and prosecute gamers who bought the game and alter it to try and solve bugs, particularly if they tried to prosecute internationally. Valve would get loads of publicity for attempting to punish people trying to fix a faulty product which they'd be accused of knowingly selling with those faults. More likely, they'd just try to quietly shut down people's accounts, which would of course drive these people to get the pirated versions, now for HL2 and for any Valve games in the future.

 

[Ari de Verci]

*) Start the game (from clicking on the launch button to the main menu) :
- Through Steam : 1 min 52 sec
- without Steam : 53 sec
and that includes a 5sec pause for the Valve animation.

*) Start a new game (from the menu to appearance of the "half-life²" logo) :
- With Steam : 2 min 25 sec
- Without Steam : 1 min 35 sec

*) Exiting the game (from the "half-life²" logo to the desktop, waiting for complete redraw and stop of heavy HD activity (which happen at the same time BTW)) :
- With Steam : 51 sec
- Without Steam : 7 sec

As a side note, these times are just whacked... It takes me ~50 seconds to start HL2 and ~45 sec to start a new game, with Steam - and I have 512 MB ram. Fragmentation? Slow hard drive?

 

[Cons Himself]

Valve would never shut down accounts on the bassis of hear say on a forum or in IRC. Valve couldnt prosecute people. Is there really going to be a world wide criminal justice investigation because some people use a non-steam patch? Also from a purely legal point of view, what people are doing is perfectly legal in some countries.

 

[Grand Architect]

The exact times dont matter as much, as the benchmarks are made with the same system. You would just get faster loads then he dose but the same gains.

 

[Ari de Verci]

Also from a purely legal point of view, what people are doing is perfectly legal in some countries.

Well, that doesn't seem to stop MPAA or RIAA lawyers from sending letters threatening anybody in the world with DMCA

 

[Ari de Verci]

The exact times dont matter as much, as the benchmarks are made with the same system. You would just get faster loads then he dose but the same gains.

I know that. I'm just pointing out his loading times seem insane.

 

[nagual678]

i don't understand why people would want to drown the point of steam being a great obtrusion to the normal functioning of its games in legal issues. legal or not, the fact is there, and it's what this thread is about.

 

[Raawr]

Piracy / illegal stuff forever

 

[Doppelgofer]

it does run about 4000 times better without steam...they really need to rewrite the entire thing in my opinion

 

[Ultimape]

hehe, I don't have a problem with steam. while hl2 is running it perhaps takes up 10mb of ram, and no cpu time.

my loading times are very small.

 

[chimpmunk]

Valve are also allowed to attempt to prosecute you for breaching that agreement.

HAHA, no EULA is above the law, a country law has priority on an EULA from another country...

VALVe are not god, they are not above the law.

 

[Mountain Man]

But doesn't that Vampire game using the Source engine also suffer from the same stuttering problem?

Yes, and long load times. So it really has nothing to do with Steam.

 

[INeedAName]

What you have failed to mention was the type of GPU you are using. If you're using some old Nvidia GeForce3, then you've got a lot more to explain on your load times. Plus you fail to mention the settings in which you are playing the game. Settings like model detail, shadows, aa, af, and screen resolution are all very important in benchmarking. And as the loading for both Steam and the patch done in the same way? Are they both with the same settings? You need to make sure that every test is consistant.

I've never had any problems with Steam. I run Half-Life 2 on an AMD AthlonXP 2600+ @2.3 GHz, with a 1 GB of ram running in dual channel mode, with a BFG 6800 OC graphics card, and I have terrific gameplay. It runs great, load times are low, and with the new Steam patch, it runs even better.

Steam has never taken up my system resources in a significant way. It uses up about 20-22 MBs of ram. Windows Media Player 10 takes up about the same amount of ram, on par with other applications.

And about laws. What about EU laws? Do they apply anywhere in the matter?

 

[Chris D]

HAHA, no EULA is above the law, a country law has priority on an EULA from another country...

VALVe are not god, they are not above the law.

I said they can attempt to. I said nothing about them being sucessful.

 

[piggy]

Oh and in regards to the thread, Steam uses a proportion of RAM, which explains the load times probably, and I doubt you can edit. If what you where saying is true, I could buy HL2, find a country (if one exsits) that doesn't have laws for electronic information, and make pirated copies of HL2 and theres nothing that could be done about it. Even though I've agreed to the EULA.

for ur own private use! how cool is that?

 

[MajorPayne]

Back to the original point of this thread (which has devolved into legal issues). For those who HAVE disabled steam (by whatever means) do you notice an increase in FPC and/or a resolution or reduction in the stuttering problem? I would be curious if steam causes us to incur a performance hit in more areas than just load times?

 

[Vito Dintino]

what i dont understand is WHY valve would burden us with steam, i mean in some aspects its usefull but from what i can tell they gain nothing from steam and neither do we (except for mabey a bit of convenience)... so WHY valve! WHY!!!

 

[The Mullinator]

what i dont understand is WHY valve would burden us with steam, i mean in some aspects its usefull but from what i can tell they gain nothing from steam and neither do we (except for mabey a bit of convenience)... so WHY valve! WHY!!!

In no particular order:

1. More advanced anti-piracy measures (everyone including Valve knew they wouldn't work 100% but you can't just give up and let pirates win.)

2. You can actually purchase and download this game online without ever having to go to a store.

3. Allows Valve to be its own publisher.

4. Content updates for both Valve and the end user and drastically simpler and easier to manage.

5. General overall convenience.

Personally Steam hasn't been a burden for me at all, a few extra seconds for loading the game is a small price to pay for having points 2, 4, and 5.

 

[Vito Dintino]

good point, but i still think that content updates and buying the game online could have been done without steam but i rest my case

 

[MajorPayne]

what i dont understand is WHY valve would burden us with steam, i mean in some aspects its usefull but from what i can tell they gain nothing from steam and neither do we (except for mabey a bit of convenience)... so WHY valve! WHY!!!

Ask those who openly and regularly pirate games WHY we have to put up with Steam type solutions to the problems they create. And while you are at it, ask publishers like Vivendi WHY we have to put up with steam type solutions to game distribution to deal with the problems publishers create.

I support steam (the idea anyway), but I AM curious as to it's effects on my system while running. That is why I asked if playing W/out steam increases FPS, and/or helps with the stuttering issue (load times I am not really concerned about tho).

 

[justmatt]

In no particular order:

1. More advanced anti-piracy measures (everyone including Valve knew they wouldn't work 100% but you can't just give up and let pirates win.)

2. You can actually purchase and download this game online without ever having to go to a store.

3. Allows Valve to be its own publisher.

4. Content updates for both Valve and the end user and drastically simpler and easier to manage.

5. General overall convenience.

Personally Steam hasn't been a burden for me at all, a few extra seconds for loading the game is a small price to pay for having points 2, 4, and 5.

'Kay. First off, would you mind 'splaining what "General overall convenience" is.

I like what steam does...I think it is very innovative. The fact that you can get updates so easily and purchase games without going to the store is great!

....BUT! Here's my issue with it. It isn't optional. I understand that Valve did this to try to stop piracy, but ask yourself: Did it? If you need an answer to that question, just go to a bittorrent site and search for "half life 2".

It's one thing to defend the features of Steam, but quite another to defend the fact that it is REQUIRED to even install the game!

I'm sorry my post was so off-topic, but I had to get it off my chest.

As far as the topic of this thread, I don't doubt for a second that de-steaming HL2 will help in some areas. If all you're wanting to do is play the single-player HL2 game you went to the store and physically bought (I know, some of us live like CAVEMEN!!!), then Steam is merely a nuissance. Unfortunately Valve are the ones who made the game and they can require whatever they want. It won't change until they notice it hurting where it counts: $$. But plenty of people still bought the game so it won't make a difference.

 

[The Mullinator]

'Kay. First off, would you mind 'splaining what "General overall convenience" is.

I like what steam does...I think it is very innovative. The fact that you can get updates so easily and purchase games without going to the store is great!

....BUT! Here's my issue with it. It isn't optional. I understand that Valve did this to try to stop piracy, but ask yourself: Did it? If you need an answer to that question, just go to a bittorrent site and search for "half life 2".

It's one thing to defend the features of Steam, but quite another to defend the fact that it is REQUIRED to even install the game!

I'm sorry my post was so off-topic, but I had to get it off my chest.

As far as the topic of this thread, I don't doubt for a second that de-steaming HL2 will help in some areas. If all you're wanting to do is play the single-player HL2 game you went to the store and physically bought (I know, some of us live like CAVEMEN!!!), then Steam is merely a nuissance. Unfortunately Valve are the ones who made the game and they can require whatever they want. It won't change until they notice it hurting where it counts: $$. But plenty of people still bought the game so it won't make a difference.

General overall convenience = easy to browse for servers, get news updates on games without having to look for the news yourself, Friends system (even though it doesn't work all that well), etc.

Of course Steam couldn't prevent anti-piracy, nothing ever will. However it has certainly made it extremelly inconvenient for both the people making the cracks and for the people who play the cracked versions. That alone makes it more of a success than any other previous anti-piracy measure.

As for it being required its only a problem now since it is still buggy. However as it gets patched and everything gets fixed then it will really be a great thing to have for everyone (assuming they remove the required online authentication).

 

[ZoFreX]

Steam actually makes it easier to pirate half-life 2 amongst friends (most common form of piracy, near me anyhoo). Oh, and this situation is hypothetical.

I give my friend the cache files, log him into steam with my account, validate everything, quit steam, block steam with his firewall. Move onto next computer. How easy is that? No cracks, no hassle.

Oh, and everyone saying "OMG I gets 5 second load times with steam running ur tlking BULL" the important thing is that there is a reduction, you need a before and after comparison to show anything, the fact that you have a nasa-level supercomputer in your mum's basement proves nothing.

 

[Doppelgofer]

Back to the original point of this thread (which has devolved into legal issues). For those who HAVE disabled steam (by whatever means) do you notice an increase in FPC and/or a resolution or reduction in the stuttering problem? I would be curious if steam causes us to incur a performance hit in more areas than just load times?

general performance is MUUUUCH better. load times are much quicker, stuttering IS still there but NO WHERE NEAR as noticeable...i've been able to wack everything up to high now and have it run smooth beyond words with only a little stuttering. if i put it on high in steam hl2, it nearly chewed my computer up. valve need to sort things big time

 

[StainlessJ-FPGA]

In no particular order:

1. More advanced anti-piracy measures (everyone including Valve knew they wouldn't work 100% but you can't just give up and let pirates win.)

2. You can actually purchase and download this game online without ever having to go to a store.

3. Allows Valve to be its own publisher.

4. Content updates for both Valve and the end user and drastically simpler and easier to manage.

5. General overall convenience.

Personally Steam hasn't been a burden for me at all, a few extra seconds for loading the game is a small price to pay for having points 2, 4, and 5.

1. Doesn't work, was pirated just as quickly as any other game.

2. How does that help us who went to the store?

3. But they aren't, they had a publisher(a bad one at that), and still doesn't help us that would rather go to the store.

4. Simpler and easier? I have a program that takes less memory, doesn't interfere with the game at all, doesn't hurt performance, and can download the patches automatically. Anyone can get it, completely free, and it is not bloatware like steam.

5. It is the most inconvenient piece of software I've ever used. It's worthless.



Furthermore, I have a serious issue with performance in all my other games while either HL2 or Steam is installed. Since technically I am required to have steam installed to run HL2, it's difficult to test it. But after reading this post, I am more inclined to believe the reason my other games don't run correctly is because of steam. Eitherway, Valve's software is bad and won't run properly on my system. It seems to interfere with other software on my system, which is unacceptable.

 

[corkscru74]

What you have failed to mention was the type of GPU you are using. If you're using some old Nvidia GeForce3, then you've got a lot more to explain on your load times. Plus you fail to mention the settings in which you are playing the game. Settings like model detail, shadows, aa, af, and screen resolution are all very important in benchmarking. And as the loading for both Steam and the patch done in the same way? Are they both with the same settings? You need to make sure that every test is consistant.

I've never had any problems with Steam. I run Half-Life 2 on an AMD AthlonXP 2600+ @2.3 GHz, with a 1 GB of ram running in dual channel mode, with a BFG 6800 OC graphics card, and I have terrific gameplay. It runs great, load times are low, and with the new Steam patch, it runs even better.

I have the same problem with long load times, the recent patch doesn't seem to have done anything. I'm running 9600 Pro, 2.8Ghz P4, 1Gb DDR, 5700rpm HD. I'd say 2 mins to load up from desktop to options screen is about right. I'm not having anywhere near the same long load times in Vampire: Bloodlines even though the performance in game is lower than HL2.

I'm in 2 minds about steam. Yes, I want to stop Piracy - the Games industry has never done anything bad to me so why would I want it to suffer. But I'm still not that keen on a program that I must have running in the background while playing a game.

I guess my main concern is that in the future everyone and their granny will be releasing their own Fog, Mist, Water Vapour programs with the same intentions as Steam. Why can't the game just have a built-in option where it must be validated on a webpage. Each copy of the game has its own unique code, once registered it can't be used again....or is this how the system works already?

 

[The Mullinator]

1. Doesn't work, was pirated just as quickly as any other game.

2. How does that help us who went to the store?

3. But they aren't, they had a publisher(a bad one at that), and still doesn't help us that would rather go to the store.

4. Simpler and easier? I have a program that takes less memory, doesn't interfere with the game at all, doesn't hurt performance, and can download the patches automatically. Anyone can get it, completely free, and it is not bloatware like steam.

5. It is the most inconvenient piece of software I've ever used. It's worthless.



Furthermore, I have a serious issue with performance in all my other games while either HL2 or Steam is installed. Since technically I am required to have steam installed to run HL2, it's difficult to test it. But after reading this post, I am more inclined to believe the reason my other games don't run correctly is because of steam. Eitherway, Valve's software is bad and won't run properly on my system. It seems to interfere with other software on my system, which is unacceptable.

1. I will say it again, it just made it more difficult for people to crack, I never said it litteraly prevented piracy. Why else are most of the cracked versions filled with bugs that don't exist in the retail version.

2. No it doesn't help you but that doesn't mean it isn't a good feature to have.

3. I never said that helped the end user did I? I just said that was something that was helpful for Valve in the long run.

4. Steam is not bloatware considering as of right now it is only using 10mb of RAM of the total 512 I have on my system. Ya sure, call that bloatware. :upstare: Also what program are you talking about? The only other system I know of for automatically downloading patches the way Valves does is the Battle.net system that Blizzard uses. As for it interfering with the game well that is one of the problems I have already stated that needs fixing and that it is plainly obvious that Valve IS fixing it.

5. I'm not sure about this one aside from it being your personal opinion. So far Steam has been VERY convenient for me and thats a fact. I am not lying, Steam really has been very good to me.

I have no idea how you could come to the conclusion that Steam is causing other games to not function properly. You can turn Steam off if you don't want to play any Valve games. You do know right? Also I have played other games (mostly Rome: Total War) both with and without Steam running at the same time and I didn't notice any difference in performance.

 

[koopa]

I guess my main concern is that in the future everyone and their granny will be releasing their own Fog, Mist, Water Vapour programs with the same intentions as Steam. Why can't the game just have a built-in option where it must be validated on a webpage. Each copy of the game has its own unique code, once registered it can't be used again....or is this how the system works already?

This is a critical point for me. I maintain that Steam is a horrible, amateurish, restrictive piece of junk, but at least at the moment it's not actively evil. When someone like EA releases their version it's going to wipe your hard drive and probably try to steal your girlfriend.

 

[StainlessJ-FPGA]

1. I will say it again, it just made it more difficult for people to crack, I never said it litteraly prevented piracy. Why else are most of the cracked versions filled with bugs that don't exist in the retail version.

2. No it doesn't help you but that doesn't mean it isn't a good feature to have.

3. I never said that helped the end user did I? I just said that was something that was helpful for Valve in the long run.

4. Steam is not bloatware considering as of right now it is only using 10mb of RAM of the total 512 I have on my system. Ya sure, call that bloatware. :upstare: Also what program are you talking about? The only other system I know of for automatically downloading patches the way Valves does is the Battle.net system that Blizzard uses. As for it interfering with the game well that is one of the problems I have already stated that needs fixing and that it is plainly obvious that Valve IS fixing it.

5. I'm not sure about this one aside from it being your personal opinion. So far Steam has been VERY convenient for me and thats a fact. I am not lying, Steam really has been very good to me.

I have no idea how you could come to the conclusion that Steam is causing other games to not function properly. You can turn Steam off if you don't want to play any Valve games. You do know right? Also I have played other games (mostly Rome: Total War) both with and without Steam running at the same time and I didn't notice any difference in performance.

1. But it didn't make it more difficult and in fact people have already shown you can crack it legitly using Valve's own instructions! Steam is worthless in the fight against piracy.

2. There is a better way to implement this. Requires a lot less hassle and wouldn't affect people like me that don't want steam.

3. Something that would help valve in the long run is to get rid of steam. You make one of about 3 people in the world that like it.

4. Most games have an update feature for the game, this is not a new feature. It is convenient if the game can download and install the patch itself rather than you downloading and installing manually. However, having a secondary program running all the time to do this is bloatware. It peaks at 40mb+ of RAM. Not even my windows shell goes that high. And for all those resources it does nothing, ever. It's like spyware.

5. But if you could get all the convenience you wanted without using bloatware, wouldn't that be better? Steam is bloatware, it doesn't do anything to help you. Downloading updates should have been incorporated into the game like most games do it, it's a standard for a reason. Downloading games online has been done before, and it's better without having a second program to do this through. Other than those 2 things, steam does nothing else. Oh, except ruining the experience for many people. I say, better safe than sorry, get rid of bloat.

 

[MajorPayne]

When someone like EA releases their version it's going to wipe your hard drive and probably try to steal your girlfriend.

Sounds like a roommate I used to have in College!

 

[rocky]

the updates to steam today with claimed performance increases have made my halflife2 single player loadtimes significantly worse than before.... sigh..

 

[Cons Himself]

I said they can attempt to. I said nothing about them being sucessful.

they cant attempt to prosecute somebody. they can attempt to sue them.

 

[aamrein]

Steam 50% slower for me

After suffering from long loading times playing up to level 13 using Steam I gave the steam emulator a chance and here are the results:

From HL2 start to playing a loaded game:
With Steam from Valve: 164 seconds
With SteamEmu from Vengeance: 99 seconds

If you subtract the 12 seconds that Steam took for the login the difference is still about 50 seconds. With Steam HL2 needs 50% more time to load than with the SteamEmu. IMHO that's quite embarassing for Valve. Also quicksave and quickload seem to perform better and there seem to be shorter or less hickups when loading stuff from disk in-game. I finished the last two levels of HL2 yesterday with the SteamEmu and it played quite well on my low-end system. @Valve: good job on HL2, very bad job on Steam.

My system meets the minimum specs for HL2:
- Thunderbird 1.2 GHz, 768MB, ATI 9600XT, Catalyst 12, Windows xp
- Steam and HL2 are kept up-to-date by automatic Steam updates
- All settings are on high except water reflections (medium) and audio quality (medium because of too much stuttering on high)

 

[Dasparov]

Of course it runs slower, your running a game through a program

 

[Varsity]

To sum up: Steam slows down loading times (well duh) depending on your system and internet connection but cannot alter performance while you are playing. Stuttering is not a problem with Steam.

 

[aamrein]

To sum up: Steam slows down loading times (well duh) depending on your system and internet connection but cannot alter performance while you are playing. Stuttering is not a problem with Steam.

Stuttering is most probably not caused directly by Steam itself. But Steam makes things worse, because the stuttering occurs when Source is dynamically loading ressources from the gcf files and the Steam dlls seem to be responsible for handling access to the gcf files. Also leaving HL2 started by Steam results in heavy swapping activities for about 15 seconds while quitting HL2 started by the SteamEmu only results in 3 seconds of swapping. Perhaps Valve messed up with the caching in Steam.