Swap Buffers tanking HL2 performance

[psyci]

Hi all,

I'm having problems getting HL2 to work. Strangely, everything used to work just fine, then I stopped playing for a few months, and when I came back, my FPS was in the toilet. I'm getting like 9-12 FPS on average.

Note this is in ANY circumstance - playing HL2, playing CS:S, even looking at the title screen for HL2, or at a blank wall in a corner in HL2. Not using any custom maps or anything else like that.

I looked at the showbudget, and saw that Swap Buffers was always what was taking so long (see screenshot attached). I moved all my video settings down to the absolute lowest settings in the menu, and I still get terrible frame rate.

What's going on here? Anyone have any ideas how I can fix this?

Thanks!

 

[psyci]

I should mention system specs:

Athlon 64 3000+
Nvidia GeForce 5400
1 GB RAM
Windows 2000

 

[Ames]

Is your mat_dxlevel set to 90? Try setting it lower with mat_dxlevel 80 or 81.

 

[Lahire149]

I'm thinking that this is a memory error, but not sure if it is vid memory or system memory...

 

[NeoNight]

the mat_dxlevel 80 command should fix the problem... you can put it at 70 if you want.

 

[psyci]

Solved it... a bit obscure, though...

Nvidia has video cards that do multi-monitor. That's fine.

You can plug in two monitors to one card, and activate them both. That's fine too.

You can activate something called "Dual View" - once again, that's still fine.

With Dual View enabled, you can set either monitor as your primary video monitor. And herein is the problem: if you set the wrong monitor as your primary video monitor, it doesn't work, and causes the problem I discussed.

I switched the "primary monitor" setting, then switched the plugs attached to the video card - and then it worked perfectly.

So that's an odd one. But thanks for your help!