There's a seriously something wrong here

[thefiznut]

Okay, so I have been playing CS:Source for some time now, knowing I have horrible FPS. It goes down to high 20s often very often, but goes up to 40-50 or so indoors and in some smaller areas. I never thought anything of it, because I normally run with everythign on high and 1024x768 res, but no AA and Trilinear Filtering for AF. Then I started wondering what my FPS would be like if I went to low settings.

I changed EVERY setting as low as it would go, and stuck with 1024x768 res. To my suprise, CS:S fps rates stayed almost exactly the same as with everythign on high. What the?

So I decided to run some stress tests.. First I ran everything on high, as I normally do, then I ran it with everything on low.

High results: 50 fps
Low results: 51 fps

What in the hell? ;(

My specs are:
AMD AthlonXP 2200+ (Clocks in at 1.87 ghz)
512 MB Ram
9800 Pro 256MB

I've seen worse machines than mine getting MUCH better FPS with settings on high than I do. Is this some sort of issue Valve hasn't worked out yet or what? A quick check on the steampowered forums reveals that I am not the only one having this problem. Apparently some people with beastly PCs are getting absolutely horrible FPS.

 

[SUPR]

Update your drivers?

 

[thefiznut]

Update your drivers?

I've tried several versions of catalysts, and also omega. No difference in results.

Also, my PC is completely clean of spyware and virii, and I make sure I close unneeded processes while I play. Unless it's vital to windows' operation, it's outta there.

 

[Zento]

You have the same setup as me, though I have a XP 2800+. I get about 50-70 FPS...sometimes up to 90.

 

[thefiznut]

You have the same setup as me, though I have a XP 2800+. I get about 50-70 FPS...sometimes up to 90.

Your CPU is still a bit better than mine. Try putting all your settings on low, and tell me if your FPS changes at all. Mine doesn't

 

[Haku666]

Thats because ur cpu is bottle-neck and u cannot get more fps with that cpu. i suggest u buy better if u want more fps.

 

[thefiznut]

Thats because ur cpu is bottle-neck and u cannot get more fps with that cpu. i suggest u buy better if u want more fps.

No, that is not the problem. I get the EXACT same FPS whether i'm using the lowest resolution and lowest settings possible, or the highest.

People with Pentium and Nvidia equivalents to my PC are getting much higher FPS than I am.

 

[Ady]

No, that is not the problem. I get the EXACT same FPS whether i'm using the lowest resolution and lowest settings possible, or the highest.

People with Pentium and Nvidia equivalents to my PC are getting much higher FPS than I am.

YES, that is the problem! If you are CPU limited then it won't matter what resolution or graphics setting y ou have on, you still get around the same fps. Your CPU can only run it that fast, even an X800XT PE wouldn't help it go any faster. Grab yourself a better cpu and your problem will be gone.

 

[sublidieminal]

yactually i think this may be a game error, i remember one time running vst and my fps stayed a steady (by steady i mean stuck at) 33 fps, but my average result in the end was 66.66 (weird considering the fps graph said 33 the whole time) could this mean that the stress test is actually doubling our true result??!?! Conspiracy.

P.S. that was the first time Ive seen fps that low on vst, i usually score a 94 with all max settings.

 

[Ady]

yactually i think this may be a game error, i remember one time running vst and my fps stayed a steady (by steady i mean stuck at) 33 fps, but my average result in the end was 66.66 (weird considering the fps graph said 33 the whole time) could this mean that the stress test is actually doubling our true result??!?! Conspiracy.

P.S. that was the first time Ive seen fps that low on vst, i usually score a 94 with all max settings.

Sounds like VSync to me.

 

[tomo13]

yeh, I have the same problem.

I get 76 fps in the stress test with everything on medium or high.
I run CS on medium with low shadows at 1078*768 and get low fps in certain areas.I was told that my cpu was a bottleneck.

P4 2.4
512 ddr 2100
9800 pro

 

[thefiznut]

YES, that is the problem! If you are CPU limited then it won't matter what resolution or graphics setting y ou have on, you still get around the same fps. Your CPU can only run it that fast, even an X800XT PE wouldn't help it go any faster. Grab yourself a better cpu and your problem will be gone.

No, that is not the problem. Even if I were being bottlenecked, uising lower quality textures, models, etc would result in an increase in FPS. This is true with EVERY game on the market.
Doom 3 even gave very good FPS with lowest settings. I am not the only one with this problem, and it's clearly a bug in the engine.

And NO, I do not have vsync enabled.

I tried running one of the configs someone posted up on the steampowered forums, it took EVERY setting to the lowest. It made CS:S look like 1.6, and I did not see an FPS increase AT ALL.

This CPU also competes with the P4 2.4 ghz CPUs, so don't be fooled by the clock speed. AMD 1.87 ghz does not equal a 1.87 ghz Pentium, if one were to exist.

 

[Kiva128]

check your control panel in windows to make sure you dont have any AA or AF set on. If you do, it doesn't matter that you didn't put it on in CS:S, it's going to take affect anyway.

Other than that, I have no clue.

 

[Gray Fox]

TheFiznut I have the exact same thing, you should check out this( I posted the same thing in the "Strange fps problem(9600xt)" thread)

I have an:
2.4Ghz AMD clocked at 1999Mhz
(but I heard it that 2.4 p4 are better, can't be sure)
512ram
ATI RADEON 9800 pro 128mb ( sapphire atlantis, no oc, no flash, no extra cooler)

*(means I only did the stress test once, so I have only one result)

In the stresstest I get with everything on high, res 1024x768, no aa and no vertical sync= between 58,52 and 62,77 fps.
With everything on high and aa at 6x and v-sync on, I get 54 fps.*

But I do agree that scource it teh wierd:
1024x768- everything on low and no aa and no v-sync= 61,72 fps*
640x480- everything high, no v-sync and no aa= 62,52*
Oh yeah and when I change teh video setting sometimes that results in purple glow, so I have to exit and start css again.

 

[FrEaKN3sS]

when you install new driver make sure you remove any old driver you had before

 

[Operator]

Did you try and update your motherboard drivers?

 

[thefiznut]

I've tried all of these things. I'm quite knowledgable, so I have done all the obvious things, as you all have stated. Yes, I removed old drivers before updating. Yes, I have updated all of my motherboard drivers. No, I do not have AA or AF enabled in the ATI control panel. Both are set to application preference. Bleh..

Grey Fox, it's strange eh?

 

[Gray Fox]

Definatly, but I have the same thing with doom3, if I run everything on medium it runs good, sometimes drops to 15 fps, but if I turn the graphics down, the fps goes down.

 

[Dekstar]

I get a seriously weird FPS too. I heard somewhere it was to do with the imfamous ATI 9800 series, as I have. Try capping your Max fps to 50, that seemed to help me slightly.

The command is something like "fps_max 50"

 

[Ady]

No, that is not the problem. Even if I were being bottlenecked, uising lower quality textures, models, etc would result in an increase in FPS. This is true with EVERY game on the market.
Doom 3 even gave very good FPS with lowest settings. I am not the only one with this problem, and it's clearly a bug in the engine.

And NO, I do not have vsync enabled.

I tried running one of the configs someone posted up on the steampowered forums, it took EVERY setting to the lowest. It made CS:S look like 1.6, and I did not see an FPS increase AT ALL.

This CPU also competes with the P4 2.4 ghz CPUs, so don't be fooled by the clock speed. AMD 1.87 ghz does not equal a 1.87 ghz Pentium, if one were to exist.

You will realise it one day mate. goodluck. You have a lot to learn.

 

[sublidieminal]

I get higher fps with af at 16x rather than at 8x with my x800 pro.

 

[MjM]

I was under the impression that benchmarking at 640*480, indicated the performance of your motherboard/system bus/ram/cpu, because your graphics card is no longer the limiting factor (espiecially when you are running a 9800pro/xt). So when you get results like the ones posted above, i would have to assume that there is some sort of bottlekneck in between the gfx card and the cpu. It could be like memory timings or frequencies ... im not really an expert or anthing ... .

Hope it helps.

 

[Gunner]

You will realise it one day mate. goodluck. You have a lot to learn.

What the hell?...

Anyway thefiznut I think it has something to do with the way the source engine works, changing between low to high detail doesn't make a difference for me either.

 

[Woggy]

Well, my sisters PC had extremely performance for a while (like 30fps in the original counter strike), so I got the VIA 4 in 1 chipset drivers (use google to find them) and after a restart the PC became nice and fast again. You might have an nforce or something. Try updating the drivers for that.

But it seems your problem is game-specific, so I doubt this will help.

 

[Ady]

I was under the impression that benchmarking at 640*480, indicated the performance of your motherboard/system bus/ram/cpu, because your graphics card is no longer the limiting factor (espiecially when you are running a 9800pro/xt). So when you get results like the ones posted above, i would have to assume that there is some sort of bottlekneck in between the gfx card and the cpu. It could be like memory timings or frequencies ... im not really an expert or anthing ... .

Hope it helps.

You are exactly right. Resolution, AA, AF, DXLevel, Reflections and all other graphics options are completely GPU dependant. So if you turn them up and down and there is little or no change to your fps then it's something else in your system slowing it down.

Sometimes this can occur; Your CPU/System is capable of pushing a game to 70FPS, your graphics card will also display it at 70fps just fine when it's set to 640x480 and everything on low. now if you set the graphics to 1024x768 with medium settings your graphics card may now still be able to display it at 70FPS, but once you crank up the graphics to 1600X1200 with everything on high with AA and AF, your frames may dip down really low, something 25fps. This means you are now GPU Limited/Bottlenecked.

So if you run out and get the latest and greatest video card to replace your old one, you will now be able to run it at 70FPS with everything totally maxed out. You will NEVER be able to go above 70FPS though unless you upgrade other parts of your system. e.g. cpu, ram, mobo.

I hope this helps some of you understand this situation more. goodluck.

 

[Steelwind]

It IS a cpu problem. I had the same trouble as you guys did. I was running a P4 2.4ghz w/533fsb. Which is very close to what the guys with problems here have. Once I upgraded to a AMD 64 3000, my framerates went through the roof. The bottom line, your CPU is bottlenecking the performance that your 9800 Pro 256mb (I have one as well) can turn out. I'd also recommend going to 1gb of RAM as well. Let's face it, you want fast framerates, you need a very fast computer.

 

[Steelwind]

It doesn't matter that you have 1gb of RAM. The fact is you have an older processor. Trying to run the game on a good card like you have, with a slow processor will net you poor performance. If it's the Source engine's fault, it's only because they have created an engine that uses modern technology. If you think a 2.1 ghz processor is top of the line, check again.

 

[John Romero]

YES, that is the problem! If you are CPU limited then it won't matter what resolution or graphics setting y ou have on, you still get around the same fps. Your CPU can only run it that fast, even an X800XT PE wouldn't help it go any faster. Grab yourself a better cpu and your problem will be gone.

Listen to the man the source engine is cpu limited. look at the hl2 benchmarks in the german pc games magazine over at hl2fallout.

on a range of processors all the way from 1ghz to a p4 and athlon64 at 3.6+ghz the fps at lowest settings and highest settings in a range of resolutions the framerate was pretty much within 10fps of each other.

 

[Steelwind]

wow u just contradictied urself, u just said in ur other post how 1 gig of ram does matter and help. and i never said it was top of the line but should be able to play todays games fine. and if i can play doom3 w/ all settings high w/o slowing down once, then this shouldn't be any different. and besides i have basically the recommended requirements so..... if my shit is slow then they need to up the recommended requirements a lot. im not gunna upgrade when i can play every other game fine...

I recommended 1gb of RAM, but it's not going to magically fix your CPU problem. You do have a bottleneck situation. I know you don't want to admit it, but more than enough information has been given to you in this thread to demonstrate that Source is indeed CPU intensive. Recommended settings for a game doesn't mean you'll get to run it with all the bells and whistles. That's why most review sites and magazines also post their recommended settings so you can run it in all it's glory. Suck it up and buy another CPU if you want super fast framerates.

 

[B-MAn]

u can;t seem to change settings for the stress test. it has its own settings thats y its the stress test i think. i ran it and i gt 111fps on any setting so tht must be the only explaination

 

[qckbeam]

I had the same problem, tried every single thing I could think of, and then found out that there was trouble with the AGP drivers. For whatever reason, the AGP slider in the SMARTGART tab (for ATi users) was grayed out and stuck at 1x. How that happened I don't know. I updated the drivers, and all was well again. I had been getting an average of 27 FPS on a 3GHz PC with a 9700 Pro, and 1GB of RAM regardless of what I had set my resolution to, what options I had turned off, etc. This fixed everything.

edit: I just went back over the original thread (I had misread it) and I'm sure you aren't having the same problem I did. So you can pretty much disregard this post I guess

 

[Malfunction]

Your CPU can be bottle-necking your video card, or you might just need to unlock your fps in the console, the command being:

fps_max xxxxx

I usually set it to 999, or 999999, whatever works. If you start to notice any weird flickers in game, set it to 80. Also, in your Advanced graphics options, turn off Vertical Sync.

 

[thefiznut]

Well perhaps Ady is right. I consider myself quite knowledgable, but somehow this has slipped by me. I was not aware that the CPU could bottleneck a system so severely. Ah well, AMD chips aren't too pricey and I can fit up to a 3000+ or so.

 

[dynamicx]

Don't listen to them, they are simply wrong. I had exactly the same problem, whether I ran in 1600x1200 with 6aa and 16af or 640x480 with everything on low and no aa/af. I would always get between 60fps and 61fps. Also, CS:S was not actually performing any aa or af, both in the VST and ingame.

My specs:
3200+
1Gb pc3200 ram
9800pro, non flashed non oced
cat 4.8 to beta 4.11

Only way I could make the settings I chose in CS:S take effect was to set click "Custom settings" on the 3d panel and to leave AA and AF to Application preference. Then I could atleast make it do aa and af, but I am still not getting anywhere near the performance I did in the beta. Then I was able to run 4aa and 8af and still have it stay above 30fps all the time. Now I get about the same performance with no aa/af

It's definantly some sort of bug with source, 2 of my friend also have this "bug", both ran the beta flawlessly.

Edit: typos