[Edit: Fixed! ]Help Meee! Laggy!

[l3eeron]

Just sayin', you should eliminate the video stuff as a problem before you get all into the networking stuff.

[Clay Pigeon]

What are your stats?

cpu, gpu, and ram?

[MateoTheBold!]

OK so I finally have some time to work on this. I will spend the rest of the day exhausting every avenue and try to fix this, so thank you all for your help.

This started around 1.5 weeks ago. The servers have been so laggy recently with updates breaking everything in TF2 that I didn't think it was an issue with me at first. After getting back into L4D2 more, I realized it wasn't just TF2.

I can't think of any new hardware/software changes that have occurred recently. My OS install is about a month old, but I enjoyed a few weeks of smooth gameplay on the fresh install before this happened.

-My comp is an AMD Black Phenom II 1090T X6 at 3.2 Ghz, 8 Gb Ram, Win 7 64 bit, Radeon 6950 2 GB.
-Game cache verified
-Up to date video drivers, up to date NIC drivers
-Anti-virus is excluding the steam folder
-It happens on every server

I will do some LAN TF2 with Zookie and then play for 30 minutes or so with netgraph_1 on and then take temps of the CPU/GPU and see if anything fishy occurs.

Also, how do I do a pathping test?

[metacide]

Open a command prompt (Start -> Run... -> cmd) and type in:
pathping 69.162.99.27

That will ping the Custom maps server. Paste the results from that here.

[MateoTheBold!]

I played on freight for 30 minutes:

Connected with 15 players; was choppy but playable at first. As the game went on and the number of players rose to 24, it turned into a slideshow. I can remember trying to play TF2 on a pentium 4 at 17 FPS and it felt like that.

My FPS bounced between 200+ down to 70. There was a ontime dip into the 40s but during the slideshow moments my FPS were around 90. There did not seem to be a correlation between lagginess and FPS, with the exception of my FPS slowly decreasing as more players came on, which mirrored my lagginess increasing, but again, it was averaging around 90 during heavy action when the lag was the worst.

My ping was 60s/70s during this time. Alt-tabbing out revealed a GPU temp of 56C and a CPU temp of 34C.

Afterwards I started a server for Zookie and I and it was buttery smooth.

Pathping results are below (pasting it messed up the formatting, so its a screenshot):

VIEW CONTENT:

On a lark I also ran pathping to TV7, as it was full (it seems like full servers cause the most problems for me):

VIEW CONTENT:

[metacide]

It's interesting to see that as soon as you hit the car1.Minneapolis1.Level3.net router your latency roughly doubles.

Is it safe to assume these pathpings are from when you are not playing TF2? Can we see the comparison of when you are playing TF2?

Do you have a router at home that you and Zookie plug into? Or is it a switch? What type of router is it?

These pathpings really dont look so bad, imo.

If Zookie's PC is not turned on at all, do you still get the choppiness?

Oh and can we get a screenshot of task manager sorted by CPU descending of when you are playing TF2 and it is choppy?

[MateoTheBold!]

Those pings are just standing at windows. During game, while logged into the same server:

VIEW CONTENT:

Task manager during game when lagging. This was when the server was full:

VIEW CONTENT:

I played some more on dustbowl. Smooth at first and jsut got worse and worse as people showed up.

The router is a Time Capusle (don't judge meeeee!). It has the latest firmware and has been reset manually.

It still lags when her computer is off. Another odd thing, is since this has started I have noticed my ping being 70s-90s when before it was 50-60s.

But again, it feels like I am playing with 300 ping at times, not 90.


I have an old router I can try. Is that the next step?

[metacide]

Yes, sir. Yes it is.

It doesnt look like your CPU is being taxed too heavily. The pathpings are comparable, as in they are so close it is negligible.

So we know it's not the path between the servers and you. We know it's not your CPU. We are reasonably sure it is not your video card (due to you playing offline games with high settings smoothly).

Now I see in your netstats that you have 157 fps, but you say it's more like 20 being all choppy and what not right?

If it isn't your router having some sort of funky config than My thoughts are it has something to do with your NIC.

[metacide]

On second thought it is possible you potentially have faulty RAM. Try running memtest86. See if that comes up with any errors. This will require that you make a bootable CD and boot off of that.

[Stevo]

net_graph 4 will give much more useful info.

[Clay Pigeon]

If the thing has issues when zookie's computer isn't connected to the router, I would think that it is your system.

If no more issues when zookie's computer isn't connected to the router, its the router.


ps: net_graph 5 is more useful than net_graph 1

[MateoTheBold!]

On second thought it is possible you potentially have faulty RAM. Try running memtest86. See if that comes up with any errors. This will require that you make a bootable CD and boot off of that.

I'm already part of TTHREAZ's botnet I'm sure after downloading L4D2 maps from his server. He won't be happy with you Meta if your mem86 program tries to steal me away for your bot network. Just staying.

I'll run that now. and then check it out with the old router.

[Flash]

Obviously check out everything, but that fact that Zookie is NOT having this issue despite her slower computer makes me think it isn't a router or internet issue.

Whenever we have network issues here it is obvious to both Daisy and I at exactly the same time. We both get laggy and both go back to normal in sync with each other.

[stujitsu]

I still think Zookie is the cause.

From everything Mateo is describing, it sounds more like packet loss/choke problems rather than latency.


This is my post from a few months back when Kat was having problems:

"Actually Kat there is nothing you can do about choke in the game engine. A "choke" packet is a TCP/IP packet that routers send to eachother to let them know that they are having too much data sent to them.

What you would change is the "lerp" in the game engine, "lerp" determines how agressive the interpolation is calculated and that will determine how smooth your frame rate is with high lag and choke. I don't know exactly how to change the lerp value but I do know it has to be done in the console. There is a source engine wiki that explains a lot of the networking stuff for TF2.

Unfortunatly there is not much you can do about choke. I have heard that most home routers are really bad when it comes to the ammount of bandwidth they actually provide compaired to what they say they do. I have not tested this but some people will set up an Astro Gateway on a spare PC and use that for their router. Your average PC CPU is going to be far faster than the hardware in most consumer routers.

That only helps if the problem is within your home network. If the problem is outside your home network, your hosed. Internet routers do their best to get packets to their destination as fast as possible, but each router decides how to send packets independent from eachother. There is no way for you to tell the internet that you want all your packets to travel through a certian path of routers to avoid the clogged ones. The internet is supposed to do that on it's own.

I could go on a rant about ISP's and bandwidth in the US but that would take more words than anyone would put the effort to read."

When an internet router at the ISP level gets a choke packet from a router it just sent a packet to, it changes the packet size to half of what was last sent to try to help it cope. So in the case of the source engine for every choke packet that means the amount of data you will recieve will be cut in half until the all the routers along your route are no longer "choking" on the amount of data being sent to them.

I would try two things. One, try a non-source engine game and see if you are still having problems. FYI I've had the same problem you are describing on ALL source engine multiplayer games. Two, check the MTU on your PC, Zookies PC, and the router. MTU is the Maximum Transmission Unit, and that tells the network just how large a packet can be for your PC.

[gator]

Doubt this is it, but maybe something really odd with your client rate settings?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -YADK-4769
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -TYSC-9690