Advice for speeding up my computer?

[arfy4]

As some of you know, in Team Fortress 2, sometimes my computer is painfully slow. I don't have this problem in Gmod or Half-life 2, this is all I know about my computer currently
Operating System: Windows vista home premium
RAM memory: 4GB DDR2 PC5700
Hard Drive: 250GB notebook hard drive. don't know the speed
Model: Dell Inspiron 1525

[Cpt._Keyes]

more hampsters!!

[arfy4]

Or maybe more caffeine.

[eraD]

What is your graphics card? To find out,
Go to your start menu, Run, type DxDiag, Display

[gator]

Looks like it's probably an GMA X3100, unless Dell had optional graphics upgrades on the Inspiron 1525. You should confirm what graphics it is Arfy.

Here's an example video of someone running TF2 on the Inspiron 1525.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOrfhmQiRLo

I'd suggest trying what they did, which is run in a window, 640x480, all advanced graphics settings turned to their lowest settings possible (low, bilinear, HDR disabled).

If that doesn't work, your bottleneck may lie elsewhere. What kind of internet connection do you have?

[Jesus_Faction]

TF2 is pretty CPU demanding, so what is your processor?

[Araris]

I'd be willing to bet it's a 2.0Ghz Core 2 Duo.

[arfy4]

My processor is intel Pentium dual core X3200 2.0GHz. My graphics card is intel graphics media accelorator X3100.

[Jesus_Faction]

OK arfy I really want to help you, but you have integrated gfx so its gonna be tough

put this into your autoexec.cfg

if you dont have one you will have to create it...


[spoil]
mat_antialias 0
mat_aaquality 0
mat_forceaniso 0
mat_hdr_enabled 0
mat_reducefillrate 1
mat_hdr_level 0
mat_picmip 4
mat_trilinear 0
mat_vsync 0
r_rootlod 2
mat_dxlevel 81
r_lod 0
r_3dnow 1
cl_c4dynamiclight 0
cl_minmodels 1
cl_playerspraydisable "1"
mat_showlowresimage 1
[/spoil]


mat_showlowresimage will make your game look terrible but it should really help your FPS


read this http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?p=9574533

[Clay Pigeon]

You're playing on a laptop?
Besides turning down your options there is not much we can do to help you.

With a desktop we could suggest part replacements and upgrades, but your options are pretty much nil with a lappy.

maybe go down to a directx 8.1 renderpath?

[eraD]

[quote="Jesus_Faction";p="165020"]OK arfy I really want to help you, but you have integrated gfx so its gonna be tough

put this into your autoexec.cfg

if you dont have one you will have to create it...


[spoil]
mat_antialias 0
mat_aaquality 0
mat_forceaniso 0
mat_hdr_enabled 0
mat_reducefillrate 1
mat_hdr_level 0
mat_picmip 4
mat_trilinear 0
mat_vsync 0
r_rootlod 2
mat_dxlevel 81
r_lod 0
r_3dnow 1
cl_c4dynamiclight 0
cl_minmodels 1
cl_playerspraydisable "1"
mat_showlowresimage 1
[/spoil]


mat_showlowresimage will make your game look terrible but it should really help your FPS


read this http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?p=9574533[/quote]
This should help you get above 4 fps arfy

[arfy4]

How am I supposed to create autoexec.cfg or tell if I have one?

[Jesus_Faction]

This post is pretty much what you want:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... stcount=19

Next you going open a new text document (Notepad) and paste the text below in. Save the file as "autoexec.cfg", make sure its not saved as autoexec.cfg.txt. Add this new file to \Steam\steamapps\your_user_name\team fortress 2\tf\cfg\

I suggest making both autoexec.cfg and config.cfg read-only once you've set everything up. Do this by going to \Steam\steamapps\your_user_name\team fortress 2\tf\cfg\ and right-click on the file, then Properties, and then set the Attributes to read-only down at the bottom.

[arfy4]

Can someone explain that link to me? I didn't get how to do it at all.

[John Doe]

Arfy I hate to tell you this but the 1525 really isnt a gaming platform with the onboard Intel video card.

As others have suggested, reduce your resolution to its lowest, tweak all video settings to low, turn off HDR and AA and stuff like that.

Also, check in the Bios to see if you can assign more ram to the video card, I have no idea how much ram it would share with the PC by default but perhaps you can assign it 512mb or more.

But, no matter what you do you may find that the fps you get in TF2 will be far too low and you will have nothing but lag and performance issues due to your laptop not being equipped with a 3rd party video card.


JD