Uber-Choke!

[bz]

Is there anything in the most recent update or any of the subsequent Ville server adjustments that would cause my choke to skyrocket? I haven't been having choke problems for months, and it was immediately after the Uber-Update that my choke noticeable. Instantly.

My FPS and ping have remained unchanged, but my choke never drops below 10, and even in moderately taxing situations I'll be chugging along at 40-100 choke. Ubers are over before I see them begin, my sentries are destroyed before I even see them get sapped, and I am pretty sure my neighbors now believe me to be a raging lunatic.

There were no general, technical changes to either my computer or internet connection leading up to the update, and i had no problems with tf2 as recently as Wednesday. I haven't noticed any discrepancies in SpeedTest results, and PingPath queries are all in the black. Any insight?

[MateoTheBold!]

I had terrible lag issues and finally realized it was due to choke. Somehow my internet speed in steam had been set to the level right above a dial up modem.

Check it under settings-> downloads and make sure it didn't get bumped down somehow.

[bz]

I checked that as well, and it was unchanged. I upped the setting by one and that seemed to lower the baseline choke level to 10-15, but it was still spiking to 40+ on even an 1v1 encounter.

[MateoTheBold!]

Speak to stujitsu. We had a discussion about it on a TF2 server one day and he seems pretty knowledgeable about it.

[Clay Pigeon]

open console

type "rate 25000"
hit enter.

That will max your rate and should reduce your choke.

[MateoTheBold!]

Are there any negatives to doing that Clay Pigeon? Or is the result always a positive?

[Cpt._Keyes]

i think its only negative to the server...which is why it has a rate limit...but then again i know about -50% of all there is to know about connection speeds

[Clay Pigeon]

No negatives as far as I'm aware, assuming you've a broadband connection.

There is one other way to reduce choke that I know of, and that is to reduce your cl_updaterate, which used to be what I did back in goldsrc games (eg: tfc, dod). Most source game servers force a certain update rate (eg: the ville's tf2 servers force 33, up from the default updaterate of 20), so that isn't usually an option any more.

25000 is the max rate the ville's tf2 servers allow.

[bz]

Huh, for whatever reason my rate was set to 7500. And I'm still at a loss to explain how that happened.

That did the trick though, much appreciated!

[MateoTheBold!]

Clay Pigeon FTW!

[THE Flying chihuahua]

Clay Pigeon FTW!

Yeah! He's fun for target practice!