Source Games Basically Unplayable

[mesa]

Hey all,

Ever since buying a laptop for myself (May '11) I have been having an issue with playing any online source game. I have a Samsung QX410-S02 which is perfectly capable of running more intense games than CS: S, TF2, or L4D1/2. I have played COD4, BLOPS, BF: BC2, SWTOR, EQ2, D3, Guild Wars 2, etc running fine. The issue is that every 30 seconds to a minute, I will skip 3-4 times in a few seconds, making it impossible to do well in Valve's online shooters.

I have tried running the game just the intel graphics card, and just the Nvidia (through Optimus controls) and no change. Running hl2.exe in admin, Windows XP SP2/3 also has no effect. I even tried dual booting with Windows 8, same issue. Unfortunately cannot try XP on this machine as I have issues finding drivers for my HDD. I'm out of luck, been searching like crazy for a year now and cannot find anything to fix this. Any, and I mean any help is appreciated! Let me know if you need more information.

Video of the skipping in multiple games:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_hpk...ature=youtu.be

Windows 7 Home 64bit
Intel Core i5 m480 @ 2.67ghz
Nvidia Quadro 310M / Intel GMA HD (Nvidia Optimus)
4 GB RAM
SATA HDD 5400 RPM

 

[Danny_ZQ]

Hey all,

Ever since buying a laptop for myself (May '11) I have been having an issue with playing any online source game. I have a Samsung QX410-S02 which is perfectly capable of running more intense games than CS: S, TF2, or L4D1/2. I have played COD4, BLOPS, BF: BC2, SWTOR, EQ2, D3, Guild Wars 2, etc running fine. The issue is that every 30 seconds to a minute, I will skip 3-4 times in a few seconds, making it impossible to do well in Valve's online shooters.

I have tried running the game just the intel graphics card, and just the Nvidia (through Optimus controls) and no change. Running hl2.exe in admin, Windows XP SP2/3 also has no effect. I even tried dual booting with Windows 8, same issue. Unfortunately cannot try XP on this machine as I have issues finding drivers for my HDD. I'm out of luck, been searching like crazy for a year now and cannot find anything to fix this. Any, and I mean any help is appreciated! Let me know if you need more information.

Video of the skipping in multiple games:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_hpk...ature=youtu.be

Windows 7 Home 64bit
Intel Core i5 m480 @ 2.67ghz
Nvidia Quadro 310M / Intel GMA HD (Nvidia Optimus)
4 GB RAM
SATA HDD 5400 RPM

I don't know if it'll work with you but when this started happening to me I just tried lowering the anti-aliasing and it worked fine.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

It's difficult to diagnose some problems such as these. Your specific issue is your choke value which flies up when you get the 'skipping' you described. Choke values are essentially packets of data which the server sends to you, the choke value indicating how many packets you've not received. The reason the server holds them back from delivering them to you is the unknown problem here. It seems on average about a choke of 20 in CSS causes the jump, couldn't see net_graph data for TF2 or L4D though.

There are two things you can do pretty quickly which might resolve the issue. One is to set your Steam client and source games to the internet speed you have. Steam > Settings > Downloads + Cloud > Internet Connection.

The other option is messing with your rates via the in-game console. In each source game you can enable the console by firstly going to options > keyboard > advanced > tick enable developers console. When in-game, press the ' button (below ESC, next to 1) to open the console. You want to type in rate settings which don't limit the ceiling of data you can receive. 3 commands and values you could use:

rate 70000
cl_updaterate 100
cl_cmdrate 100

If these don't fix your issue then it's going to be a more complex process to finding the cause of your high choke problem. You're at least now armed with the correct terminology to google the issue and search this forum & others and hopefully find someone with the same cause. Hardware can be one, wireless card or ethernet drivers. Viruses or malware are also potential causes.

 

[mesa]

Thanks for the replies. After doing some troubleshooting (changing rates did not fix the problem), I discovered that the wireless adapter / router connection was the issue. I've since hard reset my router and the issue seems to have disappeared for now. Appreciate the help!

 

[lunertexcosmo]

Thanks for the replies. After doing some troubleshooting (changing rates did not fix the problem), I discovered that the wireless adapter / router connection was the issue. I've since hard reset my router and the issue seems to have disappeared for now. Appreciate the help!

What you may want to consider for future purposes is buying a powerline adapter for your home or apartment. What they do is really simple. You plug one in near your router (Must be a wall socket, not a surge protector/strip) and one where your laptop is. Then, you take one Ethernet cable and plug one end into your adapter, and one into your router. You then plug one from your computer into your other adapter wherever those two are.

What they do is convert your internet connection into electricity which flows into the other adapter and into your laptop. Most setup kits include two Ethernet cables but make sure they do just in case. Also make sure your adapters can flow through multiple circuits throughout your home. A kit contains two adapters and as said earlier, two Ethernet cables and will run you about $50-$60 USD for a good one.

It won't be as fast as a regular Ethernet connection but it will be A LOT better than wifi and won't have nearly as much ping.