too much lag/unplayable at times - help!

[Rickyohead]

i'm on an athlon 1800+, 1 gig ram, 9800pro, hl2 single player is great. smooth, no problems playing where lots of action is going on. my only slowdown is "loading" new scenes takes about 20 - 30 seconds.

however, deathmatch was almost impossible to play last night.

i'm on a cable modem at home at about 3mbps. what's slowing me down? my computer? my connection? the server?

thanks.

 

[SubKamran]

Try playing CS:S and seeing if it lags as much. Otherwise, it's a connection or server issue.

 

[Kianor]

a HL2 dm with 14 players takes 78% of my dual xeon cpu.
too much

 

[StardogChampion]

What kind of ping do you get? Bear in mind that 90% of the servers are probably guys on 1mb hosting a server meaning it'll be laggy with a few players.

Wait for a few weeks and most of the servers should be pretty decent to play on.

 

[Ecthe|ioN]

The physics demands a bit of computer power, that might be the problem. I'm not certain though.

 

[Yoshi]

yes, the cpu is very important and yours isn't very powerfull...
but if it was a server with 24 people or something it's normal that it stutters a bit :|

 

[t0v3]

After trying 5 servers most of them lagged a hell of alot, so it was unplayable. The server which was 100mbit dedicated was playable, but still lagged.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

I'll have to try a lan game tomorrow in school, see if it lags much. 22 players with laptops... how will it go? Stay tuned...