tf2 multicore support in the new update?

I

import

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 14, 2002
Messages
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afaik, i've enabled it, and set my max_fps to 60.
runs perfect, but i also have a 9800gx2, so... yeah.
my loads on the cores were:

100, 40ish, 0, 0.


that sound right?
 
TF2 has always had multi-core support.
They've continually optimized it through updates.

mat_queue_mode 2 is currently experimental and is not 100% stable.
 
i understand that. supposedly they fixed the crash between map switching. also, enabling maxfps to 60 increases stability.
mine runs stable... but i was curious if my loads mentioned above were normal for multicore -enabled-
 
It would be nice if it was stable as every single time I enable it, within a few seconds, TF2 crashes. Hopefully they'll add it as an option within the menus and finally make it stable.
 
Yaden said:
Never heard that before. I was playing Source games on my old Athlon64 3200 without any problems.
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Competitively? "Without any problems" is a very relative statement, if you can't sustain 100fps in Source you are badly handicapping your self. Source is the most cpu limited engine used in PC shooters today, this is common knowledge in the CSS and TF2 community. Anything short of a 3.2 ghz C2D will bottleneck even a 7900GTX.
WhiteGuardian said:
he has a Q6700.
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Still cpu bottlenecked if not overclocked.

mat_queue_mode 2 works perfectly on my Q6600 and my E8400 and makes a huge diffrence, if it doesn't crash the game for you I see no reason not to use it. But don't set your fps max to 60, many servers tick at 66 and there is really no benefit to capping framerate at all unless your video card is overheating or something.
 
ok, i'll try to turn it off, or back to 300, which i think was the default setting.

with mat_queue_mode 2, should it stress all 4 cores, or just 2?
i have no problems with framerates, but i figured it would be better to distribute the load across the core, since i got em.
 
shiznit said:
Competitively? "Without any problems" is a very relative statement, if you can't sustain 100fps in Source you are badly handicapping your self. Source is the most cpu limited engine used in PC shooters today, this is common knowledge in the CSS and TF2 community. Anything short of a 3.2 ghz C2D will bottleneck even a 7900GTX.

Still cpu bottlenecked if not overclocked.

mat_queue_mode 2 works perfectly on my Q6600 and my E8400 and makes a huge diffrence, if it doesn't crash the game for you I see no reason not to use it. But don't set your fps max to 60, many servers tick at 66 and there is really no benefit to capping framerate at all unless your video card is overheating or something.
Click to expand...

On my sig rig, I average 120+ PFS in some servers where the tick rate is low it may drop to the 80-70's. I am still on a socket 939 X2 at 2.42GHz!
 
well, turns out mat_queue_mode was -1, and i was maxing at 60fps rock solid (according to fraps)
i put it to 2, and it still shows 60fps, but its choppy as hell. fps_max makes no difference.
just thought it was odd.

either way, runs like butter with it at -1, i guess multicore is a no-go for now.
 
import said:
well, turns out mat_queue_mode was -1, and i was maxing at 60fps rock solid (according to fraps)
i put it to 2, and it still shows 60fps, but its choppy as hell. fps_max makes no difference.
just thought it was odd.

either way, runs like butter with it at -1, i guess multicore is a no-go for now.
Click to expand...

TF2 will use multiple cores even when mat_queue_mode isnt at 2. On my dual core it uses 100% of one core and around 30% of the other with mat_queue_mode at -1. Setting it to 2 makes the second core usage go up to around 65% but it's unstable for me
 
odd. mines stable, but plays worse.
maybe has something to do with sli/gx2
 
shiznit said:
Competitively? "Without any problems" is a very relative statement, if you can't sustain 100fps in Source you are badly handicapping your self. Source is the most cpu limited engine used in PC shooters today, this is common knowledge in the CSS and TF2 community. Anything short of a 3.2 ghz C2D will bottleneck even a 7900GTX.

WhiteGaurdian said:
he has a Q6700.
Click to expand...

Still cpu bottlenecked if not overclocked.
Click to expand...
um. Ok thats just about the most un-informed statement I've heard this month. Now I've got my girl friend nagging me to get out of here so I'll go, but do a little research before you make a statement like that. It is true in one small technical respect.

mat_queue_mode 2 works perfectly on my Q6600 and my E8400 and makes a huge diffrence, if it doesn't crash the game for you I see no reason not to use it. But don't set your fps max to 60, many servers tick at 66 and there is really no benefit to capping framerate at all unless your video card is overheating or something.
Click to expand...

server fps =! client fps. This is coming from someone with three years of home CS 1.6, CSS and TF2 serving experiance.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
server fps =! client fps. This is coming from someone with three years of home CS 1.6, CSS and TF2 serving experiance.
Click to expand...

not to argue, but rather to learn: please explain to me why mine maxes at 60fps, when fps_max is 300 then?
i have a 9800gx2, and my q6700 is at 3.0ghz... so i doubt its the system holding it back.
 
Lets you run the game over 60 frames, it'll feel a lot smoother, but with some screen tearing sometimes.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
um. Ok thats just about the most un-informed statement I've heard this month. Now I've got my girl friend nagging me to get out of here so I'll go, but do a little research before you make a statement like that. It is true in one small technical respect.
Click to expand...

Whats so un-informed about it? Hes completely right that in a CPU bottlenecked game, increasing your clock speed will increase your FPS. i.e. Raising my E8400 from 3.0GHz to 4.0GHz increased my shader scores in 3DMark06 by quite a bit.

SM 2.0 by about 900 points.
SM 3.0 by about 300 points.
 
shiznit said:
Competitively? "Without any problems" is a very relative statement, if you can't sustain 100fps in Source you are badly handicapping your self. Source is the most cpu limited engine used in PC shooters today, this is common knowledge in the CSS and TF2 community. Anything short of a 3.2 ghz C2D will bottleneck even a 7900GTX.

Still cpu bottlenecked if not overclocked.
Click to expand...

wow, talk about misinforming people. I have a x2 4400 at 2.6, with a 7950gt I was hitting on average 45-55 fps on ave at 19x12 in TF2 (forget what AA/AF), I recently upgraded to a 8800gts 512 and am getting practically double that(I ave around 90 now). I can still play CSS on a AthlonXP with a 9800pro and average close to 100fps.... if you made the above statement about RTS's I would agree with you, but FPS's?! no, just no.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
um. Ok thats just about the most un-informed statement I've heard this month. Now I've got my girl friend nagging me to get out of here so I'll go, but do a little research before you make a statement like that. It is true in one small technical respect.
Click to expand...

Imbroglio said:
wow, talk about misinforming people. I have a x2 4400 at 2.6, with a 7950gt I was hitting on average 45-55 fps on ave at 19x12 in TF2 (forget what AA/AF), I recently upgraded to a 8800gts 512 and am getting practically double that(I ave around 90 now). I can still play CSS on a AthlonXP with a 9800pro and average close to 100fps.... if you made the above statement about RTS's I would agree with you, but FPS's?! no, just no.
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Wow, talk about taking someone's comments out of context. I'm being accused of being uninformed by the same people who seem to think that cpu limited means unplayable or not fun. Where did I say that TF2 or CS:S aren't playable on weaker cpus? Just because I said they are cpu bottlenecked (which they are) with even last gen cards doesn't mean that I'm trying to missinform people, actually I'm trying to help those who want to play TF2 and CS:S well and think spending lots of money on GPU is they way to go by letting them know that CPU is much much more important in Source than GPU, but that does not mean that it is required nor did I ever say so. If you are having a good time playing on a A64 2.4ghz then good for you, but if you want to improve your framerate in Source with that CPU, buying a better GPU is a waste of money if you already have 7900 or equivalent.

You say you were hitting 45-55fps in TF2, well thats not enough if you are playing on a 66tick server with a forced cmdrate of 66, enjoy the choke. Btw, what were your minumums? You do realize that your minimum sustained framerate affects your connection to the server right? Read up on the relationship between framerate and cmdrate (and updaterate and tickrate) before you start accusing someone of missiforming others, in Source framerate is not only about performance but also connection quality and in turn hit registration.

You are playing at a resolution that is fillrate intensive enough (and probably with HDR and AA) to overtake the CPU bottleneck and make it a GPU bottleneck, but you are in the minority. Most people don't use 1920x1200 w/ 4xAA etc and many still use CRT and play with lower competition-friendly resolutions (like 800x600@120hz or better) and if you drop yours you will see very little difference on your A64 X2 between 640x480 and up to 1440x900. If you actually take the time to inform yourself instead of accusing others who are trying to help, you will see that over 70% of ALL Steam users according to their hardware survey are using either 1028x768 (32%) or 1280x960 (39%), and at these resolutions neither TF2 or especially CS:S are even close to being GPU limited with a 7900 or quivalent GPU, even with AA and HDR (which most smart people disable anyway since it's a handicap).

My framerate stopped going under 100fps AFTER I passed C2D 3.2ghz + mat_queue_mode 2, that is a fact and I will prove it if someone really wants to see. Btw, there is no way in hell you maintain 100fps in CS:S in a firefight with an AthlonXP, my old Opteron 170 @ 2.8ghz was only good for 60fps minumum (tested at 640x480 with all low settings), your averages are meaningless if your framerate drops to the 40s when it counts (ie when your are shooting or getting shot) while the server ticks at 100 and the league cfg enforces cmdrate 100.

MrWizard6600 said:
server fps =! client fps. This is coming from someone with three years of home CS 1.6, CSS and TF2 serving experiance.
Click to expand...
true, but many 66 or 100 tick servers also force a cmdrate of the same value and if your framerate can't keep up it = choke, sir.
 
import said:
oh. heh, cool. any benefit to turning vsync off?
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never ever use vsync in Source, tripple buffering is not enabled in the engine (and even if it was it would introduce additional latency) so if your framerate ever goes even a tiny bit below the refresh rate (60hz for LCD, which is why your framerate is locked at 60fps) it will actually be cut in half and you will experience the 60-30-60-30 effect, especially bad in source since because of how it will affect your connection to the server.

edits for typos, still hurting from beach weekend.
 
When you say "multicore support" do you mean gpu or cpu?

If CPU, how do I enable it on my X2 5600+?
 
I have read that the dual core support does not include AMD chips, only Core 2 Duo. Is this true?
 
shiznit said:
You say you were hitting 45-55fps in TF2, well thats not enough if you are playing on a 66tick server with a forced cmdrate of 66, enjoy the choke.

true, but many 66 or 100 tick servers also force a cmdrate of the same value and if your framerate can't keep up it = choke, sir.
Click to expand...


Choke has nothing to do w/ cmdrate in source, only updaterate and rate. Choke = asking the server for more updates than your client or the available bandwidth can handle. You're close though ;)

Everything else is accurate. Your client will only send at the same rate as it can render. max_fps 20 = cl_cmdrate 20.
 
ehh...after reading all this I feel like a blonde. If I have a 2.5 ghz c2d and a 8600gt will I see a benefit in using this command? some say I don't need to worry about it, cuz my cpu is already using the extra core...whats the real deal?


:goes off to try command and quantify effects:
 
I just wanted to thank everyone who took time to explain why performance has a direct impact on gameplay. I've been on the fence, considering upgrades to take an already-fast TF2 machine to an extremely fast machine, and these explanations make a strong argument for an overkill machine, for the type of gameplay experience I want. Now 30in 120hz lcds need to get here faster!
 
styx0r said:
I just wanted to thank everyone who took time to explain why performance has a direct impact on gameplay. I've been on the fence, considering upgrades to take an already-fast TF2 machine to an extremely fast machine, and these explanations make a strong argument for an overkill machine, for the type of gameplay experience I want. Now 30in 120hz lcds need to get here faster!
Click to expand...

Wow, necropost often?
 
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