Steaming pile of shit.

[Soeru]

In case you don't know, Steam(steampowered.com) is an app that houses all of Valve's Half-Life games(just a GUI for the popular game Half-Life and all its mods like Counter-Strike, TFC, etc.). I've installed it on this comp but as many other gamers out there, I suffer from severely low framerates when playing games on Steam.

I've browsed their forums, asked for help, read countless threads on tweaking your system to get higher framerates, but none of it seems to work. I get nearly unplayable framerates of about 7-20fps in large open areas and 30-60fps(maybe) in tight spaces like hallways n' shit. It's nearly impossible to play the game competitively online, I just get my ass whooped(even on broadband).

I'm running a Pentium Celeron(2.2Ghz) with 384mb SD-RAM(although it's less since I use an integrated video chip(Intel 82845G) which uses RAM as VRAM). What I can't understand is why I low framerates when on older computers you can get the game to run on almost a constant 60 or 70fps. I've tried the game on a P4 2.53Ghz with 256mb of SD-RAM and it ran like a dream on that one, with a constant 75 frames-per-second. I even get a higher framerate in Quake 3, which has better graphics than HL.

I've tried everything I could come up with: switching to 16 bit color depth, lowering rez to 800x600(although you shouldn't play online with less than 1024x768), updating Windows and video card drivers, setting low sound quality and low quality models... and still I haven't improved the games preformance at all.

Let's see if I get to the point: does anyone know any fixes/patches/console variables I should change/etc. that can boost my framerates significantly? I'm dying to play CS and HL once again. I would really appreciate any help, thanks.

[ccdart]

Okay, How fast is your video card and have you tried going to settings and making sure that 56K isn't set as your current connection, also, make sure you are in OpenGL mode in the games Options, D3D usually runs slow. I used to play steam all the time on a 1.1 GHZ Celeron with at full speed. now I have a 2.2 GHZ, it runs fine for me. I play Dod more than anything on Steam.

[Soeru]

Yes, I always use OpenGL at 1024x768 and I've set the appropriate bandwidth(it doesn't really matter, I get pings below 80 so I'm fine. The problem is the game itself, not lag.).
How fast is my video card? I don't know the clock speed(MHz), but it's supposed to be 64mb(so it takes 64 mb of my physical ram, since it's integrated.)
Any settings I should change?

[Gospel]

Probably the 1024x768 resolution.

With integrated video, that's using the slower-not-meant-for-3D-games system RAM to draw your games. Lower that setting and see if that helps.

[Soeru]

800x600 doesn't help much. Neither does 640x480, but that's too low for proper online gaming.

[ccdart]

Yeah, try 800x600 Resolution. Also when you get steam working all fine and dandy use the console command, cl_hudfont 2 to make the font bigger, Not sure if Steam ever fixed that yet.
EDIT: Do you have any processes running which can be hogging cpu/memory?
EDIT2: you could try setting the sound effects to "Low"

[Soeru]

Lowering sound quality doesn't help at all unfortunately, and I keep my Windows processes to a bare minimum(15 processes on boot). I'm sure there are some console commands that I can change to improve preformance right? Games like Quake 3 have almost fully customizable variables for just about any aspect of the game, and I've been able to get smoother framerates in that game because of them. HL is based off the Q2 engine so I'm sure there must be some...
Thanks for all the effort though, it's greatly appreciated.

[ccdart]

I don't know of any commands. There may be some though, The only thing I can say to do is look up Steam Tips on google.

[Dark Neighbour]

It could very well be the video card having issues with the game. I know of some Intel chips having problems with newer games...

[TechKnow]

Okay. First off all good players play with 800x by 600x or lower. To get better FPS, make sure Vertical Sync is off. And use the following commands:
cl_minmodels "1"
cl_weather "0"
max_shells "0"
max_smokepuffs "0"
cl_corpsestay "10"
max_fps "40" (to prevent large FPS drops)

Those commands should help, but your CPU blows, and you have a onboard videocard so your not going to get good FPS no matter what.

EDIT: Oh and make sure to put the commands in your "userconfig.cfg" file.

[Soeru]

Those commands should help, but your CPU blows, and you have a onboard videocard so your not going to get good FPS no matter what.

EDIT: Oh and make sure to put the commands in your "userconfig.cfg" file.

Yeah, I figured the CPU and vcard sucked beyond my imagination, but I got constant framerates an old-ass P2 333mhz with 128mb of RAM... and an 8, 12, or 16mb video card(not onboard). Thanks a lot for those tips, I'll try 'em once I reinstall Steam(the app got unstable on me so I terminated and uninstalled the mofo). Peace.

[Borman]

Its the video card. With my old PC, the intergrated video wouldnt even run normal CS, or steam. So buy a 30-40 buck Geforce FX 5200, should help if you want something cheap

[Norgus]

Im just going to post that I hate steam all out. Games run much better without it, I don't like the GUI and without steam I get much better playability and netplay still works.

Personaly I refuse to install that crap on my computer.

[Soeru]

Running HL without Steam gave me slightly better framerates, but still sucky ones. I guess it's just a hardware issue I can't fix.
... and uh, netplay still works on the original? I heard that WON went down not so long ago, and it's impossible to look up servers within the game...

[Dark Neighbour]

I just upgrade when games don't run. Theres always some sucker whos willing to give their computer away cheap when they screwed with the BIOS. Best way to get cheap parts...I got a P4 2.66 HT last time, and before that a 1.1 GHz Pentium 3, which I promptly dumped in my server...