Can't play Team Fortress 2

I have a 15,6" Lenovo Ideapad with c2d t6400 (2 Ghz) and Nvidia geforce 9600m gs. I used play Team Fortress at medium setting and 1080p easily but after not playing for a few months I started up and it was unplayable. I adjust it to the lowest settings and resolution possible but still I can only get 20 fps (lower than 7-8 fps at more intense scenes). I used to see 100C temperatures for the graphics card and around 90-95 for the processor at hwmonitor but it was playing well. I still see the same numbers but it is a lot different. Here are my cpu-z windows, i can't remember the exact specs as it is older than 2 years.







What can be the problem? All the drivers are updated and it is a pretty clean win7 setup. The game is played through Steam. It is the same with both online and offline. I haven't tried any other games.

 

+check your power settings (make sure its not on power saver)

+while you're playing, check CPU-Z and make sure that your cpu is running at its full 2 Ghz (as you can see now, its running at 1.2ghz).i dont know why but sometimes my 2.4ghz cpu downclocks itself to 1ghz and then games become unplayable. restarting usually fixes it (while plugged in).

+oh just saw your temps. Those temps are tooo high and will probably result in throttling / running at slower speeds so it doesnt overheat. clean out the dust in your laptop, maybe reconsider repasting. your laptop sounds reallly olddd too. also, since you have a Core2Duo, you can probably undervolt the cpu to make it run a lil cooler w/o reducing any performance. Just google undervolting. It's rather safe and can noticeably reduce temps.

 

Yeah, those are extremely high temperatures. Frankly, I'm surprised your laptop doesn't shut down to prevent damage.

Also, TF2 has been updated enormously in the last two years. Hundreds of new weapons, cosmetic items, particle effects, etc. The game itself is no doubt more demanding than it used to be, and frankly, a 2GHz C2D and 9600m GS just aren't going to cut it like they used to.

 

-It's on high perf. mode.

-It goes up to 2000.1 mhz

-Here are the temperature while I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam. It surprisingly plays well at medium setting and 720p. I have no idea why I can't get similar results with TF2 as both games use the same engine.

Also I have tried to use RM-Clock and some other tools to undervolt it but for some reason those kinds of software doesn't run on my computer. It says no driver found, etc. or just don't show any options to tweak. It's on admin priv.

 

Ok, I've got this one figured.

 

My T500 plays TF2 at native resolution with high settings with no problems. I think the Nvidia 9600 GS benches similarly, so there should technically be no problem with the OP's system playing the game.

It's definitely running on the hot side, although the L4D temps are reasonable. At the very least, I would try propping up your laptop to increase airflow. In the advanced settings, I think TF2 does have some setting to utilize multiple CPU cores. Make sure that's checked.

 

It is checked. All the settings are low. No antialiasing, no nothing. Still I can see 20-25 fps max in the base where no action occurs.

 

If you don't mind the graphics of TF2, run it in directx 8. Add -dxlevel 81 to your launch parameters.

But yeah, as everyone else mentioned take some action on those temps. Clean out your vents or even go ahead and repaste.

 

My friend has an hp pavilion with a 2.4 ghz c2d and a 9600M and he plays it on 800p and highest settings, 8xAF and 4xAA with 40-60 fps. I dont think this is a problem with outdated hardware.

 

Team Fortress 2 is actually more CPU bottlenecked than GPU bottlenecked. Doesn't take much to run a 7 year old engine.

 

I know it's a bit long winded, but I've found that TF2 seems to "rot" in the same way windows does. Try reinstalling. When I was forced to do that a year ago due to an OS reinstall I found that it ran much better.

What I would advise doing is to reinstall, then install updates and backup the folder. That way you can simply reinstall every few months or so without having to donwload all the old updates again. If you have custom skins and stuff then you'll have to keep hold of those too.

 

Sounds pretty wierd but its the same with a restart fixing most of PC issues anyways.
Maybe try defragging the files from Steam too.

 

I ran the game w/ directx 8, it started off nicely with 30-35 fps but then it slowly started to decrease and sit at 10 fps. I opened the case and it was pretty clean, no dust, hair etc. as I occassionally clean it. I also tried to defrag all the disks and still no change, am about to give up.

 

I play on high settings at 1024x768 on mine (see sig). The GPU is at 600 core and 925 memory though, and the CPU runs at 2.8GHz on Dual IDA. No problems at all in the game, no slow downs what so ever.

I could run it on higher resolution, but all shooter games I run like that so I just left it as is.

TF2 utilizes one core about double compared to the other one. It goes up to about 75% on my CPU, and the other one is at about 40% or so.

since your video should be fine, I'm thinking you may need more CPU here. And your temps are HOT. Mine goes up to about 71 deg C on GPU, and about that much on the CPU with TPFanControl running the fan on max. CPU is undervolted of course.

 

My friend had issues running TF2 for a while, even though his system was far more powerful than my T500. I had him use Driver Sweeper to entirely uninstall his GPU drivers and reinstall the latest drivers, and it fixed things up (although his previous reinstalls didn't). You could give that a try.