Low FPS in TF2 - 8800M GTS & T5550

I have a Gateway 6860FX, which has a GeForce 8800M GTS and the stock Intel Core 2 Duo T5550 processor. When in a firefight with several other people, or when walking around a large map, the fps drops to as low as 17fps sometimes. Is this normal? Is there any way I can get smoother gameplay?

Thanks...

 

it is normal, tf2 is cpu bound when you play on big servers.

 

Get a better CPU. t9300/x7800 are generally the most common swaps that give the best bang for your buck

 

I'm in late, but I'll confirm that your weakish CPU is holding you back.

 

Seconded - I had the exact same CPU with the exact same problem in TF2. Moving to the T8300 really helped fix that problem - I never drop below 25 now.
Also, try activating Multicore Rendering in the Advanced Video options that was added recently. Might give you a bit of a boost.

 

Yeah TF2 had me confused when I had a desktop. I had a great video card but a really old cpu and the game was slow. With my laptop I have a mediocre video card with a T9300 and its a lot better to play.

 

Wait a sec, with what resolution do you play TF2? For example I play with an average of 60-70 fps in a firefight with 5+ people on 1280x800 and details set on "High" (note: not "Very High") with the configuration in my sig. Oh, and all of Valve's games based on the Source engine are CPU bound. At first I was surprised that TF2 played so smoothly on my mediocre GPU.

 

t8400 is minimum for good performance

 

Would overclocking my T5550 help at all? I've never done this before, but will give it a try if it might help.

 

Looking at your CPU specs I don't think you can get much of it, without risking an overheating problem. I think you may get about 300-400MHz more before reaching 100°C, which is the thermal specification of your CPU. In such а resource-leeching game like TF2 you won't see much difference. In what settings do you play TF2? What resolution? What level of detail? You may consider lowing there down for a better performance.

 

I agree, the chokepoint must be the CPU, that card is adequate, I used to play TF 2 on decent settings with a Geforce 7200!

 

unfortunately with the 6860 you don't have the ability to OC the CPU. Only the X series of CPU overclock on the gateways

 

I think enabling multi-core support in the video settings would help fix the problem a bit, but yeah as everyone mentioned, it's the CPU to blame.

 

I've enabled the multi-core support option in the settings, but it doesn't seem like it's helped too much.

The strange thing is that lowing the video settings (even setting everything to the lowest level) doesn't help much, if at all?!

 

play on servers with a max player count of 24 and you will be ok.

 

that's a clear indication of a cpu bottleneck.
i'm afraid the only solution is a cpu upgrade, or playing in less crowded servers.

 

I really don't think the risk vs reward is there for trying to overclock your system to get better FPS. I think it's just time for an upgrade. Like people said lower your settings if you can and make sure you don't have anything in the background chewing up your cpu like spyware. It does not hurt to take a look into optimizing your windows services and making sure you don't have anything running that you don't need.

 

OK, thanks guys. Guess I just need to save up and buy a T9300 then.

 

Strangely enough, when i enable multicore rendering the game loses like 10-20 fps and it becomes choppy. any reason for this?

 

It's still a beta feature, and may not work properly on all systems. Hence its default state of being disabled.

 

Yep my FPS never drop bellow 30 on high settings as long its not more than 24 players.