TF2 - High Choke?

Kona*

Kona*

Kona*

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Joined
29 Dec 2003
Posts
2,039
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Evening, hope you lot can help :)

I've just got back in to TF2 and have noticed that I have quite a bit of choke, especially in battle. My ISP is Be* with the profile set to "Speed" and "Gaming Mode" set ON. Here are the contents of my autoexec: http://pastebin.com/f4168d54b & config: http://pastebin.com/f5ab78453

My PC spec is:

E5200 @ 3.06GHz
4GB 800Mhz DDR2
Radeon 4850 512MB
SB X-Fi Xtreme Music
Windows 7 Pro (RTM)

Can anyone see a problem with any of my setup?

Cheers,

Craig
 
theres always choke at battles in some servers more in some less depends how good the server is
 
Last edited:
psychas said:
theres always choke at battles if in some servers more in some less depends how good the server is
Click to expand...

So much so that players seem to "lag" sometimes (I'm OK at the time) and that my rockets come out a while after I press the mouse button? :(
 
Ummm....what do you mean with 'quite a bit of choke' ? Does your game stutter ?
I'm with BE and have no issue with their service, get ingame ping ranging from about 17-25 in most uk servers.
Could it be your settings are too high for your graphics card ? How bout setting graphics quite low and see if same issue occurs to eliminate this
 
I'll try and explain a bit better :)

The issue isn't with the graphics - my FPS never dips below 50fps. I have zero packet loss and a ping of 35-50 on the scoreboard, 40-70 in net_graph and zero packet loss - choke is only zero in the ready/spawn room, outside of that it can go as high as 80.

The way I noticed this is that all of my bullets, rockets (especially rockets) and demo pipes come out a few milliseconds after I hit the mouse button, not instant like usual - They also don't track across the screen properly, the rockets usually get half way to the target then disappear off the screen and then you see the explosion. Also players seem to warp around the screen a lot, like you usually get with packet loss but when it happens with PL everyone does this at the same time, with my problem it only happens with one or two players at a time.

Very odd I know!

Craig
 
:confused:
Never experienced anything like this so not really sure what's causing it.
All I can suggest is to ensure that you kill anything else that can access the net before launching the game. Also try turning off your firewall and antivirus as a test to see if this is causing\worsening the situation
 
kona, not in tf2 but a lot in css.

try using a server such as UKCS or VIA and try again.

contact BE and tell them to switch off interleave. I AM with BT and

interleave is ON = 34-60 ms ping in any UK server
interleave is OFF= 11-25 ms ping in any UK server
 
Thanks for the replies chaps, a few answers to your questions:

Muzy: I have contacted Be* who have confirmed my line is set for speed and gaming mode is on (it means interleaving is off basically)

ScarySquirrel: I am connected directly to the router using a Cat5e cable - I am going to disable my AV (NOD32 v4, had other problems with this at work...) and change my NIC driver to the default Windows 7 one - I'm currently using the Realtek Windows 7 driver.
 
Fair enough. Reason I asked is because I was using a Linksys wireless card with Windows 7 and I was getting major choke on CSS.

Fixed it by just using a Cat5e cable instead.
 
Just tried disabling my anti-virus and rolling back the realtek driver - same problem.

Reload to Vista and see what happens :)
 
Try cl_interp x in the console (replace x with your number of choice, set to 0 and work up from there). When you find a suitable value, stick it in your autoexec. Personally, I'd stick with 0, but you can pick any number. Decimals also work.
 
I was getting this exact same problem after I moved house and therefore connection from Tiscali ADSL to VM Cable.

I tried putting all GFX card setting to the lowest, updating drivers etc - nothing was working.

The solution to my problem was changing my rates - they had previously been left as default. I set them to:

rate 25000
cl_cmdrate 66
cl_updaterate 66

Hope this helps.
 
First of all, it's best to get a screenshot of netgraph 3 for this sort of thing, and make sure you're trying several servers, to make sure it's actually you and not a poor server.

I use:
rate 40000
cl_cmdrate / cl_updaterate 66

2 common reasons for choke are rate being too low, so check this ingame. Other reason is your fps being lower than 66 - i.e. your computer isnt generating 66 frames, but you're telling the server you will send 66.
 
Thanks for the help :) Yesterday I reformatted with Vista, installed the latest drivers and TF2 - the magic lag has gone away! I'm thinking it was a driver issue with Windows 7 as two others on the Steam forums have had the same problem as me on Win 7.

I'm still getting ping spikes (see here: http://imgur.com/ukjUD.jpg) and my FPS is dropping below 66 so I think that's why I'm still getting choke - All of my settings are on Medium, AA is off, AF is set to Triliniar and multicore rendering is turned on as this seems to give me a slight boost. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve performance without making TF2 look really ugly or is it something I will have to live with? My settings (as suggested above) are now:

cl_cmdrate 66
cl_updaterate 66
rate 25000 (any higher doesn't seem to make a difference)
cl_interp 0.1

Cheers,

Craig
 
It's an internet connection issue - choke is basically packet loss.

I had similar issues on O2 (essentially Be) recently, thankfully it went away.

Check to see there aren't any issues on your line at the moment.
 
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