Unusual TF2 Lag

[RobH]

Ok, since I started playing TF2 back in the October beta until today I have never had any major problems playing on any TF2 server related to lag. However I've recently had problems with games lagging so badly that when I've shot the enemy has killed me and is miles away. The lag only occurs when there are a lot of players around.

It is nothing related to FPS and it doesn't seem to be anything to do with ping because it is happening on UK servers with pings <100ms yet I don't have a single problem on US servers with pings > 175ms. I've rebooted my router and PC which didn't do anything. I don't know if anyone can figure this out, I may have to go to the Steam forums or tech support.

Below are the net graphs for a game on a good server and a game on a bad server:

Good Server:

Bad Server:

 

[RobH]

It's nothing to do with FPS as you can see it is maxed out to 59fps in both games. It seems like the client isn't getting updates frequent enough to be able to draw the correct position of the other players. You can see that the good game is updating many times a second whilse the bad game has far fewer updates which is causing this 'jumpiness'.

 

[RobH]

I'm with BT, I suspected that it could be something to do with the choke but wasn't sure. It's strange because it only started a couple of days ago and it only seem to affect certain UK servers. I was playing fine on the Control Point Podcast US servers with a ping of 190ms yet on the jolt.co.uk one I was getting this horrible lag with a 55ms ping, it only srats when I go into a fight, it runs fine when I'm walking to the frontline.

Another thing is that it happens in spectator mode if I got to an area with a lot of people and watch, I can see people moving, pausing and then moving again, it's jumpy. The voice comms also drops in and out making it impossible to talk, I know everyone else wasn't suffering the same problem because I asked them. As I said it's nothing to do with FPS or ping because I was able to play at the frontline where there were 12+ people fighting on a US server with a high ping and it was fine.

I'll give the network commands a try later but I don't know if it will do anything. I'll let you know, thanks for the replies.

 

[RobH]

Also
rate 10000
cl_updaterrate 100
cl_cmdrate 100

Just got aorund to trying these and it seems to have got rid of the problem. The graph looks like the good servers now. Any idea what causes the choking on certain server but not others?

 

[RobH]

im having the exact same problem with multiplay TF2 servers

is it those servers you were having problems with ?

Yeah, I play on them quite a lot and it suddenly started happening on them as well as a few other UK servers.