TF2 - huge FPS drop down in some maps

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

Hello
Team Fortress 2 and Steam is working perfectly, but in some (bigger) maps right in team selection FPS go to ~10. Also this happen mostly when bug with missing letters appeared.
All CPU cores are used by MainThrd by 100% in time I getting 10FPS.
In other cases, game is running pretty smooth except longer loading times with around 200FPS with max. settings. When I disconnect from server, I got still low FPS. Before I connect to server, FPS is always good in menu.
I use Ubuntu 12.10 64bit + Gnome Classic, nVidia GeForce 8800GT - 310 drivers, 4GB Ram on this testing machine.
So from my testing I found just 3 bugs in TF2 where 2 are critical:
- missing letters
- FPS drop down
- longer loading time

Thanks for any help

[Jenny]

Since you are using Gnome classic, I assume you are using Metacity? If you are using a gpu greedy one (like Compiz), then you could use the script found at http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=2685 to kill and then restart Compiz (could be edited for any other wm too).

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

İlk olarak brpylko Ubuntu 12.10 64 bit tarafından gönderildi:

Since you are using Gnome classic, I assume you are using Metacity? If you are using a gpu greedy one (like Compiz), then you could use the script found at http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=2685 to kill and then restart Compiz (could be edited for any other wm too).

Thanks, but I dont use Metacity - I use gnome classic without effects.

[Big Buddha]

Is there any solution if low FPS all the time?

BTW what is your CPU?

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

I've Intel Core i3 with HT (Quad Core). My FPS is low all the time I enter the server with some maps. I know right after I connect to the server in team selection menu if it'll work good or pretty bad. Sometime same map where it worked good previously next time is very poor (FPS).
When game is running very slowly and I press ALT+TAB, my desktop is responding quite slowly too.

[muffin]

I get the same on my AMD 6850 via the 12.11 beta drivers. 15-30 FPS, crashes every so often, missing text, and very long loading times. Once... just once, I got 240 FPS on 2Fort for a few minutes, and it was glorious.

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

İlk olarak Muffinabus tarafından gönderildi:

I get the same on my AMD 6850 via the 12.11 beta drivers. 15-30 FPS, crashes every so often, missing text, and very long loading times. Once... just once, I got 240 FPS on 2Fort for a few minutes, and it was glorious.

It seems somewhere is regression, try some community servers with small maps.
I getting crashes only occasionally, but I hope it should'nt be so hard to find and solve these bugs.

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

All mentioned bugs are still here with latest version of TF2 & Steam. Anyway thanks very much for all your work Valve.

[AnatomicalAstrolabium]

I think i might have the same problem, as in framerate dropping to 10/20 territory on server join and remaining after disconnect. Loading times are also a problem.

Just some questions.

Does the fps drop appear even when you try playing an offline bot only match ? Mine is much better as in getting only occasional microstutter.

Does net_graph 3 show the low framerate ? To me it keeps showing the standard 150/170 even if it is obviously stuttering.

Ubuntu 12.04 x64
Gnome-Shell
E6300@4.2
HD5770 Catalyst 12.11

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

İlk olarak FKinmyCoffee tarafından gönderildi:

I think i might have the same problem, as in framerate dropping to 10/20 territory on server join and remaining after disconnect. Loading times are also a problem.

Just some questions.

Does the fps drop appear even when you try playing an offline bot only match ? Mine is much better as in getting only occasional microstutter.

Does net_graph 3 show the low framerate ? To me it keeps showing the standard 150/170 even if it is obviously stuttering.

Ubuntu 12.04 x64
Gnome-Shell
E6300@4.2
HD5770 Catalyst 12.11

Thanks
I found my problems are only with online servers, on local machine it is working always without any issue!
I think all official servers or maybe "ranked" servers are affected. On community servers without any "rules" it is working good too.
I dont get any stuttering, only FPS drops to constant cca ~10. It may be additionally caused by compositing manager.
I always see correct FPS with net_graph.
So this bug is probably somewhere in networking code, which is not multithreaded, maybe.

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

I tested Steam & TF2 with Arch Linux under same machine, bug with FPS drop is still here. But I got doubled FPS globally, because Arch Linux is just faster! It is twice as fast under Arch Linux than Ubuntu. In Arch I switched SDL sound to directly ALSA backend and all things are working same as with Ubuntu, except 2x higher FPS even I dont use in Ubuntu any kind of composition (Gnome fallback). In Arch I use KWin with effects :)

[blackout24]

Even though I'm using Arch Linux too and it is a tad faster in some CPU workloads since the kernel is optimized I doubt that you will see a FPS difference with the same hardware, driver, DE and ingame settings in Games. There must me something different slowing down Ubuntu.

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

İlk olarak t.jp tarafından gönderildi:

Even though I'm using Arch Linux too and it is a tad faster in some CPU workloads since the kernel is optimized I doubt that you will see a FPS difference with the same hardware, driver, DE and ingame settings in Games. There must me something different slowing down Ubuntu.

Everytime I performing tests between Arch and Ubuntu, Arch is faster. It is nothing strange, because Arch run only things what are really needed. You can read today some blogs about this.

[blackout24]

Type "top" in Arch and Ubuntu. There are only 1-2 active processes running anyway at any time. And like I said this might measurable in CPU workload benches but certainly not OpenGL games because they are GPU and driver bound.

[ZeXx86 [Linux]]

TOP looks comparable .. Well, I am software and kernel developer, so definitively, I've clear in it. Arch kernel is not much optimized, but simply does not contain useless stuff and modules which are making process switching so slow. Whats more Ubuntu because of power "optimization" use "lazy" process scheduler.

[76561198076225808]

İlk olarak ZeXx86 tarafından gönderildi:

Hello
Team Fortress 2 and Steam is working perfectly, but in some (bigger) maps right in team selection FPS go to ~10. Also this happen mostly when bug with missing letters appeared.

Yeah, I'm getting similar results.

TF2 crashes if you join a match just as the round is won though and I've had a few post-death crashes as well.

Performance-wise I've found training matches with 11 bots + me on koth maps work reasonably well, although performance is still around 50% of windows, because the game renders so well anyway on modern hardware it's still playable.

On 12v12 servers less so, you often get killed because of the dips. But maps with inside areas aren't too bad.

That's on C2D E8400 / HD6850. With Ubuntu 12.10 and the PPA xorg_edgers Kernel 3.7.0 and the catalyst 12.11 beta 8 (with VM_RESERVED changed to VM_DONTEXPAND | VM_DONTDUMP and steam started in gdb to avoid the segfault.

I tried Catalyst 12.10 but that has a missing symbol on ubuntu.

I think missing letters is related to esoteric utf8 characters. I've not seen it happen with the sane bot names but it happens on your average pub server where everyone has fancy pant characters in their name.

I do notice some "bitrot" - after playing a lot of rounds online that includes switching a number of maps the performance can degrade further and further (especially noticeable is a drop in the cl_updaterate and cl_cmdrate figures on the right hand side of net_graph 5 (i.e I have 66 set for both of these, often times the actual achieved figures are dipping below 66 and this causes a marked stuttering and laggy feel to the game)

The other issue is that some times shift-tab will show some flashing corruption (it's like one of the buffers has corruption on it which is displayed when the front and back buffer is swapped, so the corruption flashes on and off at 30hz) - I had some success getting the performance back and getting rid of the flashing by doing ctrl-alt-F1 and then switching back to X, so presumably these are driver bugs and glitches fixed when the driver goes through the process of reloading all the stuff to gpu ram.