TF2 Optimization Guide

Welcome to my Team Fortress 2 optimization guide, unlike guides of the past, I'm going to use modern information and modern tricks to improve performance, this isn't some copy paste of a past performance guide, I'm going to give the full rundown on everything you need to know.

Introduction

This guide is primarily about improving the performance of TF2 and fixing bugs, this is mainly aimed towards modern hardware to get the most out of TF2 and not towards toasters, if you're on a toaster and want to follow along, that's fine, but it may not run as well as it should, but will run better than default TF2.

In the future I will have a guide on making the game look better or "modern".

Required Materials

Here's a list of required materials.

• Mastercomfig[mastercomfig.com]: Download the latest version, don't download before the steps ahead.
  
• MSI Afterburner[www.msi.com]: Download and install. (Don't install if you do not desire to overclock.)
  
• Ultimate TF2 Visual Fix Pack[github.com]: Download the latest version.
  
• No Hats Mod[gamebanana.com]: Download the latest version. (Removes hats from the game, if you want hats don't download.)
  
• Invisible Prop Taunt Fix[gamebanana.com]: Fixes taunt props randomly disappearing, download the latest version.
  
• Demoman Grenade Launcher Reload Fix[gamebanana.com]: Fixes demomans grenade launcher barrel not spinning when reloading, incompatable with other demoman animation mods, download the latest version.
  
• Medi-Gun Alignment Fix[gamebanana.com]: Fixes the off centered alignment with the mediguns. Download the latest version.
  
• Cow Mangler Glow Fix[gamebanana.com]: Fixes the cow mangler not glowing when mini crit boosted. Download the latest version.
  
• TCP Optimizer[www.speedguide.net]: Download the latest version.

Mastercomfig

This requires it's own section, go to the link provided in materials and click on medium low.


Next, click on the customize button.

This next part is aimed towards giving you the most important visual data while maximizing FPS and net stability.

Go to networking and leave everything except bandwidth to default, measure your internet speed using Cloudflare's Speedtest[speed.cloudflare.com]. Then select the corresponding setting along the bar. Also make sure downloads is set to all, otherwise most community servers will be unplayable or loaded with visual bugs.



Next click on graphics and change your settings to the following in the pictures. Lightingex is phong, on modern hardware it's actually better to have it enabled but if you don't like phong you can disable it.

Sprays will disable a performance feature of mastercomfig so I would not recommend enabling them unless you really like sprays.

Jigglebones basically affects whether or not the holy mackeral will flop. I'd set it to on. Killstreaks sheen speed controls whether or not killstreak weapons have that glow on them, set it to slow or off depending on your preference, for performance off is optimal.

The last 2 settings are mostly up to what you are running TF2 on and what hardware you have, I would personally recommend just setting the FPS cap to twice your monitors hz, of course it's not that precise so setting it to 300 for me should work fine.

OpenGL is basically, are you using linux? If yes set it to default, if not, set it to skip. (Set it to skip if you're using windows.)





On HUD the only thing you want to edit is Outlines and Map Background, set Outlines to high and map background to itemtest.



On Sound, set it to very high, this is because ultra just disables back-end performance, very high gives you the best balance.


Turn off the logo in misc if you want to boot slightly faster at the cost of not knowing what mastercomfig version you're on by booting the game.


This is the simplest way to get your config set up, if you want a more in depth tweaking for yourself, take a look at the documents Modules[docs.mastercomfig.com] page.

Leave the addons on the default and make sure soundscapes is selected, then download.

Installing downloaded mods.

Navigate to your tf/custom and drop the files in, simple as that.

(Note, paths are not going to be the same here.)

Launch Options

To make it simple

-novid -nojoy -nosteamcontroller -nohltv -particles 1 -precachefontchars -dxlevel 100 -console -freq x -noborder +cl_disablehtmlmotd 1

-freq x is your monitors hz, mine is 144. -noborder is there if you ever want to set the game to windowed mode without having that weird window border. Disabling htmlmotd is both to fix a memory leak and to improve performance while simultaneously making community servers less annoying.

For a more in depth list and explanations go to here[docs.mastercomfig.com].

To input this go to Team Fortress 2 in your steam library, right click, select properties, and click on the launch options menu and put this in with your custom variables.

Optionally -no_texture_stream can be used to disable texture streaming, while it does increase the amount of VRAM you use, there is a performance gain on stronger hardware.
-nostartupsound disables the menu music.

While you're at it disable the steam game menu in there, fair warning, this disables the Mann Co Store and you can't view profiles from the game menu. However it does provide a significant performance improvement. Disabling other programs in game menus (Discord, Geforce Experience, Game Mode etc.) will also help.

Addressing potential bugs and concerns.

If you're on linux and you see any black artifacts, here[docs.mastercomfig.com] is where you should go, and if you have any other problems this is probably the place to fix them.

For others who are sceptical of this go to here[docs.mastercomfig.com] to read on why previous guides were inaccurate or just wrong.

Optimizing your Operating System

Mastercomfig's documentation page has a wonderful resources page linked here[docs.mastercomfig.com].

Drivers

Updating drivers is helpful to keep your system in shape.

For those using windows SDI[sdi-tool.org] is my recommendation, it's very strong for being a free software and has no adware or malware, backed by the fact it's on sourceforge.

When looking for the drivers to install, you just want to click on indexes in DriverPacks, let that download, and then click on the highest hierarchy driver and install those. Once done with the guide reboot and your systems drivers will be up to date.



For those on Linux you shouldn't worry about this nearly as much as the kernel tends to come with updated drivers as it gets rolled out, the only thing I'd recommend changing is Oibaf's[launchpad.net] driver PPA for Ubuntu, comes with the most recent version of MESA and is updated nearly daily. If using an Nvidia card you should go with the proprietary drivers that Nvidia releases for Linux.

Overclocking

This is how you can overclock your system, skip this part if you didn't install it.

The best way to test your system when overclocking is to grab a benchmark of some kind, UNIGINE[benchmark.unigine.com] is my preferred website for grabbing benchmarks. When testing your cores clock, I'd do it in increments of 40 to find stability, once you find artifacts or the program shuts down altogether, you go back to your most stable highest clock and run that for 30 minutes to an hour to ensure it's stable. While you're at it test your memory in increments of 100, once you have the same issues as the core clock, go back to your most stable and test for 30 minutes to an hour running the benchmark. Crank the power consumption and heat to the max, and tune your GPU's fan to your liking, I find between 60 and 80 to be the best mix of volume to speed, if you game with headphones on crank it up to 100. Further guides on afterburner can be found on youtube, I would recommend JayzTwoCents, Paul's Hardware, BitWit, Gamers Nexus, and LTT.




You can figure out how to overclock your CPU from these same sources, I don't want to put you at risk for ruining your system so I'm just going over GPU overclocking since it's not dangerous relative to CPU overclocking.

Undervolting also exists but I'm going leave this to those resources as well, this is about maximizing frame output.

GPU Settings

This is primarily for Windows and on an Nvidia card, AMD mostly has equivalent settings with varying different names. Just follow along and change the settings, prefer maximum performance should only be selected if the only game you play is TF2, otherwise it's just unnecesarry heat and power usage. What this does is set your frequency of the monitor and resolution to the max and enable GSync as well as do some minor optimizations.

TCP Optimizer

This is network optimization, I'll go over the important parts and just leave the rest as safe settings.

To get TCP Optimizer to work properly, right click it's .exe and run as administrator. Next set your settings to that described in the picture. First thing to address is RSC, if you primarily just game on your PC, I would disable it, otherwise I'd recommend leaving it enabled. Next is your MTU, to figure out what you should set your MTU to, go to the panel described in the second image, click on one of the web links, if there is no weblink use the previous speedtest link and put that into the program. Next click largest MTU and wait for it to finish, the final input at the bottom is the MTU you should put into the first panel. TCP chimney offload is set to automatic for the system to decide what to use. Connection speed is set to whatever your connection speed is, if it's over 100 just set it to 100+.



In the advanced settings panel. set everything to the recommended except 2, system responsiveness should only be set to gaming if you primarily game. otherwise set it to optimal, nagles algorithm should be disabled reguardless of if you game or not, it's just outdated for modern hardware. Once you're happy with your settings, click apply and if you're complete with this guide, you may reboot. I would recommend creating a backup in case you don't like your new net settings.

Credits

Credits go to all the amazing modders at Gamebanana and Github, Mastercoms for creating the unarguably best TF2 config that has it's own documentation[docs.mastercomfig.com] along with game documentation, and to valve, for making this awesome game with an accessable command line, something few modern games are willing to do, which I highly commend them for.

Also to Lizard, who has helped me time and time again with computer configuration. If you want to talk with him or me more often go to Big Joey's discord[discord.gg]. Or message me at Bucket#6881 on discord.

Conclusion

If you have any questions or suggestions, put them in the comments below or message me on discord via the credits section. Hope I improved your experience.

[Not Hideo Kojima]

no worries

[Aralthus]

Sorry about the late response I infrequently check my notifs on steam

[Aralthus]

thanks will fix!

[Not Hideo Kojima]

sorry for the crappy formatting btw

[Not Hideo Kojima]

Hey, in the chapter "Addressing potential bugs and concerns", the mastercomfig pages redirect to a 404. It should be

---

https://docs.mastercomfig.com/ page /next_steps/troubleshoot/
and not

---

https://docs.mastercomfig.com/ en/latest /next_steps/troubleshoot/
and vice versa for the other pages

[Aralthus]

Yes hence why I told people to go elsewhere, I can't be certain people aren't gonna fuck up their systems, it's unbelievably hard to mess up your system with a GPU overclock, and while yeah, it doesn't help much, I still got a few frames out of doing it.

[ENGINEEGER]

QoS only really helps to reduce impact on the game when there is also other traffic in the network, if no other device is using the internet and no other processes on your PC are using it, QoS is utterly useless, otherwise it's great but also tricky to set up
overclocking the GPU for this game is also going to do nothing, this game is CPU bound so hard it's unheard of, CPU and RAM overclocking is going to help far more but overclocking both of these is often not nearly as straight forward as GPU overclock

[Aralthus]

QoS is usually not available or far too difficult to install to be reasonable, I'd say it's more risky than using TCP optimizer 1000 times over.

[Aralthus]

The idea behind this guide is mainly a literal guide, you're not just supposed to follow it and call it a day, I have resources attached (Mastercomfigs docs) to teach you what to do and why and links to Tech YTs who generally know what they're talking about (GN, JayzTwoCents).

[Aralthus]

However I agree that Valve is lazy as shit but I think I'm happier we have the option than not.