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poor graphics performance Left 4 Dead 2

P

pezzy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 26, 2010
5
0
I picked up Left 4 Dead 2 just recently, and play on my MBP non unibody, I believe the Santa Rosa chipset with the 8600m GT. I do play on bootcamp and have the most recent drivers from Nvidia.

I read a lot of posts and seen videos on people having good to great performance. I'm confused because I get 10fps whenever there are zombies around and is pretty laggy if there's a good # of them...I get 40fps when I look at a wall. I tried reducing all the graphics settings including resolution and it doesn't change much when actual zombies are around.

The recommended settings gives 2x AA, high textures, medium effects, at 1440x900

I have turned everything except paging to low, No AA, bilinear, vert sync off and even reduced the resolution to 1280x800?


It's pretty much at its lowest settings, and I don't understand why its struggling to play. Nothing is running in the background at all. I just want it to be smooth, I can live with less graphics.
 
Hows your connection? L4D needs a good connection to run smoothly. Have you tried playing offline/single player mode, is there any improvement?
 
its good, 10mb and under 100 ping. I will try the single player later today, but I highly doubt it would drop me to 10fps
 
This is way out from left field, but it could be your drivers.

I've got a C2D 2.0GHz with the 9400M right now that runs it great on low settings. I had the latest drivers installed.

Well, I wanted to play Port Royale 2, but with the latest drivers, I couldn't. The game wouldn't start up. I had to install the previous driver release to get it working.

If it's running good in single player, I'd try a different driver version if I were you.
 
deadwulfe said:
I've got a C2D 2.0GHz with the 9400M right now that runs it great on low settings. I had the latest drivers installed.
Click to expand...

So with the other drivers, did it run better/worse/same? I understand it made Port Royale work but what about games that did work with the recent drivers
 
pezzy said:
its good, 10mb and under 100 ping. I will try the single player later today, but I highly doubt it would drop me to 10fps
Click to expand...

It could be that ping. I have a 512kb connection but my ping on TF2/L4D is 30-40. However if someone else is using the connection and the ping goes 100+ then I start getting dropped frames during connection-heavy scenes.

Go into the console and enter "net_graph 1" (0 disables it). It will display both your ping and FPS. High ping+low FPS; network issues. Low ping+low FPS; drivers.
 
I've only played The Witcher, COD Modern Warfare 1, and L4D2 single-player since I went to the older driver and they worked the same as before.
 
pezzy said:
I picked up Left 4 Dead 2 just recently, and play on my MBP non unibody, I believe the Santa Rosa chipset with the 8600m GT. I do play on bootcamp and have the most recent drivers from Nvidia.

I read a lot of posts and seen videos on people having good to great performance. I'm confused because I get 10fps whenever there are zombies around and is pretty laggy if there's a good # of them...I get 40fps when I look at a wall. I tried reducing all the graphics settings including resolution and it doesn't change much when actual zombies are around.

The recommended settings gives 2x AA, high textures, medium effects, at 1440x900

I have turned everything except paging to low, No AA, bilinear, vert sync off and even reduced the resolution to 1280x800?


It's pretty much at its lowest settings, and I don't understand why its struggling to play. Nothing is running in the background at all. I just want it to be smooth, I can live with less graphics.
Click to expand...

L4D2 is extremely processor intensive. If turning down your graphics doesn't increase your FPS, then your performance is probably limited by your CPU.

What is your CPU speed?
 
talking about cpu speed, is there a way to see how many ghz ur cpu is running at? i wanna see if the expected 3.33ghz turbo boost will show :p
 
It's a 2.2ghz C2D, and I have 2GB ram

I'm not sure what it is, sometimes I can play a decent game at 30fps usually and then another level it will drop to 10-15. Maybe some levels require more power
 
I played again today, I seem to have fine fps in the safe room, upwards to 110(reduced resolution and all low settings) And its also pretty good for a little bit, but as soon as I progress through the level, it reduces down to 10. It can be maybe too many bodies? the draw distance? I'm not sure...Are there settings for that through the console?
 
Wait, I'm assuming you have the Nvidia 9400M integrated card, perhaps incorrectly. What graphics card do you have? The Intel GMA?
 
Does the game always start fast and slow down? Is your computer getting really when it slows down? It could be over heating. Keeping your Mac on a well-ventalated cool surface might help.
 
8600GT? He shouldn't have a problem running L4D2 on low settings unless the card is dying. I read on a few posts on the MBP forums about those card being potentially flaulty.

I can't imagine heat being an issue unless it's filled with dust.

I'd seriously consider trying an older driver, though. It's not like Nvidia is targeting older cards with their updates and it wouldn't be the first time, for either Nvidia or ATI, a new driver affects an old card in a bad way.
 
L4D2 will run on a core2 at 2 ghz with an x1600 so his machine should be fine on medium high, sounds more like a software issue
 
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