FPS flutters between 30-150ish at all times

[electrickoolaid]

First, I’d like to say this game is awesome. It’s everything HL: Source should have been, and more. Great work by the dev team, based on what I’ve seen so far.

That being said, my computer doesn’t appear to like something about BMS. At all points, the game reports (via cl_showfps) a rapidly changing number for frames per second. It seems to average out at about 30-40, but it varies from as low as 5 to as high as 150. I think I even saw something above 200 at one point.

The game is mostly playable, if I turn showfps off it seems to run relatively smoothly… but I can’t help but keep it on and watch the number go wild. It’s strange and distracting and surely not intended behavior.

I should mention, this behavior occurs even while the game is idling with nothing really going on. At the points in the game where you’d expect a framerate drop, the average fps does drop, but it still varies wildly.

My computer specs:
Dell XPS M1340
Intel Core 2 Duo (P7450 @ 2.13 Ghz)
3.00 GB RAM (DDR3)
The video card has always perplexed me, I’m just going to quote what Speccy says:

@Speccy

Generic PnP Monitor (1280x800@60Hz)
256MB GeForce 9500M (GF 9200MGS + GF 9400MG) (Dell) 60 °C
256MB GeForce 9500M (GF 9400MG + GF 9200MGS) (Dell) 65 °C
ForceWare version 306.23
SLI Enabled

Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

In-game graphics settings:

Stuff:
showbudget1.jpg
showbudget2.jpg

I have a detailed report of the video card specs here. I don’t know if it helps anything, but there you go. I can provide anything else as needed.

[sersoft]

change to a better core 2 duo like 2.6 ghz and it should be much smoother.

[Leijonasisu]

64 bit, with a barely capable 64 bit processor and a mediocre GPU.

I’d say that’s some of your problem. Sounds like a ‘VRAM’ issue. Meaning that the game plays fine until it runs out of RAM. To which it has to empty that RAM and start again, giving you a few moments of 30 fps, and then down to 15 when it runs out.

Sounds like a typical VRAM/Shared VRAM problem, coupled with a bad machine.

[electrickoolaid]

@Leijonasisu

64 bit, with a barely capable 64 bit processor and a mediocre GPU.

I’d say that’s some of your problem. Sounds like a ‘VRAM’ issue. Meaning that the game plays fine until it runs out of RAM. To which it has to empty that RAM and start again, giving you a few moments of 30 fps, and then down to 15 when it runs out.

Sounds like a typical VRAM/Shared VRAM problem, coupled with a bad machine.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, it doesn’t do that. It fluctuates between 5-150, changing wildly at least 5 times a second at all times. The most common numbers are 30-40, no matter what’s going on, but I could be looking at a wall and it’d go from 138 to 15 to 60 to 30 to 150 in a single second.

I’m not disputing that this computer sucks, I know it does, but the issue is not as you describe. The game runs smoothly by all indications but the actual fps # 90% of the time. It’s just that the actual fps varies wildly in a way that it shouldn’t.

[Leijonasisu]

It doesn’t sound like the game is running smoothly at all. I’m telling you that it’s a VRAM or other bottle-neck issue.

For example. When the ‘highway’ is empty, you can go full speed. But your highway is so narrow that it fills up too quickly before allowing the traffic to go full speed.

I doubt there can be anything done except for putting everything on minimum or changing from 64bit to 32bit. You shouldn’t be using 64bit unless you have OVER 3GB of ram. Like 4+

Go back to 32bit and try again.