Team Fortress 2 and its performance: a quick overview on how to optimize it

[PlayStation 2]

Team Fortress 2 is built on the Source engine. As such, the game runs like shit. However, there's ways you can optimize the game to run (slightly) better.

First, use the launch commands 

-dxlevel 70 -mat_phong 0

This drops the DirectX level to 7.0, disabling skins, killstreak weapon sheens/killstreaker effects, and other effects like the Bonk! Atomic Punch's effects. This only disables them on the client side, so skins still show server-side, killstreaks still work, and effects still show on another side where the DirectX level is set to 90 or above. 

mat_phong is a setting that controls the phong shading. This pretty much controls the look of the player under things like light.

 

Next, and this matters especially with AMD GPUs, run the game on the last (two) core(s) you have available. This helps on AMD drivers to alleviate CPU bottlenecking a little.

 

Next, run the game either full-screen or in what the Source engine considers a 4:3 resolution. From what I can tell, the Source engine handles "4:3" significantly better than "16:10" and especially "16:9". 4:3 resolutions can also consist of 5:4 resolutions. 16:10 resolutions also consist of 5:3 and 3:2 resolutions. 16:9 resolutions also consist of 15:9, 21:9, and so forth resolutions.

Other than that, there's not a whole ton you can do to improve the performance in TF2. I will update if you have other tactics/I have other tactics.

[werto165]

2 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Team Fortress 2 is built on the Source engine. As such, the game runs like shit

wut? I thought source engine games were pretty lightweight. 

[Badazzz]

Maybe I will use this guide. Last time I downloaded TF2 it was all glitchy and almost unplayable.

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, werto165 said:

wut? I thought source engine games were pretty lightweight. 

Tell that to an FX-4100 and a Radeon HD 7850 struggling to run it at 60fps at 1440x900 as of recent.

[werto165]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Tell that to an FX-4100 and a Radeon HD 7850 struggling to run it at 60fps at 1440x900 as of recent.

isn't the 660ti similar performance to the 7850? I had no issues running the game at 1080p max settings with TF2 .

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, werto165 said:

isn't the 660ti similar performance to the 7850? I had no issues running the game at 1080p max settings with TF2 .

660 Ti is much closer to the 7950. 650 Ti Boost and 750 Ti performs the same as a 7850.

[Fulgrim]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Tell that to an FX-4100 and a Radeon HD 7850 struggling to run it at 60fps at 1440x900 as of recent.

Have they disabled multicore rendering or something? I recall Garry's Mod doing that a while back.

[PlayStation 2]

9 minutes ago, Fulgrim said:

Have they disabled multicore rendering or something? I recall Garry's Mod doing that a while back.

TF2 looks like it supports it, even in the options menu, but on my laptop, it looks like it hammers only one core. Pretty sure L4D2 and CSGO support it though.

 

EDIT: TF2 does support multiple cores. The spikes on the last two cores are from setting the process affinity to those cores and the game needing to load things.

[werto165]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

660 Ti is much closer to the 7950. 650 Ti Boost and 750 Ti performs the same as a 7850.

ah okay. Well having said that, titan fall (which runs a modified version of source engine) runs pretty good on a 750ti much better than the xbox one at least, are you sure it isn't some sort of driver issue? (I'm chatting shit at this point xD )

[Jacona]

TF2 is actually horribly optimized and is more cpu intensive.
I hope it gets ported to source 2 eventually. 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, werto165 said:

ah okay. Well having said that, titan fall (which runs a modified version of source engine) runs pretty good on a 750ti much better than the xbox one at least, are you sure it isn't some sort of driver issue? (I'm chatting shit at this point xD )

It doesn't look like it as before the Tough Break update, it ran easily at around 100+ FPS.

[werto165]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

It doesn't look like it as before the Tough Break update, it ran easily at around 100+ FPS.

oh right I had no idea it had been updated, I haven't played TF2 in a while. 

[Timmy-P]

On 1/31/2016 at 5:56 PM, Dan Castellaneta said:

-snip-

-dxlevel 70 does not work.  Valve stated that they no longer support DX7 on TF2, the lowest you can now go is 8, thus your startup parameter should be -dxlevel 80 or 81.

 

Can you provide info on the different aspect ratios?  Are you sure it's the aspect ratio that the game can allegedly handle, rather than the resolutions?  If you have Counter-Strike:  Source, this can be easily tested using the built-in benchmarks, sped up with host_timescale.

 

Furthermore, there's a lot of info you can add from fps configs, such as Chris' and Comanglia's.

 

Hope I helped.

[PlayStation 2]

14 minutes ago, Timmy-P said:

-dxlevel 70 does not work.  Valve stated that they no longer support DX7 on TF2, the lowest you can now go is 8, thus your startup parameter should be -dxlevel 80 or 81.

 

Can you provide info on the different aspect ratios?  Are you sure it's the aspect ratio that the game can allegedly handle, rather than the resolutions?  If you have Counter-Strike:  Source, this can be easily tested using the built-in benchmarks, sped up with host_timescale.

 

Furthermore, there's a lot of info you can add from fps configs, such as Chris' and Comanglia's.

 

Hope I helped.

From what I know, the command I guess doesn't work. However, DirectX 7.0 can still be used. I know it's at the very least glitchable into DX7 mode.

 

Different aspect ratios... It seems to be moreso the aspect ratio than res. 1152x648 netted the same performance as 1024x768, and the same as 992x720. I'm not 100% sure about this because the Source engine is extremely fucking twitchy about resolutions.