packet drops during the first 10 minutes

(senator) #1

I have an annoying problem, whenever I start up ET and connect to any server, no matter what map, I’m lagging badly during the first 10 minutes often with heavy packet losses. After these ten minutes of pain everything runs smoothly and I hav no more dropped packets. Any ideas of what causes this ? I might add that these heavy lagging even occures if I run my own server locally so it can’t be my connection, and as every map laggs (but only during the very first 10 minutes, if I’m already playing longer and a new map loads that map plays fine right from the beginning), even tiny maps like tc_beach. Is it my computer/graka ? Old stuff, I agree, but as I said, after playing for 10 minutes everything runs smooth.

I have an 1GHz Duron, GeForce2 TI, 512MB RAM.

Help? Anybody ?
:frowning:

(Kendle) #2

Punkbuster maybe? Even if you start your own server if you’re connected to the Internet at the time and Punkbuster is enabled it’ll try and authenticate your GUID with the PB master servers.

If not, then maybe allocating more memory to the game (by increasing com_hunkmegs) might help, as the problem could be Windows swapping stuff out to disk when you first start to play. Do you see a lot of hard disk activity during these first 10 minutes?

(PeteSpeed) #3

I feel your pain m8 i have that very same problem and its bloody annoying :angry:
My setup is
2700XP Athlon 2.16ghz
512 DDR ram
FX 5600 256 DDR
Im looking forward to some ideas here :bump:

edit:My Hunkmegs are set to 256 BTW

(Maximus191) #4

If your running Anti virus try turning it off when you play as this can lag you badly for a while :wink:
Especially Norton!!

($pence) #5

Hey Maximus191, are you refering to Norton Anti-virus AND firewall or just the anti-virus ?

ALSO ISN’T THIS JUST YOUR PC/GAEM LOADING EVERYTHING UP FOR THE 1ST FEW MOMENTS ?

(senator) #6

I am using:

seta com_hunkMegs "352"	
seta com_soundMegs "32"	
seta com_zoneMegs "32"

and I have disabled all background tasks and closed all other running programs… nothing, still lagging during the first 10 minutes.

It’s like two seconds of smooth playing, than half a second nothing, two seconds of smooth plaing, half a second nothing goes etc.

And I am even lagging if all I do is spent the first ten minutes staring at a wall and every map laggs, even tiny tc_beach who are so small they should produce no problems with caching textures.

(BondyBoy007) #7

"It’s like two seconds of smooth playing, than half a second nothing, two seconds of smooth plaing, half a second nothing goes etc.
"

I had a similar problem (on most but not all servers) and it turned out to be my router, I upgrated the firmware and it was solved. ?

(Lagger) #8

try doing the exact opposite of what kendle suggested. if com_humkmegs is too high, windows starts using the page file. with 512 megs of ram, setting com_hunkmegs to 256 might be better.

(SCDS_reyalP) #9

Agree with lagger. sounds like it might be due to swapping. There is no reason to set your hunkmegs over 192. Likely there isn’t any reason to set it that high either.

(L2|B4tt3rY) #10

pb_system 1

solves all problems, did for me i used to have wat u had even got a new gfx card before realising all i had to do was type this into console

(senator) #11

Thanx to all who replied!

First I tried lowering com_hunkMegs to 192… didn’t change a thing. Than I tried pb_system 1 and even thou I have to test it a little more in depth it seems to have solved my problems :clap:
Thanx, B4tt3rY, I owe you one! (are you the B4tt3rY sometimes playing on the BiO server ? If yes, I’ll let you kill me a few times as a sign of gratitude :smiley: )

Now, what exactly does this command do? I know it has something to do with PunkBuster but what exactrly ?

(Lekdevil.NL) #12

pb_system 1 makes Punkbuster use a different method for scanning your memory. It’s known to help with systems that become unresponsive or start to “chug” during the scan. See the PB FAQ for more information.

(senator) #13

Here is what the evenbalace website has to say about pb_system:

PB_System [0/1]
PB can conflict with other software on some systems due to vigorous memory scanning; Changing this setting may reduce or eliminate conflicts if you have problems on your system; this setting can only be changed before connecting to a server

Doesn’t really explain a lot, well, at least it seems to work for me :cool:

(Kendle) #14

Oops, yeah, that’s what I meant, honest guv. :bash:

(PeteSpeed) #15

pb_system 1

solves all problems, did for me i used to have wat u had even got a new gfx card before realising all i had to do was type this into console

Thx B4tt3rY :drink: the chugging has finally gone woohoo!! " pb_system 1" did it for me too :banana: