What are some suggestions for improving TF2 CPU performance?

Solution 1:

My first piece of advice would be to go into the video options and enable Multicore Processing. It's been my experience that this is disabled by default, and enabling it usually results in a performance boost. Despite being in the video settings, this is actually a CPU option.

My second piece of advice would be to make sure you have recent nVidia drivers installed.

Note: My system is a Core 2 Quad 6600 with an nVidia GT240 512MB GDDR5, so yours should outperform mine in anything that's not using a lot of CPU cores.

Solution 2:

It's counter-intuitive, but some people have found increasing graphics quality settings helpful.

Solution 3:

This thread explains how to make stop your antivirus sucking up CPU

Solution 4:

Config Files

It happened sometimes also to me and to my friends to have sudden and strange FPS drop on medium performance PC configuration with Team Fortress 2.

We discovered that it could happens sometimes, that the frequent TF2 update "broke" in some ways the engine configuration.

My first advice is to delete or rename, config folder, inside steamapps\[username]\team fortress 2\tf\ (if I remember well, I cannot check now) and launch TF2.

This will force an auto-reconfiguration of graphics/physics settings that could have been corrupted during a TF2 Patch/Update.

CPU Upgrade

I upgraded recently my CPU from an AMD 5600+ dual-core to an AMD X3 720 tri-core and with an ATI Radeon HD 4770 (low budged) I can play full details at 1680x1050 and never go under 35 FPS. The improvement of changing CPU with multi-core option enabled was a solid +10 over the minimum FPS.

I have friends that upgraded to a 4-core CPU like AMD X4 Phenom II 945 and the improvement was even better.

So definitively I would suggest you to think about an upgrade to any 4-core CPU. TF2 will benefit a lot, but also all modern games are now implemented with multi-core in mind.

Solution 5:

Ok, if none of the other answers helped, here's what you'll have to do.
Let me tell you a secret, minimizing the options you find on the in-game Options>Video window is not all you can do.

First I'll suggest using DirectX 8.1. Here are the steps:

Navigate to your steam Library.
Right click the Team Fortress 2 entry and choose "Properties".
Click on "Set Launch Options".
Type in -dxlevel 81, and click "OK".

Now, you can still go much lower than that with console commands and scripts. The same will usually be true for most Source engine games.

It's remarkably easy. All you have to do is download one of the high-FPS config files that can be found on forums and such. This config file is just a plain text file containing settings that can only be tweaked from the console.

In order to use a High-FPS config:

Download one. m0re's config got me 30 FPS on a really weak laptop.
Extract it if needed. Copy the autoexec.cfg file to your cfg folder. That folder is usually:
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\<YOUR USERNAME>\team fortress 2\tf\cfg\
Run the game and you're done.

If your RAM is at least 2GB you can keep your resolution at 1600x1050. To me, the resolution is the setting that most improves enjoyability.

Once you join a game, you'll immediately notice your settings are unbelievably low. Don't panic yet, truth is: this config is certainly overkill for you, but it will get you there. After playing a match (just to verify the config works), open up that autoexec.cfg file in notepad and start reading it. It is reasonably self explanatory, and it's really not that big. Just go through it and start changing the values you feel are important. When you're done, you should have great performance and totally enjoyable graphics.