CS:Source -great graphics but fps-killer

[Exilibur]

that pretty much makes wallhacks ineffective, doesn't it?

but anyway as i understand it, you're saying that the hl2 engine is somehow faster because it only draws visible stuff. Why should the fps displayed should be any better because? I mean, you might get higher fps, but if you have 30fps in hl2 and 30fps in hl1, are one of the games then really running at a higher fps than the other, because some polygons aren't being drawn?

[stefanhendriks]

no. I think peopl emess up FPS and Hz here.

FPS is literally "Frames per second" , more specificly the more 'screens' are drawn at a second. When i write my own games i have a simple counter, every second it counts the amount of screens i draw on the screen buffer. Hmm, i see this is a bit confusing. See it like this:

- you have a bitmap the size of your monitor resolutions
- your video card has a screen buffer (what you see on ur screen)

The engine draws everything probably on the BITMAP first , and at the end the BITMAP gets drawn on the screen. I wont get into details, as there are many manners to draw parts on the bitmap , and not redrawinfg things that have been drawn already (dirty rectangles, etc).

The amount of HZ is the amount of 'refresments' on the hardware size of ur screen buffer. Meaning, your CRT monitor will 'draw' that buffer on its screen. Everything below 72hz (on a CRT) will give u a headacke.. ur eyes will see a steady screen at 72 hz! (and i am a living proof + dozends of people i have helped with this problem).

On TFT screens u wont have this flickering btw..

anyway, unless the HL engine clears the bitmap everytime and then redraws all (which is stupid IMO) , it will calculate everything and then draw it. Drawing itself is probably not that CPU intensive, though the LOS and 'visibility' checks do. This causes a slow down.

Meaning, you can have 50 FPS, meaning the game does 50 cycles in one second. But your screen can do 100 Hz.

The FPS do probably not differ in HL1 and HL2. HL1 just uses an 'old' way of drawing the world compared to HL2. The FPS will probably be the same. In fact, strictly taken, FPS has nothing to do with polygons, or whatever you do in the game. It just means the amount of cycles. Meaning, in HL2 , 30 fps means it probably does MORE stuff, then in HL1 on 30 fps. In HL1 there is no physics engine for instance. Lets say the cycles in HL1 you can run your game at 60 fps. In HL2 that could be 40. Meaning that one cycle in HL2 costs more. Simple as that.

[sfx1999]

Interesting. I have a Geforce 4 TI 4200 and AMD Athlon 64 3200 (1 MB cache version) and I get 40 FPS at the least at 1024*768. Try cranking down some of the detail levels. Try going to options->video->advanced options and set them like this:

model detail: medium
texture detail: medium
water detail: simple reflections
shadow detail: high
anti-aliasing mode: none
filtering mode: trilinear
shader detail: high
wait for vsync: disabled

Also, in the console, try typing mat_dxlevel. It if is set at 90 and up, set it to 80. If it is set at 80, you can set it to 70 and disable shaders and use Direct3D 7.

About FPS and hertz, there is a relationship. Hertz is a measure of frequency. 1 hertz is one instance per second, whil 3000 is 3000 instances per second. Your monitor will always hit 60 Hz, but the problem is that your computer might not render it fast enough, so your FPS will be lower. You should usually limit your FPS to the refresh rate of your monitor, which is usually about 60 or 70 Hz, I always use 60.

As for FPS the eye needs, an image must be flashed on and off 30 times a second for it to appear solid (this is how monitors work) and 15 times a second to appear to be in motion. NTSC TVs (like used in the US and Japan) get a refresh rate of 60 Hz, but they are interlaced to reduce flicker.

More info here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace

Also, I don't think computer monitors use interlacing. They are a lot more perfect than TVs.