Lag spikes. Need help.

[Phoenixxx Wright]

Every time I join a server, I get lag spikes. Not when I first join, but usually within five minutes of joining, and it happens at horrible, horrible times. When I'm behind an eight stab chain, or near a psycho pyro, usually.

Anyway. I play on my laptop and my modem is on my main computer. Those two computers share a network, so it's easier for me to pass documents back and forth, although no one downloads off of it.

My ping is generally 50-65, and my fps is always around 30-50 (which isn't half bad, for the graphics settings).

This has only started to happen fairly recently, and the spikes go away the longer I'm on the server.

Any ideas?

 

[3.14159265359]

That happens to me too. I just attribute it to my crappy computer. I just think it's the game searching for a certain file and opening it. my lag spikes happen when i get ubered for the first time or when i die for the first time or when i get an achievement.

 

[mad pistol]

Are you connected via a router? Some of my older routers had a similar problem to what you described.

Of course, it took purchasing a $100 D-Link Gaming router to totally fix that problem... figures.

 

[ScrappyDoo]

Phoenix,

After you're in-game, open the console and type:

net_graph 1

and then when the lag spikes get bad, do a screenshot, please. If you could post the screenshot, that'd be great.

 

[DarkHawk101]

Ya what Scrappy said

 

[Gar]

Phoenix... when the lag kicks in, does your computer's hard drive LED light up? Also, how much memory do you have in the laptop? Could be caused by paging if the amount of available RAM is low. TF2 really needs at least 2GB physical memory.

 

[wasawiki.]

I had that problem but I dont know how I fixed it :S

 

[File_2]

Gar, i play TF2 normally on my laptop, and it only has 512mb of ram.
I suppose its down to the fact that my settings are quite low, but the lag spikes are probably only because its tryin to load something.
Thats generally the matter if you haven't been into a specific area on the map or something is hapening around you for the first time.

 

[QB]

Really need to see a netgraph. Certain issues leave a tell-tale graph. Even hdd/paging issues look different than any other kind of lag.

For instance, we have line signal problems here. That leaves a netgraph with a nasty sharktooth peak and interspersed lines instead of solidly packed.

 

[Gar]

File_2, wow.. 512mb is rather minimal. I'm surprised that runs OK. I typically run my system at full resolution and see about 1.6GB of memory used with a large map.

A netgraph would definitely help.