ping and fps drop

[ferapont]

sorry if there is a thread already about this here. i searched a few times.

i'm playing ET. i look straight down and i get my normal ping, 98, and my com_maxfps, say 76. as i am looking down i run into shrubbery or a tree. then all hell breaks loose. they are like blackholes. my fps drops down to 8 and to my surprise, my ping drops to 70-80. soon as i exit the shrub or leave the tree all is normal again. i am not computer savvy, so please, do talk to me like i am a child.

i changed some of my cvars but it is still happening.

Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512MB
intel core 2 duo

what other info would help?

shtanks!

[ferapont]

i went into catalyst and changed all the 3D settings ant-aliasing, etc. to use the application settings or turned it to performance over quality and so far that seemed to help alot.

[GunClap]

Yeah, sounds like it's a lot of graphics processing causing your problems.

What you're describing is a problem with the renderer. If you have high detail models/textures, they're calculated in moving, but not drawn until you "see" (point at) whatever object it is. Then your renderer takes over and tries to draw it. This is where you're getting the slowdown and it's the same for anyone who whacks up the quality beyond the capability of the GFX card.

I had massive problems with ATi and the Catalyst control. It whacked all settings to max and ignored the application's specifications. I ground to a halt with an average fps of 17... I now have a NVidia with half the specs of the ATi I had and it runs ET over twice as fast.

ATi Radeon X1550 512MB GDDR3 gave me 17 fps with awful lag.
Nvidia 6600 (not official, inno3D) 256MB DDR2 gives me a stable 76fps a second...

Just goes to show, you can have the greatest hardware in the world and it means nothing without a well coded driver to use it properly.