Half Life 2. A little help here...?

Cafe Society
1

I just got the long awaited HL2. I know there’s previous threads, but I need to ask for a little help from the more tech savvy among you.

First, I bought this game thinking it might run OK on my laptop - a Dell 2.4Ghz Celeron. I was way off… I fought with it for a few days, and decided that maybe, just maybe it’ll run on my desktop - a PIII 733Ghz. A long shot, I know, but what the hell.

So I once again embarked on that lifelong journey known as: Installing Half Life 2. You’ve discussed it before, you know of what I speak.

It worked. What? It worked!?! It’s running!!! on a P friggin 3 733?!? Well, it does have a Radeon 8500 and 700+MB of memory, I suppose that’s helping a bit.

Well, here’s the help I’m asking for. It runs real well, but slows down about every minute or so for a few to 15 seconds or so. Then it seems to “snap out of it” as it were. It appears to bog down no matter what level of action is going on.

Am I screwed? Is this an unmanageable side effect of the PIII?

Here’s what I’ve tried to improve things a bit:
~All audio & video settings lowered. Res lowered to 800x600. (the recommended defaults were surprisingly high)
~Updated all drivers
~Freed up as much HD space as I could. I’m running very low - about 700MB left.
~Let the system manage my virtual memory

Would overclocking help? I’ve never done it, and would be hesitant unless the smarter of you tells me it’s cool. Could I just buy a new processor? How much would that cost?

Any help? Am I screwed?

The game looks pretty sweet, and I just started killing people, so I’d like at least some performance before I get too into it.

As an aside, what the hell is up with the way this game is installed and played? Rememeber the good ol’ days, when you bought a game, installed it and played without all these delays bugs and hassles? Yeah, me neither, but I’ve been out of gaming for awhile, and this is the worst I’ve seen. You’d think it would get better, not worse. I’ve made a list of things I can do while the game starts:

  • Wash and wax the cars
  • Mow the lawn
  • Learn a trade, perhaps TV or VCR repair
  • or earn my degree in accounting or business management.

Seriously, WTFIUWT? It’s pretty frustrating because with 2 little ones at home, my gaming time is severely restricted. Hence the reason I haven’t games in awhile.

And no multi-player??? I know about CS, but no FFA??? HL FFA was the coolest thing since Descent2 multiplayer!!!

Anyway, the game itself seems to rock, and I do hope to get a little performance if possible. Any help???

2

Thats a well known bug with the game. Restart steam and it should download an update that fixes it.

3

Thanks Shalmanese, but I’ve tried that. I think I’ve rebooted my computer 100 times over the last 24 hrs, between updating drivers and changing settings. The folks at Steam, or Valve, or Sierra offered up a fix to reverse the patch if it doesn’t work, but that didn’t work either.

(they seem to have their hands full with all kinds of common bugs, judging from the various HL2 support forum discussion boards)

Also, I forgot to add, I’m running XP, FWIW.

Could it be a memory issue? I have 700+ megs of RAM, but with less than a gig of hard drive space remaining, will that negatively affect the virtual memory? Does it matter?

4

Shalmanese is a bit early – the update isn’t out yet. Wait a few days and try what (s)he said.

5

Cool, perhaps a bit of hope for me. Where are you getting this info? Is there a website that I can check? It seems that 3 different companies are involved in this.

6

I may be wrong but it sounds like it could be a RAM rather then a processor issue(you graphics card is up to speed). If it was lacking processor power it would slow down more often then once a minute. I think it just uses up all your RAM, then has to use the HD and thats where your performance sinks. I’d say get yourself another 512 stick with the money you make washing cars :slight_smile: , you really should see a difference. As far as overclocking goes the results are usally not worth the time/money/effort that an ordinary(non PC fanatic) person will spend on it, check wikipedia for the dope.