So excited as anything I double click on the L4D entry in my Steam windows. I watch the awesome intro, pumped up I look for a game. Quickly I find one and we start. Then the real nightmare begins, the game freezes for a few SECONDS and makes it very annoying and hard to play.

So I went to the forums/google. Turns out it was such a bemoaned problem that the devs put in an option in the "Advanced Video Settings" to turn off multi core aid, or something like that. So I turned that off and voila! This fix will however knock a couple of fps in your game. Nothing horrible just slightly noticeable.

SIGH! Oh well at least I can play the game.

So excited as anything I double click on the L4D entry in my Steam windows. I watch the awesome intro, pumped up I look for a game. Quickly I find one and we start. Then the real nightmare begins, the game freezes for a few SECONDS and makes it very annoying and hard to play.

So I went to the forums/google. Turns out it was such a bemoaned problem that the devs put in an option in the "Advanced Video Settings" to turn off multi core aid, or something like that. So I turned that off and voila! This fix will however knock a couple of fps in your game. Nothing horrible just slightly noticeable.

SIGH! Oh well at least I can play the game.

That's weird, I've never really had any problems with the game. It all depends on your PC I guess.

Yeah I don't know what the deal is. I had that problem too the first day it was out and I bought it. mracoon, do you have that feature on and working fine? I've never seen anyone get it to work. I just built my lil bro a new pc for Xmas and we bought L4D and same problem happened. Maybe it's because we're both using AMD processors. mracoon, you using an Intel processor? lol. Sorry for the questions man. Just wondering.

Its a small trade off, at least things play for the most part.

And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me. Someone tell me why PC gaming is better. (Damn, I just asked for it, didn't I?) Hehehehehehe.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with your video card drivers--at least it did for me and a friend. Nvidia drivers specifically. The 178.xx drivers don't cause stuttering, but the 180.xx + add in the multithreading/core support, which doesn't seem to be compatible with L4D..so you gotta turn it off in adv options or enter in mat_queue_mode 0 in console   :|

"Yeah I don't know what the deal is. I had that problem too the first day it was out and I bought it. mracoon, do you have that feature on and working fine? I've never seen anyone get it to work. I just built my lil bro a new pc for Xmas and we bought L4D and same problem happened. Maybe it's because we're both using AMD processors. mracoon, you using an Intel processor? lol. Sorry for the questions man. Just wondering.
"

"And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me."

"And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me. Someone tell me why PC gaming is better. (Damn, I just asked for it, didn't I?) Hehehehehehe."

"LokiZee said:

"And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me. Someone tell me why PC gaming is better. (Damn, I just asked for it, didn't I?) Hehehehehehe."

Yes because questionable performance is limited to PCs. Games like Infinite Undiscovery don't exist.
"

"CynageN said:

"LokiZee said:

"And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me. Someone tell me why PC gaming is better. (Damn, I just asked for it, didn't I?) Hehehehehehe."

Yes because questionable performance is limited to PCs. Games like Infinite Undiscovery don't exist.
"

Are you saying that Infinite Undiscovery is technically flawed?  It's really not in any way.  Pretty underrated, I think the X-Play review nailed it, suprisingly.  I think you're referencing the Last Remnant which is fixed with a HDD install.  If not, that thing runs like a whore.  Either way though, you're going to have texture pop up when you enter a new area for 1-2 seconds---> it is the unreal engine though, what UE game doesn't do that?  Well, I guess Lost Odyssey, but the others I can't remember.  Even gears 2 has texture pop up and that's made by Epic- just a thing of the engine

Console games typically run fine and I've never played a console game that was broken.  The worse is stuff like Earth Defense Force 2017 for the 360-->a certain times it'll slow down like crap.
Pc games, besides the obvious is your computer up to it, often will have a conflict with the software.  Try playing Stalker without patches to see what I mean.
"

What's your point? I really don't care to have a system wars discussion with you. Many PC games run flawlessly for many people. Console games are NOT shielded from poor performance despite their enclosed hardware environments. The need for game patching is not limited to PC's either, thus the title update features on both the 360 and PS3. As long as you know what you're doing with a pc, you can generally weed out any performance issues with games yourself unless the game itself is horribly broken. You don't get the former with consoles. And if the game is broken, just like if a console game has issues, wait for a fucking patch. WELCOME TO MODERN GAMING. Christ.
"

"CynageN said:

What's your point? I really don't care to have a system wars discussion with you. Many PC games run flawlessly for many people. Console games are NOT shielded from poor performance despite their enclosed hardware environments. The need for game patching is not limited to PC's either, thus the title update features on both the 360 and PS3. As long as you know what you're doing with a pc, you can generally weed out any performance issues with games yourself unless the game itself is horribly broken. You don't get the former with consoles. And if the game is broken, just like if a console game has issues, wait for a fucking patch. WELCOME TO MODERN GAMING. Christ.
"

Consoles are consistent, and 99.999% of console games will be playable on the console it was designed for.  On PC, even with decent specs and technical knowledge, there is still a small chance you'll have severe problems running a game.  Last Remnant when uninstalled on 360 is not optimal, but it's still a playable game despite load times, streaming textures, and frame rate problems.  The vast majority of console games play perfectly well, tight controls, optimized and locked framerates (even if it's more likely 30fps than 60fps).  On 360 and PS3, if you buy SF4 you're guaranteed a solid 60fps performance, on PC even if you have a high spec computer, you run a great risk of framerate hitching and other more severe problems, there's just too many processes and variables on a PC to guarantee a perfectly steady framerate.

It's rarely a simple matter to 'weed out any performance issues' in PC games.  Steam causing hitches in the original HL2 was a big problem for millions of gamers, this wasn't something anyone could fix for themselves.  I see resolving performance issues that aren't related directly to bad coding as an even worse problem in PC gaming today than it was years ago.  In DOS I once added 10% performance to all my games across the board by resolving an IRQ conflict between my sound card and graphics card.  These days there is so much more running that the user cannot interact with at all in Windows, I found I was constantly running into problems that couldn't be resolved for me in PC games.  There was NEVER a time in my ~15 years of PC gaming where I wasn't having some problem with at least one of the games I wanted to play.
"

"And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me. Someone tell me why PC gaming is better. (Damn, I just asked for it, didn't I?) Hehehehehehe."

"And this is why I LOVE console gaming. The little nuiances that is PC hardware, software, settings, viruses, and all that good google is just a hassle to me. Someone tell me why PC gaming is better. (Damn, I just asked for it, didn't I?) Hehehehehehe."

I had a similar problem and I found the fix was disabling multicore support in options/video/advanced. Oh are you having a system war, nevermind.

"Diamond said:

Consoles are consistent, and 99.999% of console games will be playable on the console it was designed for.  On PC, even with decent specs and technical knowledge, there is still a small chance you'll have severe problems running a game . . .

It's funny, because I rarely have issues with any newly retailed game on PC. And when I do, I run a couple of diagnostics, do a couple of google searches and try to find a solution. And 99.999% of the time, that works for me. (Yes, I can throw out retarded statistics too! :D) It's all a matter of whether or not you're willing to put effort in to fixing problems yourself . . .

I honestly didn't mean to start a "Console War", or even talk bad about a PC. I have PC gamed in the past, and enjoyed it. But beside for the technical experience most people would need to keep a PC game running flawlessly, I of course prefer a console. There are many PC games I would love to play, but I feel I would A. Have to invest a ton of money, and B.Get really pissed off from time to time because of my hardware. Congrats to you people with the computer savy.

P.S. Some positive observation for the PC, just to show you I understand where you are coming from. The technical hardware error are not only PC exclusively. I have an Xbox 360, and we have all heard about the red ring of death. Also, PCs can be upgraded, and maybe in the long run that would save you money, even if a good PC rig is expensive. Then again, most console last a good 5 years. Hmmmm.

One thing i've noticed was when I bought a new hardrive, I went from a sata to sata 2 hardrive and the game and bandwidth was twice as fast. It wasn't the cpu or videocard, it was the hardrive. So what kind of hardrive do you have? I belive that is the problem because all my games now are lag free because of the upgrade.

I don't know the specs of your pc, so I am saying what has helped me. It's not everyone's pc that's having problems.