Valve Max FPS OrangeBox Games

[jmurray1818]

After doing some research on this looks like one of the last valve updates "blocked" the ability to have a stable server above 500 fps on all ob based games. You can still get the 500 or higher fps with a custom coded kernel or software but now it sky rockets the cpu and makes the server very unstable and even doubles to triples the game speed. Guess valve is making ob based games to be like l4d2.

Although i did notice a huge improvement in the game with the new settings.

[Edge100x]

A Valve employee posted this about the FPS concern:

Hi all -

Free to Play brought a huge influx of new users to Team Fortress. To help server counts scale up to match the demand, we are reworking the dedicated server for performance. We want to improve player responsiveness as well as to reduce CPU usage so that hosts can run more servers per physical server.

Some of those changes addressing CPU usage went out last night. Server operators should see a big decrease in CPU load and can potentially run more instances per physical box now. However, a side effect that many of you have noticed is that server FPS has an effective cap of 500 instead of the previous 1000, or possibly even lower than 500 depending on your Linux kernel HZ setting. This should not have a noticeable impact on gameplay as the tick rate is still locked (well, mostly locked) at 66 updates per second and the frames that are being dropped are "empty" frames that do not actually run a server tick.

We're going to address this further in another set of performance improvements. Sorry for the temporary confusion, but we wanted to get these CPU load reduction changes out quickly to help with the Free to Play user crush.

Longer term, we want to move away from FPS as a measure of performance and instead show actual load and responsiveness (jitter/latency) statistics. The difference between a tick and a frame is complicated, and fps_max sometimes affects performance in counter-intuitive ways. We would like to retire fps_max for servers and replace it with a more obvious server performance setting. We'll give you all a heads up before we do so.

Henry G.

Before he posted this, I made this statement on Facebook:

In today's Orangebox update, Valve forced its Orangebox games to start running at half the correct FPS rate -- so our 500 FPS servers now run at 250 FPS, 2000 FPS servers at 1000 FPS, and so on. For ultraaccelerated and extreme accelerated servers, a workaround is to double the FPS rate on the "Server control" page, but there is no workaround for Windows servers yet. We are hoping for a quick fix from Valve.

Since further changes are in the works, I'd recommend rolling with whatever Valve wants, at least for now, and see how it all pans out.

[jmurray1818]

Yea, that is what i seen also.

We already had fps_max set to 0, Running at the new default (Max) people are saying its smoother then before on 1000fps.

[kraze]

I had my doubt in the beginning however I think Value may know what there doing. Lets hope for the best.

[jmurray1818]

We will see.

[Edge100x]

This is the latest directly from Valve:

Hi all, a heads up to TF2 and CS:S server operators -

A near-future update (not necessarily the next one) will change the way that framerate is handled in the dedicated server. All users, especially those with very low pings, should receive a smoother gameplay experience with less jitter and more consistent-feeling latency.

Another effect of these changes is that all Orange Box (TF2, CS:S, etc) dedicated servers will run with a locked framerate, similar to L4D/L4D2. The fps_max convar will not have any effect on servers. (It remains as a client option since limiting your FPS can reduce GPU heat and overall power consumption.)

Although we don't normally give notice before updates, this is a potentially disruptive change for the server rental market, so those who currently charge premiums for "higher framerates" should probably start considering their options now.

Valve has not yet said what the new FPS lock will be.

[IcEWoLF]

Thanks for the update John!