Not sure if its GPU or CPU.

Anyway, I recently upgraded my old rig to this (by recently I mean March, and I was under a strict budget)

Antec EA 500W PSU
HD4670
X2 5200+
2X1GB DDR2 800 ram

If you need more detail obviously I will post.

Anyway, L4D is experiencing FPS drops to 25-28 which can be annoying in hordes, even though I have seen this card min'ing like 45FPS @ a higher resolution WITH AA.

I play at 1440x900 @ maxed with no AA.

Any ideas? If its a CPU heat issue, I can probably overclock it a bit, if you think like a couple hundred MHZ would drop it, if its GPU... I may need to buy a new one or jimmy rig a second fan and OC it.

Hmm. L4D works great for me. I'm not sure of the framerates, but I never experience any slowdown. MY specs are very similar to your too. Idk what it could be.

k0rny said:

I think its clocks of my cpu, or maybe even a ram thing...

It ran fine with my old X2 5000+ too, but i've always had 4GB ram. I don't think its that though. Weird...

That hardware should be doing better. I don't think it's a heat issue. What other programs are you usually running in the background? Something else could be hogging the resources from time to time (which would make more sense as you're experiencing drops vs. simply low FPS over-all). I'd take a look into what processes are running and what's eating the most RAM and CPU usage when these drops happen, just to prove/disprove the possibility.

~Vel said:

Honestly, I shut every program down when I am playing games besides Steam/L4D... it could be processes I haven't really tweaked W7.

L4D is not a very cpu intensive game as it's basically source engine unbuffed. If I had to take a guess I'd say its the vid card.

My friend used to run it max gfx on 4200+ S939 with 2 gigs ddr1 and 8800GT no lag.

sovietdoc said:

Like I said earlier, the thing that led me to believe it was CPU was seeing this card with 20-30 fps more min with other cpus.

If you close everything, then s**t, you could be right on the heat issue. I would still take a look though as I'm unfamiliar with any processes 7 runs that may be different. As far as heat, have you monitored any temps or heard the fans begin to rev higher?

sovietdoc said:
I've the same card hes got and I can max out l4d and never experience slowdown. It's gotta be a memory thing or what Vel said about background processes.

I think this is a driver issue, have you tried any other drivers? I would do it as a test.

Michael C said:

It's been going on for a few versions now.

I am thinking its memory issue with W7, I am probably going to buy a new kit of 2x2 @ 1066 instead of 800.

In terms of heat, my card can get awfully hot (the case is the reason) but since I put a new exhaust fan in it's been a lot lower than normal, maxing around 60-70C.

I once tried L4D on my system below and it was running almost exactly how you are describing it. Coincidence? Doubt it. I assume you've tried reinstalling L4D? I believe that's how I fixed it. I also think my friend had this issue on his PC once, Lentless.

Michael C said:

Hmm, I will give it a shot when I have some time, never really thought of that.

You're CPU limited.

That Athlon X2 5200 is dying trying to keep up with your GPU... I can almost guarantee that is what the problem is.

My old X2 4600+ w/2GB RAM on my secondary system was pegged out at 97-100% CPU usage trying to feed an 8800GT while running Left 4 Dead, it would routinely go into full blown choke and puke mode everytime a hoarde showed up [frame rate dropping to nearly nothing, sound looping]... overclocking it 200MHz (which would put it on par with your 5200) did nearly nothing to remedy the situation.

The solution was swapping out the mobo/RAM/CPU with a X3 720 OC'd to 3.2, 4GB RAM... now it runs great at 75-80% CPU usage.

There is nothing more telling for figuring out what the bottleneck is than the performance monitor on a G15 keyboard.

also, you might try shutting OFF multicore rendering... I've heard that helps with some of the slower dual cores.

MrBungle said:

Hmm, I tried doing that it really only changed my FPS about 1, still giving me fps dips that hinder play.

I figured it would be a CPU thing, but I am thinking with the new fan I can OC my X2 5200+ to around 3-3.2ghz, think that'd keep it above 30?

Maybe instead of upgrading your HSF you should look into doing a CPU upgrade... you can probably get a retail version of a Athlon II or Phenom II X3/X4 for a little more than some of the high end CPU coolers... It should drop right in with a BIOS update, even at stock speeds a 3 or 4 core CPU will do more good than an overclock... L4D is heavily mutlithreaded it uses all 4 cores in the machine in my signature.

MrBungle said:

Eh, I ment I just upgraded my case fan and it dropped temps literally like 5-8 degrees C, I am thinking I can get a bit of an OC out of it for now.