Sound/Lag Spikes

[StevenM]

This is basically just an issue I've had to deal with for awhile now, so I figured I'd post it here. In fact, I probably have mentioned it somewhere. In short, anytime I find myself rounding a corner as an alien into the human base, such as in ATCS or Niveus (when humans have managed to move to the window room_, my system renders all of the sounds and images (alien radar, humans etc.) at once and a i get a huge lag spike. During the spike I sometimes can actually freeze for a second or 2 and I've noticed lots of yellow at the top of my lagometer.

To add to the frustration, this hasnt always been a problem, when I first installed tremulous, I would never experience any lag spikes. Anyways, if anyone has had this problem or has any recommendations, feel free to post.

I'll post my sound config and specs later on.

[kevlarman]

make sure your /rate is set reasonably high.

[StevenM]

yeah my rate is usually set to 25000-30000. so that shouldnt be it. ill post my sound config now.

So here it is:

seta s_khz "0"               //volume, 0 reduces lag       ON
seta s_loadas8bit "1"
seta s_compression "1"        //use sound compression
seta s_useopenAL "0"
seta s_ambient "0"
seta s_enableA3D "0"                  
seta s_doppler "0"
seta s_geom_reverb "0"
seta s_numpolys "0"
seta s_geometry "0"
seta s_occlude "0"
seta s_reflect "0"
seta s_mixPreStep "0.055"
seta s_mixahead "0.12"        //controls delay used to mix and combine sounds

edit: oh yeah, im running a pentium 4 HT, 2gb ram, with geforce 8600 GT(512mb/lowest settings).

[Toma]

your comp hates you.

[StevenM]

Damn toma, how'd you become such a computer savvy kid? You are so useful. NAHHHT

[F50]

yeah my rate is usually set to 25000-30000. so that shouldnt be it.

Nevertheless, try setting it to 35k or 40k, you never know. You also might consider increasing /cl_maxPackets to 45 (I assume you're maximum FPS is 90, the default) or /snaps just to see.
Note that it could be that your network hates you, rather than your computer.

btw, how much of an fps drop do you usually see in these situations?

[StevenM]

ill try increasing my rate, i use maxpackets 125 and 40 snaps. my maxfps is set to 125. ive never rly noticed the fps dropping, ill take a look today. thanks. it could be my network but i mean, its a 12mb/s connection, no reason for it to lag like that, no what i mean?

[F50]

If you've got enough bandwidth and have settings like that and your fps doesn't drop that covers every single reason why that should be happening, right? However, since you seem to have customized things a bit, and didn't get this bug before, you might try setting all net, sound, and fps related settings to default and seeing if the problem persists, although I'm kinda clutching at straws now.

[StevenM]

yeah, ive tried all of the easy fixes myself, but yeah i guess ill give the defaults a shot. thanks for the help btw.

edit: so i deleted my autogen, and so far so good. the default settings seem to work fine. so im gonna go ahead and input each cvar, taking note of when i notice lag spikes .

Nvm. was prematue. the problem remains, might just invest in a soundcard that isnt integrated perhaps.