Recommended Posts

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Engine

  • Enabled Steam Cloud support for key bindings and custom spraypaint images
    • Added Options->Multiplayer->Advanced option to toggle off/on: default is on

Team Fortress 2

  • Added new Highlander mode
    • 9 players allowed per team
    • Restricts each team to 1 of each class
    • Use mp_highlander (0/1) to toggle off/on: default is 0

    [*]Added "bots" to the server's sv_tags convar if the server is running bots[*]Fixed a weapon name localization issue[*]Fixed the "tf_teamtalk" server convar not controlling text chat between living/dead teammates[*]Updated the map CTF_DoubleCross

    • Fixed the map not ending correctly when using mp_timelimit
    • Changed to prevent Engineers from building on top of the shack in each base
  • Updated the map Arena_WatchTower
    • Fixed a case where players could open and get stuck on the starting gates before the round start
    • Improved clipping to prevent people from getting out of the map
    • Optimized the map for better performance

The new Highlander mode sounds pretty interesting: http://kotaku.com/5463833/team-fortress-2-gets-a-new-game-mode?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kotaku%2Ffull+%28Kotaku%29

Two teams of nine, and no two players on a team can share the same class. I question how popular this will be (I can't imagine that the guy who just wants to build sentries in 2fort is going to enjoy being a Medic or a Spy), but if nothing else, it could make for a nice distraction.

The new Highlander mode sounds pretty interesting: http://kotaku.com/5463833/team-fortress-2-gets-a-new-game-mode?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kotaku%2Ffull+%28Kotaku%29

Two teams of nine, and no two players on a team can share the same class. I question how popular this will be (I can't imagine that the guy who just wants to build sentries in 2fort is going to enjoy being a Medic or a Spy), but if nothing else, it could make for a nice distraction.

Honestly its kind of stupid IMO. Sure it will be great to ensure you do not have 5 engies camping the intel turtling, but 1 of every class is not always good balance.

Now, if it says "There can be only one!" when you pick a class that someone else already is, than it is ok.

Another issue, if you have 9 players, no one can change class......someone has to leave the team, then the person switches to their class, then they have to rejoin, just to change classes. Unless you can "queue" up your class change, such as, you die, change class, then someone else dies and changes to your current class (while you have already changed to their current class) and it switches you two. But in the end it seems like a real hassle if anyone wants to change class.

I can definitely see my skills have atrophied. Well, I guess that's what I get for not playing the game in a long time. Just got out of a game with shift. and rm20010. I think I did fairly well... when I wasn't getting owned. :laugh:

Anyone getting lag since the last update? Every time I kill someone or die, I lag like I've just got an achievement :unsure: Seems a few people on the steam forums complaining about it too. It's making the game pretty unplayable for me.

Am having the same problem :(

I think it's TF2 sync'ng with the steam cloud. You can disable this feature and the hitching goes away, at least until next time you start TF2. Or something.

I think it's TF2 sync'ng with the steam cloud. You can disable this feature and the hitching goes away, at least until next time you start TF2. Or something.

Someone else said that and although I haven't actually tried it myself yet, others on the Steam forums said it had no effect. I also get the lag randomly during games, again like I'm about to get an achievement.

I'm also pretty sure I'm getting a noticably less amount of fps after the update, although I need to do some more testing first :p

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

  • Fixed Polish Team Fortress 2 fonts not being displayed correctly in the Main Menu

And there was me hoping for an update fix to the lag when I saw it downloading :(

And there was me hoping for an update fix to the lag when I saw it downloading :(

It seems to be a rather isolated issue, chances are it might take them awhile to find and fix it.

I was hoping they would fix the demoman charging turn exploit......gets freaking annoying a demo can start a charge behind a corner where he is safe, then turn the corner and get an instant crit hit on you killing you in 1 hit (usually) with nothing you can do except not go around corners.

It's been affecting me too; it's rather annoying.

I was hoping they would fix the demoman charging turn exploit......gets freaking annoying a demo can start a charge behind a corner where he is safe, then turn the corner and get an instant crit hit on you killing you in 1 hit (usually) with nothing you can do except not go around corners.

That's good to know. Damn demomen. :crazy:

And there was me hoping for an update fix to the lag when I saw it downloading :(

Robin said in an email to some guy that they went over all the changes they made in the last update, and couldn't see why it would cause people to experience lag, plus their testing was unable reproduce it. So might be a while. :\

Are you using a Nvidia gfx card rm20010? I think the wondering if the last WHQL driver has something to do with it. I think that was released around the same time. I'll maybe try rolling back to see if it makes a difference.

I'm using an optimized 195.62 set. I had to roll back drivers after the newest one caused severe lag problems in L4D2.

Until last week, everything was fine. I don't think this is a graphics card issue.

I'm using an optimized 195.62 set. I had to roll back drivers after the newest one caused severe lag problems in L4D2.

Until last week, everything was fine. I don't think this is a graphics card issue.

Yeah I'm thinking that too now. Hopefully Valve can recreate it soon.

It's entirely possible this could be related to a third party plugin servers use (HLSTATSX, SourceMod, etc.)

Perhaps they're testing on pure servers.

Good point, Valve would likely test and only be responsible for issues on "pure" (as in no mods) servers, as they do not code any of the server mods. I have not seen the lag you guys speak of, and both of the servers I play on run SourceMod at the most, none of them run HLSTATS......try finding a server that doesn't have any mods (or at least not HLSTATS) and see if you guys still have the lag.

Taken off the Steam forums:

- rename/remove config.cfg from the /tf2/cfg folder

- restart tf2 -> creates a fresh config.cfg

- use the ingame menus to adjust settings to your liking

It has been fixing the stutter issue for many people....not quite everyone but at least half.....worth a try at least. You may also want to hold on to the config.cfg you currently have just in case you did lots of rebinding keys and what not and this doesn't fix your issue. That way you can just revert to your old file without having to reset all your keybinds.

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

-Fixed a case of client-side hitching caused by writing a file to the hard drive too frequently.

There's a new update which probably fixes the problem. Frequent I/O would probably cause pauses. I don't suffer from the problem so I can't check if it's fixed.

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

-Fixed a case of client-side hitching caused by writing a file to the hard drive too frequently.

There's a new update which probably fixes the problem. Frequent I/O would probably cause pauses. I don't suffer from the problem so I can't check if it's fixed.

Awesome, hope its fixed (Y) Although I'm a bit surprised I was seeing the issue on an SSD, if thats what it was.

Awesome, hope its fixed (Y) Although I'm a bit surprised I was seeing the issue on an SSD, if thats what it was.

Depending on the SSD it could cause the stuttering worse than on a normal HDD. I personally have a SSD and I did not have the stuttering issue, despite having a early series drive that is very prone to write stuttering. I guess TF2 itself was only constantly writing a file on certain setups and what not, and I just lucked out and it didn't decide to constantly write on mine.

If it had though, I would have been able to identify the issue, because I actually pay attention to when things slam my SSD with writes, so I would have been able to either alert Valve, or posted it on the forums so some people know what to look for and basically just get Valve to look at that specifically.

Awesome, seems that update did the trick. Not getting lag anymore in game.

If it had though, I would have been able to identify the issue, because I actually pay attention to when things slam my SSD with writes, so I would have been able to either alert Valve, or posted it on the forums so some people know what to look for and basically just get Valve to look at that specifically.

What utility do you use to monitor the writes?

What utility do you use to monitor the writes?

If I have any high amount of writes going on with my SSD it gets the stuttering issue so I know something is going on rather easily and can look into it. I also tend to keep an eye on my HDD activity light for high usage, if it seems very active I always just open Windows 7 resource monitor and check out whats slamming my C drive.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Posts

    • Millions of users to benefit from Windows 11's new performance boost on Adobe Photoshop by Sayan Sen Despite the advent of AI-generated imagery, Adobe's Photoshop remains one of the most popular tools on this planet. Adobe does not have a publicly reported total user count but it's probably not wrong to assume there are millions. As of 2025, Adobe Creative Cloud has had approximately 41 million paid subscribers, many of whom likely use Photoshop. In addition, more than 166,000 companies worldwide are apparently also using the app. These figures are according to a very recent report by SQ Magazine. Out of them, it is fair to assume that many are probably running Windows. As such, there is good news for these users as Microsoft has announced Photoshop is getting a big 20% performance boost on x86-64 (AMD64) systems and a 13% bump-up on Arm devices. This is definitely great news for them as many have complained about the slow performance and general sluggishness of Photoshop on Windows 11 ever since the advent of the latter back in 2021. If you are wondering how Microsoft managed to do this, the answer lies in a combination of compiler-level optimizations and a technology called Sample Profile Guided Optimization (SPGO). According to Microsoft, Adobe worked closely with the company’s Visual C++ team and adopted the latest MSVC toolchain enhancements together with SPGO to squeeze more performance out of Photoshop’s CPU-bound workloads. Unlike traditional Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), which requires developers to create special instrumented builds and run lengthy training workloads, SPGO gathers performance data directly from optimized release binaries. This means Adobe could collect real-world usage information which gives a major advantage to this technique, as companies could leverage data collected from actual customer workloads rather than only relying on synthetic benchmark runs. In theory, this should allow optimizations to better reflect how users interact with software in the real world. Thanks to this, there are improvements to code layout, function inlining, hot-and-cold code separation, and other low-level tweaks that help processors execute instructions more efficiently. Essentially the compiler is better able to identify “hot” code paths, those which are most frequently executed, and optimize them accordingly.
    • "The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months¨ I'd prefer to see the lowest price in over a year
    • Glad these prices are starting to come down, but that is still crazy. I bought the 2TB 9100 Pro (slightly more expensive version with PCIe 5.0) last year for $240.
    • The 2TB Samsung 990 PRO NVMe SSD hits lowest price in over three months by Sayan Sen Yesterday, we covered a really good deal wherein you can get a 4TB TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD for a low price of just $400 with a special discount coupon. That's just $100 per TB, making it a very good offer during these hard times. The deal is still live, so you can check it out in its dedicated article here if you do not want to miss out. Meanwhile, if you don't have that kind of budget but still wish to buy an SSD for a good price, the 2TB variant of the TeamGroup SSD at $280 its lowest price in over three months. Meanwhile, those seeking 2TB but faster performance can check out Samsung's 990 PRO, which has hit the lowest price also in the last quarter or so, as it's on sale for $370 (purchase links under the specs table down below). Thus, you want a faster drive, get the 990 Pro, or you want more capacity, grab the TeamGroup 4TB linked in the first para. The 990 PRO is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and still one of the fastest drives available today for under $500. Speaking of fast, sequential reads and writes are rated at 7450 MB/s and 6900 MB/s, respectively. The random throughputs for reads and writes are 1400K IOPS and 1550K IOPS, respectively. The 990 PRO is based on Samsung's 7th Gen V-NAND flash, and it too is TLC. It packs 2 gigs of LPDDR4 DRAM cache, which helps the random performance. The endurance rating for this is 1200 TBW (terabytes written), which should be sufficient for most users. The Samsung 990 PRO is compatible with the PlayStation 5, but if you are going to use the 990 PRO on a PC, check out the Samsung Magician app that lets you track your drive's health, update its firmware, customize various settings, and more. The tech specs are given below: Specification TeamGroup T-FORCE G50 2TB Samsung 990 PRO 2TB Interface PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0 Form Factor M.2 2280 M.2 2280 Controller InnoGrit Controller Samsung In-house Controller NAND Flash 3D TLC 3D TLC DRAM Cache None (HMB supported) 2GB LPDDR4 Sequential Read (Max) 5,000 MB/s 7,450 MB/s Sequential Write (Max) 4,500 MB/s 6,900 MB/s Random Read (4K) Up to 600,000 IOPS Up to 1,400,000 IOPS Random Write (4K) Up to 700,000 IOPS Up to 1,550,000 IOPS TBW (Endurance) 1,300 TBW 1,200 TBW MTBF 3,000,000 hours 1,500,000 hours Operating Temperature 0°C to 70°C 0°C to 70°C Storage Temperature -40°C to 85°C -40°C to 85°C Shock Resistance 1,500G / 0.5ms 1,500G / 0.5ms Heatsink Patented Graphene Heat Spreader No Get them at the links below: Samsung 990 PRO SSD 2TB (MZ-V9P2T0B/AM): $369.99 (Sold and Shipped by Amazon US) TEAMGROUP T-Force G50 2TB SSD (TM8FFE002T0C129): $279.99 (Sold by TeamGroup, Shipped by Amazon US) Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
    • If you can't spell a simple word that 2nd graders learn, your entire argument is suspect.
  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      Jocimo earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      suprememobiles48 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      519
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      174
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      90
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      81
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!