I've decided that my PC is probably due an upgrade.

Currently I'm using P4 3.00GHz with 2GB@200MHz and a GeForce 6600. In the thick of the action
in TF2 its been dropping down to as low as 5FPS(!).

I'm considering splashing out and getting a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 with 4GB and a NVIDIA Geforce 8800GTS 512MB, which lead me to wonder what everyone else was gaming on atm?

In the meantime does anyone have any tips on improving performance (tweaking the hardware or TF2 config settings) to squeeze in a few more FPS?

BTW I've read through PiLsY advice ( viewtopic.php?f=35&t=387 ) and have added some of the config settings suggested.

Sounds good but only a couple of things I would change.

Swap the 8800GTS for the 8800GT 512mb. It takes up less room in your case, is cheaper, uses less power and gives better performance.
I wouldn't worry about 4gb unless you're going for vista 64bit.
Q6600 is a great choice and definitely gives the best performance for its price, and its also very overclockable.

Good luck with your new build!

i'm all jealous now,

it sounds like you got the same sort of rig as me, P4 3.0ghz, 2gb ram.

just upgraded my ati x800 to an ati x1950 pro. Quite a boost and i should be able to play bioshock etc now (shader models).

next upgrade is a complete system overhaul, a bit like the 1 you mentioned, but just 2gb again, and lots of SATA!!!!

Sounds similar to my new machine mate (bar my silly o.t.t gfx cards). The chip i can wholeheartedly reccomend, great performance at a nice price (sub £150 i believe). Also def go for the 8800GT. They are phasing out the GTS and even my GTX's now i believe anyway.

For memory Id go for quality rather than amount. I'm thinking of swapping my 4GB of DDR2-667 for something a bit nippier, Even 2GB of 800 (or 1066 if your feeling flush) would be more than adequate. I'd also personally advise against Vista64 right now- or just go for Vista Ultimate, of which some versions come with both 64 and 32bit OS's. I know alot of people have had no probs with 64- but some, including me, have. (Oblivion for example wont even install due to 64 being super-paranoid)

Also Im thinking you should really get better performance from your rig. It is pretty much better than my secondary machine which was running TF2 pretty well (at 1024x768, motion blur and models high, no AA) and im sure it wasnt dropping below 15fps even under load (its a AMD64-3000 @2.2ghz, 1/1.5GB of DDR400, 7600GS- so on the whole pretty comparable). There are alot better people to give advice on tweaks and performance within the community than myself though (naming no names but u know who u are!). Im sure they will be happy to give you a few pointers! Try turning off Anti Aliasing if you are using it and swapping down to a lesser texure filter (Aniosotropic to Trilinear or even Bi) as that freed up alot of power for me without affecting the essential structure of the game. Let us know how you get on mate

Thanks for the advice. Will definitely go for the 8800GT then.

In the meantime I have dropped down to DX8.1 and am using the following cfg settings.
Everything is stripped right down. (Everyone is eyeless and toothless!) Doesn't look so pretty, but at least now fps are always >30

//Actual Video Settings
mat_antialias 0
mat_forceaniso 0
mat_hdr_enabled 0
mat_hdr_level 0
mat_picmip 2
mat_trilinear 0
mat_vsync 1
r_rootlod 2
mat_dxlevel 81

//FPS Settings
fps_max 60
cl_detaildist "0"
cl_detailfade "0"
cl_drawmonitors "0"
cl_ejectbrass "0"
cl_forcepreload "1"
cl_lagcomp_errorcheck "1"
cl_lagcompensation "1"
cl_downloadfilter "nosounds"
cl_ejectbrass "0"
cl_forcepreload 1
cl_phys_props_enable "0"
cl_phys_props_max "0"
cl_show_splashes "0"
cl_smoothtime "0.01"
cl_smooth 1
commentary 0
mat_aaquality "0"
mat_autoexposure_max "0"
mat_autoexposure_min "0"
mat_bloomscale "0"
mat_bufferprimitives "0"
mat_bumpmap "0"
mat_clipz "1"
mat_compressedtextures "1"
mat_diffuse "1"
mat_disable_bloom "1"
mat_disable_fancy_blending "1"
mat_disable_lightwarp "1"
mat_disable_ps_patch "1"
mat_envmapsize "0"
mat_excludetextures "1"
mat_envmaptgasize "0"
mat_fastspecular "1"
mat_filterlightmaps "1"
mat_filtertextures "1"
mat_forceaniso "0"
mat_forcehardwaresync "0"
mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware "0"
mat_framebuffercopyoverlaysize "0"
mat_hdr_enabled "0"
mat_hdr_level "0"
mat_hdr_manual_tonemap_rate "0"
mat_mipmaptextures "0"
mat_lightmap_pfms "0"
mat_maxframelatency "0"
mat_max_worldmesh_vertices "0"
mat_parallaxmap "0"
mat_picmip "2"
mat_queue_mode "-1"
mat_reducefillrate "1"
mat_shadowstate "0"
mat_show_ab_hdr "0"
mat_showlightmappage "-1"
mat_specular "0"
mat_texture_limit "-1"
mat_trilinear "0"
mat_use_compressed_hdr_textures "1"
mat_showenvmapmask "0"
mat_showlowresimage "0"
mat_showmaterials "0"
mat_showmaterialsverbose "0"
mat_supportflashlight "0"
mat_wateroverlaysize "0"
mat_motion_blur_enabled "0"
mat_motion_blur_percent_of_screen_max "0"
mat_softwarelighting "0"
mp_decals "0"
muzzleflash_light "0"
net_maxfragments "1280"
net_maxfragments "1280"
net_showevents "0"
npc_height_adjust "1"
props_break_max_pieces "0"
props_break_max_pieces_perframe "0"
r_3dnow "1"
r_3dsky "0"
r_PhysPropStaticLighting "0"
r_WaterDrawReflection "0"
r_WaterDrawRefraction "0"
r_ambientboost "0"
r_cheapwaterend "1"
r_cheapwaterstart "1"
r_decal_cullsize "0"
r_decals "0"
r_dopixelvisibility "0"
r_drawbatchdecals "0"
r_drawflecks "0"
r_drawmodeldecals "0"
r_drawmodelstatsoverlaymax "1.5"
r_drawmodelstatsoverlaymin "0.01"
r_drawspecificstaticprop "0"
r_dynamic "0"
r_eyeglintlodpixels "0"
r_eyemove "0"
r_eyes "0"
r_eyeshift_x "0"
r_eyeshift_y "0"
r_eyeshift_z "0"
r_eyesize "0"
r_fastzreject "0"
r_flashlightrendermodels "0"
r_unloadlightmaps "1"
r_flashlightrenderworld "0"
r_flex "0"
r_forcewaterleaf "0"
r_lightaverage "0"
r_lod "2"
r_staticprop_lod "4"
r_maxdlights "0"
r_maxmodeldecal "0"
r_maxnewsamples "0"
r_maxsampledist "0"
r_minnewsamples "0"
r_mmx "1"
r_norefresh "0"
r_occlusion "0"
r_renderoverlayfragment "0"
r_queued_decals "1"
r_rootlod "2"
r_ropetranslucent "0"
r_shadowmaxrendered "32"
r_shadowrendertotexture "1"
r_shadows "0"
r_spray_lifetime "0.1"
r_sse "1"
r_sse2 "1"
r_teeth "0"
r_staticpropinfo "0"
r_updaterefracttexture "0"
r_updaterefracttexture "0"
r_visualizeproplightcaching "1"
r_waterdrawreflection "0"
r_waterforceexpensive "0"
r_waterforcereflectentities"0"
rope_averagelight "0"
rope_collide "0"
rope_shake "0"
rope_smooth "0"
rope_smooth_enlarge "0"
rope_smooth_maxalpha "0"
rope_smooth_maxalphawidth "0"
rope_smooth_minalpha "0"
rope_smooth_minwidth "0"
rope_subdiv "0"
rope_wind_dist "0"

//Blood settings
violence_ablood 1
violence_agibs 1
violence_hblood 1
violence_hgibs 1

Sorry jason, didnt notice your post for whatever reason! Better late than never though...

You seem to have your TF2 secctings sussed - well done on this as youve got decent speed out of what is now an outdated system. Gutting how fast pc hardware improves isnt it?

Anyway, thought id throw you down a list of stuff as suggestions/ideas material. One thing I will say though - stay away from quad core at the moment. Id get a cheaper dual core and leave the quad core's for now as they will be replaced by bigger and better things over the next 4 months. My dual core runs EVERYTHING perfectly, plus you have more overclocking headroom on a dual core, less heat, less energy bills etc etc . Until games take full advantage and amd/intel have had a couple of years to refine quad core I don't see it as worthwhile yet. The gains are minimal and depend on the app supporting more than 2 cores anyway.

Good bit of reading here...(click me)

Personally if you're building your own i'd go for the following (and this is almost a carbon copy of my pc):

E8400 Wolfdale 3ghz 6mb cache
2 x 1gb OCZ 6400 platinum rev 2
IP35Pro motherboard or DFI Blood Iron motherboard (which is what i use)
Thermalright Ultra120 Extreme heatsink
PWM cpu fan
120 mm Adjustable RPM Case Fans
8800GT Graphics
Power Supply (IMPORTANT!!)
Case : Anything midi tower you like the look of with at least 2 x 120mm case fan fittings. This one is awesome though! And this one is the best ive found for less than £30

All are clickable links...

Total cost would be £500-£600. A lot of this is on special offer at the moment, but the price shouldnt vary much and if you shop around you may get a better deal. Remember postage though! I'd wholeheartedly recommend that power supply from play.com. Its a brilliant piece of kit and is about £20 cheaper than most other places, free delivery too.

Hope that's of some help mate. If you have any questions feel free to pm me or post back here.

Matt.

If Valve gets their asses into getting their multicore technology done, then we'll see a huge improvement from quad over duo Quad, when utilizing all four cores equally, reaches a booming 9ghz Beat that duo cores hehe. And Valve has announced some time ago, that their working on making their engine fully multicore - the more cores the better they said.

Multicore support in TF2 already gives quite a boost when you turn it on but unfortunately it isn't very stable.
some of you are confusing the gts 512 with the gts 320/640. The gts 512 is around 10% faster than a gt but imo not worth the extra money. You might want to wait until 21 February when Nvidia will release new cards AGAIN. Though the new cards are supposed to just be some rebranded G92 core cards, they will probably be a bit cheaper.

Jason, fyi, 4 GB of memory are practically useless on 32-bit OS'es. At the very best 3,5 of them will ever be recognized, and of those, not all can be used by applications. Best theoretical possible usage division is 2 GB for the kernel and 2 GB for applications, but since 3,5 GB are "viewable" that would be 2 GB and 1,5 GB. That goes both for XP and Vista, as long as they are 32-bit. If you install the 64 bit version of any of those you'll have no such memory limit, but you'll have performance issues due to the reasonably immature state of 64-bit drivers. Best practice imho, if possible, and IF you don't have to spare the cash that is (I myself have 4 GB even though I have XP 32 bit installed), is to buy 3 GB, if you feel 2 GB aren't enough.

You can use the /pae switch in boot.ini to get more use of 4gb on a 32bit os