Well, I've been playing HL2 for some time, and here is my collection of tips
that I strongly suggest you try:
In your bios, set the AGP Aperture to the size of the ram on the videocard.
For my 6800GT, it's 256meg.
In your bios, turn off Fast Writes.
In HL2, set Audioquality at Medium (I have everything else set at the
highest settings)
In the videocard drivers, disable FSAA and AA, and instead run at the
highest resolution that gives smooth framerate. I run at 1600x1200 and get
65-75fps in timedemos.
In the ....\hl2\SAVE directory, set the file properties of all 4 autosave*.*
files +R. This will eliminate autosaves and the stutters associated with
them. Use your quicksave F6/F9 buttons for saving instead.
In the Launch Options for HL2 (in the steam menu) put the following:
-heapsize 400000 +map_background none
Vary the heapsize value for the amount of ram you have, I have 512meg. The
effect of these is to make the initial game loadtime much faster.
Make a blank file valve.avi with notepad, and put it in the ...\hl2\media
directory replacing the file there, and be sure to make it +R. This
eliminates that intro video.
(mentioned in a steamforum post) After you start HL2 and are at the menu,
ctrl-alt-del and in TaskManager rightclick on hl2.exe and set it's priority
at Low. This has helped many people with stuttering. Try all the things
above first, but this might help you too.
I made a ...\hl2\cfg\autoexec.cfg file and put the following items into it:
snd_mixahead "0.4"
sv_forcepreload "1"
cl_allowupload "1"
cl_allowdownload "1"
cl_forcepreload "1"
mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware "1"
These were commonly mentioned when the stuttering problem first appeared,
which ones actually have an effect is a good question but they don't hurt
anyway. Notice that although Valve sets the mat_ cvar to 0 by default for
Nvidia cards, I have it at 1 for my 6800GT.
rms
