performance issues on a source game

sobral97

New Member
hello
I've been playing this game called Team Fortress 2 for almost 10 years. I started with a very bad laptop, but at the time it could handle the game quite well
With the passing of the years, more and more content has been added without proper optimization of the game's engine, which has led to performance drops to a lot of players
I really enjoy the game, so last year I decided to upgrade my system. I built one with a i7-10700F, RTX 3060 TI, 2x16GB 3200Mhz DDR4 RAM. Also bought a 1TB SSD and a 165hz monitor, but I don't think that affects performance much
I'm very happy with this system, I can play pretty much any triple A game at 60fps on the highest settings, some even at 90fps. I thought this was it, I wouldn't have to buy anything else anytime soon
Imagine my surprise when I install TF2 and still can't play it without using third party performance configs. It's unbelievable. I'm at 300fps with everything on high, all of a sudden I drop to 80-90 when there's 6-7 players on the screen. And even using a performance config, which makes the game look terrible, the FPS still drop a lot, not as much but I can tell the difference when they drop, because they go below the monitor's refresh rate and everything becomes blurry and stuttery

What I don't understand is that I can play other source games very well without configs. I play CSGO with the highest settings on everything except shadows on medium, and Im always at 200+ fps with no drops. Same thing with Left 4 Dead 2, although in that one everything is on the highest possible setting, and I still get those 200+ fps

I feel like I wouldn't notice a difference in the TF2's frame drop if I was using a 60hz monitor, because I never drop below 60fps. But I still find it strange that with this system Im getting this issue. I've reported this on steam forums, and apparently there are players with systems theoretically not near as good as mine, but they dont have any issues and dont drop FPS

What am I doing wrong here? What could be causing this issue? Is there some sort of bottlenecking?

All GPU and PC drivers are updated, I check for updates every day
All CPU cores are enabled on msconfig
Motherboard is on overclocking mode, CPU is overclocked when gaming

Although it might not be a CPU problem, as I swapped it for a i5-11600k to check, and the problem was still there

Appreciate the help. It's really bothering me that I cant play a game that people with cheaper systems can play without a problem
 
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