Make TF2 connect to a particular server when launched from command line

I suspect that you're hitting your real RAM ceiling and your machine is swapping when you're loading or connecting to games. I'm guessing you're at 4gb - I sincerely hope it's not less.

To confirm, open up Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities) and go though all the steps of loading and connecting to a game. Switch to Activity Monitor while you're in a game, your System Memory will probably have very little "Free" memory left.

You can attempt to free up more RAM by quitting other applications that are running when you're playing TF2, but I suggest upgrading to 8gb (if your machine supports it). It's under $100 and makes a huge difference when doing all sorts of RAM-hungry stuff (photoshop and parallels at the same time? not a problem!).

Or, you can try to adjust the settings down to a more manageable level for your amount of RAM. Lowering the texture quality is probably the easiest way to achieve this, but try out the rest of the settings to see what works for you.

There is an article on the Steam website called Configuring a router for multiple clients. Despite the name, the advice they actually give has nothing to do with configuring your router:

• Go to Steam's My games menu

• Right-click on the game you wish to play

• Go to Properties

• From the General tab, click on the Set launch options button

• Add a different client port number on each machine between 27005 and 27032 in the following format:

  +clientport 270XX

  Note: Do not use 27020

• Click OK