4 months ago, I could play TF2 at high quality with no lag. Now, I cannot. Nothing visible has changed–I'm running the same system, I have the same internet connection, and I'm playing the same servers. Not only do I now have lag, it's very strange lag.
The Symptoms: Every time a player on my team gets inside of my field of view, I get slideshow-level lag spikes. The closer they are to me, the worse it gets. It specifically only occurs with friendly players-I can fight enemies with no problems. If I'm not looking at them, there is no lag.
What I've tried:
- Uninstalling/Reinstalling the game
- Restarting Steam
- Restarting my PC
- Restarting my internet connection
- Going through every graphic setting in advanced options and turning them down (including model graphics)
I know someone will ask, so here are specs:
Processor: Intel Core i5-6300HQ 2.30GHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 940MX
Video Card #2: Intel(R) HD Graphics 530
RAM: 8.0 GB
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (build 14393), 64-bit
The worst part about this situation is that everything was fine 4 months ago. It all ran smoothly with no problems.
Anyone have any ideas about how to fix this problem?
Edit: after posting, I went back and realized that the lag only happens when a friendly player is in my cross-hair. Now that I know this, I can avoid it, but it's still annoying and I have no clue what's causing it.
Best Answer
It seems the cause of this problem is the little info box that is shown to let you see teammate HP and other info. If this is the case, then there should also be lag when looking at enemies as Spy (Or with the Solemn Vow as Medic). I have not seen this problem before, so I'm going off of info that has fixed all other odd/laggy problems that I have had many of.
If you haven't already done this, try doing the following:
Verify the integrity of the game files (Right click on the game in your library, go to "Properties", go to the "Local Files" tab, and click "Verify integrity of game files)
Delete all content within your TF2 custom folder (Located in "Steam\SteamApps\common\Team Fortress 2\tf\custom". You can probably keep the 'readme.txt. file)
I reccomend verifying the integrity of game files after deleting custom content, but it shouldn't be necessary to do it twice.