Well the framerate seems to be fairly stable on 60fps (tied to screen refresh rate) occasionally dipping to 40. When there is a glitch the FPS indicator flicks yellow, but the number doesn't change for long enough for me to read it.
I've turned off the windows indexing service just in case.
I've rebuilt the audio cache with the console command snd_rebuildaudiocache
I can't see any other process using the CPU or disk queue during the game, although I do note that L4D2 does max out the CPU for periods.
I verified the integrity of the local file cache, and it found 3 that failed and were re-acquired. Didn't fix the issue though.
Just running around in circle with not much happening is enough to cause the glitching. Weird.
I have tested a fresh install of Windows 7 64bit Ultimate Edition on a spare HDD, and the performance was the same, if not slightly worse than my usual Win7 installation.
I did not install any Windows updates, nor install any programs other than Steam. I copied the L4D2 files from my WinXP partition and then verified the files (1 needed updating). I did notice that the L4D2 settings from my other Windows 7 installation carried over to the fresh install, I assume via SteamCloud. Perhaps I should have disabled this. The settings do not seem to sync between the WinXP and Win7 installations of Steam/L4D2 which is sensible.
I installed a fresh Win7 32bit, and did not update the graphics drivers. The game ran smoothly. I updated the drivers and the game ran badly. Downgraded the drivers and the game ran smoothly. Updated the drivers and the game ran badly.
I then installed fresh Win7 64bit and did not update the drivers, but the game ran badly. Updated the graphics drivers and as expected was just the same.
Built-in drivers are WDDM v1.1 8.15.11.8593 Upgraded drivers are 9.12.0213 (driver 301.42)
So, it seems to be 64bit vs 32bit.
What I need to try next is WinXP 64bit, or Ubuntu if Valve would hurry up and release L4D2 for linux.
I can tell you for a fact that it's not x64 as I have run L4D2 on both x86 and x64 with no troubles. If you wanted to play L4D2 on a Linux distro I would recommend playing it through WINE. See if that helps :)
BioGhosty: I can tell you for a fact that it's not x64 as I have run L4D2 on both x86 and x64 with no troubles. If you wanted to play L4D2 on a Linux distro I would recommend playing it through WINE. See if that helps :)
Hmm thanks for reminding me. I just re-read the whole thread and I see others have said the same thing.
Just a final follow up to this post. I can confirm it was not the graphics card (NVidia 9600GT), and not the graphics drivers.
Someone gave me a 'new' computer with about the same specs. I put my graphics card in it, and installed the same copy of Windows7 as used previously. I tried with both the built-in graphics driver and then updated to the same (latest version) as on my previous PC.
Gameplay was perfectly smooth, no 'glitching/pausing'.
The 'new' PC was fitted with my RAM, my HDD, my wireless headset, and my peripherals.
So in conclusion it must have been the motherboard (hardware or drivers).
What I didn't bother testing was the new (brand new) graphics card (ATI 6600) in my old PC.
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