hiccup... chop... hiccup...

[malignantpoodle]

Just recently, q3 started doing this. Running completely smooth on Athlon 2800+, 2gb, nvidia 6600GT 128mb, 10k raptor hdd, etc. and then all of a sudden I get these nasty little freezes. When I first enter a server, it's not there, but slowly it starts, and the longer I play the worse it gets. I've tried everything I can think of like shutting down stuff in the background, making sure all drivers are up to date, minimizing all settings... it's always the same. In game I have /snaps 40, /rate 25000, but my cfg hasn't changed at all since before this started.

Curious, I hook up my older celeron notebook on wireless. Start playing... same thing, so I'm thinking it's something on the network. Reset router and modem... nothing. Firmware up to date. What am I missing here?

edit; forgot to mention that when this happens, fps drops to like 45, but only for milliseconds. Pings stays good, around 20 with no loss.

[DTS]

It's probably Punkbuster updating. Wait a few minutes and it should finish updating. Usually it says something in the console in cyan font when it starts updating (edit: and something when it finishes updating aswell I think).

Edit2: You can just go to spectator mode while it updates if you want.

[malignantpoodle]

Ah, I wish that was it. This goes on after punkbuster has finished. The longer I play, the worse it gets. After an hour or so I need a reboot.

I did remove the router from the equation and go from the cable modem directly to computer. Didn't help so I figure it isn't the router. It could very well be something in my cfg, hardware, or settings in some fashion as my notebook and this system have identical copies and options selected... this is driving me nuts.

edit; wanted to add that I've done a disk defrag to no avail. I'm thinking this is a pb related issue. Gonna try a non-pb ffa server and see.

[DTS]

Maybe someone's been messing with your config.
It could be a key (or mouse button) bound to avidemo or screenshot. Screenshot would say something in the console, unless cl_noprint was on; avidemo wouldn't I think.

You could try searching your config for avidemo and screenshot.

[malignantpoodle]

Couldn't have been anyone messing with my cfg. Nobody has access to this machine.

g_synchronousclients says unknown command?

I tried non-pb ffa servers. On one of them the chop was gone, but on the two others I tried it was there, alive and well. I think maybe it was the map I was on that caused the difference, don't know. The server only used one map so that didn't matter.

I notice that on an ra3 server I setup on my lan the chopping starts up. Gonna disable pb in the lan server and see what happens. I'm really thinking this is pb.

[malignantpoodle]

Ok update here;
I ran a ra3 server on my own machine, and had my wife connect to it with her notebook while I played on the server (it was dedicated lan tho). We both got the chop. So, I went into the server .bat file and disabled PB "+set sv_punkbuster 0" (something like that). Try again same maps, NO CHOP.

I had thought that it was PB on some level because for a bit we started playing again but not having our original key we were restricted as to where we could play. We ordered two new copies of q3 (well, Ultimate Quake) and used our keys. I noticed this happening right around the time that we entered our keys in.

I'm still baffled though. Nobody else seems to have the problem. But I have narrowed it down; if PB is totally disabled on a server there is no skip.

[creep]

It's just PB. It happens everywhere, to everyone. For some it's worse than others.

PB is teh debil, but you just have to live with it or not. pb_sleep 500 may help.

[malignantpoodle]

ah yes thank you. pb_sleep 500 and pb_security 0 have helped out a bit. It's still there, but not quite as bad.

Thanks for the insight there creep. There is some comfort knowing that I'm not alone I suppose.

[SOAPboy]

Just update PB with PBWEB or whatever there using now, then play.