- Jul 25, 2025
- 2
- 0
- 10
I have thousands of hours and play daily. 2 Problems just started within the last 2 weeks:
1) Zombies are stuttering/lagging. Frame rate remains smooth and constant. I have a video of the issue at the end of the post. The zombies will often pause and then jump ahead in a repetitive freeze/teleport pattern. It is most noticed when lots of zombies are on the screen, but happens intermittently regardless of zombie population. The Netgraph does NOT show spikes in Ping, and remains low.
2). Loading times have tripled. My wife is in the game for quite some time before I have joined. My character often idles and becomes bot controlled during this time until I am in the game. This is on a local game, with a physical ethernet connection. My Wife's PC is also on the network and connected and she notices no problems with her game at all.
I have noticed NO changes in any of my other games. Counter Strike 2, Killing Floor 2, Splitgate 2, Doom Eternal, etc. They all seem to behaving normally. So this very much seems to be isolated to Left 4 Dead 2.
I had NOT updated windows or any new drivers when this problem began. ( I have since done so to try to remedy the situation). The only thing that had changed is I had updated my Oculus software which was being finicky. It has since been completely uninstalled to see if that was the issue. The only other thing, which should not have been a problem, is that I installed Counter Strike Condition Zero for nostalgia sake and played it for a short bit. That, too has been uninstalled. Nothing else had changed on my computer.
Since the problem began I have done multiple driver updates/downgrades in an attempt to find the source of the issue. I am well versed in PC troubleshooting and Google, and Have not been able to find a solution. I have been playing Left 4 Dead 2 virtually every day for over a decade. I’ve never had any problems with the game. About 2 weeks ago it suddenly started behaving badly.
System:
CPU - Ryzen 9 3900x
MoBo - MSI Meg Unify x570 Bios Revision E7C35AMS
Ram - 32gb G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (XMP) DDR4 32GB (2x16GB) 3600MT/s CL16-19-19-39 (disabled XMP to test, did not fix)
Videocard - AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
HDD - NVMe SSD
PSU - be quiet! BN515 Straight Power 12-850w 80 Plus Platinum, less than 1 year old.
CPU Cooling - be quiet! Pure Rock Pro 3 Black CPU Air Cooler (All temps in HWinfo64 are great)
Network- Physical ethernet connection via Asus RT-AX86U Router and Motorola Surfboard Modem. Games are always LAN, but we do have 5000Gbps service anyhow.
PS - Windows 10 Pro – 22H2
Temps: CPU: 30-32 C, GPU: 50-58 C, System: 32 C, Chipset: 50 C, DIMMS: 34 C
What I have Tried;
Tests Ran: chkdsk, scandisk, DISM, Memtest86, Network Packetloss (Ping), Net speed, OCCT CPI, VRAM, 3d Adaptive. All came back normal with no errors.
Drivers: All updated (video, network, chipset, Windows, sound, bios)
ATI Software: Everything is set to Off unless Application specifies. Disabled Freesync. Downgraded to 2021 Drivers, 2024 Drivers, and reinstalled most recent drivers (used AMD Removal tool)
Network: Both Router and Modem Rebooted.
Antivirus: Scanned with MS Defender, temporarily installed Malwarebytes for secondary scan and found nothing. Also, I disabled MS Defender during game to test interference.
Background Processes: Everything possible has been closed or disabled, including antivirus. Went into process manager to verify nothing was taking system resources, (network, gpu, etc).
Steam: Deleted and Reinstalled L4D2 3 times (went into files and ensured they were removed). Third time was on a different HDD (All disks were SSD), currently on main system NVME SSD. Checked Integrity of cache.
In Game**: Disabled Multi-core, reduced Page Pool memory, ran on lower settings. Disabled steam cloud. Deleted all add ons. Disabled V Sync. Tried cl_interp 0.1
Here is a video of the problem
View: https://youtu.be/MsFexESntas
HERE IS MY CONSOLE OUTPUT View: https://imgur.com/2cLG4Gp
1) Zombies are stuttering/lagging. Frame rate remains smooth and constant. I have a video of the issue at the end of the post. The zombies will often pause and then jump ahead in a repetitive freeze/teleport pattern. It is most noticed when lots of zombies are on the screen, but happens intermittently regardless of zombie population. The Netgraph does NOT show spikes in Ping, and remains low.
2). Loading times have tripled. My wife is in the game for quite some time before I have joined. My character often idles and becomes bot controlled during this time until I am in the game. This is on a local game, with a physical ethernet connection. My Wife's PC is also on the network and connected and she notices no problems with her game at all.
I have noticed NO changes in any of my other games. Counter Strike 2, Killing Floor 2, Splitgate 2, Doom Eternal, etc. They all seem to behaving normally. So this very much seems to be isolated to Left 4 Dead 2.
I had NOT updated windows or any new drivers when this problem began. ( I have since done so to try to remedy the situation). The only thing that had changed is I had updated my Oculus software which was being finicky. It has since been completely uninstalled to see if that was the issue. The only other thing, which should not have been a problem, is that I installed Counter Strike Condition Zero for nostalgia sake and played it for a short bit. That, too has been uninstalled. Nothing else had changed on my computer.
Since the problem began I have done multiple driver updates/downgrades in an attempt to find the source of the issue. I am well versed in PC troubleshooting and Google, and Have not been able to find a solution. I have been playing Left 4 Dead 2 virtually every day for over a decade. I’ve never had any problems with the game. About 2 weeks ago it suddenly started behaving badly.
System:
CPU - Ryzen 9 3900x
MoBo - MSI Meg Unify x570 Bios Revision E7C35AMS
Ram - 32gb G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (XMP) DDR4 32GB (2x16GB) 3600MT/s CL16-19-19-39 (disabled XMP to test, did not fix)
Videocard - AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT
HDD - NVMe SSD
PSU - be quiet! BN515 Straight Power 12-850w 80 Plus Platinum, less than 1 year old.
CPU Cooling - be quiet! Pure Rock Pro 3 Black CPU Air Cooler (All temps in HWinfo64 are great)
Network- Physical ethernet connection via Asus RT-AX86U Router and Motorola Surfboard Modem. Games are always LAN, but we do have 5000Gbps service anyhow.
PS - Windows 10 Pro – 22H2
Temps: CPU: 30-32 C, GPU: 50-58 C, System: 32 C, Chipset: 50 C, DIMMS: 34 C
What I have Tried;
Tests Ran: chkdsk, scandisk, DISM, Memtest86, Network Packetloss (Ping), Net speed, OCCT CPI, VRAM, 3d Adaptive. All came back normal with no errors.
Drivers: All updated (video, network, chipset, Windows, sound, bios)
ATI Software: Everything is set to Off unless Application specifies. Disabled Freesync. Downgraded to 2021 Drivers, 2024 Drivers, and reinstalled most recent drivers (used AMD Removal tool)
Network: Both Router and Modem Rebooted.
Antivirus: Scanned with MS Defender, temporarily installed Malwarebytes for secondary scan and found nothing. Also, I disabled MS Defender during game to test interference.
Background Processes: Everything possible has been closed or disabled, including antivirus. Went into process manager to verify nothing was taking system resources, (network, gpu, etc).
Steam: Deleted and Reinstalled L4D2 3 times (went into files and ensured they were removed). Third time was on a different HDD (All disks were SSD), currently on main system NVME SSD. Checked Integrity of cache.
In Game**: Disabled Multi-core, reduced Page Pool memory, ran on lower settings. Disabled steam cloud. Deleted all add ons. Disabled V Sync. Tried cl_interp 0.1
Here is a video of the problem
HERE IS MY CONSOLE OUTPUT View: https://imgur.com/2cLG4Gp
Last edited:
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