What is limiting my character amount in games?

[Dougx1317]

I've been messing around with console commands on L4D2 lately. I can set how many zombies there are at one time. But when I get above 250, my game crashes. What is limiting me? Graphics memory, system memory, cpu power? Other than reducing the settings, is there anything I could overclock to get it to work with more characters?

System:
Intel i7 860 @ 3.20Ghz
4GB @ 1600Mhz 7-7-7-20
Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3
Diamond 4890 1GB @ 950Mhz/1025Mhz
OCZ Agility 60GB
700W FSP Fortran PSU

 

[Raidur]

The game code may be limiting, you have a solid setup. Run a google of that command and see if you get any bites. My guess however is that its software. If you're drivers/direectx is all updated and good its probably the game.

 

[Dougx1317]

Thanks for the suggestion. I can't find anything that says it's anything about a software limit, but that could be part of it. When I turned down AA and AF, it helped me get a bit higher. I'll just have to settle for 300ish.

 

[loneninja]

Have you looked at your taskmanager? That'll show you cpu usage and physical memory usage, which should give a much better clue as to what the limit is. Personally I'm leaning towards the gpu since lowering video settings has helped improve performance, but it may also be cpu limited because that is a lot of zombie AI for the cpu to handle. Aren't you running like 6x+ the normal amount of zombies in that game?

 

[Dougx1317]

I checked my taskmanager. My CPU seems to stay between 50-75% utilized. This seems high for the CPU I have, but not a bottleneck. The system memory never goes over 2GB. I think it is something with the graphics card. Maybe 1GB of GDDR5 is just not enough for this kind of graphics. I am using 8-10x the normal amount.