Seems everybody has a different problem with this game, and with many different problems there are many different fixes or workarounds.  From launch I had quite a few.  I will list what problem I had along with the solution that ended up resolving it.

1) Low framerate.

Solution) I installed the ATI hotfix located here.  This gave me nearly a 100% increase in framerate.  It wasn't terrible or unplayable based on framerate before, but now instead of a steady 60fps I average around 110 and max around 160.  Helps a lot.

2) Game crashes to desktop or black screen with unknown error.

Solution) I am pretty sure I have this fixed.  It was simply a matter of completely removing my Creative X-Fi ExtremeGamer sound card and using the onboard sound.  Those cards tend to have issues so I am assuming this worked.  If you don have one of those cards but DO have a pci or pci express sound card try disabling either that or the onboard sound in Windows Device Manager.  You can reach the Device Manager in Windows 7 but going to Start> right click Computer, select Manage.  From the left menu select Device Manager.  From the center menu select Sound, Video, and Game Controllers.  You can then right click and disable whatever you may need.  And you can always go through the same process to enable the card again.  You can also try installing Direct X again, though I did not do this.

3) Lag, disconnects, rage.

Solution) This was the big one for me and the cause of many a profanity laden tirade since launch.  Tons of things appear to be causing problems.  Everything from bad netcode to the game utilizing more cpu than gpu power.  Since I wasn't having an issue on the cpu/gpu side I will instead talk about the net side.  Basically it all came down to two things, one of which I know helped and the other probably didn't but I did anyway.  First I installed an Intel gigabit pci network card.  This probably did absolutely nothing, however it is always nice to have an Intel gigabit card instead of onboard LAN.  The on thing I am 100% positive stopped my disconnects and connection issues was replacing my nice Netgear router with a piece of junk 2wire router.  This router is old, it's interface is bland, it is generally inferior to the Netgear.  However, the games netcode LOVES it compared to the Netgear.  Which leads me to believe a lot of lag and connection issues people are having are coming from the games netcode.  Things not playing nicely with all the different routers and modems out in the wild.  I would love for them to fix this asap so I can go back to my Netgear, which cost a nice chunk of money, but for now I can live with it.  I realize most people don't have spare modems and routers just sitting around, but if you do go ahead and give this a try.  What could it possibly hurt?

4) General performance issues, small FPS and performance increases.

Solution) Check out a nice Steam forum thread here.  You can download that config editor and make a few adjustments without having to sift through the actual config file.  This may help some.

Things are running fine for me now, I never had the stuttering problems some had.  I am running the game just fine at 1920x1200 resolution.  It looks and feels great now.  I also never had a problem with single player, it worked perfectly right away.  It was the multiplayer that was causing me a lot of problems.  I hope this might help somebody.

My system specs as taken by xfire:

Manufacturer: Jed
Processor:      AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 965 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
Memory:          4096MB RAM
Hard Drive:      500 GB
Video Card:     ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series
Monitor:           Hanns-G HH281 28" LCD Monitor
Sound Card:    Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Headphones:   Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headphones
Keyboard:       Razer Lycosa Gaming Keyboard
Mouse:            Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse
Mouse Pad:     OCZ Cloth Pad
OS:                  Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (6.1, Build 7600) (7600.win7_gdr.100618-1621)
Motherboard:   ASUS M4A77TD
Case:               NZXT Beta

Important note:  I can now see our servers listed in the server browser most of the time.  If it doesn't show there it always shows under recent or friends.  However it appears I cannot add any new favorites at the moment.

EDIT:  It appears the hotfix wasn't quite the FPS savior I thought it was.  I was messing around with that config tool and enabled all settings to see what would happen.  Turns out my framerate dropped back down to 60-ish.  So shadows, glow, whatever, one of them causes some serious issues.  So I again disabled them and all appears to be fine.  So first and foremost, if you want to try and get a better framerate, use the tool to disable all those options.

EDIT 2:  Browsing the forums a lot of people are reporting success with making sure Vsync is enabled.  They are saying this is helping their stuttering as well.



Last edited by tet on Sun Nov 14, 2010 5:46 pm; edited 2 times in total

Looks like server side issues today.  Oh well.