Strange counter-strike issue

[Amarack]

I recently installed counter-strike on my laptop (P4 1.7 ghz, Radeon Mobility). Using winex. It seemed to run nicely which was good and I am even able to play online without getting kicked, yay. But a strange problem has emerged. I never had this problem before so the cause is either the newer version of winex, the radeon drivers, or my laptop's coolness.

When I join a game that is online all goes well until im in the game. Once I am playing it is obvious that I move a lot faster than anyone else. I run significantly faster than anyone else. But! every couple of minutes I kinda freeze and go into this strange "fake lag" situation. I kinda jerk back and forth and cant really go anywhere for 30seconds - 1minute. I can shoot however and my shots aren't lagged or anything. My latency during this whole thing is always very respectable and doesn't shoot up or anything. Now that is part one of the strangeness. You might just assume that winex is messing up on something. Well now prepare yourselves....

When I host my own server, not dedicated, I have a similar effect. Where I run very very fast, but now there is never any of the "fake lag" that pained me so much before. Now not only do I run very fast but my bullets seem to fire at a faster rate. Pistols dont change THAT much, but it is very very noticable on automatic weapons and especialy the knife. And it is very very fun 100 kills - 10 death scores are common. But I'm not that good. And I would like to know what is going on. It is very strange. If anyone has experienced a similar effect please tell me. By the way, in case you are about to make some smart comment about cheating... I assure you this is a completely untainted installation of counterstrike. It went gentoo->winex->hl->counterstrike.

P.S: I keep telling my friends the reason I move so fast is because linux runs SOOO fast that it causes the game to run really really fast. It is fun to see the pain in their faces... oh wait I mean no... Anyway thanks for any help.

[BonezTheGoon]

I have little to no idea's for you. I installed CounterStrike and see no such problems. The best thing I can do for you is relate this to other online games I have played where I experienced something similar, however clearly different. If we factor out the different aspects though I can offer an interesting theory. In some online games if there is a true lag of some sort (either server resources lacking, or simply pipe limitations [latency/bandwidth]) then each client system continues at a normal pace until the server and all the clients can sync up again, which generally results in everything moving very fast for a breif period for all clients while everything occurs that was supposed to have occured in the past (time warp anyone?). So here is my "out-there" theory: Some how your game "clock" is out of sync with the server when you are a client, and when the server sends the sync command you are penalized due to how much time has passed for you in relation to what should have passed, so you are slowed to let everyone else 'catch-up.' But when you host the game your clock is the default/master and you never get penalized, I'd guess that should others play in your games you host they would tend to have bursts for 30 seconds to a minute of ultra-speed to sync up with your machine that thinks they have been too slow, while the 'norm' for them is normal speed. So enough of all the theorizing, do I have any suggestions for you? Not really. I was very intruged by the post though and certainly by the attention to detail you have reported on it and I hope to hear about the solution you find.

I hope that this might help somehow, but unfortunately doubt it will. Best of luck though!

Regards,
BonezTheGoon

[Amarack]

That syncing idea hadn't occured to me. And it is the better than any ideas I have had on how it could be happening. I will try messing around in the in game settings. Maybe there is something that could allow me to have it sync more often and reduce the problem some, if that is indeed the case. Thanks for your ideas, and I will be sure to post a follow up if I find anything out.

[Ozymandias]

whell, that clock answer is about right, but it missed why your clock is too fast: your notebook has some sort of power saving feature by clocking down the processor, when you launch the game, the processor doesn't know yet it has to run as fast as it can, but this becames clear later on, unfortunately as the game launches it tests your processor for speed etc, to build upon that for things like the clock. And this speed measure was done while still in clocked down mode, so the result is your game will be running too fast.
Remedy: play a movie before launching the game, or launch the game ones, quit and restart. Or whatever to prevent the processor from clocking itself down. Long term solution would be to find a way to disable the clocking down thing manually (mind you this feature greatly prolongs the battery life, so don't turn it off always)

greetz Ozy

[iKiddo]

I'm gonna try this on my dad's notebook, sounds like great fun )