It is said that for some lower powered machines, the Source game engine may actually run the fastest with some unconventional settings.
Lets say you have a weak machine. Like the world's toastiest toaster. Maximum toast.
You want to play Counter Strike or Team Fortress or something like that with all your gamer friends on the Interwebs. You want to hit at least that sweet 60 FPS.
First off, try playing the game on all the recommended settings. The defaults.
Yeah I know, your craptop probably can't handle High everything and low on shadows on a 24 man CS:GO server. But the Source engine works in mysterious ways. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Don't ask why or how. YMMV.
Second, try turning everything down to lowest. Duh. Everything except resolution if you're playing in full screen. Some monitors cannot display scaled outputs as efficiently as their native resolution and so lower resolutions may actually result in worse performance. If that fails too, drop the resolution as low as it can be to still be comfortable, and give it a shot.
For reference, I play all my games in a windowed mode at 1024x768 on a normally 1080p screen. While I dev. On a laptop. Don't ask why, it's just preference.
Third, actually try moving some of the video settings up a bit, from lowest to something like medium. The Source engine is old, and lowest settings will sometimes offload graphics work onto your CPU instead of using whatever low level GPU you might have. Bumping settings up a bit will hopefully make the engine use your CPU and GPU equally. YMMV.
Finally, if all else fails, consider tossing out your old toaster machine for a nicer machine, like a high quality microwave or a fancy shmancy broiler. Unfortunately, not every machine is capable of playing the vidja games, and such is life.
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