Tetris Friends System Requirements

[Impact009]

I know that TF has a terrible reputation with lag.  That's not what I'm looking for.  I'm looking for people who can tell me what their specs are and if they lag or not due to hardware performance, NOT the usual lag issues that plague TF.  The reason why is because I just rebuilt my computer for WoW, and though it works fine for WoW, it's choking terribly on TF compared to my previous build.

Previous Build:  Pentium 4 Northwood 3.0, GeForce FX 5500, 3 IDE 7200 RPM HDDs, 500w PSU, Win 7 Ultimate x86

Current Build:  A8N32-SLI Deluxe mobo, Athlon 64 3200+, GeForce 8500 GT, 4 IDE 7200 RPM HDDs, (2 connected to a PCI RAID controller, but not in an array), 2 IDE optical drives, 300w PSU, Win 7 Ultimate x64

Compared immediately after formatting and using fresh installations.

Unlisted hardware is still mostly the same.  Same expansion cards, same RAM chips...  Maybe the P4 is somehow outperforming the Athlon for TF, even though benchmarks and my performance on WoW suggest otherwise otherwise.  That huge drop in wattage coupled with 3 extra IDE devices seems unlikely also, because I don't notice throttling when encoding in H.264 or playing my other games.

Might it be a software issue?  I know before on my previous build, TF would lag more in IE than in Chrome.  TF in Chromium on Gentoo also lagged slightly more compared to its Windows counterpart.

Could it be that it's because Chrome is 32-bit, and thus also still uses the 32-bit Flash player plugin?  I don't see why a 64-bit OS using a 32-bit app would lag only specifically in TF, but it's the only case that I don't have sufficient evidence to rule out yet.  I'll keep a computer for WoW, DWO, and my other games and a computer solely for TF if necessary.

Any thoughts would be great; thank you.

[coolmaninsano]

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache, 1066MHz frontside bus, 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory, 250GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive.

Not really sure if that's exactly what I have, but that's the basic configuration for the 13.3'' MacBook Pro.

Better info is probably at http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html

[Rosti_LFC]

Wouldn't surprise me if it was compatibility issues with Flash on a 64-bit OS. It'd be the only thing that would make sense.

[Ravendarksky]

I don't think the TF lag is necessarily always a user problem.

Sometimes I join rooms that are totally lag free..... I'm sure I'm not the only person who has encountered this.

And by lag free I mean instantly noticeable, everything running smoother, faster.

[DarkERocker]

Lag isn't really due about PC specs ( maybe a tiny bit but TF doesn't really require a high performance PC, but still, the best PC the better, it won't change much through ), but the most important is your internet connection, it also varries deppending how much people are connected to the TF server.
One other factor is where your opponents play from, ( European country's vs American country's and others etc ... ), I tryed playing with my brother sometime in a 1v1 room, and it didn't lag since his pc was next to mine ( and the fact that it was a 1v1 room helps too )

Just depends :
-When you play
-With how much people you play
-Where are those people playing from
-If your internet connection is good
-If your opponents connection is good
-If all your applications are closed
-If you only have one thumbnail for TF and no other browsers open
-If you have only one PC connected the the Livebox ( or what you have ) is best

This is what I think, it may be the case, but if i'm wrong or forgot something feel free to correct my mistakes xP

[berry]

I believe Xeal said flash is CPU dependent and that's exactly what i noticed.
I went from a PIII to a quadcore 3Ghz and the lag was gone. My connection is 30MB up/down so that can't be it.
Nowadays i encounter all the lag variants from ZeroT's thread, so i dunno really anymore.

nullpo is totally more playable but lags too sometimes and that's with a tiny amount of users. What would happen if there were 100s of players on?
The same goes for hardware game-consoles i'd reckon.

It might be interesting to setup 1v1 's with ppl on slow pc/connection vs fast
and see the results (and sell these results to TF ofcourse:P)

[Rosti_LFC]

My connection is 30MB up/down so that can't be it.

It totally can be it. I've been playing for months on a 100Mbit connection (both ways) and I still get connection-related lag from time to time.

Connection bandwidth to your computer doesn't mean a great deal if the server's bandwidth is struggling or it has too many requests, though I think that's unlikely.

It also doesn't mean anything if there's a high amount of latency, which is far more likely, and how bad the latency affects gameplay lag is entirely down to the way the server/peer connection works, and how exactly TF is programmed to handle high amounts of latency.

High latency isn't really something you can do anything about, except perhaps live closer to the TF servers, which seems a touch drastic. How far you are away from your opponent doesn't necessary matter either, because I'm pretty sure all the connections are peer-server-peer and not simply peer-to-peer. That is to say, your computer sends data to Tetris Friends, which then sends it to your opponent. This means that living 100m away from your opponent is mostly meaningless if the data is having to travel 1000 miles to get to the Tetris Friends hub and then 1000 miles to get back. Two players each living 100 miles from the TF server and 200 miles from each other would have a lower latency than two players living in the same house but thousands of miles from the server.

I'm pretty sure most lag spikes which cause misdrops are mostly CPU/Flash related, because they shouldn't be related to the connection unless the game is poorly designed (which wouldn't surprise me too much), but connection latency and packet loss are definitely responsible for some. When you've got 8 spectators who all agree that both players' fields are frozen, then that's a connection issue and has very little to do with CPU.

[DAS44]

Honestly I have yet to find a computer that doesn't lag on TF. But that may be attributed to the time of day or number of people chatting and entering.

There are anomalies mind you, there are days where it is completely lag free for me, but usually it lags horrifically.

It seems my last remaining complaint with tf is the lag. It has the potential to be a very good game (yes the line clear delay is horrid, but it is for everyone!), if only the lag could be dealt with.

[XaeL]

There are a few things to consider:

Flash is entirely cpu bound, but TF is poorly coded. I remember having to use an i7 to get smooth frame rates (well smooth for me)

When hosting rooms is the room hosted on the TF server, or is it hosted on the creator of the rooms computer?
If its the TF server the TF server surely has an upload limit. If its the users computer, surely this has an upload limit dependant on who creates the room.

[Chumpsquid]

There are a few things to consider:

Flash is entirely cpu bound, but TF is poorly coded. I remember having to use an i7 to get smooth frame rates (well smooth for me)

When hosting rooms is the room hosted on the TF server, or is it hosted on the creator of the rooms computer?
If its the TF server the TF server surely has an upload limit. If its the users computer, surely this has an upload limit dependant on who creates the room.

It's server-sided.  Easy: if you disconnect from the room the game still continues.

On a side note, when you alt-tab out of a game in arena and come back late, the countdown is also delayed, and everyone else gets a head start.  I find that really annoying.

[Dakhath]

If you have a multicore processor, you might try tweaking which core you're using for TF/your other applications. That does seem to improve performance on my school's desktop boxes. (Something along the lines of what's mentioned here.)

[Zircean]

It's server-sided.  Easy: if you disconnect from the room the game still continues.

That doesn't really mean much. Most games that function like this transfer host privileges to another player when the host leaves the room. That being said, I do believe everything is done server-side anyway, or it would be stupid easy to cheat.

[chopin]

On a side note, when you alt-tab out of a game in arena and come back late, the countdown is also delayed, and everyone else gets a head start.  I find that really annoying.

Yes, but also it's very annoying if you make it to about 2:30 and your opponent has no rising garbage because of the late start. Almost impossible to win if it's someone decently good. It's entirely annoying both ways... D: Unacceptable.

[Impact009]

I'm fairly sure it's a problem with my hardware because between the two setups, my LAN and ISP are still exactly the same.  Yes, the previous build had lag every now and then, but the current build has horrendous framerate lag present in every game no matter what.

As for TF itself; it seems like most of it is server-sided.  I have yet to see desyncs happen among the remaining players somebody left mid-game, so I assume it's server-sided with no actual time-out limit during games for whatever reason.

I'm beginning to think that on my side, it's actually my CPU that's the problem.  Chrome is bogging down right now with Arena open.  I find it retarded that I can get 73 FPS in WoW with vertical sync disabled, yet I can't even get a consistent 60 FPS on TF.

I forgot to mention that I've been lagging considerably in other modes besides Arena.  This never happened with the previous build, and since there's technically no syncing required with other players, then the other modes might be client-sided.

I'll set my process process priorities and play a bit to test when I can.  This is the only CPU that I can use with my 8500 GT, so I want to avoid building something else if I have to.

[Dakhath]

I'm fairly sure it's a problem with my hardware because between the two setups, my LAN and ISP are still exactly the same.  Yes, the previous build had lag every now and then, but the current build has horrendous framerate lag present in every game no matter what.

As for TF itself; it seems like most of it is server-sided.  I have yet to see desyncs happen among the remaining players somebody left mid-game, so I assume it's server-sided with no actual time-out limit during games for whatever reason.

I'm beginning to think that on my side, it's actually my CPU that's the problem.  Chrome is bogging down right now with Arena open.  I find it retarded that I can get 73 FPS in WoW with vertical sync disabled, yet I can't even get a consistent 60 FPS on TF.

I forgot to mention that I've been lagging considerably in other modes besides Arena.  This never happened with the previous build, and since there's technically no syncing required with other players, then the other modes might be client-sided.

I'll set my process process priorities and play a bit to test when I can.  This is the only CPU that I can use with my 8500 GT, so I want to avoid building something else if I have to.

You're using Chrome? Eh. I know most people here recommend against Firefox, however:

Yeah, I'm going to suggest Firefox, but you need to tweak it. Disable the crash protection/plugin container, and try not to install any extensions (although, for security reasons, Adblock and NoScript are not a bad idea...)