I'm using 8.105.1 on medium-low, just tested this on an offline server and I didn't crash.

8.105.2 released with bug fixes.

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@springrolls @Kermit Could you share OS/system specs?

Windows 10 Education latest update
Ryzen 5 3600, 16 gb 3600mhz cl19, 1080 Ti Studio Driver 451.77

Will update nvidia drivers and see if maybe that does something.
Edit: still crashes on studio driver 452.06

Ryzen 3700x
also a 1080ti
corsair vengeance @3200mhz CL16
Tried to check what version of GPU drivers I had and it auto-updated lmao, tested again on newest version 452.06 and still no crash. I'm still on version 1909 of windows 10 pro though.

Sorry if this is not really the place to ask or if this has been asked already, but Lawena uses a pretty old version of Chris' maxquality config as far as I know, and I was wondering if the Ultra config is a lot different than the config Lawena uses.

Is there a reason for blocking mat_antialias, other than it slowing down launch? Your implementation can still be bypassed with toggle mat_antialias 0 or by editing valve.rc. The only thing it prevents is using incrementvar, which means I can't just toggle it back and forth and have to use fixed values, which only hurts the user.

Not a real answer, just that I've been using mastercomfig ultra for recording and if there's a difference, I didn't notice.

Usually HUDs will have a wait command which delays toggling mat_antialias, and this causes a material system reload. This is usually to force removing the dimmer on the main menu, which is not worth the material system reload, which causes unoptimal reinitialization and some rendering/HUD bugs. For example: https://github.com/n0kk/ahud/blob/master/cfg/valve.rc#L22

You can disable this behavior for HUD editing by adding alias block_antialias in your autoexec.cfg, or you can use mat_aaquality.

It's not substantially different, but it will increase water quality at a distance, lighting detail extremely slightly, sound quality, and contains system optimizations which don't affect quality which may increase FPS/prevent drops.

So that doesn't cause the issues mat_antialias does and should be what is used to remove DashboardDimmer?

Also, does mat_aaquality actually change anything? It's not in mastercomfig and I didn't notice any differences between values. No difference would mean I don't have to restore it, which would save one reload:

wait 5; showconsole; toggle mat_aaquality 0 1; hideconsole

Yeah, it doesn't affect anything graphically. It does cause the same reload that mat_antialias does though, but I haven't blocked it because HUDs don't use it.

9.0.0 released with new customization UI and performance optimizations.

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I have not updated in about a year and a half, will I notice major improvements if I do now? The only reason I'm reluctant to do so is because the last time I tried to, the update wiped all of my settings (binds, launch options, etc)

I like it, I see tangible improvements in fps and an overall better experience. What I don't like is the net_hitscan for scout and sniper. so I put net_projectiles for those classes (15.2ms lerp). Make sure you backup everything in case you want to revert.

If you keep up with the updates, there's less chance of breakage. Generally you'll want to update to the latest version as new versions come out.

Some updates will change how user settings are expected, but those are usually simple migrations. mastercomfig will never wipe any settings on its own.

How do I reload the hud once at startup like it worked by default in older mastercomfig versions?

You shouldn't need to do this, if you're using modules properly and not setting graphics options after startup. However, you can refer here to learn more about the aliases in mastercomfig you can use for custom scripting: https://docs.mastercomfig.com/en/latest/customization/custom_configs/#optional-aliases

In this case, you can use alias game_overrides_once_c"hud_reloadscheme"

9.1.0 released with download UI updates, customization improvements and performance optimizations.

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I just installed the very low apk and tried to benchmark with the command "alias game_overrides_once;timedemo benchmark_test"

Unfortunately I don't have the timedemo record out on the console, any idea ?

Very Low disables console output. Use the debug_minimal command, or set debug=minimal in your launch options.

hello mastercoms. I've heard lots of people talk about how if you have a good graphics card it might be worth trying a higher quality config so that it makes your gpu do more work instead of the processor. Is that accurate or is it a meme? I have a 3.4ghz skylake i5 and a gtx 1070 so i figured it might be worth experimenting with because my frames sometimes drop below 144 in team fights. If its not a meme, is there a particular config you recommend I try and/or settings i should change?

Thank you in advance.

I feel like it's a misunderstanding of a few variables as well as possibly older FPS configs not working as well:

First, I think the main premise of this was because people associate DX8 with lower quality, while it is much more than that. It changes the entire rendering pipeline to something which doesn't work as well on newer GPUs. The speed boost that people see at all is simply because DX8 supports less features, and thus renders less, but it renders less at a lower efficiency.

Furthermore, many configs in the past did not properly save changes to TF2's video config, which caused the game to reload many times on startup, causing graphics systems to initialize in pathways which could have resulted in glitches and lower performance. mastercomfig saves the graphics options that you select to the video config, so that these reloads are avoided. To completely ensure that this is the case, use modules entirely instead of individual rendering commands (usually prefixed with mat_, also applies to r_rootlod).

Finally, I think that in some cases, people found that their game ran better without a config, and I don't want to disparage the work other people have done, but perhaps people associated a config with only changing graphics quality, while it does much more than that, and thus, can affect the game's performance beyond lower quality graphics.

All of these things can combine together for a community to eventually come to the conclusion that lower graphics are bad for performance on some systems, even though the reality was slightly different. These games of telephone are very common in this community as well as any other community. As information is passed along and reworded, re-understood and re-contextualized, it can gain new meanings which point to new conclusions.

In my time looking at how people have benchmarked each of my presets, I have found that each preset scales in respect to FPS as you would expect from low quality to ultra quality, and it is close to linear (with some softer bumps across the medium presets). So, I don't expect this rumor to do you much good.

I think a good way to think about it is that these sorts of options are rarely part of some zero sum game, where the more quality you stress onto your GPU, the less work your CPU does. Most often, it's a constant amount of CPU work, or more CPU work, in combination with increasing load on your GPU.

There is, however, one case where increasing the quality is a good tradeoff, and that's if your GPU is throttling below its max clock because of power saving measures, since it doesn't realize it needs to render at full capacity for TF2 since it is generally lighter on the GPU than other games. Usually, you can control this in your power options, both in the driver settings (in NVIDIA it is called "prefer maximum performance") and in Windows 10's graphics settings "graphics performance preference". In the vast majority of cases, this will solve the issue, but some cards may still not scale correctly and thus it may be worthwhile to look into the medium high or high presets.

cfg when

I feel like that information about DX8 should have been more wide-spread! If it was i completely missed it.

Yeah, admittedly, I could do better than just not mentioning DX8 in the docs. My wish was by not mentioning it, it would be used less by people who don't need it, and the ones that did would find it in their more extensive search for performance, but really, it's better to inform than to hide things.

Is there any real benefit to using a separate sound card instead of using the motherboard's inbuilt one? I've an admittedly ancient xonar dg and there is no real difference between the sound module settings in benchmarks.

How do I compile mastercomfig from the source that is on github? I'd like to try and help out development aside from updating the list of launch options to remove the junk strings that aren't launch options. This is the list that I'm going to refer to if I do.

P.S Can I use the 2018 code leak of TF2 as a source of information like the Source SDK?

you'd use one for 2 reasons, higher audio quality or the chip on your mb broke
actually you have drivers for the card which may not be compatible with the games you play (if you use uni xonar ones like me), but speaking strictly of fps, it's the same

Thanks for your interest in contributing to mastercomfig! There's a contributing document that contains packaging instructions here: https://github.com/mastercomfig/mastercomfig/blob/develop/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md#packaging

Beware that any sanitization of the launch options must be automated to be part of the generation process. So a filter of known bad launch options could work, as well as a heuristic for random garbage.

You can use your own personal knowledge of TF2 to develop mastercomfig. Where that knowledge comes from is not of my concern.

My pleasure mate.

Do the launch options need to be in the latest game version? If so then I can adjust my launch option list to accommodate that. Also what do you refer to as a bad launch option?

Ok thanks for the info.

The things you were saying: "junk strings that aren't launch options"

Ok that's easy to do then, since the launch options are defined by the CheckParm, AddParm, and FindParm functions which refer to launch options in the game code. Only real problem I'm going to face is how to organize the new launch options, since some of the launch options in the code leak seem to no longer exist.