in my experience, the -dxlevel flag actually does change visual settings
also you can disable compositing on kde at least, which improves fps. But it's still better to use xfce or somethings like that.

I used arch linux with gnome 3 a while back and followed a method similar to this to disable lag: http://superuser.com/questions/407043/is-it-possible-to-run-graphical-applications-such-as-firefox-without-installing

I can't for the life of me remember how I did it though.

Ive tried using -dxlevel 81 but it didnt show any apparent difference from stock and still showed "mat_dxlevel 90" on console
Are you sure you tried that on the linux version and not on the windows version running under wine in linux?

Disabling CPU powersaving also might help (setting CPU frequency scaling governor to "performance" instead of default). I use cpufreq-set from cpufrequtils package:

for ((i=0;i<$(nproc);i++)); do cpufreq-set -c $i -r -g performance; done

I made benchmark using governor "ondemand", which is default for me:

2639 frames 21.300 seconds 123.90 fps ( 8.07 ms/f) 9.436 fps variability
2639 frames 21.197 seconds 124.50 fps ( 8.03 ms/f) 10.121 fps variability
2639 frames 21.456 seconds 122.99 fps ( 8.13 ms/f) 9.636 fps variability

and using governor "performance":

2639 frames 20.154 seconds 130.94 fps ( 7.64 ms/f) 8.499 fps variability
2639 frames 20.087 seconds 131.38 fps ( 7.61 ms/f) 8.380 fps variability
2639 frames 20.187 seconds 130.73 fps ( 7.65 ms/f) 8.477 fps variability

This is bullshit, every DE disables compositing for full screen applications.

I dont know if its bullshit but i remember running stock Unity and playing TF2 on fullscreen, and getting some crazy input lag / overhead.

maybe they changed it since then but i wouldnt personally recommend a bloated DE anyway just to see a few "cool" 3d effects anyway.

great tip ! this worked in my laptop making the average clockspeed higher on the "performance" mode but it still varies (480 MHz to 2.16 GHz on intel N3050)
do you know how to make it fixed?

Arch Wiki says that new Intel CPUs (like N3050) use intel_pstate driver which uses dynamic frequency scaling, so it should be fine (source):

and also this article says that performance using intel_pstate shouldn't be an issue:

Might be slightly off-topic but has anyone figured out how to get the equivalent of 6/11 Windows sensitivity on Linux? Its the only thing stopping me from changing to Linux as a daily driver because I don't want to relearn my sensitivity for games that don't support raw input.

Sensitivitity is 1:1 (6/11) by default. I think what you're talking about is mouse acceleration. If you're using Xfce or KDE, you can disable it in the GUI.

But if you're using Gnome 3 or you're not using Desktop Environment at all, you can try disabling mouse acceleration by using xinput (you need to have xinput package installed), but it might not work on the newest version of X­.org. First, you need to get your mouse name or id:

user@localhost~$ xinput --list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                          id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ YOUR MOUSE NAME HERE                      id=8    [slave  pointer  (2)]
...

then you disable acceleration (with second command you can adjust your "real" mouse sensitivity, "1" is the equivalent of 6/11):

xinput --set-prop "YOUR MOUSE NAME HERE" "Device Accel Profile" -1
xinput --set-prop "YOUR MOUSE NAME HERE" "Device Accel Constant Deceleration" 1.000000

If that doesn't work, you can try using xset command, but it also might not work:

xset m 0 0

Finally, you can disable mouse acceleration completely in the X­.org config as described in this guide.

P.S. Actually, my "gaming" mouse had acceleration disabled by default, but my cheap office mouse didn't.
P.P.S. Also there are guides for setting up mouse sensitivity if you want it:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=17772
http://510x.se/notes/posts/Changing_mouse_acceleration_in_Debian_and_Linux_in_general/

I just wouldn't recommend gnome or KDE because they're crap lmao

also for xfce just use Compton with comptray. Ez for toggling on and off before games

You don't have to disable accel if you have raw input enabled. The only difference compared to Windows is that, when raw input is enabled, because of a bug in SDL in-game sensititivity is double in TF2. So with the same DPI, if you use 2.6 in Windows you should use 1.3 in Linux.

Bug: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source-1-Games/issues/1834

Use openbox, HUUGE help.

Just use raw unput, works for me on debian + openbox

Yes I am sure. Maybe something has changed, because I experienced that 1+ years ago and I noticed they have been changing some things regarding dx recently (mm updates come to mind)

In my experience, openbox/i3/ light window managers are better for gaming (for multiple reasons) than kde/gnome, and I have tried both.

KDE is great for when you want to be sure that the computer has everything it needs already (perfect for reviving an old computer for a family member)

the xset method for macc has works for me.

If anyone is testing different settings and wants an less tedious method to benchmark, here's a bash script I made when I was testing what worked well on my machine. It runs a demo 3 times, tries to scrape the settings used, along with the system specs and then appends the results to a file after the game closes. It's not exactly pretty, but it works.

Results look like this

Also here's a script that can change the governor to performance if any of the listed processes are running, and sets it to powersave if they're no longer running. However, you need cpupower to be exempted in the /etc/sudoers file so it can be elevated without a prompt. You can do that by adding something like this to the end of the file

your_username_here ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/cpupower

x

One common problem that I would like to ask regarding the gamma though. changing the brightness slider in settings does not change the actual brightness in game, and I have already set fullscreen. Is there a solution for it?

This only allows a single user to avoid the prompt on a specific program.

I can change it when I first start the game, but if I change it after joining a server it doesn't do anything until I restart the game.

I am very sorry to necro this dead thread but I have not seen any solutions elsewhere.

So I recently found a solution to those facing the problem. So what you need to do is:

1. Install xrandr
2. go to your tf2 directory

 ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Team Fortress 2/ 

and edit the file hl2.sh then add the line:

 xrandr --output output_name --gamma 1.6:1.6:1.6  

just above

STATUS = 42

3. and then add

 xrandr --output output_name --gamma 1:1:1 

above

 exit $STATUS 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can find your output_name by running:

$ xrandr

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is my file incase you need referencing:

#!/bin/bash

# figure out the absolute path to the script being run a bit
# non-obvious, the ${0%/*} pulls the path out of $0, cd's into the
# specified directory, then uses $PWD to figure out where that
# directory lives - and all this in a subshell, so we don't affect
# $PWD

GAMEROOT=$(cd "${0%/*}" && echo $PWD)

#determine platform
UNAME=`uname`
if [ "$UNAME" == "Darwin" ]; then
   # Workaround OS X El Capitan 10.11 System Integrity Protection (SIP) which does not allow
   # DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES to be set for system processes.
   if [ "$STEAM_DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" != "" ] && [ "$DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" == "" ]; then
      export DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES="$STEAM_DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES"
   fi
   # prepend our lib path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH="${GAMEROOT}"/bin:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
elif [ "$UNAME" == "Linux" ]; then
   # prepend our lib path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${GAMEROOT}"/bin:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
fi

if [ -z $GAMEEXE ]; then
	if [ "$UNAME" == "Darwin" ]; then
		GAMEEXE=hl2_osx
	elif [ "$UNAME" == "Linux" ]; then
		GAMEEXE=hl2_linux
	fi
fi

ulimit -n 2048

# enable nVidia threaded optimizations
export __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1

# and launch the game
cd "$GAMEROOT"

# Enable path match if we are running with loose files
if [ -f pathmatch.inf ]; then
	export ENABLE_PATHMATCH=1
fi

# Do the following for strace:
# 	GAME_DEBUGGER="strace -f -o strace.log"
# Do the following for tcmalloc
#   LD_PRELOAD=../src/thirdparty/gperftools-2.0/.libs/libtcmalloc_debug.so:$LD_PRELOAD
#gamma correction
xrandr --output HDMI-1 --gamma 1.6:1.6:1.6 #play with values if required
STATUS=42
while [ $STATUS -eq 42 ]; do
	if [ "${GAME_DEBUGGER}" == "gdb" ] || [ "${GAME_DEBUGGER}" == "cgdb" ]; then
		ARGSFILE=$(mktemp $USER.hl2.gdb.XXXX)
		echo b main > "$ARGSFILE"

		# Set the LD_PRELOAD varname in the debugger, and unset the global version. This makes it so that
		#   gameoverlayrenderer.so and the other preload objects aren't loaded in our debugger's process.
		echo set env LD_PRELOAD=$LD_PRELOAD >> "$ARGSFILE"
		echo show env LD_PRELOAD >> "$ARGSFILE"
		unset LD_PRELOAD

		echo run $@ >> "$ARGSFILE"
		echo show args >> "$ARGSFILE"
		${GAME_DEBUGGER} "${GAMEROOT}"/${GAMEEXE} -x "$ARGSFILE"
		rm "$ARGSFILE"
	else
		${GAME_DEBUGGER} "${GAMEROOT}"/${GAMEEXE} "$@"
	fi
	STATUS=$?
done
xrandr --output HDMI-1 --gamma 1:1:1
exit $STATUS