This site is a collection of information on a problem with Half-Life 2 that has plagued many players of this otherwise excellent game. This problem is characterized by a sudden massive drop in frame rate when turning corners or moving into new areas of the game. These drops are usually accompanied by looping or stuttering sound during the frame rate drop which is how most people become aware of the problem. Aside from these isolated drops in frame rate, the game is otherwise perfectly smooth. These sudden drops kill the immersion and lead to a very frustrating experience. Below you will find additional details on this problem, some theories, and all responses from Valve on this problem.
Valve's DougV has posted
an update on the
Steam Users Forums. Here are the most relevant pieces:
I appreciate that people are still having problems with audio stuttering I know it's frustrating that we haven't released a "magic" fix but this problem *is* at the top of our list to fix and we've got a dedicated team working on it. This is a tricky problem as you can guess by reading all 650 posts in this thread...people aren't all having exactly the same problem and the solutions people have found are different on most machines.
We take a great deal of pride in our work and it's just as frustrating to us that you can't enjoy the game that we've worked so hard on. We ARE working on this and hope to have a fix to release shortly.
