I'm having a problem with my last map, it seems to lag in an unusual way.
I have made every possible move and reduced the wpoly to 1400 in the corner of the room which is the worse place.
The map seems to have constant 100 fps although every second or so it gets something like a hiccup, for one line in my r_speeds I get like 30 fps and then 100 fps lines continue.

What's driving me crazy is that I've been comparing my map to another one which has 3000 wpolys and the crazy thing is, while this map may not have constant 100 fps on my pc (it fluctuates from 90 to 100 fps constantly), it doesn't have this hiccup thing that mine has.

This has led me to believe that there is something else in my map that's lagging it and it does not have to do with wpoly count.

Anyone got any ideas of stuff that make maps lag? I could give you download link to investigate if that's needed.

Lights with effects and lights turning on/off cause lag.

I suggest you try HINT.

Lots of water in the map, complex brushes, models... Lots of stuff.

There is no water in the map, models are minimal (I removed them and there was no difference, epoly is at 4000 with them anyways) and there is no brush more complex than a clipped rectangle. As for lights with effects there are only 2, which I compiled without and there was no difference either.

Anything else?

im assuming you dont have any leaks.. so that's out of the question.
models are amazingly cheap to render so they wouldn't have anything to do with it especially if you say they were 'minimal'.

Is there a specific amount of time between the hiccups? Like every 30seconds? or is it more random.

Are there any timed triggers in your map? have you checked for problems before compiling?
are there any issues with your compile log?
How are your textures scaled? is anything crazy small or crazy big? (smaller than like. .1 and larger than 10)

If all else fails, you can always upload to the problem vault and shoot us a link.

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Do you have any trains like func_trains and/or func_track_train in your map?

First of all, as I said the "hiccup" occurs roughly every 2 seconds or so and it seems to happen in a standard interval. I failed to find something happening to trigger it.

As for entities, there are 3 lights that flicker, a rotating fan, a multimanager that's off, 2 env_beams that are on and a simple sprite. All of those are out of rendering range from the room I'm talking about though.

Texture scales, there are no textures scaled too low and the biggest scale is 3.0. And no func_trains or anything like this. There is a func_friction somewhere.

The only I get in my compile log is this:
10%...Warning: Too many light styles on a face(238.000000,-1999.989990,-708.000000)
Warning: Too many light styles on a face(250.000000,-1999.989990,-708.000000)

I'm also tryin to see if it is my laptop causing the hiccup but it's not easy seeing other maps don't get this kind of lag.

The only I get in my compile log is this:
10%...Warning: Too many light styles on a face(238.000000,-1999.989990,-708.000000)
Warning: Too many light styles on a face(250.000000,-1999.989990,-708.000000)

This is usually caused when you have too many named lights. I believe vrad.exe makes a new lightstyle for each named light so it can light the environment properly. When you have these named lights too close together then you get this error.

Try un-naming them or move them apart. If you are getting this error then the overall map is not rendering correctly. I am not sure about the lag.

You should never name lights if they don't need to be toggled on or off. If they just emit static light, there's no need to name them.
You could also get the Too many light styles message if you have too many animated/dynamic (lights that flicker and strobe) lights too close to eachother.

You should use texturelights for static lighting and only point lights if you want flicker/strobe lights or lights that can be turned on and off in your map.
There's a way to make texturelights flicker/strobe as well, but that requires some entity work and the result is basically the same as just using a pointlight.

But i believe the too many light styles message should not cause hiccups, at least that's what i can tell from my experience.

I removed the flickering lights from the map and the lightstyle warnings ceased. This stopped the hiccups.

Thanks everyone for guiding me. It's a basebuilder mod map for cs, I'm not sure if it's got a spot in map vault, if so I will surely upload it when it's finished.

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Showbudget

This should help you a little as well...

I don't think this works in half-life 1 engine but it seems hell of a lot useful tool. If there is a way I can have it for cs 1.6 please explain me how.

my bad...

that is a Half Life 2 tool.

There is no such thing for GS.

Check your maps main parts, aka where two large areas join and such.

Did you use optimization? 1 point separation, sky connection, NULL / BEVEL texture, hint and skip...

Post us some screen shots.

Go into SPEC mode and check the map out with developer 1 + r_speeds 1 on.

As I posted above, the hiccups were caused by the flickering lights which caused the lightstyles warning I also posted. I removed them and hiccups problem solved, it was not a wpoly problem, it was a triggered lag.