Found out about this on facepunch and decided to give it a try, and i got to say its awesome!
What it does is starting up TF2 in what looks like a DOS window, and with some more additional startup parameters, you can get it to barely use any ram/cpu so you can still use your PC like usual while idling!
You will also be able to start other sourcegames while idling this way, as well as idling on a pc that would usually not be able to start up TF2, for example due to a graphics card with a shader model that’s too low for TF2.
So i can now use my old-ass laptop for idling too!
Parameters i use to start up TF2 for idling:
-novid -textmode -noshaderapi -nosound -nopreload
If you hear beeping coming from your pc speaker (the one inside your case), then put this in the windows command prompt:
net stop beep
Or to permanently disable it:
sc config beep start= disabled
Also note that running the game with -noshaderapi will reset all your video settings, so you better save them before you start idling. To do so, open up the windows command prompt and put
reg export HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Valve\Source\tf\Settings video.reg
And right after that
move video.reg c:/
Now open your C:/ drive and look for the video.reg file, move it somewhere for easy access, like your desktop.
Now whenever you finished idling and you want to play some real TF2, double click the video.reg file and click yes, this will write your old video settings back into the windows registry so you don’t have to set them up on your own again every time.
Using this method, i idled on 3 accounts this night (For me, Keychain and my 2nd account) to see how well it works. Here’s the results of all 3 accounts after 9 hours of idling including screenshots of memory and cpu usage for reference:
My account, idling on my gaming pc, athlon 64 x2 6000+, geforce 8800gt and 4 gb ram.
http://www.tf2items.com/id/W0rf0x?time=1269288212
Keychain’s account, idling on my pc that i use to host my oc server, 1,6 ghz athlon single core, radeon 9600 and 1 gb ram.
http://www.tf2items.com/id/iKey?time=1269286364
My 2nd account, idling on my laptop which shouldn’t even be able to start tf2, 1ghz single core cpu, integrated S3 graphics card with DX6 and 256 mb ram.
