edit: never mind, i get this when i don't have the problem.
can you guys please help me figure this out some more. it's a pain in the ass tremendously.
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i decided to take another look at task manager when this is happening and actually did find out that, on my performance tab, it gets pretty bad when i'm experiencing this issue. did this by opening task manager, alt tabbing back in game, play for like 10 seconds, check task manager, wait for it to go down, go back in game for 10 seconds again, go back to task manager to see that it spikes when i'm in game (a lot) and doesn't when i'm not.
now i'm guessing maybe it's just because the computer is more focused on the game when it's not alt tabbed, but if that isn't the case or may not be the case, then i would like to know. i think it may be the case as i only have a lot of cpu usage from tf2 as i probably should.