SimRacing.org.uk

Grid/server capacity: 22

Track: Hockenheim '60's GP Download this (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3358.msg128898#post_hock60_79)

Cars allowed: AC Cobra (320kw/429hp, 1068kg/2349lbs only), Alpine A110 1800S Gr.4  Download this (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3358.msg54518#post_alpine_a110_76), Ferrari 250 GTO Download this (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3358.msg54518#post_f250gto), Porsche 904 GTS/6, Download this (https://www.simracing.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3358.msg54518#post_porsche904gts)

Required Skins

AC Cobra Download this (http://www.mediafire.com/file/despot1vczdc43t/AC_Cobra.zip)

Drivers are reminded that they are limited to only two drives per manufacturer. Check your status HERE (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hBXHZB-152ZVESM4gmvm21f9XPBPeeJn_SxQ1be6xfk/edit?usp=sharing)

Practice: ~19:20 (60 mins)
Qualifying: 20:20 (20 mins)
Race: 20:40 (24 laps)

Time of Day Setting: 14:00
Start: STANDING
Tyre wear: 2x
Fuel consumption: Normal

Server: simracing.org.uk Monday
Password: see above (#post_event_password)

Notes:
(1) It's best if all drivers can make sure they are connected before the Qualifying session as drivers on track during qualifying will not see cars that join after they are on track until they go back to the garage.
(2) Please make sure you are fully aware of the SimRacing.org.uk Rules.
(3) The AI control should be turned off so that you have control of the car at all times, including pitting. Your player file should therefore read
Autopit="0"
Force Autopit Off="1" // Forces autopit always off
No AI Control="1" // AI never has control over car
If you still finding pitting problematic, experience tells us that its less to do with positioning and more to do with approach speed. A slow approach to pit crew chief has proved most reliable.

Special Notes: None

No. of laps increased to 24

Server was not running, so I started it withthe settings it had.
I did a few laps to test cars.
Is it meant to be a version without the chicanes?

Yes, version without chicanes, thanks Matt.

It s the AC Cobra version  ;D

 :lol: :lol: :lol:

Server was down again after I tested it. Perhaps admin is at wirk

Seems ok now, fingers crossed. Note that praccy server did not have the correct tyre wear dialled in, sorry chaps  :oops:

After nearly ruining Misnoimis's race twice I thought it best to retire to the bar.  :surrender: I really should practice for these events!

Congrats to the podium, cya next week.

Limited practice for this one being away until Saturday evening and it showed. :(

One day I'll arrive on the grid with the proper amount of fuel in the tank.  ::) Dropped to a lower amount for the last practice session and completely forgot to fill it back up for the race. A 1998 sim like GPL has qualy and race set up's I keep forgetting it's a glaring omission from GTL. :(

Was going quite well and even hung onto the back of Erling for a while until I put a wheel onto the grass into T1  Suddenly around lap 14 noticed I was running on fumes and to add insult to injury took my eyes off the road long enough to lose it entering the SF straight so decided now was a good a time as any to take the pain of a pit stop and listen to everyone hurtle past the other side of the pit wall. Rest of the race was pretty quiet, picked off a few Ferrari's and might have even had a chance at the group ahead but was mindful of Ziu who I knew was coming up behind so slowed to let him through and followed him home a lap down.

See you all next week.

TTFN
John.

N P , I hope you had one for me.  ;)

Replay and results now posted

Was a good race. Was managing to keep Erling out of DRS range mostly, but then GTL minimised to desktop again  :taz:
cpu is getting very hot. I have set it to run on 4 cores, and the frame rate is awesome, was touching 300 at times
I have the case off, and a big deskfan blowing a gale into the case, I have reseated the CPU cooler with a smear of silicone
another smal case fan blowing at the CPU area inside. There seems to be a pattern, as in it does it after about 20 mins
then when I maximise it it runs to the end no prob. Is very weird. I think my other system does it as well, I will find
out next week, as I will be there not in Southport.

(https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/phspok1/GTLHot1.jpg)

I managed a low 2m 08s in qualifying, the same as I had managed offline in practice and was satisfied with that. I think I misheard the bleep at the start and was a bit slow but got away with it.  I was taking it steady for the first few laps, minding my own business when a much faster Geoffers, obviously recovering from a mishap, used my car to slow down at third gear right hand bend between the straights. I have been guilty of using this technique myself. It is usually because the car in front takes a corner slower than you expected.  A pity because Geoffers was very quick. Anyway I got demoted from fifth to about eighth.

After the bump I think the handling of my car was compromised. It was not terrible but felt more difficult and my pace was well down on my offline practice on full fuel. Somehow I made it back to sixth place to start with and then into fifth, I think someone must have retired and others had problems.

My tyres wore at an alarming rate. By the last lap I had no rubber left. The back was breaking away on the slow corners even when taken really slowly. A combination of tyre ware and damage maybe. I managed a couple of half spins and lost two places on the last couple of corners I think taking Steve off on one occasion, sorry, it was like trying to drive on ice. However I enjoyed the qualifying but the race was lonely and uninteresting.

Grats to winner and podiums  :clap: and commiserations to those who had problems.

At least now no one can say that 13 is an unlucky number  8)

Anyway without  Geoffers mistake on the first lap we could see several laps on low 2:06  between me and Geoffers also if so we finished the race on the rim wheels for sure. With Geoffers off i could go with a cruise step between 2:07.2 - 2:07.5, even more because i had a good advantage on Matt and Erling in the Ost Kurve so i not had need to push on the Motodrom saving my tires for the final laps.

This is the 1979 track (we used with BMW Procar in 2016) without the Senna Kurve and the Clark Kurve, now why leave the yellow marker signs without this chicanes ? Sometime this can deceive especially after several laps......BOH ? What Sense has ? These things make me piss !

Grats to Matt  and Grats To Erling

PS............I watched the replay, just i wanted say that the Ost Kurve is 3° gear not 2° gear

I arrived home knackered after a weekend in the North of England on our quest to visit as many UK circuits as we can with my friend from GPL, Andy Livingston.
Rolled into the house at around 7:15, dog wanted a walk and there was food to be found. As luck would have it, my wife was in the middle of watching a film so I was able to sneak away to the PC with about 5mins of qually left.

Grats to Ziu and the podium.

With zero pre race practice and not having touched these cars since the last round, I had to take a punt. I had 2 drives left in the Ferrari, so grabbed one of those and rummaged around for a setup that I had used a long time ago in No-Grip at Le Mans. Dropped the final drive by one notch, and set off to familiarise myself with the car/track combo.
It soon became obvious that this was going to be a 2 class race with the Cobras out front and the Fezzas behind. When the race started I still had not found how to get the car into the stadium complex without running wide and getting a warning!!

The race was pretty uneventful, after the gaggle of Cobras ahead slowly pulled away, until the end of the race when a recovering Jeep started to close and the last lap when Misnomis and Steve decided to trim the grass in the stadium and I was gifted 2 places within sight of the flag.

Really can't complain about the finishing position given the less than zero preparation, but it would have been nice to have had some race action to keep me awake lol.

Matt: Is that the CPU load when running GTL ?   Doesn't look like much at all, so if that makes it overheat, what then happens if you load it 100% ?   I can bring my own CPU to 80º, but need Prime95 hammering it with 100% load on all 4 cores to do so (Core i7 930, overclocked from 2.8 to 3.25 GHz, and cooled by a Zalman CNPS9900A, an ok but not exceptional cooler). If the shown load brings yours to 80º, I would wager there's something seriously wrong with your cooling  :o

The fact that the GTL problem happens too on your other system suggests to me it's not heat related - would be a very remarkable coincidence if both overheat after 20 minutes.  Is there any common software on both, which could possibly kick in with a disrupting task after 20 minutes ?


About the race:  Have always hated the Cobra, but at least some tweaking of setup made it reasonably driveable, although I doubt I could ever truly tame it  8)

Chuffed with qual; knocked 0.5 secs off my pb, and great fun to steal 3rd on the grid from Matt with a mere 0.007 difference  ;D

Got an ok start for once, retaining 3rd, and even getting level with Geoffers towards T1.  That presented a dilemma; didn't dare take my usual line, for fear of colliding with him, so gave him ample room. That in turn caused me to run wide on cold tyres, losing two places as Matt & Misnoimis slipped past.  Adding insult to injury, John then eased past down the long semi-straight. Recovered a place by outbraking Misnoimis into the stadium, and another one when Geoff went off.  Got past John when he put two wheels on the grass in the Ost Kurve and lost momentum.  He then became my persistent shadow for the next many laps, until a dust plume in my mirrors after T1 signaled that I could now concentrate on chasing Matt.

Gap to Matt was around 3 secs, but started dropping. With more than half the race left, it was around 1 sec.  Plenty of time to wait for an opportunity, so didn't try to rush things.  Then suddenly, as we were threading through the stadium, Matt's car braked, stopping in the middle of the track. Barely managed to swerve around him  :o  Looked weird, and learned later that his GTL had minimized.  A consistent gap of 5-6 secs over the next many laps signalled that he had got going again.

Towards the end, it had dropped a little, and on the penultimate lap, what shouldn't happen did happen. When braking for the Ost Kurve, I got one of the dreaded 'Cobra wobbles'. Car changed direction, and with no rear grip left, I ended up on the grass, halfways spinning. With a gap of less than 5 secs, I couldn't get going again before Matt roared past.  Pressed as hard as I could, and closed the gap a little, but 1½ lap was just not enough for a comeback, so had to settle for 3rd.

Grats to Ziu & Matt, and commiserations to those who met with bad luck.

Cheers,
Erling

The taskmgr is just after closing GTL. The proc is an i5 750. DevMangler says 2.67gig. I am probably mixing up my two systems
but one or both report 3.2 gig max in the Hardware monitor. On one I remember it somehow overclocked itself, and when i
set it to normal it ran ok. If I don't set the affinity to all cores, GTL maxes out on core, with all cores it runs as in the chart
and the frame rate ismuch higher. I agree with 2/3 to 1/2 load it should not be hitting 80deg

The other system (at my own house) is a Core2 quad 3gig, and that one also gets very hot. That one (and maybe this one)
could do with a better cooler, but I could not find a better one that would fit, as it's quite an old machine
I fitted a case fan on a bracket blowing cool air onto the CPU fan, and that seems to cope now.

This one I refitted the cooler but it has made no difference before or after. The mounting brackets are rubbish on the
core2Quad, and the cooler fell off once, as they don't clip in very firmly. I am not certain that the Core2Quad does
exactly the same thing, it may be that it used to just  crash out of GTL with overheating. GTL must hammer things
hard, because modern multi threaded games like AssetoCorsa and Race room don't cause the overheating, though
they do run quite hot, I've never had an issue with them. It is only GTL that does this minimise to desktop thing.

Have you tried running a temperature probe while GTL is running, and Alt-Tab out of GTL to check what the temp is ?

Visited Zalman's homepage just a couple of days ago, to see if they still were in business (It's been a few years since I last built a PC).  Was surprised to see that they still make many of the designs I remember.  Most of their coolers appear to be compatible with Core 2 Quad.  Whether any of them might be better than your current solution I can't say of course, but could be worth a look: http://www.zalman.com/contents/products/list.html?c=100010

Cheers,
Erling

The screenshot has the temp readings, the max are what it got to running GTL
I get my stuff from scan.co.uk I bought a selection of coolers for the core2quad
and picked the one with copper base, stuck the faster fan on etc.

Ah, my bad - hadn't scrolled to see the right part of the screenshot..  :whistling:

Really strange that it gets so hot.  Looks like a nifty hardware monitor - could you tell me what it is; would love to give it a test myself  :)

Cheers,
Erling

Results (https://www.avonrise.co.uk/srou/kurts/60Hockenheim_12062017)

8)

Thank you Kurt  :thumbup1:

Congrats to the podium and a special grats to Clive for such a good finish in the F-fer.  I had already driven the Cobra once and went with the GTO.  Race was very uneventful, Kurt and I raced close for about the first half.  I went into the weeds on about lap 4 and he went by, then a few  laps later he went off in the same place and I returned the favor. While I was behind him I tried to draft and see if it would help us together but didn't seem to help us.  Speedo and tach stayed the same and I didn't want to really pull up on his bumper and scare him so just continued on.  The GTO has the speed it just takes forever to get there, Cobras would just blow it away on acceleration.  Oh well should even out in the end I hope....

Thanks for the race
Bob M.

http://openhardwaremonitor.org/

There are a few, but this is the one I am using

Thanks; got it.  My CPU didn't get as hot as yours running a GTL replay, but need to check if actually driving in GTL is harder on it.  Dragon Age Inquisition on the other hand brought a couple of cores to 80º.  Some sensor anomaly though, as it reported my CPU fan had been spinning at 7000+ rpm - had that been the case, the PC would have left the room..  ;D

Have ordered a 2nd hand hexacore i7 980, and am waiting impatiently for it to arrive. Curious whether it will improve performance, and about the heat generation of course.

Cheers,
Erling

It gets silly figures for some sensors here as well. I have another one I use called "speedfan" and it claims different temps
for some sensors, and mostly slightly less. So, I am not entirely convinced that it really is getting to 80
but it gets "hot", and hotter than other sims, so I assume that the temp may be the issue.

I do not understand why "getting too hot" causes only the minimised screen issue. Surely it would just stop working?

If the program still runs but the graphic display is affected doesn't this suggest that the GPU is being problematic?

That is my dilema Tony. I have had CPUs overheat in the past, and it tends to reset the system, and reboot
I have had sims crash to desktop and die, Graphics cards overheating or dodgy connections causes funny effects
on the screen before it dies etc. This minimises GTL and can be restored imediately, I just lift and brake
and try to get off track if I know where I am, and maximise it again, it has always continued fine after that.
I have been thinking maybe the replay gets to a certain size and causes "something" to kick in, 1st time
I thought it was a windows update or similar. I have no AV software on my games machines, so it's not that.
This system has 16Gig RAM, I have done the 4 gig patch, I have tried running with and without the CPU
affinity set to all. If I could get it to run cooler I could then rule out CPU overheating, but so far it is
the only "obvious" cause. Could be GPU, I installed older drivers which gave me better frame rate at Sebring
but it's beeg doing this before that time.Started at the oval we did a while ago
GPU temps in Open Hardware Monitor look much cooler than the CPUs

I have Speedfan too; could check if it reports lower temps for me as well.  Can see you have an Asus board too.  Have you got 'PC Probe' ?  If so, you could check CPU temp there too.

Peculiar problem for sure.  If it's the CPU overheating though, I would expect the following:

1: That it happened much quicker - temps seem to shoot up almost immediatedly when I put a load on my own CPU.
2: That it would happen again very soon after the first time GTL minimises - if it takes 20 min to overheat, it shouldn't be able to shed the accumulated heat in just a few secs.

How do you apply the thermal paste to the CPU ?  Looking at Arctic Silver's homepage, it seems they recommend the 'vertical line' approach for all non-mobile Core i5 & i7 (not that I've used it on my current CPU myself): http://www.arcticsilver.com/intel_application_method.html#

Cheers,
Erling

Just done a few laps at Paul RIcard in AC, and the Open Hardware Monitor claims 99deg for 3 of the 4 cores
and there were no problems, so I think it may be reading wrong, or the proc can stand more than 80 without issues
I just put a dot of paste in the centre, then twist the cooler around a bit when I fit it to spread it around a bit.
I have some experience at CPU replacement as I used to teach field engineers how to fix computers in a galaxy far away
for Sun, and there are more "correct methods" than I have hair on me head... (not that there is a lot of that these days)  ::)
But I am always open to enlightenment.   :hammer:
I trust "sensors" in Linux, otherwise I am not convinced of accuracy. I will try a couple more apps to see if they read
more sensibly. You are right, it is unlikely to run fine for another 20 mins if overheating caused the drop.

Couldn't hurt to give the GPU a quick go over with a hoover nozzle?

Lol, you are right.  Have been researching thermal pastes and methods of application in preparation for my CPU replacement, and there's certainly no shortage recommendations for diverse methods..  ;)

Cheers,
Erling

Seems like Open Hardware Monitor is reporting temperatures too high.

Take a look at this comparison with Speedfan & PC Probe II (The little red/green display beneath Speedfan):

(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a60/erling2792/CPU%20Temp.jpg~original)

This is running the 'max heat' test of Prime95.

Cheers,
Erling

Just a followup on the heat issue; it's off topic, but info could be relevant for Matt and possibly others.

Start of this week I got my 2nd hand hexacore CPU; Core i7 980 (not the Extreme 980X version).  I initially mounted it with my existing cooler; the Zalman CNPS 9900A.  As seen above, my earlier i7 930 was running at 3.25 GHz, reaching temps of 84ºC with Prime95 max heat test.  Started out at the stock speed of 3.33 GHz with the 980 CPU.  In the same test, temps climbed to 90ºC.  Disturbingly high, and obviously no scope for overclocking.

Had a brand new Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU cooler, given to me by a colleague who wasn't going to use it.  Tried it instead.  Idle temps seemed a few degrees lower, but was virtually shocked when I fired up the Prime95 test, and saw temps as low as 53-54ºC  :o   Lots of scope for overclocking here then.  Haven't found the limit, but currently it's running at 4.25 GHz, reaching temps of 71-72ºC after 1 hour of Prime95 max heat test.  Appears to be rock stable.  Ambient temp at testing has been around 22ºC

Looking at the two coolers, you wouldn't expect such a great difference.  They're roughly the same size, albeit different shapes.  Zalman is all copper, while the cooling fins on the 212 is aluminum, and copper is supposedly the better heat conductor.  Zalman has a mirror smooth contact piece for the CPU, whereas the 212 is much rougher.  The 212 has 'direct contact' heat pipes - the tubes are flattened in the part in contact with the CPU, whereas the Zalman has a separate contact piece, with the heat pipes running through them.  Don't know if the 'direct contact' design is that much better - if not, I'm inclined to think the Zalman is defect.  For both I used Arctic MX-4 Thermal compound, applied with the 'vertical line' method.

In other words; the cooler can make a huge difference, and based on the above, I can certainly recommend the Hyper 212 EVO wholeheartedly.

Cheers,
Erling

??? What did he say!!!  ???