Shame I saw this late, as I would have been tempted to dig my wheel out of storage for a spin or two.

Possibly, but Eriksson's relaxed regime didn't get great performances out a similar group of players at the last 2 world cups either.

They just look nervous. It almost makes me feel sorry for the overpaid brats. Oh well, go New Zealand.

My 2p worth.

With the low turn-outs, I think you should consider dropping multi-class racing, as racing against a handful of cars isn't much fun. Personally, I'm looking to get back into sim-racing on a fairly casual basis (unlikely to be racing every week). My preference would be to race the fastest cars, GT1s, on mostly default tracks. Learning a new track is a major time commitment for me, which realistically isn't going to happen. I've never found the add-ons to be the same quality as the originals.

Best of luck with organising the next season.

Thanks Tony.

Poor race for me. Gave someone a clout at the chicane on the first lap, sorry about that. Badly misjuded the braking, thought I had plenty of room and was easing off the pedal, until I found myself closing rapidy at the apex. Rest of my race was ruined by too many silly spins, especially at the penultimate corner.

I'm using 2 litres a lap around here, so with the X2 fuel usage looks like my pit-stop window will be between lap 16 and 21.

Thanks for that, I'd missed that I needed to turn off the AI in my plr file for pitting. I'll test the pitting procedure tonight. I've found myself a decent setup on NoGrip: http://www.nogripracing.com/files.php?subcat=36 - the animalaz one near the bottom if anyone is interested. It's a bit more stable over curbs and under braking.


Using GTLPD, I'm getting tyre wear of 1.7 after 6 laps. With the X2 wear rate, that should give me about 17 by the end, sounds like 1 set of tyres will be enough.

What is XD? Is it a 3rd party util?

Connected to the server OK. Don't suppose anyone has a stable 911 setup I could use? I'm using the default atm.

Been having fun pootling around Hockenheim. Lapping in the 1:57s in the 911, probably not competitive, but hopefully fast enough to stay with some of the slower cars.

With the X2 tyre wear will a trye change be neccessary? I have no idea how long the rubber lasts, I've only ever raced sprints in GTL.

Yep, I've got a list of things to sort out. Lobby patch, skins and add-on car to install, and copying of my old .plr file. I'll try and connect to the server tomorrow.

I might join you for this one. I'll dig out my copy of GTL at the weekend and see if I can get around the track reliably. Hockenheim is a track I like, and I used to get on OK with the 911.

Here are a set of benchmarks comparing a core i5-750 against an E8600, note that a low score is best in some of the benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=54&p2=109

The E8600 has some wins due to it's higher clockspeed, while the i5 cleans up in multithreaded tasks. In terms of gaming, there is little to choose between them, with a few exceptions (FarCry 2 scores 72 fps on the Core i5 Vs 48 on the E8600).

Core i5 is a better buy than E8600 for a new system, it's quite a bit cheaper (although the motherboards and memory costs a bit more). However, Intel are launching a couple new i5 chips, and the i3 next month. They will be dual core chips with hyper-threading and higher clockspeeds than the current i5, for less money. Might be worth waiting for them to come out.

Had a very quick go at overclocking it. Turned off the turbo-boost, and had it running at 3.6Ghz without any voltage increases. Seemed to be stable, although I only left Prime95 running for 15 minutes or so. 4Ghz should be fairly easy to achieve.

I've set the clocks back to stock again for now, as I don't need the extra horsepower at the moment. Good to know I have plenty of headroom for future upgrades though.

I've had a bit of play with the new system now. Think the core-i5 was a good investment, cost me about £90 (CPU, RAM and motherboard) over a mid-range CPU. Getting smooth frame rates in Left 4 Dead at 1920x1080 with all the details maxed, and that was with AVG doing a full system scan in the background (quad-core is a bit of a luxury, but it does have some benefits). I'm not going to bother to overclock it for now.

Haven't tried GTR2 on it yet, but rain and lighting shouldn't be a problem anymore. Hope to see you on track sometime.

Next year, I think there is a dual-core i5 coming out, running at over 3Ghz and with hyper-threading enabled for a bit less money. That would probably be an even better buy, the higher clock speed should make most apps run faster than on the i5-750, while hyperthreading will give a decent boost to anything that utilises more than 2 cores.

A broken CPU cooler mounting bracket has delayed my build. 

Agree that there isn't a strong case for upgrading from a fast Core 2 Duo to Core i5 or i7. There are a few games around that fully utilise a quad-core CPU, but not many. However, we can expect to see more in the future, so a quad-core or tri-core is a decent investment for anyone looking to buy a new system now. I hope to get a lot of life out of this system by upgrading the graphics card in 2 or 3 years.

I see my system is already obsolete with the introduction of the ATI 58XX series, and I haven't even built it yet. I wasn't expecting them to be released for another couple months. 

I'll definitely pick up GTR again some time in the future, hopefully the new PC will give me an incentive. I'll probably only race on a casual basis though. Lack of talent and setup skills makes learning a new track a very slow and painful process for me.

Wonder if McClaren will be asking for their money back now?