Disconnections.Disconnections back to lobby aren't Simbin fault either. Internet is a complex thing. What you will probably find is that your line stats are poor, i.e poor attenuation and poor signal to noise ratio!! If you have a router you can find these things out.. I had poor stats and tried different things but eventually I phoned my ISP and they asked me to connect to btwholesale line test for 12 hours or more. After that period they said I had been disconnected several times and would send an engineer out to investigate. The engineer did some tests on my line, went down the street to a box somewhere came back and said he changed a few boards around - no idea what he did but my stats were excellent after that even good enough for 8mb line!! Sometimes lines can be like a blocked toilet, you got to phone for a plumber to flush the blockage away.
Strange decrease, then normal then decrease in frame rate.Those sudden low FPS is for sure throttling of GFX card which is caused by too much heat. When it reaches certain temp GPU and RAM speeds are lowered considerably to slower speeds in an attempt to decrease temps.
I know Nvidia are quite harsh on throttling. I had it on my previous FX5900.. only way I fixed it was by making a bios for it with no throttling at all and then flashing it but that's quite difficult to do!! If you want me to explain more how to do it I can? Anyhow I flashed FX5900 and it fixed it but there is a risk always doing that sort of thing.
Other way is some better cooling on GFX card i.e more expensive heatsink and fan, also got to keep case cool. Or alternatively, buy an ATI card cause they can take higher temps and have little or maybe no throttling at all - not sure but my x850xt gets to 50+ frames all the time. I cap frames at 50 by underclocking refresh rate to 50hz and then vsync on and triple buffering forced on via ATI Tray Tools. I got 50 all the time no matter what including starts.. and it's super silky smooth due to the vsync [no tears] and triple buffer [completely removes latency caused by capping frames and totally removes tiny stutters that occur without triple buffering].
You got two choices really, flash bios or buy ATI card!!
Also, to keep my case cool I have PSU out side of case, side panel off and funneled ventilation system [using three big case fans and then re-directed 90 degrees] blowing cold air from outside window directly onto CPU and therefore around mobo. The funnel is made from card board and is air tight.
Been there, got the T-Shirt. Nvidia, never again!! I have no complaints at all about both ATI cards i've had and using ATI Tray tools you got loads of additional tweaks and options.
Operating system and driver tweaks.Firstly make sure that no programs can interupt D3D. Things like scheduled live updates and windows messenger. If you have messenger enabled in services it can bring you back to desktop and give you an advertisement. To disable this go to control panel\administrative tools\services - go down to messenger, right click, properties, startup type and select disabled. Also turn off automatic updates in service list.
L2 Cache registry mod if you have 512kb L2 cache CPU as windows defaults to 256k. Download CPUz fro here
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php. Load CPUz and on first CPU page on right side at bottom it says what L2 cacheis. If it's 512 or more do this registry tweak.
The L2, or second-level, cache, is an integral part of your CPU. However, XP is very shoddy at detecting it, so setting it manually is sometimes necessary. It's easy to do, though, you simply have to navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\
in the registry and find the value SecondLevelDataCache. You must then adjust it to the value (in kilobytes) of the L2 Cache of your processor. The L2 Cache of your processor should be entered in Decimal.
So all you do is find that registry entry by doing 'run' regedit, and then put your L2 cache with the 'Decimal' option selected as oposed to hexadecimal. I put 512 in decimal seen as my Barton is 512k L2 cache.
I am also currently investigating other registry tweaks and will add them if they are successful.
Another good one is disabling sideband addressing [SBA] for GFX card as this can cause CTD and lockups. First find out if it's enabled by loading CPUz
http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-132.zip, look on 'Mainboard' tab and at bottom it says if enabled or disabled. If enabled the only way I know to disable is through powerstrip. Download powerstrip from here
http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm. Install it and probably reboot is required. Then right click PStrip task tray icon\options\preferences and make sure 'autoload with windows' is ticked. Now go to Pstrip task tray\options\adpator information.. here you can disable SBA. Untick 'Read-only' and then untick SBA. Also you can set latency of AGP - I set to 64. And you can disable or enable fast writes here too but that is better done via a bios option. Fast writes on most cards causes instability, i.e lockups CTD.. but some cards need it enabled like 9600XT and my X850XT. Once you've disabled side band addressing check again with CPUz.
Another thing to try to help with stability is increasing vagp in bios. My previous 9800 Pro needed 1.6vagp otherwise I got CTD and hangs. Default is 1.5vagp so I wouldn't go above 1.6vagp cause it could damage a card.
I found out that Video RAM cacheable, Video BIOS cahcheable and System RAM cacheable can cause instability when enabled. So perhaps if you're having crash to desktop try disabling all three options if possible. These options on my NF7 are in the bios under 'Advanced Options'. For a while I had Video RAM cacheable enabled and I got crash to desktops eventually in all 3D applications, so this option is best left disabled for stability.
GTR tweaks.First thing is I always delete config.ini after rebooting and starting a session. Then I make new by running 3dconfig. Once new config is made make sure to open and set VBSTRATEGY=0.
Do this tweak - Try in userdata\defviews.cam under cockpit these settings
OrientationRate=(360.000000, 360.000000, 360.000000)
This stops any unnatural resistance and removes any small jitters in cockpit and espceially jitters in a turn.
This is for seeing actual dampers settings rather that clicks.. Damper Units="1" // Show damper settings as (0)clicks or (1)actual force units [found in your .plr in userdata folder.
To decrease lag disable high process priority in .plr High Process Priority="0" // Improves FPS on some systems, but may conflict with some background applications
If you're having any further issues, let me know and i'll try to help.
KeyDelayThis program assign's buttons on wheel to key strokes. Logitech Profiler has some bugs i.e it can cause sticking gears or loss of FFB, then use KeyDelay instead. I only ever used Profiler for key strokes so np not using it anymore.
Press button on wheel you want to assign key stroke, then highlight this button on left. Put in delay time, 200 ms is what I use and then choose which key stroke to use. i.e for shift up I use M and down N. Now in sim I assign shift up to M and shift down to N. This is ideal for any double shift problems, especially in GTR as it is able to recognise shifts within a very short space of time.
http://www.auyu41.dsl.pipex.com/KeyDelay.zip
