iRacing Season 1 - Lime Rock (no chicane) - Jan 5

[Paul968]

Yeah sorry if I held you up there Paul - I just don't have the same confidence/ peripheral vision with the Skippy I might do in some Simbin cars and didn't want to risk moving off line/ slowing up only to be collected by your extra pace. I know when I'm lapping (the distant memory that it is!) I always prefer some predictability so decided to drive as normal and let you make the move when you were ready. Any other track and it would have taken a corner or two but it's a little tight at LR isn't it!

The thing is though that in equal cars, and especially in low powered ones, it is hard to force a pass quickly, even if you are much quicker. The places where you gain time are the corners, but you have to go at the same speed as the car in front. The only place you can make it stick is at the end of a long straight, and even that needed an early brake from you.

I take the point about moving off line as this can make you miss braking points or make the next corner too tight, but I do think it is possible to slow down a touch. The best way to do this is accelerate out of corners slightly less than normal. You have to trust the lapper not to crash into you really - when lapping I am looking for any sign that I may be let past, and I try to position the car so that the driver ahead can slow down and not get shunted. The main thing is not to do anything suddenly as this is unpredictable.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

i checked this last time it happened Dave, there were no other processes running that could hog the memory/resources other than the usual xp things like svchost.exe (what is that and why are there several of them?).

Svchost covers a multitude of Windows service hosting processes. You should be able to see where the CPU is going in task manager - if it's 70% idle but still choppy (you may have to run iRacing in a window to test it) that would be more than slightly odd - perhaps an overheating graphics card, though? that seems unlikely if you never have the problem in other iRacing events - unless there's a memory shortage.

TBPH I'm as skeptical as Simon that this is directly related to hosted racing in any way - computers don't do devious. It's much more likely to be the number of cars in the session. It can't be a memory leak, driver issue, overheating, power supply, spyware or anything else more devious if you don't get the problem in 'normal' sessions of comparable lengths.

[Mark J]

Sorry Pops, missed your post but read it now. I already had my available gfx memory reduced to 425 or so from the 512 available. I have shadows and anything too fancy turned off.

DG, you could be right as not until hosted events have there been as many cars on track. All the standard IR events usually had about 15 runners at most. Have certainly ran much longer normal sessions than i am managing in these hosted sessions.
I assume 22 IR cars is a lot more resource hogging than 28 GTR2 cars at a gfx heavy track like LM then?

Had already de-loused my pc to make sure no hint of spyware anywhere.

Last night i had even tried switching my dual display to single to see if that was the problem but nope.

Guess all i can do is try lower and lower gfx settings in game to see if it cures it until i get my upgrade.

[ross.mcw]

Mark, have you tried a complete format and reinstall of Windows?  A pain I know, but Windows gathers so much crap over the years that a complete blat like that should certainly iron out the chance of it being any odd software that's been installed in the past.

[Mark J]

Ross, it was only reformatted and reinstalled about a year ago...something i would like to avoid doing yet again as ive got 122gb of data on my pc !

Just ran the intensive 'Intel Burntest' application and that passed successfully, so all okay in the cpu/RAM department.
Anyone recommend an app to give the gfx card a good kicking/test ?

[Truetom]

I think it was mostly motivation, Pops. The guy ahead was a bit faster and you were closing (after my spin, yes) but not fast enough for me to drive closer to the edge and risk another spin. If you got too close I could always do "The Summit Point Trick".

[spanner]

Ross, it was only reformatted and reinstalled about a year ago...something i would like to avoid doing yet again as ive got 122gb of data on my pc !

Just ran the intensive 'Intel Burntest' application and that passed successfully, so all okay in the cpu/RAM department.
Anyone recommend an app to give the gfx card a good kicking/test ?

Theres something called ATI tool, used to be an ATI tweaking/ overclocking tool but now tends to be universal. Has a tool for finding artifacts if you overclock the graphics card. Its just a furry cube spinning round but does seem to tax the card a bit as the temps rocket up. Would suggest the Futuremark benchamarking stuff but tends to be quite general.

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

DG, you could be right as not until hosted events have there been as many cars on track. All the standard IR events usually had about 15 runners at most. Have certainly ran much longer normal sessions than i am managing in these hosted sessions.
I assume 22 IR cars is a lot more resource hogging than 28 GTR2 cars at a gfx heavy track like LM then?

iRacing is definitely more CPU intensive than GTR2 or GTL. What I don't understand is why you don't get problems immediately, but only after some minutes have elapsed. If it happened in all sessions I'd say it screamed overheating graphics card. I suppose it could be overheating CPU, but if you've passed a CPU stress test that seems rather unlikely.

[Brendan]

Ross, it was only reformatted and reinstalled about a year ago...something i would like to avoid doing yet again as ive got 122gb of data on my pc !

Just ran the intensive 'Intel Burntest' application and that passed successfully, so all okay in the cpu/RAM department.
Anyone recommend an app to give the gfx card a good kicking/test ?

I've used 3dmark06 in the past as a benchmarking tool which seems to stretch the card's abilities.  I think also you can run a stress test from the Nvidia control panel (assuming you have an Nvidia card).

Also, have you got RivaTuner installed which allows overclocking and temperature monitoring/fan control of your GFX card.
 

[Mark J]

just been running some other housekeeping apps. My MFT and swap file were a bit fragmented so cleaned them up on startup using disk-keeper.
Used cc-cleaner to give the whole system a clean up too.

Tested my card and other bits in Dxdiag, nothing flagged as wrong. Cant see a stress test in NV control panel and no havent got rivatuner installed.

Surely if there was a prob with the gfx card overheating it would make itself known in P&G /other sims too ?...which it doesnt.
might run that 3dmark and see what it finds.

[Paul968]

If you want to rule out your graphics card you could try running the game in a window at a much lower resolution. Not a great long term solution but it might help you work out where the problem lies.

Have you tried turning everything on the graphics and replay to minimum btw?

Also, you say the fps drop happens after random time periods - can you say how random?

[Don]

Any of you kind Fellas have a replay of Lap1 from last night, please?

[Mark J]

If you want to rule out your graphics card you could try running the game in a window at a much lower resolution. Not a great long term solution but it might help you work out where the problem lies.

Have you tried turning everything on the graphics and replay to minimum btw?

Also, you say the fps drop happens after random time periods - can you say how random?

No, not tried it at minimum Paul and to be honest i wouldnt want to race the sim at minimum especially as i can run full danglies in P&G. I can try it as a test but never find out results of my testing until next time there is a hosted race session and by then its another race night ruined 

The random times are litterally that. Last night it was okay for about 15minutes. Restarted pc, lasted about 5minutes. Race before that, think it was about 20mins. Race before that it lasted okay with some stutters the whole race, and first hosted race it lasted until about half hour into the race, so about an hour+ inc praccy and qually before it threw a wobbler.

[Paul968]

Any of you kind Fellas have a replay of Lap1 from last night, please?

here you go...

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.harrington/LR%20lap%201.zip

[Paul968]

No, not tried it at minimum Paul and to be honest i wouldnt want to race the sim at minimum especially as i can run full danglies in P&G. I can try it as a test but never find out results of my testing until next time there is a hosted race session and by then its another race night ruined  Sad

Yes, but you need to know where the source of the problem lies and since every race is bad for you it is probably worth enduring minimal graphics for a race or 2 to find out.. You could try joining some of the open hosted races to test things perhaps?