Technical issue with FPS

[Kruger Enge]

Sorry for duplicating but I thought I post the copy of the message I posted on iRacing forum here as well, in case someone might be able to help:

Hi all,

Since I've joined iRacing, I've had a couple of races with Solstice and two with SRF, in Charlotte Road and Watkins Glen. With Solstice, I have experienced minor hiccups with FPS in Laguna and no FPS issue in Lime Rock but with SRF, once in the race, I had FPS falling down to 10-16 FPS making it impossible to drive safely.

Testing and qualifying either track/car combo gives me a run of 70-80 FPS but I have them limited to 51.

My specs are (good for Class 6 graphics):
Win XP Professional
GeForce 6200, 128 Mb
AMD Sempron 2800+, 1.6 GHz
768 Mb DDR (one 512 and one 256 chip)
1366x768x32b @ Samsung LCD TV (32 inch I believe)
iRacing auto configured and I see no boxes for shadow details AA etc. so everything is at a dead minimum.

I searched through the forums and picked up a few tricks to improve framerate (tried setting Nvidia for performance, decreasing virtual mirror and max no. of cars) but none have yielded a significant result. I can try chaning the account info to 56k modem but I guess I could improve the graphics and RAM a bit.

I have my eye on the following items:
- SO-DIMM DDR2-667 1GB (would replace the 256 chip and combine with 512 one)
- nVidia GeForce 6200 512MB

This would be around 75$ upgrade and I can't afford cashing in much more than that at this point (since I bought recently 3 cars and 5 tracks and in September I'm looking to extend the membership for a year).

Question is: what kind of improvement am I looking at with beefing up RAM to 1.5 Gb and graphics from 128 to 512 Mb or will the processor still create problems since its not dual core? What graphics class could I end up in after upgrade?

I would appreciate any advice and experiences you might have had on the issue.

Regards

Nihad

[Legzy]

Just a quick note to let you know that Laguna is the worst FPS track you'll find.

[Kruger Enge]

Just a quick note to let you know that Laguna is the worst FPS track you'll find.

Charlotte Road and Watkins Boot were far worse for me, but I never raced SRF in Laguna so I can't tell what'd happen.

Seems that faster car causes more problems... though, SRF is not that faster than Solstice.

[spanner]

I'm sure others will say later but iR seems to be more dependant on raw processing power than vga card. Ram might not help too much. Alot of people here seem to find iR really pushes their PC and tbh i'm surprised you can run it with your PC (no offence!)

The so-dimm's are memory for laptops so wont fit. and changing the vga card for one with more memory wont see much improvement. your whole system could do with a boost, short of changing everything your'll only gain prob 10% fps figures. your better off changing the cpu and vga card to faster ones.

Laguna is a known one for really pushing the fps figures, on my old system they would drop 40-50fps. good thing i was over 100 anyway.

Legzy runs with the speed at 56K, has it helped?



Bit of a pet annoyance of mine, but nevermind

[Kruger Enge]

tbh i'm surprised you can run it with your PC (no offence!)

None taken, I was just as surprised as you are when I first had a go. It rans smoother than rFactor i.e. as long as cars on the track are spread out...

The so-dimm's are memory for laptops so wont fit. and changing the vga card for one with more memory wont see much improvement. your whole system could do with a boost, short of changing everything your'll only gain prob 10% fps figures. your better off changing the cpu and vga card to faster ones.

Didn't know about so-dimm; but I am planning on a 1 Gb upgdade. I'm quite happy with the level of details and framerate in general, I'm just looking to prevent that critical drop once there are more cars on the track in close vicinity. You simply cannot race at 16 FPS.
Maybe its not a pattern, but I seem to be facing problems when starting from the front, so mirrors could be a culprit. I will have to try starting from the back.

Laguna is a known one for really pushing the fps figures, on my old system they would drop 40-50fps. good thing i was over 100 anyway.

Only raced there with Solstice so far but I imagine if it was anything faster, the PC would struggle.

So, you recommend CPU as a priority upgrade because, RAM and graphics alone won't help that much, unless they are paired with a strong Dual Core CPU?

Legzy runs with the speed at 56K, has it helped?

I would be very thankful for this piece of information...

And thanks Mark for your valuable reply, I'm beginning to get a better picture of the $ituation...

[popabawa]

Yeah, CPU is king with iRacing.

Just a heads up but the medium term plan is to introduce a new sound engine during the next 6 months which will be able to utilise it's own core.

As iRacing already uses 2 cores it may be benficial to go straight to a quad core CPU so it can use all 3.

It will still work with a dual core CPU though but you won't see any benefit (obviously!).

[popabawa]

BTW Kruger, please keep asking, there's a LOT of good info. buried away in the iRacing forums that isn't easy to access. I bet we know it all between us but probably not one individual knows it all.

The SRouk 'hive mind'

[Brendan]

.....probably not one individual knows it all.

Oh, I can think of a few  

Kruger, try downloading and running a program called GameBooster which shuts down un-necessary processes, thus freeing up resources for the programs you want.  If you're a bit more savvy you could try Alacrity which I believe does the same thing, only more in-depth.

Also, it might sound daft, but by shutting down my browser immediately after joining a session, I can get an improvement of over 10% in framerates.

[Legzy]

Kruger, try downloading and running a program called GameBooster which shuts down un-necessary processes

Great advice, has made a decent difference to my PC for zero cost.

Legzy runs with the speed at 56K, has it helped?

I would be very thankful for this piece of information...

It has made a difference too, worth doing with your/my setup that's for sure. Only downside, is that you can only ever see a maximum of one car behind you, no matter how close they are.
I do miss seeing both Picnic & Spanner back there

[Kruger Enge]

Thank you all for your inputs. I'm sure without your advice, I was bound to go wrong on investments that would yield little results.

Last night I did a bit of testing. Tried gamebooster and switching to 56k connection in my account. Went to Laguna with Solstice but couldn't really test the start as I got a disco (third time in Laguna actually and only place I ever got discoed so far). But then went back and tried going around the track. FPS was not ideal but definitely driveable, as it was the case in previous Laguna races I've taken part in (apart from discos, racing was feasible).

Then I went with SRF to Summit short, which doesn't seem like a FPS breaker - testing goes ok, runs very smoothly but in the race, first right hander and and the first tight left corner there, I get a FPS drop below 20 (goes to 15-16). Withdrew from the race and switched to the lowest possible resolution, lowest color depth, decreased available memory for textures, switched off mirrors and steering wheel, did everything possible (coupled with 56k connection) and went into Practice - SRF at Summit short. No change whatsoever   I was still getting same FPS, disregardless off the position of other cars on track, as long as there were some on track (server had about 20 entries but between 5 and 10 were on track, nowhere near me). I was still getting a massive FPS drop, in particular those two corners I mentioned.

Could it be the issue with voice chats (my card is SB Live)?
Why the presence of other cars, not visible to me or my mirror affect FPS so much?
What is it that makes such a big difference between testing and racing? I thought seeing other cars puts strain on graphics but it seems not?

I know feel Mark and pops were spot on in pointing to CPU, I'm underpowered and outdated in that part and I could do with improvements with RAM and graphic card, as well as new motherboard as this one is quite old. Rather than to buy individual components, I will try and build a racing machine specifically for iRacing and have nothing else there. It will take some investing but I feel its worth it.

Sorry for being a nuisance but people on iRacing forum aren't very helpful and you lot are the only people who care and have the iRacing and PC background to give a useful hint. Otherwise its just guess work for me.

It would help if you guys posted here your PC specs (MB, CPU, RAM, GPU, Sound etc) and FPS you're getting (what graphic class are you in) so I can have some pointers when picking items for configuration.

Sorry for long post.

Kruger

[Brendan]

Considering you are running a 1366x768 resolution, I don't think you need a monster PC to get a pleasant viewing experience, although buying the best bits you can afford will obviously help in the future.  Check out www.tomshardware.com for benchmarking reviews so you can find the best value for money.

I run at 1440x900 on a pretty low-rent machine:

Pentium D 3.4GHZ
ATI HD4850 1GB video card (made a big difference when upgrading from 8800GTS)
3gig DDR2 (667MHz) RAM
Onboard sound (although I believe a soundcard yields better FPS)

I run with everything on except shadows, and virtual mirror enabled.

At most tracks, I get upwards of 100FPS but I run v-sync at 59fps and it's silky smooth and gives the GFX card an easier ride.

Only thing that does concern me, is whether future developments within the sim will push my system beyond it's capabilities, time will tell.

Hope this helps.

[Kruger Enge]

It certainly helps Brendan. It gives me a clearer picture of where I'd end up with certain specification. Now that I'm investing, I might indulge my self with a bit of quality as well

Thx mate

Kruger

PS
I'm still interested in hearing specs of other people as well

[Ken Murray]

I'll post my racing system specs later, I'm on laptop atm and I can never remember all the details. However I just thought I'd  mention that when I first tried iRacing on my old system I had exactly the same experiences and even with everything turned right down I still got very poor fps at many tracks, except as you say in training mode. I think iRacing has very long draw distances, in fact as long as a lap of whatever track you are on. At Brands Hatch you can see cars dropping in to Paddock Hill as you exit Druids and there are other tracks where cars are visible for even greater distances away from you. I think even though you may not be able to see the other cars, except at particular spots such as Druids, their graphics are still processed by the software just ready for when they pop in to view. I don't want to sound too discouraging but I gave up and didn't renew my subs until I'd upgraded. As I say I'll post the specs later. It isn't a top spec gaming rig but it does have a dual core processor and apart from tweaking some of the shadow settings it runs with full graphics everywhere no matter how many cars on track.

[Kruger Enge]

I'll post my racing system specs later, I'm on laptop atm and I can never remember all the details. However I just thought I'd  mention that when I first tried iRacing on my old system I had exactly the same experiences and even with everything turned right down I still got very poor fps at many tracks, except as you say in training mode. I think iRacing has very long draw distances, in fact as long as a lap of whatever track you are on. At Brands Hatch you can see cars dropping in to Paddock Hill as you exit Druids and there are other tracks where cars are visible for even greater distances away from you. I think even though you may not be able to see the other cars, except at particular spots such as Druids, their graphics are still processed by the software just ready for when they pop in to view. I don't want to sound too discouraging but I gave up and didn't renew my subs until I'd upgraded. As I say I'll post the specs later. It isn't a top spec gaming rig but it does have a dual core processor and apart from tweaking some of the shadow settings it runs with full graphics everywhere no matter how many cars on track.

Ken, thanks a lot. I think you hit a nail on the head with the most probable reason why is this happening, and it makes perfect sense. I know from when I drove at Charlotte road, I could see cars passing at other sections of the track, which looked a bit new to me. I think they had to do that to get a realistic feeliing with big ovals and since this sim is aimed at hardcore sim racers, they simply assumed they would've had monster rigs to play with

I'm quite convinced anything else other than upgrade wouldn't help and since I enjoy the sim, I think its worthy of upgrading.

I'll post later some details of configuration I have my eye on, just to hear your thoughts.

Thanks all

Kruger

[Dave 'Gizmo' Gymer]

You can also play with LODPct in the renderer.ini file - I use it to try and boost frame rates on my triple screen setup. It does make cars in the distance look very odd (they turn into low polygon count boxes) but helps the FPS a bit.