Np
It is ofcourse your money and decision. Congratulation to the new system and enjoy it. BTW if you would wait 1.5 month you could have iCore 5. Same fast, much less money but dont kill me for saying that now.

LFS will not benefit from SLI at all but other games will do for sure. The question is if you have good PSU to support it. I would buy some not cheapo 750W power supply to be really on the save side. Maybe you will need even more as I dont know what all your current system consist. for example if you have a lots of HD in your rig it can stress a system when powered because the HD take a lot from 12V when starting to spinning. Some people might be suprised how much it can be. Otherwise the HD does not consume so much power.

Quote from avih :

It's a bit hard to see the exact FPS since it changes so fast, but I'd say about 5% slower with the test shadows.

Interesting FPS observation: When looking from the last car forward (either cockpit view or behind-view), FPS is almost double (70-90% increase) than when looking from the front backwards toward the grid... even though on both cases the LOD setting is such that I can see all cars...

To see constant FPS number use FRAPS. Its more accurate in my view then LFS.

I have seen a lot of disprepencies of FPS in LFS which are puzzle to me and does not make a logic much unless there is something behind we dont know. For example looking at Start grid of AI in BL from TV view (LFS paused) the FPS are like 1/3 rd of when looking from first AI wheel view but the GPU usage is still the same and around 50 percent between both views. Not a much logic in this unfortunately.

Another example would be when LFS is paused and I am in the corner before the bridge at Westhill (offline game) the FPS goes higher when I turn virtual mirror on. Logically it should be opposite or its like that as the hardware must draw more information on screen. I found this odd behaviour in other places as well.

/the above is not based on the issue I meantioned in the other thread regarding differences of FPS between 2 OS systems and performance gain/loose between old and new hardware/

Other thing why LFS sometimes only stress some CPU&GPU only to 50 percent and the FPS are still low. I would be expecting the FPS drop due to the hardware not possible to cope with it not to be fully unused.

I am going to test the shadows performance gain/looses once I will be back at home.

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:59.

synthetic benchamrk does not always mirror the real perfomance. Are you playing benchmarks?

Games are what really matters here

As your motherboard support AMD3 why did you went the way to spent more money. Can you still hold the order?

What about AMD Phenom II X3 720BE. It has unlocked multiplier so you dont need to raise the FSB and it cost around 110-115 euro currently. What a performance for the money.

That is not always true. That mainly depend what games you play and at what resolution. That difference can be sometimes day and night. Especially the min FPS as 4870 has almost double the memory bandwitch thx to the DDR5 Rams.

However I respect the decistion made by Ashley. Its always about the money and personal preferences.

You should have bought this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... 1&catid=56&subcat=

or if you wanted to really save money and something simillar fast with less power usgae then:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... &catid=56&subcat=

Quote from SamH :

I didn't think I was being unfriendly and I wasn't trying to make an idiot out of you. I was just pointing out some facts. What I said about FPS is true, and I think that it's important not to obsess about things that don't make a difference.

Finding what is causing the drop in reported framerate is a worthy cause but I think it's very important to keep in context what the impact of the drop really is.. and a drop of 100fps from 500 to 400fps is genuinely not pivotal to the visual operation of LFS on a 2009 monitor. ANY monitor. That drop would be proportionate to my Celeron D dropping from 100fps to 80fps. Believe me, it drops a lot more than that sometimes.

Thanks for clearing that about your attitude. Written things can have sometimes more meaing unfortunately.

I think you did not read my last reply carefully also about the online FPS not improving otherwise you would still not repeat the 100-500 FPS thing.I dont want any heated discussion as this would be really pointelss and not hleping the things. I just reported the issue which I bealive might be LFS related. Thats all.

I think really good thing to start with would be to try in some test patch how behave the LFS with minimu sleep set at 0ms under the windows XP SP3 here. Just an idea sure there might be something else in LFS or it can be totally something different however nobody suggested anything what I did not try yet and would fix the issue.


EDIT: some suggestion came to me via PM about sound card and the respective drivers. Tried different drivers as well as to disable the sound card in bios. No change in windows XP SP3. The frame rates are still half compared to Win7 RC1. The offline play is something which really does not bother me but as the online FPS showing low under XP SP3. No gain against my old system.

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:23.

Quote from MijnWraak :

Obviously not, because an operating system is software and changing it doubled your FPS.

Well in a certain way you are right but why in other games I can simply see the difference while LFS failed to do so?

I would like to say that I rule out LFS to be causing the issue but no matter options I tried it simply did not work and no change with FPS in LFS with new system on Win XP SP3.

Quote from SamH :

Just to add to that, whatever framerate is being reported by LFS/FRAPS, the framerate being delivered to your eye is whatever Hz your monitor is running at. If your graphics card is cranking out 500fps but your monitor is running at 85Hz, then ONLY 85fps will pour out of your monitor. Anything FPS, in excess of the number of Hz, is just wasted cycles.

[edit] That also means that, unless you don't have frames locked to Hz, and have that ugly tearing going on (which nobody in their right mind would volunteer for), if you THINK you can see the difference between 400fps and 500fps, you're fooling yourself. BUT, if you're interested, I have some audio cables for sale, with carbo-goldium tipped connectors for £600, which will DOUBLE the quality of the audio out of your stereo.. and you'll definitely hear the difference!...

Sam,
from a moderator I would be expecting more friendly attitude - I really did not like the phrase about fooling myself and the cable part. Please stop trying to make an ididot from me. I had always respect for you being neutral all the time yet you had to dissapointed me .

I am not such a guys who dont understand things around the PC. Also you probably did not read all my reports/test I did above. As I said I really dont care if its 100 or 500FPS...whatsoever. I have read a lot of as well I know quite well and from my experience as well that I can not see difference between 60 FPS and more. My point was that for me it looks there is something buggy with LFS as my FPS went after upgrade with every game much higher while in LFS I got even a small decrease of perfomance which is suspicious.

Also I said my FPS in online went also with Win7 RC1 much higher(basically doubled at least) and that what really matters here. The problem is that it did not happend in Win XP SP3.

When I made the compersion especially in offline part of the game to rule out also CPU being fluctuated by any network glitches or what so ever.

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:26.

Quote from Stefani24 :

I don't know what it is, but I keep disconecting from servers, like all 5 minutes.
Worked on the same internet line before without any problems.
All that's running is skype, wlm, and steam, no other application that's connected to the internet.

Not sure if it is well known for you but Skype detects your internet connection and if it will analyze as a good one it can start using you as some kind of node for traffic. I guess this might be the issue. Also it might be very rare and random.

Skype is very well known from history for not doing really nice things.

I dont say this must be the issue with your disconnects but try it LFS online with Skype totally disabled and see what happens then. Not only to be logged of from skype.

that is when someone talks to you and you are in the middle of word and the continue....

I have to deeply laugh myself

What about if you disable the AA in your graphic card?
I think the low frames are mainly because your old 2.4Ghz penitum was even much slower then my AMD A64 2Ghz in my previous system. I have been strugling at start in races where was 20+ players. I could not run 20Ai at start at all with decent frame rates.

I think you can build easily a new system for around 300-350 pounds (new case,powersupply,motherboard,CPU,4Gb of ram and graphic card) which I consider living in UK should not be a problem to gather within few month.

You would be able to play then every new games and LFS would run as smooth as you currently cant imagine.

Quake 2

hold on.You need to unplug also the power cord from powersupply. I saw few times when someone screwed his motherboard by doing clear CMOS and leaveing the powerplug in powersupply.

Be aware some powersupplys does not have on/off button!!!

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:42.

Just for your info Danthe.
The CPU George suggested can make 500+ FPS on westhill with not very fast graphic card.

And I would rather save money month buy month and then buy it all because sometimes even between 2 month the prices might drop like 20 percent or more. Especially in case when new CPU/GPU generations are introduced.

I saw my mobo to fall down 10 Pounds just in 14 days!

All,
nice suggestions but I dont how to make it more clean that I ruled out software issues. I am not instllating PC hardware first time, I am actually builduing like every month at least one PC including software as well.

I had all latest drivers for mobo,CPU,graphic card. Also tried older version of graphic card.


EDIT: Scawen, please would you be able to look at this performance "issue" at some time? I fully understand that there are more important things on your list to do and these must be finished first. I think there is something really wrong with LFS and might cause issue with performance on some faster PC. Maybe this investigation could help to gain some more pefromance out of LFS. If you need anything more then let me know. As first idea I got the minimu sleep value to be tested with 0ms.

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:53.

I isad CnQ is disabled in windows as well in Bios and I never use other the high performance profile. Thats not the issue with windows XP.
As I said I tried to rule out all the possibility of the above odd perrfomance in XP by disabling every power saving features and simillar things.

Quote from Renku :

I think you are capable of understanding that Scawen has loads more important work to do than figuring out why you have 10% FPS drop! It's not like you can't play LFS @ 140FPS!

That was not my point or probably I did not make it clear.
Did you read my latest report re the Win 7 RC1 performance. My online FPS doubled at least. I was struggeling even with better computer.

Something looks simply not right to me. I was not complainig or whinigh about my FPS. The main point was that the new computer configuration being superiour to the old should give much better performance and not to leading to 10-15percent drop.

Just trying to help here.

Quote from Mango Juice :

A bit random, but Twitter would be a good way to update players on what is currently going on at regular intervals .

I dont use twitter and never did so far.
Not a good idea.

Hi Scawen & all,

You will not bealive but I tried just for curiosity to install Win7 RC1 and guess what. My FPS doubled on new system. So where I had at start on BL track like 160-170 FPS I have now 333 FPS and on some parts of the track even 400+ and some places almost 500!!! :eek:. Its insane but who really care if I can not see in reallity the difference between 60 or 500 but the more important thing my online FPS doubled as well!!!. I was sometime going to 30-40 FPS at start but now I am not moving below 100. I wanted nice smooth frames.

Now the puzzle is what is really causing the issue with better system being slow in LFS with XP. As I said several times other games run fine in XP SP3 and had huge boost in FPS with new system. Only LFS failed to do so. Any idea someone?

I dont think its the system it self but only two options in my view. Graphic driver or LFS itself.
However i tried different drivers and the odd performance drop or basically not gain at all was same using different drivers. I dont want to point to LFS but it looks like that.

Need to find now if my older wheel will work with Win7 RC1.

EDIT:
Found interesting behaviour of LFS in Win7 RC1 with enabling virtual mirror.
For example at BL start line when enabling the FPS drop from 330 to 260. At T1 without mirror the FPS is 427 while with mirror its 500. something weird is happening. Its always reproducable and also on other tracks. Tried westhill and same behaviour with those virtual mirrors.

EDIT 2:
Testing more...
Tried to install newer driver using windows update but got less LFS (10-15 percent) so reverted back to 8.56.1.13 version using rool back function under device manager.

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:12.

Did you check the pictures above I posted. You can see even IE running but the CPU usage is low. Of course I did most of the comparsion test even without anything then LFS running and switching off the antivirus software/firewall.

I am using same combination of software when I switch the hardware so I am pretty sure I rule out the software issue. Also as I said in other games I get significant boost. This seems to me really LFS related.

Well I know LFs cant use more then one CPU core, nothing new here but thanks for trying. Still your post does not answer all the above I have mentioned.

The above with HDD seems to have same pattern when CnQ thing that LFS is not enought stressing CPU and still keep it on my system at lowest power stage. All cores running at 800Mhz.
I guess this is however WinXP issue rather then LFS

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:26.

Thats what I have tried as well already and here are the results which I have tested on BL GP track again today with just 1 car(Ai):

When no afinity is set to specific core Task bar monitor is showing around 25 percent CPU usage. Core temp can be more specific showing individual core usage and it showing LFS jumping between the cores and one of the cores is always get basically unused(showing 0-5 percent usage).

Setting the afinity to just one of the core for LFS giving following results and something suprised me here today!!!. Even I set the afinity to 3rd core the following happend:

1st core still get used (why?) ; 2nd core is jumping between 0-5 percent ; 3rd core for which the afinity was choosed for LFS is showing 35-50 percent.
Same strange behaviour is happening when setting the afinity to just 1 of any of the cores. LFS is still using 2 core apparently and 1 is always left unused.

Also regarding the graphic card. There is no change in FPS if I change the AA/AF or resolution down or up. My monitor has possibility to go 1 step but streching the picture just to the middle. I wanted to mentioned about LCD because somebody might asking how is possible on 22"LCD which has native resolution 1680*1050 to go to 1900*1200. I can set for example lower resolution of 4:3 and my monitor is capable not to strech the picture just fill the screen to aspect ratio.

Seems something is holding up LFS on this new system but dunno what. As I described in every other games I got huge boost in FPS.
As I said its really strange the FPS are basically a bit lower. A64 comparing to Phenom II is much slower clock per clock and I have even 800Mhz more now. It looks from looking at the CPU usage that LFS is simply not able to enough use CPU power when the CPU usage never goes above 50-55 on this new system when afinity is set to just one of the cores. Isnt is the cause here the Minimum sleep set to 1ms and not allowing to change it to 0ms? Just an idea as I mentioned already. Sorry if I seems going in circles a but I feel a bit confused by this several strange behaviours and not able to narrow it to anything. Maybe Scawen would be able to find something by my reporting....hopefully. Not a big deal but maybe it would help to clean something in the code(possible bug) or even to dig more performance from LFS.


Also I dont bealive that LFS is drawing multiple frames. How would be possible then that Blackwood would be showing for me 120-230FPS from wheel view and Westhill up to 330. Another thing is why the FPS is jumping so much between both values and FPS behaviour does not change when I set resolution higher or lower. I would expecting as LFS seems not to be graphically limited on my card (I really dont bealive it is) that the FPS would be more steady.

Scawen,
did you start implementing some multithreading(even by something you did and you dont know that it might caused LFS going to multicore - sorry might be stupid questions/idea. Just trying really to find what is going on here) to LFS which might causing some of this strange behaviours.

EDIT:
One more notice. When I move the LFS down to desktop by ALT+TAB then LFS usuage get like max 12 percent only on 1 core and then rest of the cores jumping between 0-3 percents.As I understood the physic calculation still going on even LFS being moved to desktop as the Ai cars simply moving on the track. LFS cant even use single core CPU by more then 12 percent or I am missing something here?

When the LFS in full screen the usage goes much higher but still cant get over 55 percent even when afinity is set to just one of the cores. I am lost to be honest is it does not make sense to me all these things. Sorry if I sound stupid Scawen but I simply does see the reason why LFS can fully use CPU nor graphic card.

1st picture showing LFS usage when running in full screen or SHIFT+F4 and 2nd when I ALT+TAB LFS from full screen.
3rd picture is showing GPU usage on BL GP track with 6 Ai in 3 laps race. When it showing around 10 percent thats when I move LFS to desktop by ALT+TAB.

Just my observation not that it would have to be like that but looking at the pictures my self seems it seems something is not optimized.

Last edited by DEVIL 007, Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:11.

Quote from Trekkerfahrer :

try 16 bit resolution, mostly it helps with fraps <-> LFS issues

That change nothing.