Check power saving options, try turning off the feature that shuts down screen after some amount of inactivity. It shouldn't happen while you have game running but you never know, try and see if it has any effect.

Nice, what are the odds of that happening, rotate camera just a little in any direction or reposition the car on the backround and it's gone.

Quote from hazaky :

Thanks alot for the info and site. Was helpful. Anyways, i guess that ill go with the Club 3D HD 4870 1GB OC - good price for me and it fits in my case well, reference doesnt fit. And i havnt heard that Club 3D is that bad - yet. Because i just got my money today and i just have to make my desicion.

Differences between brands are mostly down to cooler choises and bundled software. However, check what's the price for standard version of that card, overclocked versions are usually quite expensive considering increase in performance is barely noticeable.

Quote from hazaky :

... But, are there any facts that i should know when going on ATI card? many people are talking that there are bunch of them. Catalyst bugs or something like that and so on.

ATI drivers were pretty bad during 2000-2002 with the launch of Radeon series, even installer menu on driver cd looked like it was made by 4 year old in MS Paint and had typos.

As for PSU, 500w is well enough for your system, checking few reviews across the internet for that particular card shows that even with fast quad core the system overall power consumption peaks just under 300W

Little bit of reading about the subject:
Xbit labs: PC Power Consumption: How Many Watts Do We Need?

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Please, this is the real world...not everything is perfect. If you have a car with 450bhp you're going to let it loose from time to time on the way to work....

When I just got my licence, I probably would have and occasionally did stupid stuff behind the wheel. But sooner you realise that it's just not you out there and there's nothing cool about taking risks on public roads, better driver you will be.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

You don't buy a car with 450bhp to drive at the speedlimit, unless your car just happens to be some sort of Limousine. You buy a Ferrari (Lambo/Aston/Porsche, etc) to drive it in some sort of the manner it's designed to driven in..

...in a place suited for that kind of driving, racetrack.

Quote from morpha :

Well it's not that simple either. A more powerful car still has the edge in terms of acceleration even within the speed limits. A more powerful car, especially RWD, can get out of control at very low speeds with an unexperienced or simply stupid driver behind the wheel, though that's not at all limited to young people. A very powerful car will in almost all situations be a more dangerous car to drive, same goes for underpowered heaps of junk too though.

On daily driving, acceleration difference between 100hp and 200hp car is meaningless, neither car will be used to their full potential although latter is probably much nicer to drive due to higher torque. In a city traffic, you'll hardly ever need to use more than half-throttle anyways.

If car gets out of control due to driver's stupidity, is it really car's fault then for doing what driver asked it to do? Things usually get out of control when driver does something without thinking what will be the consequence of that action, simple errors like smashing throttle to the floor in middle of a corner usually results in a spin or understeer of the road and yet those drivers will tell you that; "duude, it just went totally out of control, dunno what happend".

Quote from Migz :

Well im not a driver so i dont know what dangers there are. But for one, if someone pulled out infront of you on an extremely narrow road with nowhere else then your more likely to slam into the side of that car if you had a more powerful car, as you'll be going faster.

There are speedlimits in place and they are equal to all, no matter how powerful car you have. Having powerful car doesn't mean that you're allowed to go faster and anyone who thinks like that shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel at all.

Quote from mrodgers :

Here's the kicker.... That "horrid heavy gas guzzling SUV" gets 22-24 mpg. The economical and gas sipping car? ......22-24 mpg.

In your example SUV is 1000 pounds heavier and requires more energy to move. I'm not sure in what universe your example is taking place.

Although, I have to say that 22mpg sounds pretty bad for SUV, but "economical and gas sipping car" would have to have hole in the fueltank to reach that bad mileage, most new familycars have ~40mpg.

If you want to save cash, pick a car that isn't too popular amongst gullible teens who are willing to pay for pile of turd if it has the right badge on it. Heavily modified car isn't very good idea either, unless you know how to fix it when something eventually breaks down.

Snow is not something that you should be too bothered about when choosing a car, any car will do and it's more down to tires with good studs than car itself.

Quote from Doorman :

And therein lies the basic problem. If you want to race the Solstice, Skippy or Spec Racer out of choice you'll never get to drive anywhere else except...stock tracks.

That's not entirely true, there seems to be small changes in season schedules. For an example Skip Barber race series seems to now run twice on Sebring while LRP Chicane configuration has been dropped from schedule. Also Mazda serie will be visiting Road Atlanta next week, I'm pretty sure that's a new track since I haven't had to buy it before.

1. Maserati GranTurismo
2. Ferrari F40
3. Ferrari FXX
4. Lotus Elise
5. Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione
6. Saab 99
7. Wiesmann Roadster MF4
8. Pagani Zonda F
9. Lamborghini Miura

Can't come up with 10th...

Edit: Looks like I'm not the only one who fell in love with FXX after watching latest episode of Top Gear

Last edited by Crommi, Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:29.

Just a quick question; Everyone keeps repeating how it's a huge improvement over Vista, but all I can really notice is just new UI. Performance seems identical, compatibility with old programs is identical... so what is it then?

That's what the licence system is here for, it automatically weeds out drivers who are not able to drive safely and prevents them from getting into higher series. There's no resets either, which means crashing out will completely destroy your SR since you won't be able to reset and then cruise around trying to get laps in for lowering "corners per incident" ratio for that race.

Reckless driving and/or dangerous driving can also be protested and I'd highly encourage you to do so.

Quote from Gabkicks :

any news on when the mustang/corvette will be released? the TDi is supposed to be released in september at start of season, iirc.

Jetta will be coming for Season 3 and Corvette seems to be very near completion so my guess would be Season 4 or first season of 2010. Fords are probably very much work-in-progress since they were announced only short while ago.

Quote from FooAtari :

Less brakes, more speed through the corner That was the biggest thing I noticed watching others, you can carry a lot of speed through the corners.

It's not that simple, not braking enough will also slow you down but being able to brake deeper into corner will usually help. But first and foremost one should focus on getting consistent laptimes without spinning or crashing, from licence level C and above there is no resets.

Skippy and Spec Racer are valuable learning tools, they can sometimes be a handful but they're fairly forgiving when pushed over the limit and you have plenty of time to do correction. Mazda and Radical are little bit different, while they do have a lot more grip, they require much more precise driving to go fast and far quicker recovery when gone beyond the limit.

Mazda + Milwaukee combo has been kind to me once again, it's been far too long since I've had a victory but today everything went just right. I have to say that winning feels so much better when you've been fighting for it through out the whole race, on road courses that doesn't always happen because gaps get fairly large.

Anyways, looking forward to next week on Silverstone, I remember enjoying that track as it's quite high speed circuit with good overtaking oppoturnities.

Quote from The Moose :

Yup, its a well known issue with the G25. Anyone who says they don't have this 'deadzone' on their G25 hasn't tried a DFGT. Try them one after the other,then you'll really notice the difference around the centre.

Point being, deadzone is less than 1 degree. It's not really noticeable in normal driving but driving over rumblestrips or rough piece of tarmac makes it obvious. Still, it's definately not 30 degrees and that just sounds like broken wheel.

Quote from amp88 :

Am I the only one who thinks this looks like an obese version of the normal Scirocco?

Have to agree with you there, front looks pretty good and somewhat aggressive but rear is "meh", just round and bloated. I guess it's pedestrian safety thing, no sharp looking things as they might hurt sensitive people.

Quote from kingfag :

Other than disk brakes, i don't see much inventions that were made by the car racing industry.

You're over simplifying things, it's definately true that aerodynamics research began on airplanes, but it without racing industry we probably wouldn't have everyday cars with very low drag and advanced underbody aerodynamics that create downforce in high speeds to stabilize the car.

Same deal with 4WD, that development really took off once it was introduced in rally cars.

Insulting/criticizing someone of different racial heritage is not racism, it's just a weak comeback caused by lack of testicular fortitude. ("stupid" is not racial trait, it's very common amongst all races)

Here's a funny Radical set I found from forums. I think name says it all

One crash does not ruin your rating, don't worry about it. If it was caused by reckless driving, go ahead and file a protest too. Blame-game is pointless because clean racer will end up with low incidents/race average even if he ends up being victim couple times.

That's true, car detail is ok but graphics engine does not support advanced shaders and now is not the time for it, forums are already full of whining on how long it has taken with Scirocco. Then you'd also have massive protests when someone's ancient computer can no longer run the game at 100fps.

Quote from hansonator69 :

Simply just increase the full scene anti aliasing and it would look smooth enuff.

No, anti-aliasing does not tesselate the geometry to create smoother surfaces.

Last edited by Crommi, Fri, 8 May 2009 13:35.

Adding edge loops or camfer will help to tighten up edges when using smoothing modifiers.

One crash doesn't ruin your safety rating, incident points you collect just by doing silly mistakes will eventually heavily outweight those you get because of others.