When racing alone, I can get 40-80 fps. When on a full grid in multiplayer, 10-20 in the start and down to 6-7 in some first corners like Blackwood GP. Once I get some clear track it's 30-50 even with all the others still racing elsewhere on the track. Right now I have an XP 1700 and Geforce 3 Ti200. All LODs are minimum, LOD dynamic reduction is max, trees&flags off, low res shadows, 1024x768x32, no AA/AF, cockpit view with mirrors. I want to at least get the lowest possible fps into a playable range without spending a lot.

Changing to wheels view gets me an extra 10 fps on race starts but first corner at BL GP is still 6-7. Lowering resolution to 800x600 doesn't help. I'm thinking maybe there's too many polys for my current graphics card to cope but I'm not sure. Does LFS do more physics work when there are more cars nearby or is it the same wherever they are on the track?

Your processor is too slow.

try 16bit, albeit i don´t think it´ll help that much...
can you extend your ram? 1gig should be not to much money, unless you need pc133 sdram, as they are harder to find nowaddays.
next thing i would upgrade is the graphics card, don´t know if you got any money?
the last thing i would upgrade is cpu and motherboard, since it is already the fastest component of your setup.
as far as ingame tweaking or windows tweaking, try the latest nvidia drivers, see if they can help - if not look in forums for the best driver for geforce3 (can be detonator 44.03 i think). also check your motherboard and sound drivers, maybe upgrade them aswell.
ingame try things like the haze effect on/off, texture filter off, vsync off, and have a look at the difference between frame limit on/off. also turn the sky off and watch if it does any good.

peace mo

Quote from cannonfodder :

When racing alone, I can get 40-80 fps. When on a full grid in multiplayer, 10-20 in the start and down to 6-7 in some first corners like Blackwood GP.

Logic suggests that your CPU is falling behind when there's more cars to calculate physics for (more cars in view), try pausing a replay of a full grid and look at the difference in fps, that difference is probably close to the amount of fps sucked away by physics calculations.

..increase your dynamic lod all the way

I made a replay of a near full grid race at BL GP. Watching the replay netted me about a 2-3 fps gain compared to when I was driving. I topped out at about 50-55 when alone and 10 at the slowest point. This was right after turn 1, where I spun backwards. However, I found that switching from cockpit to wheels only view netted about 20 more fps, meaning I was hoviering around 70 on the back straight. When close to another car or two, my fps would stay at 25-35 but in wheels only at 45-50. Even at the slowest point it was about 22, a full 12 more fps. Is this conclusive enough evidence of the limiting factor?

I don't want to reduce the visuals any further, and I can't race without cockpit & steering wheel in view. I can spend about $100-150 on an upgrade, preferably as little as possible. I'll be happy with 30-40 fps at the slowest points.

Quote from XCNuse :

..increase your dynamic lod all the way

Did you read my first post?

so tell us more about your pc: how much ram? what type of motherboard? how much ram banks are free? this infos are needed to determine which upgrades are technically possible. then we can look whats the best you can get for your $.

peace mo

6-7 FPS at turn 1 in Blackwood? Hell, I get that with my Pentium III. illepall

I think it's not a matter of hardware, it's a matter of your graphic options.

256MB PC2100 DDR, ECS KM400-M2 motherboard. 2 ram slots, supports up to PC2700. 8x AGP slot.

With the difference in performance with and without the cockpit, is it safe to say the limiter isn't the CPU?

Quote from cannonfodder :

With the difference in performance with and without the cockpit, is it safe to say the limiter isn't the CPU?

cannonfodder, I had very similar issues on my old pc, P4 2.5 with 512 ram and onboard graphics. Near cars, FPS was crap. Starts were completely unplayable, I forced myself to start in the rear. I ran in wheels view to help but hated it (saw like a 20 fps difference wheels vs. cockpit view). I bought a new gfx card, though I only had old pci option. It was a cheap radeon 9250 256 mb card. It made a difference of being rough still in wheels view to being totally playable in cockpit view, even at the starts. Still wasn't great because it was still a crap card, but was a huge difference.

My opinion from my experience is the graphics card.

FWIW, that PC fried the motherboard or chip (not sure) and I put that card in a Celeron 667. My daughter and I play S2_Q networked and that PC gets like 30-35 FPS (though only with 2 of us and maybe an AI car running my new PC as the "server").

Hope that helps.

since the cockpit is a graphical thing that doesn´t need that much pysical calculation, i think its clearly the geforce thats bottlenecking here (along with the small ram).
my advice would be to buy another 256mb of ram, or buy one 512mb ram and have a better upgrade possibility to 1gig. that would set you back around 50$. then i would recommend to upgrade the graphics card. since agp systems are comming to an end, maybe you can get some used gear of a mate. then i would recommend looking for something like the original radeon 9800pro, or a 9600 / 9550 with 128ram. don´t go below that (e.g. 7500). don`t buy a geforce 4 or fx, but if you find a cheap 6800 you are good. that would be anywhere between 50 and 150$. depending on a new or used buy.
btw your mobo supports up to sempron 2800+ with real 2ghz and a core that is very similar to the athlon64, but don´t just upgrade the cpu as it will get to fast for a harmonic system.

peace mo

Quote from cannonfodder :

256MB PC2100 DDR, ECS KM400-M2 motherboard. 2 ram slots, supports up to PC2700. 8x AGP slot.

With the difference in performance with and without the cockpit, is it safe to say the limiter isn't the CPU?

Hi i have the same mother board, I use 768mb, 9250 ati radeon 128mb 64bit card my processer only runs at 1.6g but i have no probs with it my internet conection is cable 2m. also i have my frame frate at 30fps works fine for me no laging runs nice and smooth.!

Thanks for the advice guys. I've been able to find an Apollo 6800 card, but the reviews are mixed on reliability. The only others available are more expensive 6800 GS or lower end 6200 cards. Could I still expect a significant improvement with a 6200?

Now that we have migrated more to the topic of gfx cards, I have a question about selecting one.

When I'm ready for a card (single income and raising a family, more important stuff to spend $$ on), my main spec will be price. Now I was looking and it looks like the cheapest decent card will be a 6600GT in the $130 range (USD).

So, my question is as I look at cards around that cost, what specs should I be looking at? I'm assuming core clock, memory clock and bits rate. Which is more important and are there recommended specs? Of course I'll assume dx9 only and most are anyways anymore. Some other specs to look at?? I don't know anything about the other specs. I see most memory clock speeds around 1000 MHz, but core speeds seem to vary quite a bit. I've seen down to 350 and as high as 600 (usually on more than 6600GT). Is core clock extremely important? or just semi important? Same with other specs.

Good luck cannonfodder. I'm going to look up the card you're talking about.

Quote from cannonfodder :

Thanks for the advice guys. I've been able to find an Apollo 6800 card, but the reviews are mixed on reliability. The only others available are more expensive 6800 GS or lower end 6200 cards. Could I still expect a significant improvement with a 6200?

NO, NO, Dont stuck on upgrading your GFX. GS6800 will SLEEP while you are LFSing. The only thing that is really used from GFX in LFS are Hardware Vertex Shaders(or HVS). GF3 series already has support for HVS.

So what would I reccomend you?

1) Get Sempron 2500+ CPU(checked your MoBo on the net, should support it)
2) Install 512MB of DDR2700(333MHz) RAM modules - the old 266MHz ones will slow your system down by 15-20%
3) After this, check if the HVS are enabled in LFS Graphic settings, you can also turn down Z-Buffer to 16

If your fps are still low, then you can think about buying a new graphics card, but getting a GF6800 to system powered by Athlon 1700+ with 256MB RAM sounds to me like adding a Nitrous to VW Beetle

I have a simular problem to this dudes, racing by my self i get between 80 - 130 fps depending on graphic options (aa etc) as soon as theres cars on track it starts dropping rapidly, full grid i get barely 20 fps :/.
AMD 64 2700, 512meg pc2700 ram, asus n6800. :/ I think it might be the ram slowing things down, but I thought I would get good fps all round with this set up.

i used to have a similar setup to that except it was an xp1800, it would struggle in 1024 res in most games when the action got intense

Quote from fragile_dog :

I have a simular problem to this dudes, racing by my self i get between 80 - 130 fps depending on graphic options (aa etc) as soon as theres cars on track it starts dropping rapidly, full grid i get barely 20 fps :/.
AMD 64 2700, 512meg pc2700 ram, asus n6800. :/ I think it might be the ram slowing things down, but I thought I would get good fps all round with this set up.

I find it really hard to believe your RAM could eat 60 fps, is your fps still that low if you pause a replay on a full grid start, hop into shift-u camera and look around at all the cars?

Quote from fragile_dog :

I have a simular problem to this dudes, racing by my self i get between 80 - 130 fps depending on graphic options (aa etc) as soon as theres cars on track it starts dropping rapidly, full grid i get barely 20 fps :/.
AMD 64 2700, 512meg pc2700 ram, asus n6800. :/ I think it might be the ram slowing things down, but I thought I would get good fps all round with this set up.

Try to disable sound acceleration in dxdiag, might help in some cases.

To be fair, your whole system is rather low powered for lfs.

lfs is normally cpu bound, check out the unofficial lfs benchmark, you'll see that cpu is the most important thing.

Running with all those low detail settings, I expect your graphics card is ok, but I cannot be sure. I suspect that you probably need to upgrade both to get a decent frame rate.

512mb is totally fine for lfs.

Quote from filur :

I find it really hard to believe your RAM could eat 60 fps, is your fps still that low if you pause a replay on a full grid start, hop into shift-u camera and look around at all the cars?

Yep.... No aa or af i get 150 and above, look at a full grid it drops to 40fps. Unpaused and it drops lower down to 17 fps at times :/.

Madcat: no doesn't help :/.

southhamptonfc: I wouldn't of said it was low powered for lfs, seems to run most modern games quite well. I would of said its mid range :P but then thats me. No chance of upgrading in the near future, only recently got this gfx card.

edit: its actualy a 2800 cpu, and im running xtreame-g forceware drivers with the gfx card.

sorry, I was replying to the original question by cannonfodder. Your system is quite a lot more powerful

Quote from fragile_dog :

Yep.... No aa or af i get 150 and above, look at a full grid it drops to 40fps. Unpaused and it drops lower down to 17 fps at times :/.

Madcat: no doesn't help :/.

edit: its actualy a 2800 cpu, and im running xtreame-g forceware drivers with the gfx card.

Huh, strange.... your comp is just good enough for LFS, maybe there is some background process running... try to do a test with 3DMark05 or 06, it has system info that can be easily saved and posted here. The point of it is that a part the 3DMarks system info checkes what processes are running on your system.... there might be something that slows LFS down.

Also, SHIFT+N disables sound in LFS, check what difference does sound on/off....

I had unusually bad fps, this was caused by simple track setting, you should turn this off and test if it helps

I have quite a lot of experiences with FPS count as I started initally on Athlon(K7)1.2Ghz+GF2mx400 to ATI8500 to A643200+@2.4Ghz to A64320+@2.4Ghz + GF6600.

To be honest there was hardly any difference(+-2-3FPS) in FPS count between ATI 8500 to GF6600 except I could add tress and using 4xAA+16AF on GF6600.

With such a setup I have on every track + max number of cars and being last in pole no less then 45-50FPS at start and during races mostly around 80-200FPS.

LFS is really very CPU hungry and if you have something like ATI8500 and up(please dont count integrated solutions + ATI9000,ATI9100,ATIx1300) or GF4200 and up(again dont count integrated solutions + NVDIA GF4MX,GF6200,GF6500) then you are fine.
Having powerfull CPU(AMD A64 is best solution) will give you really nice benefit especially at start.The most worst situation is when there is many cars around.Its not due to graphic mostly but due to phisics calculated.Its very complex model.

EDIT:all in 1024*768 resolution.