The online racing simulator
Quote from Scawen :

At the moment it seems I am mainly seeing people saying things like:

"I have frame rate issues on Westhill"
"I have lower frame rate on all tracks"
"My computer has frame rate issues when in full screen"
"My laptop randomly goes into power saving mode"
"There is a lower frame rate when a lot of detail is visible"
"It is all good and running smoothly on my computer"


That happens when you ask for feedback. Everyone shares his opinion. Big grin

BTW i dont think that most complain. We found a bit weird the low FPS at few points of the track (while usually FPS are over 100) and thats all Smile
As promised here are print screens with my system requirements, places with critical descent FPS ( screen and sometimes sound lags)


I got intel HD graphics and Power Options in max performance. with msconfig i enable 4 processors(with 1,2,3 or 4 dont make a difference in LFS), disable unnecessary processes, desckpot windows classic and i use CCleaner alwyas before a open my LFS. my hard drive has 407 GB free.

It is not a supercomputer I know, but these places except I do not have a so drastic FPS drop, have a low fps (not always) but he is stable.
Attached images
fps1.jpg
fps2.jpg
fps3.jpg
meu sistema.jpg
Quote from cargame.nl :Now do the same in low texture quality mode, which is 3 times less in size then high texture mode.

That is low texture mode
@abone
You should really upgrade to windows 64-bit. As you can see from your system page, you are only able to utilize about half of your installed memory. With 64-bit windows, you can utilize all, less onboard graphic card use.

You should also check out your bios settings, and see if you can ramp up the cards dedicated Video memory a notch.
There are FPS drops and certainly coming out of that last corner onto the straight is a serious one. I measure 160->120fps = 25% drop. But it's not GPU related, it's CPU related. I think LFS runs a bit into the single core/thread limitation now. Or the CPU still is doing some stuff which should be the task of the GPU. I have no knowledge about this.
Quote from oleroc :@abone
You should really upgrade to windows 64-bit. As you can see from your system page, you are only able to utilize about half of your installed memory. With 64-bit windows, you can utilize all, less onboard graphic card use.

You should also check out your bios settings, and see if you can ramp up the cards dedicated Video memory a notch.

yes I know, I got this information before. I have my keyboard broken(now i use usb keyboard) and CD player does not work, it does not enter the bios by the normal method ( you if know more help me for open bios). I'm hoping some friends with more knowledge resolve this issue for formatting. memory is not the problem, but it would be good to use 100% of it Smile
Quote from cargame.nl :There are FPS drops and certainly coming out of that last corner onto the straight is a serious one. I measure 160->120fps = 25% drop. But it's not GPU related, it's CPU related. I think LFS runs a bit into the single core/thread limitation now. Or the CPU still is doing some stuff which should be the task of the GPU. I have no knowledge about this.

This Smile
@Abone
You only have a "Intel HD graphics", that is not a "real" graphics card.
It is just something built into the CPU so that the processor can act a bit like a graphics card. Means CPU has to do both, normal CPU-work AND graphics-works, it is not very good.
Even a very cheap graphic cards would probally make a big difference, not sure if it is possible to upgrade. (Is it a laptop?)
Those onboard graphics are never very powerful, it is more for office-work etc. One can not expect good performance for games without gfx card.
100% correct. If you have gaming in mind you always need to focus on a laptop (yes this is a laptop) with a separate real GPU. Even then you need to be careful what to choose but most laptops from 2008 with a dedicated GPU easily outperform this one from 2010. Although a lot of laptops have some sort of Nvidia variant which has the heat/reball problem. They "die" over time and the only way to revive them is by giving them a re-soldering process done by a professional. There are also some laptops with a MXM slot, then you can swap GPU cards without much problems (some laptops make a problem @BIOS. Be careful).

I wanted to start my earlier message like that until I discovered that he actually has a point. Also on machines with a lot more GPU power there is a FPS problem due to CPU not being properly utilized.
Quote from Gutholz :@Abone
You only have a "Intel HD graphics", that is not a "real" graphics card.
It is just something built into the CPU so that the processor can act a bit like a graphics card. Means CPU has to do both, normal CPU-work AND graphics-works, it is not very good.
Even a very cheap graphic cards would probally make a big difference, not sure if it is possible to upgrade. (Is it a laptop?)
Those onboard graphics are never very powerful, it is more for office-work etc. One can not expect good performance for games without gfx card.

Intel HD chips are actually pretty good as far as IGPs go. HD 3000 can run Left 4 Dead 2 which taxes the GPU far more than LFS ever could. Given the state of Abone's laptop by guess would be it's overheating and clocking down.

On a somewhat more generic note, I wonder if a lot of these reported FPS drops can be accounted to overheating and stuff. The new Westhill causes a far greater CPU load so maybe people with older systems and clogged up fans just see their CPU throttling down.
It comes down to:
Quote :most laptops from 2008 with a dedicated GPU easily outperform this one from 2010.

Worth noting is also that the integrated graphics do not run fully indepent from CPU (despite claims of some producers) and both slow down together..
Together with other tricks/effects like throttling down, the "numbers on paper" alone do not mean so much.

PS:
Some questions seem to repeat, like powersaving mode etc. Maybe something for FAQ.
Quote from MadCatX : The new Westhill causes a far greater CPU load so maybe people with older systems and clogged up fans just see their CPU throttling down.

Maybe, but the exact same happens lap after lap at the same spots (WE1 in this case). Didnt feel the need to analyze the complete environment in cruise mode but the principal is the same, for some reason the CPU needs to kick in quite heavy on some spots. Good noticable on laptops which are multi core but with a lower clock as their desktop counterparts. And with multiple screens it seems to get worser but I only did a short test with two screens.. (One with LFS full screen, other with Windows apps).
Quote from Gutholz :@Abone
You only have a "Intel HD graphics", that is not a "real" graphics card.
It is just something built into the CPU so that the processor can act a bit like a graphics card. Means CPU has to do both, normal CPU-work AND graphics-works, it is not very good.
Even a very cheap graphic cards would probally make a big difference, not sure if it is possible to upgrade. (Is it a laptop?)
Those onboard graphics are never very powerful, it is more for office-work etc. One can not expect good performance for games without gfx card.

You are wrong, As you can see in the printscreen my CPU is working very well(remains stable across the curve) a turn where FPS drops. maybe the problem is GPU. but I think every case is different and we are reporting problems we see in our system.correct me if I'm wrong.
Attached images
cpu lfs.jpg
No I am not wrong. Your CPU is dual core, 4 threads and while one part is completely busy the other part of the CPU is doing nothing.

25% is the max you can score concerning LFS because LFS uses only one thread. The problems are not @GPU. If you would have a GPU monitor you will see that the GPU load stays steady. But you cannot run a GPU analyzer because of crappy "GPU". Which is not a GPU, just a Media Accelerator. (Youtube and such).
Quote from cargame.nl :No I am not wrong. Your CPU is dual core, 4 threads and while one part is completely busy the other part of the CPU is doing nothing.

25% is the max you can score concerning LFS because LFS uses only one thread. The problems are not @GPU. If you would have a GPU monitor you will see that the GPU load stays steady. But you cannot run a GPU analyzer because of crappy "GPU". Which is not a GPU, just a Media Accelerator. (Youtube and such).

I do not I mentioned to you. interesting your explanation, thank you. you have way to use all the CPU without damaging my laptop?
I know you didn't quote me but I brought it into discussion Wink

And no, you cannot change anything so the CPU can get more utilized. It's up to Scawen to do this, if he sees reasons to put work into it. You can buy a newer generation CPU. Intel does do turbo boost on newer CPU generations for single thread applications (boosting clock speed on one core)... But, it's not the holy grail..
Quote from Abone :
Quote from cargame.nl :No I am not wrong. Your CPU is dual core, 4 threads and while one part is completely busy the other part of the CPU is doing nothing.

25% is the max you can score concerning LFS because LFS uses only one thread. The problems are not @GPU. If you would have a GPU monitor you will see that the GPU load stays steady. But you cannot run a GPU analyzer because of crappy "GPU". Which is not a GPU, just a Media Accelerator. (Youtube and such).

I do not I mentioned to you. interesting your explanation, thank you. you have way to use all the CPU without damaging my laptop?

You might want to get ThrottleStop and check the CPU clock while you're playing. Your CPU and GPU are on the same chip and if they're both working at full power, it might easily overheat and throttle down.
Quote from MadCatX :

You might want to get ThrottleStop and check the CPU clock while you're playing. Your CPU and GPU are on the same chip and if they're both working at full power, it might easily overheat and throttle down.

I tested and ThrottleStop dont make difference, it is not overheating stupidly (continued stable), the only changes that are lags in the 3 points I mentioned in westhill. i find information (in official site) about ThrottleStop and it can damage the computer's battery or other components, is not good for use i guess.
Quote from Scawen :
Quote from Papa :I average now like 30 FPS on WE1 with frames really jumping from 15-40 back and forth while going around the track (while still running LFS at 5760x1080 and full detail as before). Lowering all the details didn't really lead to significantly increased FPS (around 10-15 FPS maybe).

When switching to windowed mode I steadily gain ~100 FPS. So I went back to maxed out settings and run LFS having 100-160 FPS at WE1 in the largest possible window that spans over all three screens. While windowed mode is somewhat ugly, at least racing is possible again (regardless of graphic details).

Maybe also an option for other people who can live with these minor flaws. Or even a hint on what may be the problem here.

So you are saying that, in full screen mode on 3 screens you have a low frame rate, but with a large window extended to 3 screens, your frame rate is fine?

Exactly, in a large window I get high frame rates (~100-160) and in full screen mode the frame rate is low (~20-40). See also the attached screenshots.

Quote from Scawen :Which version of Windows are you using? On XP it was possible to go full screen on 3 monitors, but since XP, my understanding is that it isn't possible except by using special software (probably supplied by your graphics card manufacturer).

I am using Windows 7 (64-bit) and AMD Eyefinity for full screen on 3 (physical) monitors.

Quote from Papa :I will test whether I get the same results with one screen at 1920x1080 later this week.

Well, I tried now. As one could expect, the frame rate is pretty decent, no matter which settings I use in 1920x1080 (FPS always above 110, windowed and full screen). Still, the average frame rate is about 70-80 FPS higher and the maximum frame rate about 100 FPS higher when in windowed mode.

Quote from Scawen :Seems a bit like this:

Before 0.6H: "Why do you insist on making LFS run on a Casio wristwatch from the 1980s?"

After 0.6H: "OMG this is impossible, I don't have a Cray supercomputer!"

Sure enough, I'd never complain about increasing the level of detail in LFS. Why should I? But maybe my luxury problem is somewhat related to the problems people have when running LFS on (older) laptops (as I did for 7 years without any trouble, btw).

Cheers,
Dennis

PS: My system specs are: i5-3570K, 16 GB RAM, AMD Radeon 7950 Boost Clock 3GB, Win7-64bit
Attached images
full_screen.jpg
Windowed.jpg
Quote from Papa :
Quote from Scawen :
So you are saying that, in full screen mode on 3 screens you have a low frame rate, but with a large window extended to 3 screens, your frame rate is fine?

Exactly, in a large window I get high frame rates (~100-160) and in full screen mode the frame rate is low (~20-40). See also the attached screenshots.

Quote from Scawen :Which version of Windows are you using? On XP it was possible to go full screen on 3 monitors, but since XP, my understanding is that it isn't possible except by using special software (probably supplied by your graphics card manufacturer).

I am using Windows 7 (64-bit) and AMD Eyefinity for full screen on 3 (physical) monitors.

OK, that is intriguing.

Have you had any other problems (I mean when using other software, not LFS) with the frame rate of Eyefinity in full screen mode?

Am I right to assume that Eyefinity is only active in that one case - full screen on multiple monitors? And it is only in that case that there is a loss of frame rate? Could there be a problem with Eyefinity and DX9... something like that?

Sorry if I have missed you saying this, but have you tried with Antialiasing on/off and with Vertical Sync on/off?

To the other people, thanks for discussing / posting screenshots of the situations where you have a lower frame rate. I've been sorting out various other things (LFS and not LFS) but at some point I'll have a look at CPU usage in the drawing system and see if I can find any significant fixes or helpful optimisations at those points. I have to start by seeing what's taking the time and then considering if there are any easy or hard ways to improve it. But I can't really comment yet as I haven't studied it.
Quote from Scawen :Have you had any other problems (I mean when using other software, not LFS) with the frame rate of Eyefinity in full screen mode?

Well, I haven't really tried to run other games in a window when the frame rate was low since I didn't see any connection between full screen mode and low frame rate either, nor had I any FPS values for comparison like I have now with 0.6F and 0.6H.

Quote from Scawen :Am I right to assume that Eyefinity is only active in that one case - full screen on multiple monitors? And it is only in that case that there is a loss of frame rate? Could there be a problem with Eyefinity and DX9... something like that?

No, I switched between full screen mode and windowed mode while Eyefinity was active all the time (also when the screenshots were taken). When pressing Shift+F4 the frame rate increases/decreases by ~100 FPS instantaneously.

Quote from Scawen :Sorry if I have missed you saying this, but have you tried with Antialiasing on/off and with Vertical Sync on/off?

Not systematically. But my first try to get some "driveable" frame rate back was lowering all settings including AA to very low or even lowest values. The frame rate increased only by around 15-20 FPS. Not sure about toggling vertical sync on/off either. I might test it again though.
Quote from Papa :...

Exactly, in a large window I get high frame rates (~100-160) and in full screen mode the frame rate is low (~20-40). See also the attached screenshots. ...

BTW, when I zoom both screenshots on the tree + power lines ahead of car, it looks different. The fullscreen picture looks better antialiased and much smoother. Or are my old eyes playing tricks on me?

Try to see, if there's some AA setting in LFS to get the same quality in both window and fullscreen, then check the FPS difference again?
Quote from Papa :Not systematically. But my first try to get some "driveable" frame rate back was lowering all settings including AA to very low or even lowest values. The frame rate increased only by around 15-20 FPS. Not sure about toggling vertical sync on/off either. I might test it again though.

Vertical Sync looks like the smoking gun here, as it is turned off when in windowed mode (AFAIK it only works when the application has exclusive access to the display device, i.e. when it's full screen). Are all your monitors the same model or do you run a mix of different monitors? Are your monitors 75Hz by chance? It kinda looks like EyeFinity respectively your graphics card somehow fails to sync across your three monitors, which in non-triple-buffered applications would result in a framerate of roughly 75/2 = 37.5 fps, assuming it fails to sync and skips every second frame (might just be coincidence, though).

That said, I'm not sure if something like that is even supposed to work, since VSync basically synchronizes your application's rendering with the hardware refresh rate of the monitor, which seems kinda impossible if you have multiple pieces of hardware (that are not specifically built for this purpose), especially if they're connected via different connectors (DVI, HDMI, DP, etc.). Maybe you can define the main monitor it should sync for, though, no idea. Shrug

But even more important, are you sure this is caused by 0.6H? What does your fullscreen framerate look like in 0.6G?
Quote from AndroidXP :
Quote from Papa :Not systematically. But my first try to get some "driveable" frame rate back was lowering all settings including AA to very low or even lowest values. The frame rate increased only by around 15-20 FPS. Not sure about toggling vertical sync on/off either. I might test it again though.

Vertical Sync looks like the smoking gun here, as it is turned off when in windowed mode (AFAIK it only works when the application has exclusive access to the display device, i.e. when it's full screen). Are all your monitors the same model or do you run a mix of different monitors? Are your monitors 75Hz by chance? It kinda looks like EyeFinity respectively your graphics card somehow fails to sync across your three monitors, which in non-triple-buffered applications would result in a framerate of roughly 75/2 = 37.5 fps, assuming it fails to sync and skips every second frame (might just be coincidence, though).

That said, I'm not sure if something like that is even supposed to work, since VSync basically synchronizes your application's rendering with the hardware refresh rate of the monitor, which seems kinda impossible if you have multiple pieces of hardware (that are not specifically built for this purpose), especially if they're connected via different connectors (DVI, HDMI, DP, etc.). Maybe you can define the main monitor it should sync for, though, no idea. Shrug

But even more important, are you sure this is caused by 0.6H? What does your fullscreen framerate look like in 0.6G?

I am using 3 60Hz monitors of the same kind which are connected via DVI and MiniDP(-to-DVI using active adapters). This setup has been working perfectly for two years including LFS until 0.6H with stable frame rates of at least 80 FPS.

At times I even ran a LFS dedicated server and TS Server in windows on a separate fourth screen which was also driven by the same graphics card via HDMI without trouble (FPS dropping to 60-70 maybe). I didn't change any in-game settings either until I ran into the discussed problems trying out 0.6H and the new WE1 for the first time.

Anyway, I will look at VSync and AA settings again.
Quote from Papa :No, I switched between full screen mode and windowed mode while Eyefinity was active all the time (also when the screenshots were taken). When pressing Shift+F4 the frame rate increases/decreases by ~100 FPS instantaneously.

But what does it mean, for Eyefinity to be active? Is it doing anything when you are not in full screen? Or is it just running there idle, waiting for you to go full screen? I know from my dual monitor setup that a large window on an extended desktop works OK in Windows 7 without any additional software (usable and with good frame rate though it doesn't look very nice). So this is why I am asking if Eyefinity is really doing anything in that case.

This reminds me of my old grumble about how annoying it is that MS removed the capability that XP had, to go full screen on multiple monitors. To use a dual monitor I used to simply go full screen in the relevant mode. Now, with Windows 7, I have to use a window and not go full screen. Although I have on my notes to look into coding for a new borderless window mode. And also I see there is external software available to run games in borderless windows. http://westechsolutions.net/sites/WindowedBorderlessGaming/

Quote from Papa :Anyway, I will look at VSync and AA settings again.

That will be good to know.
This thread is closed

New Westhill racing environment - 0.6H
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