OK guys, I hope that some one can assist. I NEED more frame rate if I am to progress further and not mess up other particularly on the start of a race (frame freeze).
To be honest I can see that many have gone before me with the same problem and many replies and suggestions have been posted. However I am still confused.

To assist I attach a spreadsheet with all of my details which I hope can lead to the provision of a solution. The attached excel file gives

• Task list
  
• LFS settings Shots of Grafics, Display and Misc
  
• Computer specs

If anyone can help I would be most appreciative
PLEASE bear in mind I am not exactly a “techie” so go easy and slow OK?

What kind of FPS are you getting now? After a quick look, the settings to disable wheels/trees/flags/rubber are hurting you. Setting them to mirror or all will increase your framerate. If you choose 'mirror' you'll still see them in front of you, choosing 'all' will totally disable them. Turning the 'multiplayer speedup option' on may also help a bit.

I get about 5 to 12 at the start of a race with about 4 or 5 other cars on track
This speeds up to about 25 or so particularly after the first bend
The best it get to (and this is with NO OTHER CARS about me) is around 25 to 27


Thaks for the help so far - please keep it coming

I have now set Flags etc. to ALL
and Multiplayer to on with Car Draw @112 and LOD @ 0.01
Will test this and advise

Go to the Misc menu and play with your "minimum sleep". If it's at '0', raise it a little bit and your gameplay may become a bit smoother. Go too high and it'll lower your FPS.

I have tested the sim with the 1st lot of adjustments and while it was not BAD I still have low frame rate on starts (get a bit of sound lag as well and gear change is sluggish - was like this before changes as well):eclipsee_
Had a good few car and was able to manage a bit better.
I will try the "sleep" options - which is currently set at 7
any other ideas -

PS - BIG thanks for the help so far

I would think that you should be getting way better than the frames you are saying with your specs and options. I see you say LFS is running in 640x480 for crying out loud. Two similar things that always kills my system for gaming is 1 - hardware accelleration in the graphics options (of windows) and 2 - sound accelleration in the sound option. The first one, hardware accell. for gfx is in the advanced window of the display properties. Go to usually the troubleshooting tab I think, and turn the slider down 1 notch. For the sound accell., go to Start->Run and type in dxdiag (it's where I know to do it. can't remember where in the sound options.) Anyway, click over to the sound tab once that opens up and you will see "Hardware sound Accelleration Level". Turn this slider down one notch and exit. After changing both of these, you may need to reboot the system to take effect.

I've always had to turn both of these down on any system I've had, be it onboard gfx/sound, or separate cards for either or both. My gfx card was a good bit outdated, so I don't know what the latest and greatest needs. It looks like you have a bit of an outdated card as well (GF5200?.)

*EDIT: I also notice z-buffer set at 24 in your LFS options. Try turning down to 16 to gain FPS. I'm not sure what that really does, but I imagine a smaller number would be better. Set "simple track" to "All" as well. And reset the resolution to 1024x768 in LFS as there is no way you should have to run lower than that. If you can't, then you still have problems and we all can continue to help you out. I wouldn't settle for running at any less than 1024x768.

One last thing, go get the "unofficial LFS benchmark" download and do all your testing with that. It basically shows how to data record your FPS stats with Fraps and allows you to tweak then test with the exact same replay so you see even the slightest increase or decrease of FPS. this is how I tested my new PC with changing graphics options and other settings to optimize my system for me.

Seconding the advice to run LFS Benchmark, there you can test under a controlled environment. Your FPS will be much lower there though, because it runs with the maximum amount of AI cars.

Anyways, no need to run 640x480, you should handle 1024x768 fine.

Misc
Multiplayer speedup should be turned on, dynamic lod recuction at max (1.0).

Graphics
Put the options to "mirror" or "all". I don't know about simple track but on my machine it actually makes LFS run slower, so I'd leave that off.

Track LOD reduction should be on.

Z-Buffer determines how many "depth" steps the graphics card knows. If you use less bits for depth information, far away textures/polygons may overlap and start flickering. You can try setting it to 16bit, shouldn't make that much of a difference though.


Finally, what ForceWare version are you using (GFX card drivers)? Maybe you need to update these.

As posted by mrodgers, turn down sound acceleration, i use basic acceleration (2 notches down) which actually gives a huge fps boost in situations where there'd be lots of sound sources.

If you have antialising or anisotropic filtering turned on in your graphics adapter configuration, turn them off. (control panel, display, advanced)

I've never noticed a single frame +/- from altering minimum sleep.

Err, are you sure that your CPU isnt overheating? P4s can "throttle down" when they are overheated... and it can cause a BIG peformance loose(greater than 2x slower). I had throttling problem also some time before... so i know what I am talking about. Do some temp measurements when playing.... any temp higher than 70 degrees is CRITICAL and you need to improve CPU cooling...

- Have you tried to unpack LFS to a clean directory?
- Do you have actual DX version(DX9c, Feb06 release - download form MS web)?
- Some drivers, are you sure there is no messy driver on your system?

and here is a list of tasks you can also close:
- MpfAgent.exe
- MpfTray.exe
- oascnlt.exe
- McVSEscn.exe
- MSKAgent.exe
- MCTskshd.exe
- PsPMPSv.exe
- McShield.exe
- Mcdetect.exe
- tfswctrl.exe

A lot of htese apps seems to me like se backgound virusscannres and protective utilities... maybe one of them came crazy when LFSing(such a theory)... you will not do bad when you do a test with these processes terminated...

EDIT: I have noticed that mrodgers suggested to ENABLE Simple Track. DONT do it... Enabling Simple Track can cause serious performance drop when HVS is enabled... and you also shouldnt disable hardware graphic acceleration in dxdiag, it will most likely not help you. Sound accel. should be reduced or completely turned off...

Quote from MadCatX :

EDIT: I have noticed that mrodgers suggested to ENABLE Simple Track. DONT do it... Enabling Simple Track can cause serious performance drop when HVS is enabled... and you also shouldnt disable hardware graphic acceleration in dxdiag, it will most likely not help you. Sound accel. should be reduced or completely turned off...

Why thank you for showing the error in the knowledge I thought I had. I always had Simple Track set at "all" and I turned it off. This combined with reducing Sound accelleration an additional notch gained me like 10 FPS with the LFS Benchmark replay using my cfg file. I managed to increase the resolution and increase the z-buffer from 16 to 24 and still had a slight increase in the benchmarking. Can't wait to check it out on the servers now .

FWIW, it's not any of the acceleration in dxdiag that I am talking about when I say hardware acceleration, meaning NOT the direct draw, direct3D, or AGP Texture acceleration (only the sound acceleration there of the sound tab). I'm talking in display properties (right click on desktop) on the settings tab. Then you go to advanced and the troubleshooting tab. There, you see Hardware Acceleration and I always click the slider down 1 notch.

OK guys, this is great - many thanks for the help so far.
I am trying out the suggestions made, and I THINK I am beginning so see some improvement.:eclipsee_
Just a couple of issues for ye

MADCATX
You suggest turning off antivirus.
Will than not cause problems for me? I suppose I am a bit paranoid about getting some virus on my machine as it has happened before (way back) and I lost a shed load of important stuff and now it’s a case of one bitten twice shy.
CPU overheating?
How would I check that exactly? given I am a bit of a dumb ass with all the hardware techie
DX version – will download the new one ASAP
How would I check for “messy drivers”?illepall

I haven’t completed the LFS benchmark testing as yet but will do:thumb3d:

Good on ya guys please keep it coming – I need to improve my starts for racing so that I stand a reasonable chance at the finish line.


LONG LIVE LIVE FOR SPEED AND THE GUYS ON THE FORUM:lfs:

The reason I suggested the LFS Benchmarking is not to see what you can do with the supplied min and max cfg files, but to test with your own configuration. That way, you could say, run it with your current gfx drivers then change the drivers and compare the results to see if you improve, degrade, or stay the same in performance. It is interesting to see what the min and max config would give you and compare to others, but checking FPS with the benchmarking when you are tweaking your own settings is great as it takes many variables out compared with just "noticing" what your FPS is when you jump back to multiplayer. Here's a quick example from my Fraps log testing out installing an extra stick of 512 ram but being slower ram than my 1 gig that came with the PC.

2006-02-04 18:50:41 - LFS Benchmark My cfg @ 1152x864 w/ stock 1gig PC3200
Frames: 2731 - Time: 103672ms - Avg: 26.342 - Min: 16 - Max: 45

2006-02-04 19:03:43 - LFS Benchmark My cfg @ 1152x864 w/ xtra 512 PC2100 added
Frames: 1811 - Time: 103515ms - Avg: 17.495 - Min: 11 - Max: 28

There's an interesting one I found. I had a stick of ram left from my old computer that was slower than my new computer's ram. But I thought it would still help out and boost me to 1.5 g ram, but I took a BIG hit in FPS by installing it (in the 3rd slot.)

:eclipsee_ :eclipsee_ UPDATE

OK guys, things are starting to get a bit better. I updated my drivers and changed a few of the settings that were suggested.

I just come off multiplayer and was getting about 50 during the race but better still was the fact that I has NO stutter at the start of the races .
To be honest I was that excited that I forgot all out checking the race but HEY it was fun.

On the subject of closing out background tasks – any further ideas bearing in mind my hesitation to drop the antivirus ? :banana:

Again LONG LIVE LIVE FOR SPEED

You could try http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php, to see your cpu temperature, it's always worked on any pc i've tried it on, very free and no ad/spyware.

About shutting down antivirus etc, i can't really see any reason at all to have virus scanners running all the time, firewalls yes, but to the best of my computer knowledge it would be very impossible to attain a computer virus "automatically", while for example playing a game.

If you feel like you need persistent scanners, have them running when you're surfing the net or installing programs etc.
Personally i just use the free online scans, housecall etc.

Once again many thanks for the help.
I am very pleased to advise that the steps taken so far would seem to have made an inprovement. At least with about 4 cars in a race I get 50 frames or so with at least 25 at the start.
Haven't had much time as yet to try out all the suggestions yet but fully intend to do so.
One server in particular made no real improvement at all - anf it had about 4 cars as well. Anyway - will advise further progreess as I get it