Hi,

Im not techincal so apologies in advance

I recently installed S2 and find that when there are many cars around me (especially on single player) the screen freezes/unfreezes and I end up in a wall.

I have the following spec:

Fujitsu Amilo
Processor: AMD Turion(tm) 64 x2 Mobile Technology TL-60 2.00 GHz
RAM: 2815 MB
System: 32 bit
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G

Can anyone suggest what the problem might be?

Cheers

How much fps are you getting? It think its on (on the top left of the screen) by default. If you're seeing the time - press ctrl+shift to see fps.

In options>graphics

Are you using full screen antialiasing? Try lower the setting or turning it off completly (just to see if that plays a major part)

Same goes for Texture filtering / AF: go lower or [none]

Try "low res" for Textures.

This kind of laptop should handle LFS quite easily if you disable AA and AF like Silverracer said. Also make sure you're not running on battery while playing and that there are no power saving features enabled.

Im getting between 60 and 80, is that good or bad?

Thanks for the help, much appreciated

Not bad. Is that before the changes?

You can see how various gfx settings affect the fps. In single player I'm getting 70 and this would drastically fall if I tried max settings for AA and AF.

Mind you, with lower settings you can get like 150-200 (or even more) FPS with LFS, but your laptop monitor would be limited to less than that (mine is 60).

Yep thats before the changes. Now I know I'll play around with the settings, good to know I dont need to buy a new machine, cheers everyone

Have played around and still no better to be honest. On multiplayer with 8 cars the fps drops to around 15 when in traffic and the problem started again even with AA and AF both off. With no traffic its around 80 and no issues.

Any ideas as to how to avoid this or is it common?

Cheers

It's much more likely the problem is being caused by the weak CPU rather than the GPU. Did you read MadCatX's first post in this thread?

Isn't Turion 64 x2 roughly comparable to core2duo? I have a 2.26 GHz c2d and have no CPU performance problems of note. Lower shadow quality and resolution (I use 1280x720), right after you've first reduced AA and AF. Then start increasing one setting at a time until you get a nice balance.

Turion is in no way comparable to Core2, but it is still poweful enough to run the game just fine. Problem might be that some power saving option might prevent the CPU from running at full power which would definitely cause huge performace drop...

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

Isn't Turion 64 x2 roughly comparable to core2duo? I have a 2.26 GHz c2d and have no CPU performance problems of note.

Yes, depending on exact models, it could give comparable performance to the C2D models clock for clock. However, considering LFS only utilises one core, neither are that good for LFS performance. Sure, managing expectations with regards to graphics settings is going to help out, but it's worthwhile managing overall expectations too. You're not going to get a totally smooth framerate out of these chips in LFS with a reasonable number of cars close by, even on very low graphics settings.

I don't think so, I've had a chance to see a Turion powered laptop in action and when utilizing one core only it was about as fast as P4E@3,5 GHz which runs LFS at decent speed with adequate details settings (adequate != somewhat reduced). Now it would be a good idea to check if you CPU runs at full speed and if it's properly cooled.

Quote from MadCatX :

I don't think so, I've had a chance to see a Turion powered laptop in action and when utilizing one core only it was about as fast as P4E@3,5 GHz which runs LFS at decent speed with adequate details settings (adequate != somewhat reduced).

The problem, though, is that with a system that's struggling to maintain a good framerate in optimal conditions (which, in multiplayer LFS, means few cars in the session and none of them near you) it's inevitably going to dip into inconsistent performance when things get 'less optimal'. Some people are quite sensitive at detecting changes in framerates, so they perceive even small, momentary drops and they get disturbed by them. Others can copy fairly well with a system that's struggling along slightly.

Quote from MadCatX :

I don't think so, I've had a chance to see a Turion powered laptop in action and when utilizing one core only it was about as fast as P4E@3,5 GHz which runs LFS at decent speed with adequate details settings (adequate != somewhat reduced). Now it would be a good idea to check if you CPU runs at full speed and if it's properly cooled.

How can i check if the CPU is running at full speed and properly cooled? Apologies if this is a very basic question.

Ok I seemed you have resolved the problems, thanks to everyone for their help

Quote from Blue Badger :

Ok I seemed you have resolved the problems, thanks to everyone for their help

Do you know how you solved the problem? If so, would you mind sharing with us?