Mine is slowly dying. I installed it about a month or so ago, and have only spend few hours with it. Last time I booted to Win 7, start menu died. It would pop up, but wasn't functional.

I won't be touching Win 7 again until there is a service pack release.

Quote from amp88 :

If you run this FurMark benchmark...

It's still fun though, especially when enough ppl uses such tools. I've done benchmarks in 3DMark as well for same reason, but at the end of the day I don't value such benchmarks as much as real world apps.

In my case I prefer to do my tests in the apps and games I use. I still have LFS Patch W because I've been using replays from that for benchmarking whenever I upgraded hardware. I defo need to jump ship to "start over" with recent version of LFS, to get more realistic/optimized results though - but these tests are ofcause not comparable with others, since they are unique to me.

I also don't like reviews with hardcore and up to date games being used exclusively to benchmark performance, because more than often (too many IMO) those reviews doesn't tell about how a GPU performs under normal conditions.

Forinstance, my 8800 GTS did an OK job panning 10k images using latest version of ACDsee. But my GTX 295 is being choppy about it. Overall it's smoother at pushing 2D around, but this just gets interrupted too much. It was worse when I tried the first few drivers. Could still be a driver thing. Could be the software (some have claimed the board performs a lot better on 64 bit because you can then have more mem available to you) - but would have been nice if reviewers did casual usage tests as well. They may not be as exciting but screw that. GTX 295 doesn't come cheap and ppl are too quick to jump onboard the FPS boat yelling, omg a gazillion FPS \o/

The irony here is that I didn't solely purchase GTX 295 because of hardcore gaming, but because of my large monitor. I want smoothness when working in PS, dragging stuff, panning etc etc., but so far it hasn't really been impressive on the 2D area. I would probably have stayed with the 8800 if I had known about this back then

Thanks for all the replies

Quote from amp88 :

I remember you telling me when I was getting ready to help out with adminning the MoE race from SO4 last season too. You were the first person to tell me you could open the temp.mpr file while you were still connected a server if you opened another instance of LFS. I can't remember the exact number you said you were using but it was at least 3.

Oh wow, really been that long? Time has been flying

Quote from CasseBent :

I just tried with only 2 instances, and I can't get above 30 fps. Granted, it's not a super system, but E8500@3500 mhz. XP SP3, I don't think I've ever been able to open more than one instance without it being slow.

3500 is faster freq pr. core than my previous CPU, so you should be doing better - you wouldn't be able to run as many as on a quad, but 2 really should be nothing for it IMO.

Quote from R.Kolz :

Longshot. Try this:

1. Start LFS ( here it will be in windowed mode ).
2. Shift-F4 to make it fullscreen.
3. CTRL-ALT-DEL.
4. repeat step 1. to 3. as many times as you want to.
5. Shift-F4 to, one by one, get the games back into windowed mode.

Not sure it will help you issue here but this is the only way to even be able to start LFS more then twice with my PC or, without step 2, I´ll be stuck with a black LFS game, using 100% CPU.

The formation lap of yesterdays IGCT race I´m able to with 10-25 FPS with 3xLFS, CPU load, my limiting factor, is just under 100%, P4M 2.2 Ghz, No AA/AF -Res. 2148x1150 - GF6800. XP.

I can't do that. ctrl+alt+del bring up the Windows Security popup, from where you can log off, restart, start task manager etc.

And if I change to desktop (win+d), LFS just minimizes and whenever I click on it, it goes back to fullscreen.

I believe that is the normal behavior, and running it in windowed mode is no problem for me (it was a single or two Windows installations ago, but still not much).

CPU:

See the attached cpu_idle.gif - the graph shows my computer idling for 30 secs. During this time, CPU load ranged between 0 and 0.77%. The 1.15% occurred just when I hit Print Screen button - could be a coincidence. Maybe not. But it's low enough to not really matter. The idling was also performed while all my normal apps were running, meaning: I didn't close any app or service to increase performance. Same is true for all the benchmarking I've done so far.

cpu_4_instances.jpg - this one shows CPU load during the benchmark run with 4 LFS instances running. The load isn't alarmingly high.

Quote from SparkyDave :

Do you still get bad fps when you run additional LFS at resized windows?

Like in the attached pic?

SD.

EDIT: After re reading the posts I would suspect an issue with the GTX295 Drivers.

Running in 640 res windowed mode gives me slightly better performance, but I'd say it's marginal:

2 instances, windowed:
Frames: 2072 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 69.067 - Min: 32 - Max: 137
Frames: 2169 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 72.300 - Min: 32 - Max: 144

I don't know why the second run peaked - my CPU isn't throttling.

4 instances, windowed:
Frames: 814 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 27.133 - Min: 11 - Max: 69
Frames: 847 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 28.233 - Min: 10 - Max: 70

Quote from morpha :

I gave this a go and found something interesting: On my 4870X2 in windowed mode, VSync was enforced, but instead of limiting each window to 60fps (60hz), it kept scaling down. 2 windows á 30 fps, 3 windows á 20 fps, 4 windows á 15 fps and so on, so the cumulative framerate could not be higher than 60 fps. I then switched Aero off (I'm on Win7) and ...
(see attachement)
9 instances running 60-ish fps, only problem then was that I ran low on RAM which caused severe slowdowns and even complete stops occasionally when writing to disk

€: img is a bit too wide ;p

I've noticed something odd with LFS Vsync as well, but haven't looked too much into it, so it could be me really. LFS AA isn't as good as Nvidia AA, and I therefore only use AA and Vsync from Nvidia soft.

Quote from george_tsiros :

Yeah, you said so already that you have an intel cpu and an nvidia card :P

/flame ON XD
(j/k)

Give me your address please, so I can send you a "gift"

Quote from george_tsiros :

Just drop the graphics requirements man. you really need 1280xwhatever?

It's not lfs's fault, it could be a combination of OS/drivers/hardware that manifests itself as a problem under these circumstances

Nah, I don't really need 1280 res, but that was for test purposes. Also, most above-average gfx boards are usually completely oblivious to resolutions that "low". LFS prefers CPU over GPU, so it should matter even less - anyways, my test with 640 res above shows there's not much to gain with lower resolution.


I'm also beginning to suspect my gfx driver to be the cause, even though it doesn't make much sense - I'll try with different driver(s) later. Can't afford doing that kind of experimentation atm.

Quote from JasonJ :

How do you connect 9 times to one server? You have 9 s2 licences?

As zeugnimod said: you don't need multiple licenses to watch a replay - and the really cool thing about that is that LFS saves a temp replay which it then later deletes or saves depending on what you want LFS to do. This temp replay can be watched without ever having to leave the server (but you need to view it from a different LFS instance). In the end you get one full race replay because you didn't have to leave the server, you don't annoy drivers by constantly leaving and joining and it's just overall faster and better to do it like this - or so it should be.

The lack of FPS is the least of my problems - not that is't not any problem at all. the bigger problem is the halt/crawl state my computer enters.

Quote from george_tsiros :

seems to me it scales nicely

with twice the workload, it renders, at average, more than half the frames...

try setting a maximum fps of 60.

Sure, seems logical, but it isn't from the earlier experiences I have. Would help if I had numbers from back then, but fact still is that I was able to use 4-5 without problems, and now I'm having huge pain in the butt just by running 2 instances - only proof of that I have, is that I was telling DWB some months ago about how cool it is to do so.

FPS limit: 58
Frames: 1245 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 41.500 - Min: 24 - Max: 58

FPS limit: 30:
Frames: 892 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 29.733 - Min: 26 - Max: 31
Frames: 895 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 29.833 - Min: 27 - Max: 31

Quote from CasseBent :

can I just ask what monitor you have, with that resolution?

Sure, I'm using a 30 inch HP LP3065


Edit @ george_tsiros: See, you can do it well. Something is way wrong with my system

Last edited by r4ptor, Sun 26 Jul 2009, 10:32.

Quote from amp88 :

Score: 234 o3Marks

But how?

^^ and not to forgot, to place a fixed cam on certain turns and pit exit, to see if ppl are making poo poo.

Did some tests on Win 7 64 bit - yaya, 32bit soft running on 64 bit, but:

2 instances, windowed
Frames: 3707 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 123.567 - Min: 51 - Max: 237

1 instance, windowed
Frames: 4455 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 148.500 - Min: 54 - Max: 335

1 instance, fullscreen
Frames: 5054 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 168.467 - Min: 55 - Max: 398

1 instance, fullscreen - compatability mode: XP SP3
Frames: 4983 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 166.100 - Min: 54 - Max: 398

Beside OS, driver version is different, and some Nvidia settings are different (but those shouldn't affect fps).

Running 2 times LFS gives my loads of gfx glitches, but I'm not too concerned about that, as Win 7 build 7100 blows.

Other apps ran perfectly well, unlike on XP.

I posted a FurMark result here - did that on XP 32 bit:
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1221832#post1221832

Same test on Win 7: 3639 o3Marks
Executed in XP SP3 compatability mode: 3647 o3Marks

No concrete conclusion can be drawn from this, other than XP should be performing better.

I'm annoyed :|

I recently purchased a Q9550 (OC @ 3.8GHz) and Nvidia GTX 295.
Before that I had a Q6600 (OC @ 3.2GHz and Nvidia 8800 GTS.

Before the upgrade:
I was able to run 4-5 instances of LFS (very handy when marshalling races) without too much hassle. 5-6 instances would be too much (less than 30fps). Using other apps (browser, mIRC, MSN etc. was somewhat fair/normal).

After the upgrade:
Running just 2 instances "kills" the PC. Frame rate drops by a lot and programs/windows gets drawn slowly and typically takes 2-5 secs to update/draw the app.

Assigning a core to each LFS instance doesn't help at all.

I've tried different GFX board settings, but nothing helps.

Some benchies (best LFS quality + 16xAA and AF using NVidia software) :

2 instances, windowed @ 1280*800
Frames: 2779 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 92.633 - Min: 30 - Max: 212

1 instance, windowed @ 1280*800
Frames: 4752 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 158.400 - Min: 71 - Max: 300

1 instance, fullscreen @ 2560x1600:
Frames: 4651 - Time: 30000ms - Avg: 155.033 - Min: 68 - Max: 302

Benchmarked virtually same thing (+/- 0.2 sec).

It's been ages since I was down at 30fps, and although I was aware of poorer performance on older games due to newer architecture on GTX 295, I didn't expect this.

Any ideas/suggestions?

Quote from pit3k :

Car Numbers: #33 and #37

Lap 3, Sector 1, before Turn 1

Our car #33 passing car #37. We were in front and were side-hit from behind by car #37, which caused a spin of car #33.

It is our judgment that your driver (ZION Team) caused the incident himself either because of lack of situational awareness, and/or lack of respect for being close to another car.

DT penalty to #33

Quote from CrAZySkyPimp :

Car Numbers:#03 and #02

Lap/Time: Lap 1 sector 1

Description of incident: Car nr 02 braking very late hitting our car 03 in the back putting him off track loosing tons of positions.

DT penalty to #02 CoRe Racing for causing an avoidable contact.

You are better off with a bumpmap vs. what you currently have. Bump maps are far from sufficient in closeups and flat angles, but for a numberplate it should do just fine.

Displacement mapping is overkill, and can also have the side effect of looking "pixelated". You could compensate by creating a even larger map to be displaced, and refine the displacement quality. The numberplate is a pretty small area so one could argue the extra geometry doesn't really matter. But it is still a messy solution for clean shapes like characters.

I suggest you create the characters with a bold font and then bevel the edges. You may not need to make them bold though. That depends on how your bevel tool works.

Then move the geometry so only the front faces and the front-most bevels are visible and you can delete the rest if you want to.

This will give you great results since the bevel will pick up highlights.

I did those in modo, but almost any somewhat good renderer can produce similar results.

The über thing, and also the curse of PC's, is that you can have a wide variety of different hardware and software mixed together, which unfortunately can affect performance and stability. But on top of that, Win7 is brand new - too new to expect all software to run smoothly on it.

I've installed Win7 RC1 64bit on a different drive to test it out. Starting LFS results in a prompt BSOD. w00t w00t? I've learned (Google is a good mentor) that it's either my anti-virus or firewall app causing this. Can't remember right now, I just go and disable them both and then LFS works perfectly - how much sense does that make?

I have other issues of well, all reminding me of my old principal about never to change OS until there is at least one service pack release for it. I'm just too eiger these days to jump onto the 64bit wagon, and XP 64bit is supposedly just a big nono

iCry

Quote from XCNuse :

Hah, I did that for a while trying to prove how 1337 I was at rendering with my 1 minute render times and no lighting up had a shadow under the car.. it looks terrible lol!

uploaded an example; this render was done by me 4 years ago
those were bad times in my life lol

But I did mention that I tried to do a simple render (by that I meant the style, not the scene setup). The comments about plastic look etc. are misplaced.

Most renders we have here are simple scenes, where the true power of indirect lighting isn't being fully expressed. If you for example used a couple of filler lights in your example scene, I'd bet that the result would be very close to a GI render (unless you overdo GI to obtain color bleeding - but would be a style, not realism) - when I use indirect lighting, I do it because I'm too lazy to setup traditional lights. But in that particular case it was because of a particular look I tried to aim for... and as said, still need to work on it, sure. It's not easy to make renders of these days do "false" gradients and shading etc.

Black border pics + copy/paste = retired humor.

Quote from hyntty :

Besides, everybody understands German don't they?

I live right next to Germany, but even being that close doesn't mean I understand a word of it :P

lol ^^

Quote from chelsea 003 :

Could someone do mine pleasee :P

I hope you like this one.

Been playing GRID?

You can't do that in LFS. You'll have to start "all over".

A having-a-break-from-work render.

Grats with the anniversary

Aren't the ingame hotkeys (shift+f4 and shift+f9 - f12) sufficient enough for this?

Anyways, you can create a .bat file to have LFS run with different settings. I do this to clear the chat keys when I race in leagues. I don't know if LFS can be pointed to specific cfg files, so what I'm doing, is simply renaming them.

I'll be doing further testing with this style to make it better, but I'm not interested in good vector looks:
http://homepage3.nifty.com/highside/pict/rawlings-l.jpg

A tad too good

Quote from XCNuse :

imo would make for an awesome poster image, but for a picture there isn't enough.. or any GI to speak of, also as stated the tire material isn't very good, no texture to it, looks like plastic.

Go away. I'm boycotting GI for now

Last edited by r4ptor, Tue 7 Jul 2009, 19:47.

Quote from Shadowww :

Can I has 1680x1050, please?

You can has

Felt like doing a simplified/vector gfx-ish render.