I don't think the 9550 is a helluva lot faster than GF4 you have, probably not worth the money, if you can, you should really try to get at least a 9600 to make the upgrade worthwhile. If you can't find a 9600 for a decent price then the 9550 you listed will be ok for you.
256 more ram will really really help too
don't get an nvidia, they are quite a bit slower in LFS, don't listen to nvidia fans, I have an nvidia and have had ati's too. In fact I think my friend went from a 9550 to 6600 and while it was faster in every other game, it was slower in lfs. Checkout the lfs benchmark to confirm this.
I have found the framerate jumps around a lot more with X10, I found it got worse with X as well.
Before X, I would get constant framerates of around 110fps, now it's all over the place, down to 50, up to 140+ etc. With patch X, it almost stopped a few times - ~8fps :0 and others have reported that as well.
I don't know if this is a lag issue, cpu or gfx but it would be great if it was sorted in the next patch, it really does affect online racing.
Turn 9/10, the chicane before the start finish straight
Turn 2 , the fast right hander
Turn 6, the second slow hairpin
To get a faster laptime, work on these corners.
Turn 9/10 you must use a lot of kerb and not induce tc TC.
Turn 2 you must carry as much speed as possible, you don't brake, just lift
Turn 6 you must take the line which allows you to get the power down as early as possible
Make sure are you on the white line heading towards a corner, then touching the apex of every corner and touch the white line again on the exit.
hth
No, I'm not joking, your processor is totally different, as I've said about 3 times now and NikLaw, it is far better at lfs than a p4. go to lfsbench and see for yourself, and benchmark your system while you're at it so you can make real comparisions with other peoples systems, apple for apple like.
You can even see my p4 extreme results for yourself if you go back a few versions, my P4 Extreme did ~60fps but with a horrible min fps of 38.
My Pentium-m does > 90 fps with a minimum of 57 and that's the key, the miniumum framerate, almost double the P4's minimum and about the same as the P4 's AVERAGE :0
The P-m runs at 2.8, the p4 was at 3.4, clock speed means nothing unless comparing identical processor models.
Oh btw, frost_more, if you have an asus P4.... motherboard you can get close to Core2 performance by installing an adapter and a pentium-m chip, again look at lfsbench ok, I'm spent.
You are getting lots of conflicting advice, seriously, go to the lfs benchmark and do some research. I'm afraid the processor is about as bad as they come, I used to have a 3.4Ghz Extreme edition Pentium 4 and it was still rubbish.
That's partly to do with how the AMD handles lfs. The minimum framerate is probably 30, very close to the average.
The pentiums peak and dip a lot more, meaning you might get 30fps average but it sometime goes up to 45, sometimes down to 15, which isn't good at the first corner of WE1 : )
Also as I said, everyone's idea of good is different. 30fps seems almost like a slideshow to me as I'm used to 100fps.
If you want to get higher fps, the thing to do is to run the lfs benchmark so you can compare your system to others properly, then you can make informed decisions about what hardware is needed.
PERSONALLY, I think an average of over 70 on the benchmark is acceptable but you can change detail levels in game and everyones idea of good is different.
You can see from the benchmark that cpu power is what is needed. AMD systems are the best value for money but intel rules the top spots. AMD graphics are the fastest with lfs. Having said that, i've got and intel and an nvidia and still have >90fps average.
Generally speaking for lfs.
Core2 > AMD > Pentium 4.
Pentium 4 really does suffer in lfs nowadays
Frost_more: If you get a gfx card, your cpu will be a terrible bottleneck, you aren't going to know for sure until you install it but I think as long as you are currently playing in 1024x768 with no aa or af, you wont see much increase in performance. The crucial thing is that the cpu will still cause the same MINIMUM framerate which for gaming is all important.
Thats a big fat no from me. I think realistic damage ie stress related damage and breakages are far more important as are probably loads of other physics stuff.
If you hit those kinda barriers I think your race is normally over anyway.
you are a very annoying petty little man. I can't remember the last time you posted anything friendly. If you don't undestand what I'm taking about I suggest you simply ignore it.
Your sound issues could be the driver for your sound card. Is it working ok with other games?
I'm not sure LFS supports Vista. I know there are tonnes of problems with Vista and gaming (have nvidia released GA drivers yet???), I think the best way forwards is to maintain an XP installation for gaming and all the other stuff that doesn't work on Vista currently!!
I recently got a new Dell laptop and had to uninstall most of the Dell preload software as it didn't work on Vista, even though the machine came with Vista pre-loaded too, for example, the Dell wireless utility was stopping the wireless working : )
Probably both been requested before so consider these a +1 to them
1. We need to ability to create folders for setups to keep them organised. I would like to have a folder per track so I can keep them separate. Also, allow longer setup names. Or as a few posts down, allow notes to be made with setups.
2. I would love it if the track would rubber-in over the course of the race so that there is a proper 'dirty' and 'grippy' part of the track, this could be enhanced with marbles.
The great thing about lfs is there isn't the ability to create cars and tracks, it just ruins online play.
An extra developer would be cool but I think finding one good enough would be tough! A dedicated track designer perhaps, some of the tracks are amazing in lfs but we need more epic tracks for the bf1 like we1. More elevation changes and corners like turn 8 at turkey etc etc