The online racing simulator
#26 - wien
Quote from KROM :This the case with me also.

I've seen a lot of people report the same thing. Must be a driver issue...
#27 - avih
Quote from wien :I've seen a lot of people report the same thing. Must be a driver issue...

Or bad initialization on LFS part...
Heck, if that trick really does work, LFS can automatically switch window/full-screen on start and improve the perforamnce..?
Given even a remotely recent video card (GF4 and up, Radeon 8500 and up), my experience has been that minimum framerate in LFS is always, without exception, limited by the CPU.
#29 - J.B.
Quote from KROM :(Ridiculous performance trick - if you switch to windowed mode (shift+F4) and then back to full screen your FPS could nearly double - at least they do for me)

This the case with me also.

Isn't that just loss of AA/AF due to crappy drivers? When I had Nvidia I used to have this.
Quote from Forbin :Given even a remotely recent video card (GF4 and up, Radeon 8500 and up), my experience has been that minimum framerate in LFS is always, without exception, limited by the CPU.

I agree with that. Anything above 6800 Ultra / x800 XT, or maybe even slower cards can run LFS fine when details maxxed, and the minimum FPS (that matters when aiming for smooth experience) after that is dependant on CPU.
#31 - Jakg
Quote from avih :Heck, if that trick really does work, LFS can automatically switch window/full-screen on start and improve the perforamnce..?

It only works for some people which suggests more of a driver issue tbh.
#32 - avih
Quote from J.B. :Isn't that just loss of AA/AF due to crappy drivers? When I had Nvidia I used to have this.

If that's true, then anyone gaining noticeable FPS from this should turn off these filters IMHO, because it's the GPU that limits the frame rate on such cases.
#33 - KROM
I lose no AA or AF, both still work after a windowed and back, sometimes it take a few trys to get it to recover the frames.

The AA works fine (I can tell for sure it's working)
The AF is also working as you can clearly see it making the near to medium texture as sharp as it can , and no fuzzy point just off in the distance.

So they must be working, .......also if I turn them off, it looks very different.

This game doesn't stand a chance when it comes to over loading my graphics cards , the thought of it makes me laugh, if anything I should be looking at getting higher texture packs and adding as many graphics based effects as I can.

Is there a texture pack out with all the tracks in one zip?
Whats the best texture pack?


Start game = just driving around a few other cars round you = 120-170fps fullsetting AA16 AF16
After F4 Trick = same cars round me = 170 -250fps looks the same.

Start of a race full A.I grid of 19 me at the back - 38- 45fps full details AA16 AF16
start of race after the trick = 55fps - 80fps (depending on track and car). same settings.

And it looks no different to pre-trick?.

I think theres a small memory leak also, as over a few hours performance slows a little. the more I make my cards do, the better it runs.



Who going to bet with me on whether I get better performance with better textures, I'm saying I will.

Any help on the texture pack to use would be cool, I took a look at some threads and it seemed like theres just people doing one or maybe two tracks, is there a full texture replacement for tracks?.
#34 - J.B.
Ok, so it's not the old AA/AF problem. Strange issue.

avih, as long as you use no AA/AF you should get roughly a double fps boost with a modern CPU, even though only one core is supported. With AA/AF I think your GPU will become the limiting factor.
#35 - avih
Ok, a short update.

I've replaced my aged FX5600 Ultra 128M with a 7600GS 512M AGP. There's a VERY noticable improvement. On the back of the grid (multiplayer) I can now get 30-40 FPS and in race I've seen more than 110 fps and if I limit it to 60 (my refresh rate), it almost never gets lower than 60, except on the grid and other crowded situations. That's with 1920x1200 resolution but with very little filtering.

So there you go. Athlon XP 2500+ can cope with LFS very well as long as it's accopmanied with a reasonably modern GPU.

Hope it helps
Quote from avih :Ok, a short update.

I've replaced my aged FX5600 Ultra 128M with a 7600GS 512M AGP. There's a VERY noticable improvement. On the back of the grid (multiplayer) I can now get 30-40 FPS and in race I've seen more than 110 fps and if I limit it to 60 (my refresh rate), it almost never gets lower than 60, except on the grid and other crowded situations. That's with 1920x1200 resolution but with very little filtering.

So there you go. Athlon XP 2500+ can cope with LFS very well as long as it's accopmanied with a reasonably modern GPU.

Hope it helps

Wow. Are you sure you don't have something faster in there? That sounds more like my FX-62, lol...
I gotta say WOW myself, those are incredible frame rates for that cpu. I mean, once you hit like 100fps, for most people, it's the cpu runnin away with it, I didn't even get that with my old athlon64 3700.
#38 - avih
Quote from Stang70Fastback :Wow. Are you sure you don't have something faster in there? That sounds more like my FX-62, lol...

yah AXP 2500+, no OC or other tweaks. An A7N8X-X ASUS bord and Kingmax 1G ram which wasn't state of the art even when I bought it few years ago. Seems to do the trick.

Quote from DHRammstein :I gotta say WOW myself, those are incredible frame rates for that cpu. I mean, once you hit like 100fps, for most people, it's the cpu runnin away with it, I didn't even get that with my old athlon64 3700.

I thought so too. But (i.e.) at the aston national backstraight I get consistent ~115 FPS on every lap.

Talking about breathing some fresh air to an older system
#39 - avih
I thought I should revive this thread for the sake of more info for people who might need it.

The time has come, I've replaced my system. The new one is based on E8400 Core2Duo 3GHz (P43), GTX260+ and 4G@800MHz RAM (3.3G actual, still on XP32/SP3). Even though it has a nice OC potential, the system runs at stock everything, cool and very quiet.

Using the same LFS settings as my previous post, I can now get 150-300 FPS, and usually more than 200.

When I max all the settings (16xQ FSAA via the driver, X16 AF, best LOD- had to check the manual for that, no MP speedup, high res shadows, paths, etc), I get around 80-90 at the back of a large grid and 150-200+ most of the time during the rest of the game.

When not testing, I use vsync and limit the FPS to 70 and I get a consistent 60 FPS without ever dropping a frame. Nice

LFS' CPU usage is 20%-35%, and about 25% most of the time. It does seem to use both cores though (Using Z15 patch and latest NVidia drivers), although not completely symmetrically. One core is about 20%-30% and the other about 20%-45%. I'd say it's good enough.

As suggested by my previous and current benchmarks, LFS would cope way more than enough with much weaker CPU than E8400 (X3 weaker probably), and I think that a decent GPU is contributing more. Still, at its current state, I guess GF8800 (or equivalent) would be enough for very high visual settings at very good frame rates.

Only problem with my current system is that I now started playing Grid once in a while (great fun! very dumbed down physics yet still feels great), and it completely destroyed my LFS skills... My FZR just keeps spinning and overheating the tires!

Die Grid Die!
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(Shadowww) DELETED by Shadowww
The thing with cpu usage on more than 1 core when running LFS is the fact that Windows is still running while you play the game.... Theres the Audio Service, Network Service, Plug n Play and all the other services and drivers that make up Windows OS that still has to run to keep the system live... Thats what shows usage on other cores while running LFS or other single threaded apps...
#41 - avih
I don't think so. At least not to that degree. On idle my cpu is 1-2%. Same goes when listening to music etc. Not a chance the extra windows stuff takes 20-30%. My guess is that if not LFS directly, it's the GFX driver which is multi core aware. Also, on the processes list, except for LFS, all other processes together don't consume more than 2% (as in most 0%, 1 or 2 at max 1%).
Idk, when i play LFS patch v or Unreal 1 i still get high usage on both cores... When playing games theres all the 3d audio drivers and gfx APis loaded and running to let the game work... Due to most functions not running direct on hardware then windows has to be the man in the middle...

I also dont think the biggest svchost shows its cpu usage at all.. When running sevices loaded into it, it still doesnt show usage in Task manager, Even tho it has high i/o operations all the time...

Also, when playing LFS i get about 40-50% total usage for the whole computer in Task Manager, tho the cpu gauge will show over 90% on 1 cpu and 40-50 on another... which is roughly 70-80% total usage...
Interesting reading this thread, however when I shift F4 to windowed and back I dont get any change in FPS at all

It has been said before LFS relies heavy on the CPU for high fps with big grids, but newer CPUs will always out perform older ones even at the same clock speeds, because when the jumps in die sizes happen, they don't just shrink the chip, they completely redisign it, trying to make it more efficent each time. Even a intel quad (lets say 2.0Ghz) with 3 cores dissabled will outperform a P4 2.0Ghz in every situation.

This is also why you can't compare AMD with Intel by clock speeds alone.

Excellent system upgrade Avih nice to see you can run at higher gfx settings now

SD.
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