Hello,

When I start playing LFS I usually have 100+ FPS (I refer to 100 because it's the deffault limit) but sometimes after a while the FPS are dramatically drop between 50-60 and then 20-30.
My hardware is:
CPU:Intel core 2 quad Q6600 2.4GHz
Graphics card:nvidia gts 250 1gb
Running windows 7 64 bit

PS.There's no overheat problem.


If somenone could help me I would appreciate it a lot

How did you make sure that it is not an overheating problem? This sounds a lot like it. Another possibility is some background task like antivirus scanner which might start doing funny things when you don't want it to

50-60 is just perfect (i prefer vSynced 60fps anyway) if u have a monitor that is on 60Hz. But if it drops lower then its crap. Anyways, ill second the question MadCatX asked - how are u so sure about that?

Open task manager, go to "Perfomance" and then start lfs, play a bit and when it drops down - see the graphs and watch if theres any weird drop offs or maybe the CPU maxxes out (not sure, it may max out on lfs only too, dont know). Also, make sure u got nvidia control panel set up correctly.

I just wanted to start a thread like this, because I have similar problem
All this time everything was kinda fine, but now I'm noticed that FPS critically drops to 30fps, 20fps and even less.
Can't even talk about some 20people or even more on start line, when fps just hilariously drops to 4 or 8 fps
And even if it's heating, why the same happens on lowest graphic settings ?
And why this doesn't happen in other games with even higher graphic requirements ?

Well I checked the temprature before playing lfs and while playing and there's no difference.The temperature is about 38-40 Celsious.
I have closed all the backround programms but nothing changed(I don't use any antivirus programm).Finally the CPU is not facing any problem during lfs I have checked that.
About the nvidia control, panel I have done some adjustments but I don't know which are the best.
Could you tell me which things I should change?
As feat said why this don't happen in games with higher requirments?

Something that I didn't mentioned before is that my FPS aren't steady they're running up and down the values i refered to before.

hi,

we've had a simular problem on one pc.
The pc was simply to fast for LFS. So the processor was running only at ~30% and the powermanagement was clocking down the processor. This causis that it was to slow. Maybe it can help to switch of powermanagement.

hope it will help you
papax

Quote from Leonid@s :

I don't use any antivirus programm

Maybe THAT is the PROBLEM. You PC may be virus nest, and they could slow your PC reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly much. Especially if you have some Trojans. Get AVG 9 Free and Ad-Aware. They can find anything. Scan and give us report.

Quote from Leonid@s :

Well I checked the temprature before playing lfs and while playing and there's no difference.The temperature is about 38-40 Celsious.

What program do you use to monitor the temperature? I find it highly unlikely that the CPU temp would be the same no matter if your CPU is loaded or idling. Unless you have some crazy cooling system, I'd expect your CPU to heat up to some 60°C when playing. Are you sure you checked the right temperature reading?

Quote from Leonid@s :

I have closed all the backround programms but nothing changed(I don't use any antivirus programm).Finally the CPU is not facing any problem during lfs I have checked that.

As matijapkc pointed out, running windows with no antivirus protection is not a good idea. Get some antivirus tools and do a scan. Avira Antivirus and Spybot S&D always did the job for me.

Quote from Leonid@s :

About the nvidia control, panel I have done some adjustments but I don't know which are the best.
Could you tell me which things I should change?

Your graphics card is powerful enough to run LFS at any settings you could possibly change in nV CP, so I don't think there is a problem there.

Quote from Leonid@s :

As feat said why this don't happen in games with higher requirments?

LFS is VERY CPU intensive game, much more than you'd expect. Most modern games rely mainly on the graphics card, so your CPU might not be stressed enough to overheat and throttle down when you play other games.

There is a utility called "RightMark CPU Clock Utility" which can tell you if your CPU is throttling down. Getting it working under Win7 is a little tricky, but I've successfully used it few weeks ago to track down an overheating problem on my notebook.

Quote from matijapkc :

Maybe THAT is the PROBLEM. You PC may be virus nest, and they could slow your PC reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly much. Especially if you have some Trojans. Get AVG 9 Free and Ad-Aware. They can find anything. Scan and give us report.

Sure it might be one solution, except that those two DO NOT find "EVERYTHING"..

OT: Try to kill all the processes that u don't need running in activity manager or whatever the name is in English

I don't think that there are any viruses because after several formats I am facing the same problem.I made format yesterday and I had the same problem exactly.I'll check the cpu and I'll tell you.Thank you all for your help

Well finally it's an overheating problem at CPU.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HELP!!!

You're welcome

Anyone could answer why is this happening nowadays ?
I'm seeing this problem more and more by some users than it was in past versions and past years.
LFS needs more resources from CPU ?
Looks like nothing can help for me except changing CPU to more powerful one

I have the same kinda problem. I installed LFS on my computer today, and when I started playing I constantly had 100 fps. I set the graphics higher, and still got around 60 fps.

But now, for some reason framerate keeps jumping around between 5 and 100 fps, no matter how low I set the graphics. Screen might actually freeze for a second or two, and then I suddenly get 60 fps again. Problem is not overheating, and not antivirus either. I don't have any other applications running at the same time. And I certainly have a fast enough computer for LFS.

Any ideas?

EDIT: this problem only applies to actually driving, no framerate drop at all in replays.

EDIT2: More info about my case. Restarting my computer helps, everything is ok for a while. But after playing for a couple of hours, framerate starts jumping again. I think I'll do some memory monitoring, maybe there's a memory leak or something like that?

Looks like the same thing... How can you be sure about overheating. Download PC Wizard 2010. I use for a while, and it will always tell you same temperature as in BIOS...
You can also try using VSync, removing FPS limiter...

Your best for temperatures would be something like Speedfan, or RealTemp if you have an intel Core processor (although realtemp will only give you the individual core temperatures).

If you have a q6600 and its overheating in LFS then there is a serious issue there. Either your CPU's fan isn't coming on or your heat sink isn't properly seated.

If LFS is freezing up caused by the "Minimum Sleep" time for your Miscellaneous settings being too low?

my game is aways les than 20 fps and i like, going to 60 who is the limit from a lot of monitors is not enough?

Si Mclaren @ Your monitor can have 75Hz (set to 60) and you would still notice the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz. And 20 is really low...

erfrag @ I'm not sure for Intel, but it doesn't show anything right on AMD. For AMD, PC Wizard is the best solution.

I have similar setup.

Core2Quad Q6600 Undervolted
GTX260 Core216 OC
Win 7 64bit

I too notice FPS drops when servers are busy. LFS only uses one CPU thread which seriously impedes performance.
So LFS no matter what. can not use more than 25% of that Core2Quad.

Upgrading CPU could be done, but shouldn't be required.
You could wait until the game uses multi-threading.

Funnily enough, on Linux my FPS are steady, so i guess Windows has a much bigger overhead.

Sorry for BUMPing.
I have a problem. HUGE one. Just like Leonid@s. Usually had 70-150 FPS. Now they dropped and are constantly UNDER 40... I dunno what to do.
Here's what I alredy tried:
Closing all unneeded processes.
Reducing graphic sets.
Defragmenting. (I was even thinking of scaning for viruses, but I've alredy done that week or two ago, and I wasn't downloading anything (I know there are other ways to get viruses except downloading.), so I think I'm clean of viruses.)
Overclocked GPU for 100MHz. (not even 2 FPS better after that)
Restarting PC.
I think that's all. What else could I try?

P.S. I'm going now, so I will answer on your posts tomorrow. (Maybe I check answers on my phone, but I will not post anything.) Please give me some advices...

EDIT: Forgot... Not overheating... GPU at 45C and CPU's one core at 40, other at 25.

Quote from matijapkc :

I have a problem ...

Try updating directx, even tho it runs on older one but it may need newer extras to run with vista and win7. Just guessing. Do other games lag? Take your vSync off and limit framerate to 60 (if u barely can reach that, go with 40)

Quote from hazaky :

Try updating directx, even tho it runs on older one but it may need newer extras to run with vista and win7. Just guessing. Do other games lag? Take your vSync off and limit framerate to 60 (if u barely can reach that, go with 40)

DirectX is up to date... I have XP. Other games. No. They are even faster. (CoD MW 2 running on 1360x768 on almost everything highest with no lags.) vSync is off. Tried both off and on and it's same. Limiting doesn't help either. "If you can barely reach 40." - I had up to 150 before, it's just tomorrow, just at once.

Quote from matijapkc :

DirectX is up to date... I have XP. Other games. No. They are even faster. (CoD MW 2 running on 1360x768 on almost everything highest with no lags.) vSync is off. Tried both off and on and it's same. Limiting doesn't help either. "If you can barely reach 40." - I had up to 150 before, it's just tomorrow, just at once.

Going 150 is nuts. Just something to fry ur gpu, most likely wont happen but its overkill. Limit to 60 or some or the one that ur monitor shows max. Look what resolution got, example 1920x1080 @60Hz - limit it to 60fps because the monitor cant show over 60fps.

The perfomance, dont know. Try to download a clean copy of lfs, what it does.

Actually, it's O.K. now... I was changing some settings in Catalyst and it could be it... And something else is strange. Before I had only 60Hz for 1360x768, now I also have 75Hz for same res... I think I could limit it to 75...