Lately my dad and myself gave up trying to keep our old PCs running and we both got new lap tops. Which are almost identical, slight variance. One is a A8-3500 one is an A8-3510, everything else that matters is the same.

I tested them each offline, running LFS, with just a single AI F1, and no players, running around the track on their own... Since they were both doing it at the same time I decided to start the races at the same time.

The red,and green lights triggered at the same time, and the F1 started to move at the same time. The entire first lap was almost identical on each PC, as was the time on both PCs. About 3/4 of the way through the second lap, one of the PCs was a few seconds ahead on the clock, then by the end of the 3rd lap it was almost 2 minutes ahead, and the F1 on this PC was WAY ahead of the other PC. A the race continued the second PC just kept getting further ahead.

Is this why some people are called a cheater? because their PC is just faster than the server?

Quote from Draconious :

[...]then by the end of the 3rd lap it was almost 2 minutes ahead,

Did you mean 2 seconds? Something is very wrong if there was a 2 minute difference by the 3rd lap!

Well maybe the 5th or 6th lap I was staring at it for a while... thinking of what settings I could change to coutneract it, no changes worked, repeat tests did the same thing.

So, if you run the replays on the other PC, does that make a difference?

Else you could just post the replays.

Now i know why some people are so fast in LFS, they use just a faster real time clock.....

Well, now i have a great excuse to be 2-10s slower than the WR...

It might be interesting to see if the laptop's clock really runs faster than it should. Apart from the obvious check against a stopwatch you could run the attached application.
It reads the system time using timeGetTime() function (which is what LFS uses), waits for a specified amount of time, reads the time again and checks how much time actually elapsed. The wait delay is controlled by HPET which should be much more precise and independent of the RTC. The test is run 10 times and the default delay is 60 seconds (the delay can be changed in the batch file). It'd be interesting to see if you can observe the incorrect speed of the RTC this way.
(MSVS 2010 Redist might be needed to run this)

Just out of curiosity, is this alright?

http://gyazo.com/5149f6bb475539438e1a4c91a9923df7

I should probably note that I'm quite curious myself what kind of results is this going to return on machines where the RTC seems to run incorrectly .

Assuming that everything works as I except it would mean that your RTC runs by 16,7 ns faster per one ms. Considering that crystals in common RTCs are set to 32 768 Hz (=> 30,5 us per one tick), it's well within the precision margins you could expect from an RTC clock.

Quote from Draconious :

Lately my dad and myself gave up trying to keep our old PCs running and we both got new lap tops. Which are almost identical, slight variance. One is a A8-3500 one is an A8-3510, everything else that matters is the same.

I tested them each offline, running LFS, with just a single AI F1, and no players, running around the track on their own... Since they were both doing it at the same time I decided to start the races at the same time.

The red,and green lights triggered at the same time, and the F1 started to move at the same time. The entire first lap was almost identical on each PC, as was the time on both PCs. About 3/4 of the way through the second lap, one of the PCs was a few seconds ahead on the clock, then by the end of the 3rd lap it was almost 2 minutes ahead, and the F1 on this PC was WAY ahead of the other PC. A the race continued the second PC just kept getting further ahead.

Is this why some people are called a cheater? because their PC is just faster than the server?

Assuming the laptops RTC clocks check out, There are many things that could effect the speed of the AI's driving, sometimes they just get things a bit wrong and some AI's are just faster than others (they also learn and get better over time)
Maybe wind was enabled on one PC and not on the other?

Have you tried to start a private server and allow each laptop to enter a single AI to drive in a race together to see if there is any on-line difference IIRC the server takes care of small differences in clients clocks and works it all out so its totally fair (level playing field so to speak) try pressing shift+F8 on each PC to see network debug info.

I too am curious to see any results from this.

SD.

Quote from SparkyDave :

Maybe wind was enabled on one PC and not on the other?

I think the AI can't drive in windy conditions yet (except if you enable it when you are already on the track).

Quote from matijapkc :

I think the AI can't drive in windy conditions yet (except if you enable it when you are already on the track).

Of course I wasn't thinking I haven't played the AI for some time

SD.

I'm pretty sure this is due to bad cpu setting power states.
is there any FPS stutter or lag on the slower machine?
If not then I think the issue is this. CPU bios set at 2.5ghz
boots into OS> Pstate calls RTC clock to be 1.4ghz.

I've seen this happen with only bulldozer and llano.
Phenom I+II / athlons don't seem to have this RTC timing issue.

For your reassurance:

RTC can vary by as much as 20% (+/-10) but most fall within 5% of each other. This can result in notable differences in single player gaming when played side by side.

LFS corrects the real time clock when playing in multiplayer mode by a process of synchronisation over time. It does this by comparing your clock versus the host and compensates for lag.

Whilst It is fair to say there will always remain a discrepancy, within the multiplayer environment of LFS it is minimised to the extent of making no real difference thanks so Scawens resynchronisation approach.

Not all games do this.

I thought this would be the case if both PCS were connected to a host
(shift f8) shows this synchronisation on the client side I do believe.
My point just hopefully points towards the bug/problem OP has with systems.
It Would be interesting to learn a little more about PPS and how this works with RTC clock,I assume any iregular beviour on the host would cause errors of some kind or do the packets themselves regulate the overall RTC/timing on the host. .
But I so damn lazy

While clients all connected to one server will be corrected, doesn't this mean that online laptimes will vary depending on the RTC of the server, as well as hotlaps varying depending on the offline PC?
Oh dear.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Whilst It is fair to say there will always remain a discrepancy, within the multiplayer environment of LFS it is minimised to the extent of making no real difference thanks so Scawens resynchronisation approach.

what does that mean for offline hotlapping though?

Quote from Gener_AL (UK) :

I've seen this happen with only bulldozer and llano.

hm i wonder if there is any relationship between that and what hardcop found with arma2
http://www.hardocp.com/article ... play_performance_review/2

Quote from MadCatX :

the attached application.

is this thing meant to fully load a core?

anyway the result with a i5-2390T (done while watching videos and surfing the web if cpu load has any influence on this)

Quote :

what does that mean for offline hotlapping though?

nothing, because in the same way the physics speed up or slow down so does the timing.

The only thing that changes as the experience of the gameplay, but this is the case for every game and isn't really in LFS' remit.

Quote from Shotglass :

is this thing meant to fully load a core?

anyway the result with a i5-2390T (done while watching videos and surfing the web if cpu load has any influence on this)

The app actively polls HPET in a while loop, so it does hog the CPU quite a bit. Other running tasks might affect the precision a little due to the OS not being able to serve the app in time, but unless you're running some CPU intensive stuff at high priority during the test, it shouldn't be a problem.

Quote from Becky Rose :

nothing, because in the same way the physics speed up or slow down so does the timing.

so esentially you could be at an advanatge if your clock is running slow
or if you figure out a way to make it run slow

Quote from Shotglass :

so esentially you could be at an advanatge if your clock is running slow
or if you figure out a way to make it run slow

If your clock is running slower, the car is slower too... The entire game goes slower...

So no advantage or disvantage...

Quote from Si Mclaren :

ISo no advantage or disvantage...

You'd have more time (reflexes) to handle the faster cars.

i.e. I keep banging off the walls in SO in the BF1. If I could slower gameplay, I would be able to set a faster time in that combo. I'd say that would be a quite an advantage if it was possible.

Quote from Gener_AL (UK) :

I'm pretty sure this is due to bad cpu setting power states.
is there any FPS stutter or lag on the slower machine?
If not then I think the issue is this. CPU bios set at 2.5ghz
boots into OS> Pstate calls RTC clock to be 1.4ghz.

I've seen this happen with only bulldozer and llano.
Phenom I+II / athlons don't seem to have this RTC timing issue.

PC is starting to do weird crap... pauses etc... in other software.
So what are some ways I can play with these settings on my PC?
Preferably without installing 3rd party stuff... since I will not do that.

The bios has pretty much NO settings that are changable...

Quote :

PC is starting to do weird crap... pauses etc... in other software.
So what are some ways I can play with these settings on my PC?

Its very unlikely the system clock is causing your PC to do weird crap, or anything in the BIOS either. Its more likely you have stuff running in the background that's running at intervals and slowing down other apps, anti virus, windows update, email clients, that kind of thing. Maybe have a look in the task manager to see what's running and start a new thread for it with system specs, OS etc, if your running XP it could be simpler to back stuff up and do a fresh install though.

Nothing has been installed since the last time I posted, and even a while before that....

I have as few things running as possible... always do... and it is in Win 7

PC is just pausing a lot more lately, I once let it slide thinking it was just accessing the HD, but it happens too often now... mouse stops etc.