Hello,

I've now faced a lot of random fps drops. My computer is enough powerful to run LFS with fps, but I have a really interesting fps drops.

A) Fps drops to somewhere between 15-30, I think. Not sure, because LFS's fps-limiter shows 100fps, same with Shadowplay/Fraps
B) Fps drops only when there are lot of cars. But most of the time I have static 100fps
C) Fps dropping lasts only like ~3-5 seconds, but in racing, it is REALLY long time
D) Fps doesn't seem affect to steering wheel / mirrors (different viewports?) - however, not sure about these, since mirrors are small areas to notice fps drops
E) This issue is pretty new

I haven't played that much now, so I'm not sure when this started, but I managed to play new westhill with no problems at all. So if this is LFS related, it must be related to pretty new version of LFS.

Game feels like it would choke, like with many cars, it would start to choke and fps is getting lower, then game starts to breath again and gains some extra fps and goes back to 100fps.

Just to make sure, my computer is enough powerful, it has no problems (heat, I/O, etc), and software are fine, no problems. Running Win 7 Pro.

Ofcourse many times this kind of problems are related to bad GPU drivers, so that's what I'm mainly thinking. I'm waiting for new drivers for my GPU and try again. But for now, everything is up-to-date, and I have no problems with any other game / software.

Feel free to comment / ask if you have something in your mind.

since last update there are some new settings in Options in Misc section:
"sleep every frame", "max buffered frames" etc.
Recently was also added option for AA in mirrors or something.
On right side is also some new debug-graph, think it is supposed to help find problems or tell if bottleneck is CPU or GPU.
(maybe look in patch thread or so)

Quote from pmw :

So if this is LFS related, it must be related to pretty new version of LFS.

So, do you run LFS 0.6J or not? And why such a big story and not telling CPU/GPU specs? Resolution played?

Quote from Gutholz :

since last update there are some new settings in Options in Misc section:
"sleep every frame", "max buffered frames" etc.
Recently was also added option for AA in mirrors or something.
On right side is also some new debug-graph, think it is supposed to help find problems or tell if bottleneck is CPU or GPU.
(maybe look in patch thread or so)

I need to try this. I already forgot the whole issue, until I raced again..next time.

Quote from cargame.nl :

Quote from pmw :

So if this is LFS related, it must be related to pretty new version of LFS.

So, do you run LFS 0.6J or not? And why such a big story and not telling CPU/GPU specs? Resolution played?

A littlebit confusing text, anyway, I'm running the latest LFS version. I meant that this bug is pretty new, not sure when it came.

And about the specs, I don't know how CPU is related to it, since I told it is enough powerful. And about the GPU, highly related to drivers -- however, this issues has been with multiple different drivers. Resolution has never changed.

But if you have some experiences of this GPU, go ahead and tell.

CPU: i7 960
GPU: GTX650Ti

But like I said in first post, there's no problems with the actual computer. So it's highly related to LFS or the discussion between LFS<->GPU driver. Of course it could be something else too, something totally out of the box. Feel free to comment.

Although Scawen improved CPU usage, LFS still isn't true multi core. This means that its quite important to know what kind of CPU we are talking about here. As stated by the LFS devs themselves;

Quote :

LFS is mostly CPU dependent due to its physics calculations.
A full multiplayer grid requires a fast CPU more than a fast GPU.

https://www.lfs.net/downloads (at the bottom of the page)

an i7 960 is pretty old and single core performance is not that great, but, for LFS it should be able to keep up I agree with that.

---
I don't think the GTX650Ti and/or the drivers can get pretty excited of LFS but maybe NvidiaInspector can tell more. My mobile GPU tends to go into power saving mode often. It's because I told it to do so @Nvidia control panel otherwise I am sitting with a full speed cooling fan all the time. But, LFS rarely manages to get the GPU out of this power saving state, resulting in screen lag in some situations.

You only know whats going on if you start diagnosing and measuring. Take a look at values. Processor speed in Mhz, GPU core speed in Mhz.. Memory.. Etc.

Why do people not do this anymore nowadays? When I was @school I heard so much about overclocking, Mhz, CPU and GPU types that I got sick of the talk about it.

Quote from cargame.nl :

Although Scawen improved CPU usage, LFS still isn't true multi core. This means that its quite important to know what kind of CPU we are talking about here. As stated by the LFS devs themselves;

Quote :

LFS is mostly CPU dependent due to its physics calculations.
A full multiplayer grid requires a fast CPU more than a fast GPU.

https://www.lfs.net/downloads (at the bottom of the page)

an i7 960 is pretty old and single core performance is not that great, but, for LFS it should be able to keep up I agree with that.

---
I don't think the GTX650Ti and/or the drivers can get pretty excited of LFS but maybe NvidiaInspector can tell more. My mobile GPU tends to go into power saving mode often. It's because I told it to do so @Nvidia control panel otherwise I am sitting with a full speed cooling fan all the time. But, LFS rarely manages to get the GPU out of this power saving state, resulting in screen lag in some situations.

You only know whats going on if you start diagnosing and measuring. Take a look at values. Processor speed in Mhz, GPU core speed in Mhz.. Memory.. Etc.

Why do people not do this anymore nowadays? When I was @school I heard so much about overclocking, Mhz, CPU and GPU types that I got sick of the talk about it.

Talking about CPU speed in this case is totally pointless. It has been running perfectly and CPU is very overpowered for LFS, so no problem there. As I told, I have no problems with hardware or the power of hardware.

And again, as I told, hardware is running perfectly. Since I said this, I've diagnosed everything before I made this topic - I'm doing this for living, so I know this stuff.

Anyway, I found the solution. As I feared, the problem was with Nvidia. Not with the drivers, but with Shadowplay Record software. There was a bug with it which caused this freeze spiking.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

Oh a book..