Quote from St4Lk3R :

Hi all you Radeon Low-FPS guys,

try Omega Drivers instead. Since I use them, I can get lotsa more fps from my R9800+P4 1.4+1GB RAM system.

But be careful: before you install Omega Drivers, uninstall the old original drivers completely. Best is to use a Tool like DriverCleaner for this.

Yeah I get Omega Drivers quite often, but it doesn't help. Right now I am on drivers from my manufacturer and they give me the best performance so far. The latest Catalyst by ATI or modded Catalyst drivers by Omega and others.... those have just given me really poor performance in LFS lately. And they cause that blackscreen issue a whole lot. Right now with these drivers dating back to early 2005, I don't get blackscreens, but a tad bit better FPS.

Scawen, I notice the most FPS drops when seeing things like fences, trees, and smoke or dust. Forget what those textures are called, heheh.

I have some troubles with the latest patches. If I choose a new track from garage, it takes much longer to load it now. Everything in the garage goes slower.

Sometimes when I join a server, things are "like lagging" every 1.5 seconds. This can happen when I hotlap too, I do not drive singleplayer to much, so I have not chekked that part out.

This was definately not there before i upgraded to patch 18 (From u12)

At least one danish driver has got the same problems, with the "lagging" - Not really lag, I do not know the english word for it. Stop a split second, then ok for 1,5 sec. Stop a splitsecond, then ok for 1,5 ........

Sometimes it go away after 5 - 10 minutes, or when you restart Lfs. But I never ever had this problem untill now.

P4 3.0 Ghz (2mb level 2 cache)
1.5 Gb pc 4200 ram
Nvidia 6600 Gt Gfx.

Drivers are the newest.


EDIT :

Internet connection : 4096/768

That's exactly what I feel alland44!! And you described it just fine

I had exactly this the other day, but it turned out to be a different application running in the systray (a CoolerMaster program, written in .NET, very badly). The 1.5 seconds and blip is exactly what I experienced.

Just for grins, try and kill as many systray and sundry processes. It's worth eliminating any other potential causes like this.

Quote from SamH :

I had exactly this the other day, but it turned out to be a different application running in the systray (a CoolerMaster program, written in .NET, very badly). The 1.5 seconds and blip is exactly what I experienced.

Just for grins, try and kill as many systray and sundry processes. It's worth eliminating any other potential causes like this.

Yeah every process I close could help (as in previous versions of LFS, just having Winamp open would give me some blips), but with everything closed I still get some tiny pauses. I don't know, something is affecting LFS, or LFS is doing something differently. But this PLUS my low framerate, video performance of U patches have not been good at all for me, to say the least.

Quote from alland44 :

I have some troubles with the latest patches. If I choose a new track from garage, it takes much longer to load it now. Everything in the garage goes slower.

Sometimes when I join a server, things are "like lagging" every 1.5 seconds. This can happen when I hotlap too, I do not drive singleplayer to much, so I have not chekked that part out.

This was definately not there before i upgraded to patch 18 (From u12)

At least one danish driver has got the same problems, with the "lagging" - Not really lag, I do not know the english word for it. Stop a split second, then ok for 1,5 sec. Stop a splitsecond, then ok for 1,5 ........

Sometimes it go away after 5 - 10 minutes, or when you restart Lfs. But I never ever had this problem untill now.

P4 3.0 Ghz (2mb level 2 cache)
1.5 Gb pc 4200 ram
Nvidia 6600 Gt Gfx.

Drivers are the newest.


EDIT :

Internet connection : 4096/768

Yes, I have the same since patch U. Every 5 seconds or so there is a 0.2-0.3 sec stop of the screen. If it happens on the straight it's not a problem, but when ur racing through BL chicane with another driver, it can make trouble or when correcting a slide. Haven't changed video card or drivers during the time that the patches have changed.

Scawen, if you more info to know whats going on I'd be more than happy to help. Maybe we could be provided with some kind of form to know exactly what info do you need - system specs, GPU, whatever.

Just another update on my low FPS issue... and maybe this might help.

My general FPS is lower than it used to be on previous versions. Normally I would get 70-90 FPS when driving by myself in SP or MP. Now in SP or MP and going solo, I get around 50-60 FPS. With only a few cars around, my FPS drops by a lot, like to around 25-30 for small grid racing online.

But then there are more cars around it is just 12 fps or lower. Really undriveable and I've got LOD turned down, no shadows, simple wheels, etc etc... basically my LFS looks like crap and I still get low FPS.

The other wierd thing happening now is that turning on/off mirrors doesn't help my FPS at all. Even mirror LOD wouldn't change anything. Yet when I use my look behind button combo (or look left+right), my FPS turns down to 4-8 fps. I cannot even use this feature anymore it is so laggy. Even if there are no cars around me, looking ahead is fine, but looking behind will just reduce FPS by huge amounts. If there is about 4 or 5 cars in front of me, and FPS is average around 30, looking behind with 1 or no other cars present, FPS is terrible.

I dunno if there is any sort of LOD optimization done in the recent patches or generally different draw methods... this is just the worst I've ever played LFS on my system.

Well i'm on ati x700 pro and cat 5.8 and it's same as usual..no fps drops...strange thingy going on here :/ i feel sorry for u guys...i hope it won't happen to me.
As for lfs settings..all maxed out with aa and aff...around 70-80 alone 40-50 during race and teh minimum i saw was about 22-25 with all cars on T1...my pc is gettin old...ok enough from me now.

I've had the black screen error from time to time.
I only happens when I change screen rezies alot tho.

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

Yes, I have the same since patch U. Every 5 seconds or so there is a 0.2-0.3 sec stop of the screen. If it happens on the straight it's not a problem, but when ur racing through BL chicane with another driver, it can make trouble or when correcting a slide. Haven't changed video card or drivers during the time that the patches have changed.

I was having this same issue on my computer too, and also when i closed LFS the sound on my pc always stuttered if i played an mp3 and used a cpu intensive program at the same time. after reboot was fine, just happened after playing lfs

anyway, both issues were fixed with a clean install of windows, so it could be an unrelated issue. i have a nvidia 6600gt

No glitches on my side. XPsp2/Sapphire x800pro

I´m using allways the newest Cat (of course without CCC) and I´m on AitTrayTools for the gimmicks. OC´d (CPU/FSB+GPU/RAM) since the first days...

About frame rates...

Has anyone established if it was the drivers, or a test patch?

I've heard a lot of "When I upgraded to U20 from U10 I lost frame rate" sort of posts. But I haven't heard anything to test this, like "If I reinstall the U10 exe then my frame rate is higher again".

My point is, I can't tell from what I'm reading here, if you just did a driver upgrade to a dodgy driver version, at the same time as you got a new test patch. If I am to suspect the patch in some way, we will need to have some verifiable and repeatable test results, like "with U13 at the start of Blackwood, when paused, my frame rate is 70, but with U14 in exactly the same conditions, my frame rate is 30".

That sentence was pure fiction by the way, no reason to suspect U14...

I really cannot be certain if it was a patch or drivers. But I do know that I haven't changed graphics drivers for a long time, and the official patches T & U ran pretty well as usual. I don't know where it started, but it might have been with a very early test patch, because in mid May, I had a OLFSL league race and it was very hard to drive in that from low frames. South City would usually drop my framerate only slightly, but this was plenty of frame loss... enough to lag my entire system and have unresponsive steering. I'm not sure when you started the test patches, but I'd say it was around May or June when I've had some bad fps experiences.

Since then I have tried different drivers dating all the way back from 2.4.96, all the way up to the recent 3.8.273 Catalyst version. I remember you reported that a few specific Catalyst versions had issues with LFS (something .x.11 and .12). When that was heard, I was using drivers that were only a few versions older, and they have worked great and given me the best performance ever in LFS. Any newer drivers... and I seem to get good performance in some areas, but with things like smoke and quite a few cars present, it just cannot sustain a decent FPS level.

I've had a fresh install of LFS S2U since July if I remember correctly, and drivers haven't helped the issue even then. I updated right away to a high U test patch (U15 I think? ), and then progressed up until U20 currently. I suppose I could try each version and see my results, but I need two things: 1) As many U-test-patches as possible to download, because I deleted all of the downloaded ones, & 2) lots of time So I hope this is easy to figure out....

Going slightly off topic about Windoze XP services and performance.
Do the services that are enabled on a standard box use much cpu/mem time?

Quote from CSU1 :

Going slightly off topic about Windoze XP services and performance.
Do the services that are enabled on a standard box use much cpu/mem time?

No not really. Unless you are increasingly anal, you can shut down a few needless services, but not many. Really won't make a difference in performance though...

Quote from Tweaker :

No not really. Unless you are increasingly anal, you can shut down a few needless services, but not many. Really won't make a difference in performance though...

Ok , atm i have a bare xp system running(at home at work now), I spent some time a while ago turning off svcs., resarting my pc , then checking if I needed them.Only a half dozen turned on that you need.In the Task Manager running processes = 19 when idle.When I go home laters I will reset everything back as if I just started up a bog standard new system then report on the performance difference.
I can't imagine as you said we won't see a significant difference but for those of us suffering from low FPS and dont know about msconfig to turn off anything we don't use, it should be a help.

Quote from Tweaker :

I suppose I could try each version and see my results, but I need two things: 1) As many U-test-patches as possible to download, because I deleted all of the downloaded ones, & 2) lots of time So I hope this is easy to figure out....

Well I may be able to save you a bit of time. Here is the U exe (note it is called LFS_U.exe so make sure you run the right one).

The point is, if this has no better frame rate than U20, then you immediately know that the test patches have not reduced your frame rate, and it must be a driver issue, and no more testing required.

Not ATi card - nVidia 6600GT, but LFS_U.exe gave me an extra 5-10 FPS average gain. Sure the ATi People have been the ones reporting this, but it does happen in the nVidia cards, just less of an effect/no noticible effect.

U20 - most commonly seen in the 50.0 range
U - Most commonly seen in the 59-63 FPS range.

It's meaningless without a full description of the exact game state you used to get the results.

E.g. paused, at Blackwood start grid, with 5 AIs in view, taken from in-car view in 6th position with mirrors on, in mode 1024x768x32 without antialisasing.

(I'm not saying you have to use that setup, I'm just saying, we need a full description of that type - that you used in U AND U20).

Both I used GTI on BL, (due to U being locked), did 1 full lap of BL, using mouse, in-car, Mirrors on, 1024x768x32, No AA or AF. Patch U had a much higher average FPS compared to U20, like I outlined above.

Well it's still too vague and subjective. That cannot really be called test results, because you have not said anything that is exactly reproducable.

An example of exactly reproducable, is entering the game and immediately pressing P to pause it, after one second, before the car moves, so you can do exactly the same in another version, even on another day.

BUT, I'll take your word for it, assuming that the difference on your computer is so great and unmistakeable that you don't even need to do any rigorous and reproducable testing to see the frame rate loss. And so I've put all the execuatables from U8 to U20 in a special download so you can try them out and see exactly which test patch resulted in that very noticeable frame rate loss.

www.liveforspeed.co.uk/LFS_TEST_U_U8_TO_U20.zip

i just tried the U patch kyoto oval, full Ai grid, last position, paused - 59 fps.
U20 - 58 fps
so...cant believe it though but anyhow its just 1 fps loss now
unpaused i lose 2 fps. its a bit wierd, i think when the movement starts the real fps drop comes.

i upgraded to a ATi 9600XT 256mb around october last year and since ive had it when im in a server around 3 or more cars i get really low FPS. and this never happened on my old Nvidia geforce2mx 128mb anyone know what it could be? ive tryed updating the drivers and it didnt help at all

I get better FPS. Maybe its my new PSU.