Quote from bo-kristiansen :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

thx

Quote from Jakg :

Yes... 16xAA, 7950GT + nHancer!

I know what AA does, and i said i can't see the difference between 4 and 16 while racing (although in screenies it is pretty obvious!), but yes i can tell the difference between 0 and 4x!

oh, nice I thought you messed up the terms, happens to some you know

well then i can fully understand you, I wouldn'T notice much difference between 4x and 16x either, but I wouldn'T go above 4x anyways, no need for that

I user 8xS and 16x, whichever is which I dont recall, I just ramp 'em to max. I actually think I might have turned them both off in order to try and grab 32 bit but it wasnt enough so I went back to 16bit colour, but forgot to reenable the AA and AF.

I'm upgrading my graphics card drivers as I write this, so i'll be sure to check settings before I start round 4.

to which ones Becky? i "advise" you try the XTremeG 92.91's from here, as they seem to be rather good (always run them, seem to be quicker, only ever had an issue with the new 96's), and what are you overclocking with? I use ATi Tool (the latest 0.25 Beta 16 works on nVidia fine - although it does seem to incorrectly see the memory speed half of the true value) and then run the artefact test for 5-odd mins, perhaps theres more in the cards?

Quote :

what are you overclocking with?

A quartz oscilliator. I bought the BFG overclocked ones. I could probably squeeze more out with the forceware drivers, but the problem I have is CPU juice - my LFS settings are maxxed and I dont suffer slowdown even with tons of hi res textures.

ah, the overclocked ones are best for overclocking, they get the highest "grade" ones and overclock them, and as such, usually have a fair bit of juice left to squeze! My 7950GT is a "Gainward Golden Sample" which means they overclock it from the stock 480 Mhz (core) to 580 MHz, and i run it at 625 on stock cooling with no problems. Although i know mem speed on the card is actually more important, i can't remember the figures of the top of my head, although i think i've added something like 100 MHz on the memory, and with the rubbish airflow in my case it isn't too bad.

If it's your cpu then...

Overclock!

Quote from Jakg :

If it's your cpu then...

Overclock!

A candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. There's a reason why chips aren't stock overclocked, and there are good reasons why overclocked chips aren't warrantied, too. I wouldn't overclock my hardware. I'm simply not that wealthy, and I need the thing to last its warranty.

Quote from SamH :

A candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. There's a reason why chips aren't stock overclocked, and there are good reasons why overclocked chips aren't warrantied, too. I wouldn't overclock my hardware. I'm simply not that wealthy, and I need the thing to last its warranty.

Agreed - I once overclocked my PC for 5 minutes, then decided it wasn't worth it, and went back to standard. Warranty, stability, life and thermal stress are more important to me that an extra 5fps.

Quote :

I use twin overclocked 7800GT 256mb's, but a lot of people commented on raged edges this round, i'm wondering if I didn't have the correct AA/AF settings when I recorded it, perhaps because I had been playing another game.

That might be it. The video looks really smooth during the Redman/Horvath clip at the beginning. Sometime later on it seems as if the AA/AF was turned off. The difference is very noticeable when you compare Redman's in-car shot to the in-car track preview with Victor.

Warranty? My pc has no warranty!

Stability? Yup, mines perfectly stable!

Life? The loss of life on a small overclock of 20% is virtually non-existant - plus by the time it DOES die my pc will need a whole different socket CPU to run anyway!

Thermal Stress? New heatsink and fan, quiter and cooler than stock, more so if i ever re-seat it as my dad used to much AS5

Warranty? Well, thats a risk you have to take, but the chances for CPU failure in the first 12 months is quite minimal!

Stability? Yup, mines perfectly stable too!

Life? So what if the CPU dies after 5 years, instead of stocks 10 years. I will sell my parts about after 2 years of use anyway.

Thermal Stress? Read above.

Overclocking maybe decreases life span from 10 years to 8. I have a celeron 300 that ran overclocked to 450 its whole life upto about 6 months ago and its still fine except that its damn slow by todays standards. Got a good 7 years out of it and most of its like it thought it was a 450 not 300mhz chip. As long as the temps aren't too high then it can last longer than a non overclocked chip that's running hotter.

I'm not sure if it's possible but can you get fraps to run on one core, and LFS on the other? I know that when I'm recording it only uses 1 core, I haven't looked into getting a program to use a different core, but I'm sure it's possible with some other program. With fraps on one core, and LFS on the other it should allow for recording at higher resolutions which would then allow a better image once compressed and resized.

I mean.. it's not like I'm dismissing what you're saying about overclocking. It's just that the processor I have in my PC didn't exist 3 years ago, let alone 10, so I'm having difficulty taking on your statements about longevity as a result of overclocking, yanno?

If, in 10 years time, you wanna say "The AMD64 3000+ could be clocked comfortably by X amount, and the impact on its lifespan was X hours on average, according to actual statistical data collected in the field.." sure thing, but I'm honestly not able to take on board any statements about the impact of overclocking over 10 years on a piece of kit that's so far only 2 or 3 years in the public domain

i understand your point, but with older processors it hasn't affected the life, and in theory it won't unless you do rediculous overclocks (like the bloke who took his 3000 to 3 GHz, making it a 5000 by AMD's naming system - thats a 60% overclock!)

Guess I 'm just saying that overclocking sensibly does not hurt the life span much.

I've been doing some testing of my own and with my measly X2 3800+ overclocked to 2.5ghz and 7600GT I can record a 10player mpr in 1440x900x32 @ 30fps realtimne with 4xAA and 16xAF around Blackwood, other tracks may differ. One thing I have noticed is that running LFS windowed offers better fps for some reason.

I'm going to make a few sample clips and see which settings offer the best results using xvid.

Running LFS windows may give better results, I had not thought to try that. It's because Windows is handling the multi-tasking differently (or rather, LFS is waiting on a poll event which kicks Windows in. I will definately try that.

I can overclock to 10% without breaking my warranty, but I choose not too because 10% wont make the difference and i'd rather not blow the thing up.

You can run a P200MMX two days without a heatsink & fan before it explodes out of the socket (seriously, I worked for a PC manufacturer and one of the lads did it just to see what would happen, it crashed the first night, but didnt actually explode for 2 days). I've not tested a socket 939 chip in the same way, but i'm hazarding a guess here that it'll blow much faster. The integration scale isn't the same, the silicon is different, the processes are different, the power consumption is different, the heat is different, it's like comparing a Mini to a Ferrari... Take out the oil and rev it up and see which one blows first.

from my Hyper 48's manual....

"a modern high performance chip running with no thermal paste, heatsink or fan will be irrecovably damaged after 10 secs of use. DO NOT TAKE THE CHANCE"

:S

As long as your CPU is under 55 your ok, although 50 is nicer

I was feeling somewhat down this evening, and I was really in the mood to watch some motor racing, but sadly there was none on Speed Channel. Browsing around the forums I saw a little link in SamH's signature that the STCC round 3 video was released, and I was overjoyed

The STCC is as good or better than any form of racing I could have seen on T.V., bar none. The racing was absolutely top class, the commentary was excellent, the video production was spot-on, in short, it was perfect.

A big congratulations to everyone involved in this project

Watched, enjoyed, Laughed out loud at the post-finish carnage.

Roll on the next one!

Ironically you're closer to what happened in round 4 than you think, Robster.
Keep commenting on youtube to help the STCC get views and attention.

Vain

Quote from Vain :

Ironically you're closer to what happened in round 4 than you think, Robster.

Vain

Hahah now that's caught my interest!

i still can't believe how quick Victor was in the XRT - he was quicker than me and i was using the FXO!

Yes, the FXO!

Quote from Jakg :

i still can't believe how quick Victor was in the XRT - he was quicker than me and i was using the FXO!

hehe, I actually happened to practise for this race a "couple of laps" to create a fast and easy to drive setup (around 150 laps I think) and I had quite a lot of laps in this track from S1 times still with all 3 TBO cars.

Being a backmarker by conviction, I just now got around to seeing this. Excellent quality in all aspects, loved the extra sounds here and there and great use of non-builtin camera angles/positions.

Pity you didn't manage to get more commentators but you more than made up with enthusiasm (try to keep the mic somewhere to the side of your mouth and away from your Purposeful Potent Ps though, as you did in the second half) and the driver interview bits.

The whole coverage is just like it was recorded live (the replays, commentator ignorant of things not being shown on camera, etc) and it just draws you in.

So... well done STCC drivers and staff! Apart from highly entertaining it's by far the most painstakingly creative and well-made piece of promotional material LFS could need.