I recently upgraded my system to the following:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.67GHz
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
2GB RAM

I formatted my old HD (by old i mean 12 months) and i kept my old graphics card (Nvidia GeForce FX5200).

The system above (i believe) is fairly good, not mind blowing but quick enough. The problem is that i'm only getting 20-30 FPS and down as low as 10 - 15 at the start of a race. I'm running middle of the road settings in the graphics options in LFS.

The only thing i can think of is that the graphics card is crap... I dont wanna splash out on a new one until i can say for certain that is the problem.

Anyone any ideas?

I have far less impressive specs then that (except much better gfx-card), and I seldom drop below 60 fps where its locked. Running 1920x1200, everything on full and 4xAA.

So...

Yes they do play a MASSIVE roll and it's your graphics card thats bringing your whole system down.

I have just upgraded to a E6750, Gigabyte P35C-DS3R and 2GB of ram but I had a 7950GX2. Now I get well over 300FPS when running on my own (at certain tracks) but it still drops to around 30 or 40 at the starts with a full server with all the settings maxed out including AA and AF.

If you are upgrading your internal bits, like CPU, RAM, motherboard and graphics card its the graphics card that you should put aside most cash for, as mush as you can.

Keeping that card was a big mistake which would take the best part of £200 to fix, sorry.

Yes, your gfx card is holding you back a tremendous amount.

ok cool, i always thought LFS was very CPU dependant and not so much GPU dependant. anyway, looks like i should cough up for a new graphics card.
any suggestions for in or around €200 - €300?

You could get 8800GT or 8800GTS G92 512Mb version. the new G92 8800GTS is offcourse better than 8800GT, but more expensive also. So if you could, you may get 8800GTS 512mb, otherwise 8800GT 512mb.

LFS doesn't use the gfx card as much as newer games, but obviously older, slower tech is going to cause a bottleneck if you've surrounded it with new stuff. Remember the CPU and RAM can churn out physics and calculations at whatever speed they like, but they rely on the gfx card to be able to display it as well.

With that setup, yes the card is slowing you down. Even a small upgrade (I still love my GeForce 7900GS-E and it's well cheap now) would improve your frame rate massively.
e.g. I'm on a single core Athlon64 3800+ and even I get well over 120FPS most of the time. The only time my rate drops under 80 is when there's an assload of cars on the screen (which would be helped by a faster CPU).

Definitly your gfx card, I would recommend the 8800GT or the new 512MB version of the 8800gts.
If you are ready to spend quite a lot of money and wait until next month, I suggest you get the GeForce 9800 that will be released next month.
I doubt that you have AGP gfx ports but IF you do, then the ATI Radeon x1950pro would be a good choise.
A tip, check on Toms hardware(www.tomshardware.com) there u can see a chart with gfx cards performances and much more.
Use the menu to the left and click "Graphics & displays" in the sub-menu select "VGA charts", you can select two gfx cards to compare(marked with blue on the chart) and nvidia cards green and ati cards red. And also select how to compare them, several games with different settings and resolutions in each game, overall all games fps and also 3DMark06 with different settings and resolutions

I've got the same processor, same amount of RAM but an 8800GT and play LFS with typical race frame rates of over 100 with other cars and 300 odd in single player with full detail (and AA and AF). The lowest frame rates I get (excluding AI) are down to about 40 at the start of a race on SO6 with the FBM.

For the money I think the 8800GT would be the best card for you, not a lot of point in spending a lot more for a slightly faster card short of bragging rights and ego feeding IMO

How do you use an AGP video card onto a system that is surely PCI-E?I cant remember any FX5200 PCI-E.No...well...there aren't any afaik.

Quote from ussbeethoven :

5200 PCI or PCX5300 (5200 + PCIe bridge chip)

Really?Can't remember that really

@Nikimere:That system is wasted without a good recent video card.Just a HD3850 or similar will do the dirty job and assure you will never have FPS drops.

Quote from nikimere :

ok cool, i always thought LFS was very CPU dependant and not so much GPU dependant.

Used to be that way, people didn't believe me but it's far more apparent now, but LFS used to be CPU dependant back until Patch F which introduced Vertex shading, and since then LFS has been far more GPU dependant.

Anyone got an preferences on any of these? http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.as ... ce=300&inStockOnly=on

Quote from nikimere :

Anyone got an preferences on any of these? http://www.komplett.ie/k/kl.as ... ce=300&inStockOnly=on

HD3850 as i said in my previous post.It just cant be beat in price/performance ratio

Still you have to consider any other game you might be playing in the near future.But if you won't go over 1280*1024 the version with 256 MB is fairly enough to compete with almost every game on sale today.

My desktop (and LFS) resolution is 1650 x 1050

Do you play other games?Except for LFS i mean...

RACE 07...
and rTractor sometimes thats about it

Quote from nikimere :

rTractor

Then you will be satisfied with the 256 version.My X1650 pro is already good for LFS and surely the 3850 is on another planet compared to this

Cool, thanks for the help. It's my birthday in a few days so this will be going on my list!

Quote from nikimere :

Cool, thanks for the help. It's my birthday in a few days so this will be going on my list!

Congratulations for the double achievement then

If you care Powercolor has produced a HD3850 with a Zerotherm heatsink and fan on it which is incredibly efficient and cool (in both meanings:razz.If you can,then go for it as you may reach the bigger sister frequencies just by overclocking it a little while keeping the card still cool and safe.

Quote from IlGuercio :

HD3850 as i said in my previous post.It just cant be beat in price/performance ratio

Big +1 on that one. Just got one myself and from the back of a nearly full grid I get a steady 60+ FPS @ 1920x1200 with 8X AA and 16X AF. Your CPU may still struggle a bit with very large AI fields, but nothing a little dynamic LOD reduction can't fix. For the price the 3850 is a no-brainer.

Quote from nikimere :

rTractor

Isn't it called rFactor? lol :P

Yes they play a very massive roll.

I have an 8800GT and it looks VERY nice.

Quote from daanroof :

Isn't it called rFactor? lol :P

There's your answer

Quote from h3adbang3r :

There's your answer

HAHA! is it rFactor mod?? just gotta try it!