Hi, I am having trouble setting up the graphics, so this game will run smoothly on my machine.
First of all my specs

1.5 GHz
768MB Ram
Radeon 9600 Pro

When I run on my own, with the default graphics setup, the FPS is about 30-40. When I add even one AI car or a mate online, then the FPS drops to 5-10 and it's impossible to play. I have tried reducing all the details to 0 but it doesn't seem to have any real effect. Another thing, what does LOD stand for? It doesn't seem to make any difference if I change
User LOD, Dust LOD or Mirror LOD.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

LOD = Level Of Detail

should have quite a big incluence on the fps, though.
maybe it`s a good idea to use half texture size - I dont know how much vram your gfx card has.

Any more info about the specs? is the 1.5GHz a Celeron, or maybe a Centrino CPU (which is way faster than the first)?

Have you installed the latest drivers (catalyst/directx), and are you sure you have disabled any kind of antialiasing / anisotropic filtering in the gfx control panel?

Ok I reduced all the detail, so now, when I'm on my own, FPS is 50-60, but it's still 5-10 with even one extra car. Something is definately wrong or buggy because even on high detail I get 20-25 fps. But only when I'm on my own.

btw its a pentium 4, but that doesn't make that much difference.

Whats the Vidoe card?

I got a 128mb video memory, with a 1.8ghz proc. and 512mb Ram, and on a good day I can return 70-80 FPS, on line that drops to around 40-50 and on a really bad day it dips to 30. And thats with detail set pretty high and some high res packs.

Maybe you got some conflict issues going on. Shut down all background processes, update your drivers. Clean your system and check if anything hase hijacked your bandwidth. Get defragging and virus checking. Then if after all that it's still buggered, then I'm all out of ideas.

Quote from Funnybear :

Whats the Vidoe card?

I got a 128mb video memory, with a 1.8ghz proc. and 512mb Ram, and on a good day I can return 70-80 FPS, on line that drops to around 40-50 and on a really bad day it dips to 30. And thats with detail set pretty high and some high res packs.

Maybe you got some conflict issues going on. Shut down all background processes, update your drivers. Clean your system and check if anything hase hijacked your bandwidth. Get defragging and virus checking. Then if after all that it's still buggered, then I'm all out of ideas.

well the card is a Radeon 9600 pro. and I have all the latest drivers etc. The problem isn't bandwith as I have the same thing with AI cars, nit just online. Thanks for your help anyway. This is really really pissing me off. :mad:

Do NOT use the latest catalyst drivers, there are several threads on this issue with the ATI drivers (5.12/5.13 drivers are very bad with LFS), try going back to catalyst V 5.11....

Hope this helps!

I'm running a 9800pro on catalyst 6.1 drivers and have no problem, in fact my performance is probably better than on the previous driver set.

As the person above me said there have been problems with LFS and Radeon cards [or more specifically their driver set]. If you're not on the 6.1 driver set, you could try it, although all I can say is that it works well for me, which isn't a guarantee it'll work fine for you, since I have a 64bit 3400 Athlon therefore obviously my hardware is different to yours.

Your system sounds adequate to run what's essentially a directX 8 game, it's probably your video card/its drivers that's giving you grief.

Yea, I got a Radeon too. Can never work out which driovers I am using though. But I know I havn't updated in while (contrary to my own advice) so I am assuming I am using a fairly old set. As far as I can tell LFS isn't actually all that resource intensive, unless you get on the more fuller servers. I can generally run a couple of background app's (not too big though) and LFS will still be sweet. And my system isn't anything to write home about. So maybe roll back your driver set.

Any progress?

No, not yet. I use Omega drivers, current is 6.01 I have the resolution down to 800x600 and the fps is still shite. I am not going to buy new parts for a game that should run fine. They say the min specs are: 1GHz cpu and 128 mb gfx card. I have a better machine than this so why doesn't it work? or did they lie on the min specs?

are you using any AA/AF?

i also have a 9600pro, but my processor is a 1600+ althon xp, and 1g ram, and i get 40-50 fps with 2xAA/4xAF at 1024. this is online and offline. only time it drops below that is autox tracks that have a huge amount of objects or races with more than ~10 cars (the 1g ram upgrade was only recently, and for a different game. before that i only had 256mb ram and had the same performance).

i'm using the official catalyst drivers. either v. 5.9 or 5.10. Regardless, its not your rig. this seems like a driver issue. that, or if you have antivirus/anti-spyware software running in the background, they could be causing the performance issues.

No aa or af, no other progs running.
(I'm not that stupid)

Ran the LFS Benchmark and here are my results on MINIMUM

2006-02-08 16:26:17 - LFS
Frames: 557 - Time: 103266ms - Avg: 5.393 - Min: 4 - Max: 10

If it's drivers (and it's looking likely, then which version do I need?) Also I though the latest was always the best.

I got 5.11 and mines working fine..

Well it's a tiny bit better (on 5.11 drivers), but I mean tiny. Max fps (on Min dtail) is now 11 not 10!

I'm afraid that I'm tempted to say its your processor. Especially if it jumps down that much when an AI is added.

LFS uses a massive amount of processing power, especially when calculating physics, AI path, and so forth. If possible can you try swapping over to another machine for a few minutes and see if you get any difference?

nah can't do that, but if it's CPU why did they say 1GHz was ok?
I really hate it when companies LIE about the minimum specs
I expexted it to work fine, but now I have a game I can't play with my mates on

It's not lying - LFS works on a 1GHz system, but like most games it'll not be that playable when lots of stuff is happening - either AI or graphics, or internet connecting.

There is a demo available to see if LFS works on your PC, and if it worked there S2 will work now.

I tried the demo and it worked fine
I then spent money on the full version and it doesn't work.

Well, the full version is in no way different to the demo (technology wise), it just has more unlocked content. I really can't see how S2 full is at fault here, if everything worked perfectly in the demo, as you said.

It's my comp then. Fine. I was just wondering why they put lowe specs than needed, that's all.


OK I will update my comp. Problem will be solved by that. Thanks for all your help guys.

Ok, so the demo worked ok. What patch were you running on the demo? Is it different from now? Has anything else changed on your system, other than unlocking LFS? Are you comparing previous performance, which was on Blackwood to a different S2 track?

Lets see if we can see any changes and track down whats wrong. But I find it difficult to believe that theres going to be much we can do.

Edit: Nevermind.

Lol I admire your stubboness to give in!

Ok, in the demo I don't think actually ran with any other cars, I just ran on my own, so that's a poor comparison.

I have not changed any hardware or drivers since I bought the game. I really can't see what else the problem could be except the CPU.

I basically problem solve for a living, so I think I'm starting to bring the same way of thinking to the forum lol I think you're probably right, and it was probably mean of me to get you to admit that it wasnt a fair comparison. For that I apologise

Visit ATI's site and get the latest driver set which is linked from the front page...AFAIK it's 6.1

I used to run LFS S1 on a Pentium 3 1ghz with 256RAM and a 32mb Riva TNT 2, in fact I could run the S1 demo on a Pentium 3 450 with 128mb RAM and a 16mb Riva, although that did slow up as soon as I added any A.I. On the 1Ghz box it used to run fine, only slowing markedly in a full field of cars.I can't say how those machines would deal with S2, I don't have either of them anymore.

Now I know S2 physics is better and the game is generally more processor intensive now than it was then, but all things being equal I still think your video card drivers are hindering your performance.Try playing online when your machine isn't trying to calculate A.I physics as well as yours and see if your framerate is better.

That said, stating the blindingly obvious a faster chip would help you out...

Hmmm I WAS on 6.1, but got told that they might be the problem, so I changed to 5.1.

Drivers is NOT the problem, It wouldn't make that much difference. I want a 25fps increase and new drivers (or old ones) won't give me that.

Hmmm, still seems that something is eathing your resources other than LFS. I fyou are adamnat that your machine is capable of running LFS at at least 30-40 Fps then you must have something running in the background.

Don't just check in the appliaction bar at the bottom but get into the task manager and see if anything looks untoward. Even though my LFS runs fine even with the A/V running I still turn it off on occasion. I find that it does effect it on the odd occasion. I always turn everything off that I can, just to free up the system and as general good housekeeping. My startup is at the bare minimum, virtually nothing but the A/V starts up and system essentials.

Have you tryed (drastic I know) reformatting. If all your good housekeeping doesn't do anything then . . .again, I'll be scuppered.