Okay, that helped quite a bit. Thanks. Its now playable.

What exactly is Hardware Vertex Shading? And should it be on or off? And, would running compressed skins help framerate? Thats what I'm assuming anyways. Some of the graphics settings are confusing to me.

Thanks, I'll try that.

I did update my drivers a while back. I checked and it says they were updated 8/2/2006. Driver Version: 8.282.0.0 if that helps anyone. I downloaded them directly from ATI.

There aren't any more programs running in the background. Guess I could try a new install...

Okay, I've recently started having a problem with LFS. My computer is more than capable of playing this game, and for about two years (until now) it was common to get between 60-90fps...no matter how many vehicles were on screen, or how high I had the graphics settings cranked. I usually keep everything as high as possible and I run 1280x800 because I have a widescreen monitor.

But now, all of the sudden, I'm struggling to run the game. FPS will start out around 10-12 at the beginning of a race, and will eventually stabilize aroun 20-25...which is playable, but its not very fun. And if something happens, ie. a wreck...it drops back down to 10 and I end up getting screwed up and wreck myself.

I haven't changed anything on my PC, and all of my other games still run smooth. I don't know whats going on. I play rFactor on DX9 with most settings at "full" with no framerate problems. I hope theres a quick fix, but I've tried messing with all of the settings in the options menu and nothing seems to change my horrid framerate. I've even tried running as low as 800x600 windowed to no avail. This game is unplayable unless I'm hotlapping by myself...then I can get up to 35 fps...wooo

Heres my computer specs if anyone is wondering:

P4 3.00 gHz
1gb RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility 128mb GFX card
WinXP sp2