Could it be down to the CCC (bloated piece of rubbish, waste of space ATI control panel) that is now a must for the 5.12/.13? could that be part of the problem?.

Dan,

Quote from danowat :

Could it be down to the CCC (bloated piece of rubbish, waste of space ATI control panel) that is now a must for the 5.12/.13? could that be part of the problem?.

Dan,

There's a big difference between control panel (CP) and Control Center (CCC) .. control center is the .net dependant "application" and the control panel are the tabs in the advanced display settings.

5.11 is the last version which included the control panel, but does still work with 5.12 and 5.13. But if you want all options available (such as ovedrive) you'll have to edit your registry.

Check this link for more detailed info .. http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33839451

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I think cli.exe is just the update checker thing, that polls ati.com to see if there's a newer version of your driver available.

I get sometimes 3 instances of cli.exe one for the tray icon one for the CCC when it launches and i think one is the poller you mention , I have couple of PC's here both with ATI cards and 1 with X2 cpu so Ill try to get some results posted later tonight,( I think this slowdown is somthing to do with shaders and how the drivers are running on 2 cores , rather than LFS running on 2 ) .

SD.

EDIT just saw the post above . if you want new driver with old CP read here... http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33839451

I have an X700 PCIE (16x). Pentium 3GHz, 1.5GB RAM HT enabled.
I installed the drivers that came out in December and my frame rate dropped a lot. If I use the look function to turn my head to the left, frame rates jump way up (from 40 to 100+). But straight ahead, frame rates were down to around 40. They had been right around 70 with the older drivers. (The look function also had the same affect with the old X300 GPU that I had before??)
I have vertical synch turned on, AA and AF set to max values. With the newer drivers, changing AA and AF settings in the driver made absolutly no difference inside LFS. The frame rate never picked up.
I rolled back my drivers and everything returned to what it was before.
I also always turn off the ATI error detection stuff. It seemed to slow things down and make them unstable when switching to windowed mode in LFS.
I only use the control panel. I do not use the full ATI configuration software crap. I don't overclock.

I haven't noticed any major difference between 5.11 and 5.13 (Probably because I don't have a DC/HT CPU), but one thing I have noticed, is that any version beyond 5.09 gives me generally lower and more unstable FPS. Using 5.09 I get a pretty stable 55-70 FPS (a lap around BL @ 1920x1200 4xAA). 5.10+ I get ~60FPS with frequent drops to ~25FPS. I've even had the 5.10s suddenly drop to ~10FPS and stay there. Probably not the same problem, but thought I might as well mention it...

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton core) with 1GB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9800 (Plain vanilla) 128MB.

Quote from Hallen :

I also always turn off the ATI error detection stuff.

hmm .. You mean VPU-Recover?

Quote from Scawen :

One more question :

For those who experience the massive drop in frame rate, i guess the frame rate is still very low, even if you press the pause key? Is that true?

I'm asking that just to be sure that the updated drivers aren't somehow causing LFS physics to run slowly, and so the slowdown is almost certainly in the drivers themselves. If that's quite well established then the ATI guys will really need to run LFS over a debug version of their drivers on a HT system and they may be able to see instantly where it's tripping up.

Sometimes there is a huge slowdown due to exception handling. The scenario for that could be that somehow there is an error (or many errors) each frame due to a certain DirectX function called by LFS, and these could be causing the slowdown.

Last night playing multiplayer, I was geting ~25fps when I first dropped into the pits during the session, after the world "spooled" up and everybody else was drawn around me, I dropped to ~10-15fps.

If I changed to spectator mode I would get back up to the ~25fps range, but the minute I dropped the camera view to "forces" or "in car" I crashed back down to the ~10fps range.

And it's been pretty well covered, but yes, my proc is a dual phyiscal core 64bit processor running in 32bit mode. I was going to bring the machine in to work and throw it on a debugger but don't have time this week.

Single player empty track, no other cars, I was getting ~40fps, but I did not try to pause the game. I'll try that tonight if I get the chance.

It's not only related to HT processors only.

I've got a 2,2 Ghz Athlon XP and a 9800Pro. With 5.11 stable 70-90 fps with 5.12 20-40 fps.

I'm running on a P4C 3 GHz HT enabled. x800xt 256mb 2GB DC PAT Before .12 i got above 100 fps, after .12 I got below 20. For someone that said that had a cli.exe error... I think it's because you have no .net framework installed.

Quote from felplacerad :

hmm .. You mean VPU-Recover?

Yes, thank you. That stupid thing. It could just be an ad-hoc logic thing, but when I turned that feature off, I stopped having problems with the GPU locking up when I went to windowed mode.

Quote from Hallen :

Yes, thank you. That stupid thing. It could just be an ad-hoc logic thing, but when I turned that feature off, I stopped having problems with the GPU locking up when I went to windowed mode.

ah bummer i can't seem to check wether is on or off, since i didn't install ccc, just the 5.12 cp. the reghacks which are supposed to re-enable the tab doesn't seem to work for me. which is weird cause the other hacks do :P

i guess that might be the problem then, maybe its turned on even though it's hidden.

EDIT: Ok, i've found the source of the "1 fps when showing "hints"/popups whilst in windowed mode"-problem, it has to do with anti-aliasing. If i set it to anything else then application preference lfs will slow down as soon as a popup appears. It doesn't matter if i set it to 2/4/6, it's all the same. The Anistrophic filtering setting does not have any impact on lfs whatsoever, nor the texture/mipmap/vsync settings. It's just the AA - The problem isn't resolved but atleast now i know how to bypass it.

If you get a cli error or the CCC splash screen hangs , I would recommend uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling with CP . the ATI uninstaller is here
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894

EDIT..Use .NET 1.1 not .NET 2.0 if it freezes on the splash screen.just read at another forum .


I tested with wheels view virtual mirror on

ran a 14 car replay and noted fps at start from driver in 1st and last position when paused and not.

on my older pc AMD xp2400+ 9800pro (6xAA 16xAF) Windows XP Home I get constantly similar results with 5.11 and 5.13 drivers leader - 50 fps last car 24fps .
and when paused leader 60 fps last car 29 fps .

other pc AMD xp 4400 X2(dual) X850XT PE (6xAA 16xAF) results

Win XPx64 with 5.11 leader 130 fps last car 50 fps .

and with the 5.13 leader 50fps last car 20 fps .

Win XP Pro with 5.11 leader 160 fps last car 70 .

and with the 5.13 leader 60 fps last car 25 .
Edit: pause added about 15- 20 % increase in fps in each case.
note on the dual PC if I set simple track to all in graphics HVS options the fps drops to 6 - 8 fps , also turning virtual mirror off almost doubles(up to max 256) the above framerates on the dual core for the lead cars but does not alter the simple track HVS performance .

testing with omega drivers gave same performance exactly.
testing with NGO optimized drivers gave same .
setting LFS.exe affinity to only 1 core made no difference.
still testing .

SD.

Interesting people have mentioned recently that when you look left or right the rendering in the mirrors stops? don't know if that is a fact or not but if it is then several people are experiencing a dramatic increase in frame rate (more than would be expected ie 2x) by disabling mirrors or looking left/ right with the ATI cards and DualCore CPUs, hopefully we are getting closer to the problem... do you other guys that experienced the fps drop find this the case also?

Yes, good question...

Could it really be that disabling mirrors removes the problem totally? So that with mirrors disabled, 5.11, 5.12 and 5.13 all give the same (or at least similar) frame rates, on a HT cpu or any other affected computer?

It seems unlikely! But if so, then it must be something to do with rendering to a texture.

Scawen,
No problems here running X850XT 256MB 1368x768@56Hz 4xFSAA 8xAF. Runs silky smooth. Also, A64 3500+ 2GB RAM for the record. Keep up the good work! :-)

I have a Athlon X2 3800+ and a Radeon X850XT, and the newer drivers give me about 20FPS. I tried setting the affinity of LFS to use just one CPU, but it seems to be the ATI driver processes that need to use one CPU. Ill try settings the affinity of the ati stuff tomorrow and see how it goes. I don't want to install the new drivers again right now

Ok, fresh install of the Cat 5.13's, without CCC, using ATT, all mirror settings, none, real, or virtual make any difference to the poor FPS ,which "I THINK" has improved since the 5.12's and now get 25fps with 5.13, 10 with 5.12 and 100 with 5.11.
Setting the LFS process to a single affinity also makes no difference, so, basically back to square one.
Scawen, I will leave the 5.13's on for now, if you require any checks or anything done let me know.

Dan,

For what it's worth:

9800 Pro 128MB
2500+ Barton
1GB RAM
Windows 2k SP4

5.13 was ~20fps slower than 5.8 I'm using now, noticed this during LFS benchmarking with the max cfg. Didn't try anything else back then, disabling mirrors etc. Interestingly enough, the LFS menu had also some lag when using the new drivers.

I hate bumping posts, but I wondered has anyone else tried the "no mirrors" and seen the effect?, or any other news?.

Dan,

Not yet apparently! I guess they are bored with installing drivers - i'm not surprised!

We only need a few people to confirm that mirrors make no difference, then we can assume it's nothing to do with mirrors.

Dan, your first sentence in yesterday's post is a bit unclear. I just want to be sure : you are saying that mirror settings make no difference at all, and it's just slow in all cases with Cat 5.12 and 5.13 drivers, even with mirrors off?

i just updated to 5.13 and ran the benchmark replay.

on the old 5.7 drivers, the corner before the pit entry gets 70fps with mirrors on.

on the 5.13 i get 35fps with mirrors on. with mirrors off i get 70fps

AMD64 3000+ (single core)
1024mb Ram
X800 256mb VIVO


on the grid i get 20fps, i think before i had around 30-40

I'll just go ahead and confirm that turning off mirrors makes SOME difference, my fps drops from about 140 to 120 if i turn them on when im alone on the grid.

5.11 = My "normal" LFS S2 FPS 100+fps
5.12 = 15fps
5.13 = 20fps with mirrors,20fps without, i.e. no difference, also tested turning off HT by forcing the LFS.exe process to a single affinity, makes no difference, also tried ALL options for the ATI driver, again, makes no difference

Going back to 5.11 solves all FPS problem,

Now, something I did notice was this, when I load a car + track, the FPS start at my normal (100fps) then after a split second, just enough to notice the fps counter, it cycles down to 20fps





Right, 3 shots taken at split seconds when loading a track, the first is just as its loaded, 160fps, then 100fps, then 23fps.



edit: actually mirrors DO make a very slight difference, maybe 5 fps

Dan,

No difference in FPS between old (5.x) and 5.13 driver. My system specs:

ATI Radeon 9600 (Sapphire Atlantis) 128 MB AGP 4x, passive cooled
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (no HT) 2 Ghz, 512 MB RAM
Win XP SP2, DirectX 9.0c

Quote from felplacerad :

I'll just go ahead and confirm that turning off mirrors makes SOME difference, my fps drops from about 140 to 120 if i turn them on when im alone on the grid.

Thanks, yes, mirrors absolutely must make some difference to frame rate, as it is another draw of the world (at lower res) onto a texture. But the important point is, if the mirror draw is responsible for the slowdown.

The question is : For people who do experience the massive slowdown with the new drivers, try switching off mirrors, and now, with mirrors off, is the massive slowdown still apparent, or is it almost the same frame rate with 5.11 and 5.12/5.13.

Anyway, Dan's answer is that it's nothing to do with mirrors. Even with mirrors switched off, it runs incredibly slowly on the new drivers.