Downgrade to 12.4 and see how things look. That is the driver I am currently running and everything looks fine to me.
Downgrade? No. It is simple really. For people with AMD mid-range cards struggling to get smooth FPS: First, install 12.11 Beta and 12.10 CAP. Leave Catalyst settings ALONE (except for "performance" settings). Links here: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/8291-New-AMD-12-11-beta-drivers-available Inside rFactor2 "Video Res" tab: Resolution: Native monitor resolution (1920X1080 in most cases) Refresh: 60hz AA: Level 3 Sync: Video FXAA: ON HDR: Off Inside "Display" tab: Circuit Detail: Medium Player Detail: Medium Opponent Detail: Medium Texture Detail: Medium Texture Filter: Bilinear Special Effects: Medium Shadows: Low Shadow Blur: Fast Movies: On Sun Occlusion: No Raindrops: No Road Reflection: No Environment Reflection: No Wind and crowd motion: No Using these settings, most people will be able to sync the monitors refresh rate with the game FPS - resulting in a very smooth gaming experience as the creators intended.
This might have something to do with more stuff on screen vs less stuff on screen, for example if replay is played from swingman view or tv view it has own car body visible too, but from cockpit view it might be rendering bit less stuff and if your settings are such that normally you are using all of vram it might give bit of slowdown during replay. Well, that is just something that came to my mind being one of the possibilities why it is so. For those that are more cpu limited replay should be better fps and for those that are gpu limited it might be more of slowdown or no change.
I have most of the settings high or full and all the visuals on (shadows "fast" currently). Resolution isn't the highest though (do not remember exact resolution, something around 1300X1100). Sync on video, hdr off and fxaa on, AA level 2. I get around 40+ fps (36 when traffic and around 45-52 after that). I think the game is smooth this way. Have not noticed any stuttering for a while. I do not see why it should be 60 fps? I don't want to cut the detail level. I'm willing to cut not so important stuff though. I have AMD HD 7660D card (not sure if this is mid-range card, hopefully better). You can see other specs from my profile.
It really does make world of difference to gaming feel when you have fps constantly at 60fps, cars feel much, much better that way, at least so with Nvidia, but it is easy for you to do testing, just lower bit of details so that you get constantly 60fps and drive around, can you feel the difference? If not you can always return to your current settings.
I have the 7950HD with a triple screen and every thing on Max without HDR,antialiasing-4(opponents car-medium) and I get 55-65fps(max-75fps)!in the Nurb I get 90-100fps with one car and 75fpfs with 20 cars! I have a i5/3.5ghz. I think that rF2 runs better with i5 than i7 and I don't understand why!
As far as I remember i7 processors have Hyper-threading while i5 don't have it (or at least didn't have it in the past, maybe newer models have it). Some games/applications are known to have issues with Hyper-threading, meaning you get better performance with turning it off. This may be one reason why i5 would perform better than i7.
Tried to lower my detail settings but it did not help much I achieved 45-55 fps in race (Topeka full) with 370Z all settings high. Nothing to complain in this performance level. I would not even try any better settings if I would not know that it could be better. I do not believe that it even could get much better than this. One thing I noticed was that fps depends to large extend also from track/car compination. There were 20 fps difference between Topeka/370Z and Putnam park/spark f2.
Yeah, Monaco with GTR is perhaps heaviest, for me shadows at low is easily 10fps hit, without smoothing, shadows at med causes another 5fps hit, and these are alone on track, I'm curious if AMD GPUs are taking as hard hit with shadows? One thing I noticed is that with full textures or full car detail (monaco, gtr) either one is cutting 50% of fps, so with shadows full, textures and car model at full I get 20fps tops, but textures to high, car model to high and shadows to low I'm mostly around 60fps already, taking shadows off completely makes everything work perfectly. Now of course your cards can provide different results, but I figured out that using high textures, but increasing Anistropic filtering makes things look better with better fps, so there are some settings that kill fps but are not giving much back in terms of graphical quality. Another thing to make sure is that gpu memory is not fully used, after that memory fills fps will drop to fraction of what card is capable with less memory usage, so using msi afterburner or something similar one should check to see if memory usage stays within limits. Ingame memory meter did show me 1/4 green bar when I did in reality had ran out of gpu memory already, that is why I recommend msi afterburner or something like that to monitor how much memory really is being used. My card is quite slow by today's standards, but settling to high settings instead of full I can get pretty ok results, I'm sure that with your cards similar might apply as my card also has only 512 ram.
Yes, most of us can get decent frames by turning all the eye candy way down. That's not the point. The comparison is to other sims and rFactor2 looks only equal to or not quite as good as the others when all eye-candy is maxed out. And as I mentioned, for me, shadows have to be either off or maxed because the in-between settings cause very bad strobing effects. Always have, since the first build. And no, I am not willing to run with no shadows. I await graphics optimization...
Of course it is the point. Either the computer you have chosen to settle with can do it to a satisfactory standard or it cant. Optimizations have come and still will - but don't expect miracles. You do realise the differences between a sim and a non sim? By choosing to be a sim, rfactor is dealing with a lot more calculations in an effort to model the experience, rather than simply cool looking DX11 features. This costs cpu/GPU cycles, which means a sim will NEVER "look" as good as a game designed simply to look good. Most people seem completely unaware of the benefits of syncing your FPS to your refresh rate. It is the ONLY way to play. It really is.
Does it make that much of a difference to update the driver? I'm running 8.683.0.0 on my HD 5870 and everything seems to work well, most setting are on max and I'm getting 60 fps by myself and 40-50 with other cars. Just wondering if it's worth updating because I was having massive problems with BSOD and crashing and it seemed to happen only after updating my driver in August. Ever since a fresh install of windows and starting all over again has the problem seemed to be fixed. Anyone else have the same problem? System Specs: Model: ASUS G73JH CPU: Intel i7-720QM Motherboard: ASUS Memory: 8GB DDR3 OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Audio: onboard Realtek 5.1 Internet Connection: Sky DSL (UK)
What should I do if my in-game memory bar is almost full (85% green)? I got about 10 fps more by lowering shadows from high to low. Now I get max 62 fps occasionally when driving alone. It would be better with high shadows of course and I believe that with my specs I should be able to max almost everything?
Running 12.8 Beta CCC Everything at Max except MSAA and SS Inside rFactor2 "Video Res" tab: Resolution: Native monitor resolution (1920X1080 in most cases) Refresh: 60hz AA: Level 3 Sync: NIL FXAA: ON HDR: ON Inside "Display" tab: Circuit Detail: Full Player Detail: Full Opponent Detail: FULL Texture Detail: Full Texture Filter: 16 x Special Effects: Max Shadows: Max Shadow Blur: Fast Movies: On Sun Occlusion: yes Raindrops: yes Road Reflection: yes Environment Reflection: yes Wind and crowd motion: yes Q6600 @ 3.0ghz and a single HD6970 I can run most tracks but average most of them at 30+ frames. Would a second card boost frames or would a new CPU and Mobo combo be betterererere... I will install 12.11 and see how it goes. P.S. I dont see the point in downgrading graphics to enjoy a sim, play them how they are designed, to look good and play just as well. Get the best out of your system, or upgrade if you can afford it. Some people cannot afford it, so thats why designers put settings in, but thats me, Im a candy junky, always have always will... just lucky to be able to upgrade now and then lolol
I wonder if rF2 is utilizing your APU properly, maybe you are getting performance equal to your 512MB card only? You see, I'm getting better fps with low shadows, everything else high, no hdr, no aa, only 4x AF, 120fps is not rare. As I looked up, your APU should provide nearly twice the 3d mark 11 power than my card, so for me it looks like that your APU is not being used?
The CPU does play a large role when it comes to gaming even though the game itself doesn't directly use the CPU for graphics. For this reason it is always best to try and balance the CPU and GPU. There have been advances in CPU technology since the release of the Q6600 that might play a role in better performance over what you have. There have been tests done to see how much of an effect and you would be surprised at the results. That being said, I have a larger display area that needs to be drawn and my frame rates, though I don't look at numbers, is sufficient to race on any of the tracks out there currently with all settings on high with the exception of shadows. I use a 6950 2Gb card for my graphics and an AMD X6 CPU @ 3.6Ghz. I am also running 12.4 drivers. If you are unable to run the game with everything maxed on a single screen, then I would suggest a motherboard/CPU upgrade to something with newer tech and a faster core speed. The L1, L2 and L3 cache are probably where the performance gain is achieved the most.
Thing with shadows is that if shadows even at low setting give bigger impact to fps than track detail difference between low and high, then for me at least it is quite easy to live without shadows, it is far bigger loss to have track detail at low. Of course if one has enough money to put over 1000 to a gfx card etc, then one can get decent performance with full details and maybe even several monitors, but for normal people with house loans and families it is about what to loose and what to keep to have most out from sim.
Everything maxed out except shadows and no HDR over 70-100 fps at croft no problem with some AI's. Turn on HDR and Shadows 40-60 fps, really needs to get some tweaks into it. i5 2500k @4ghz Radeon 6950 2 gb slight overclock inside catalyst.
Try turning off the CCC altogether in "smconfig" (click "start" type in "msconfig") un-tick the CCC and reboot. At the very least, you've freed up some CPU cycles and a bunch of memory. If you're looking for software for clocking and fan speeds try using MSI's Afterburner. Hope this helps, Bryan