What sort of system?

Hi guys and gals,

I am becoming increasingly confused, I have seen some videos and screenshots and rfactor 2 looks great. I know there is some discussion about what people expect over and above and what is considered next gen, what the competition is doing and so forth, but let's leave that to one side for a moment.

I see the screen shot thread, I see official screens and I saw a vid by Adrian esp (i think of mores compared to RL)

I have an old graphics card radeon hd4970, so I know I am at least 3 years behind but... What are we all running? What can I expect? Is a radeon 7950 any good? I was debating the following as I only have single screen.

Radeon 7950 3gb in my current system Mac Pro boot camp 6gb ram Octo core Nelheim
Radeon 7979 3gb in another old pc I have with a qx6700
Geforce 760 4gb in the same as above

Or just wait and save up for a whole new system, which will take me some time, so as a stop gap??

Or even just get a cheap 660ti, but again the old system would have to manage.

Can someone explain what sort of system they have and some kinda reference screen shot? I know it is a lot to ask, but it would kinda help me know if it is worth it.

I love the game and find I am much quicker / competitive on tracks that run better. I already have the graphics reasonably low as the playability is more important, but that said, I think it would help this having a system more capable, how much of it is graphics could mean this upgrade is well worth it

 

Stop gaps don't work for me, usually regret them in hindsight because at some point a total upgrade is eminent and then you prolly going to update the card as well as tech moves fast.

Using a HD4800 myself, cant even run HDR without the game crashing my pc but apart from that i'm pretty happy. looks better then rf1 and does the job, been gaming etc long enough to not feel the need to rush to the store for more eye candy

here's an unedited shot, well unedited graphically. for the LRP shot I did search for the right spot to display things better but still no hdr.
http://isiforums.net/f/attachment.php?attachmentid=9302&d=1376426830


which is a bit of a questionmark in the screenshots thread, just how much did peeps take an effort to make it look good. If I would do a video for example it would be in hdr and all the cool angles to make it look better. yet in real time its not nearly as nice.
But I kinda have to chose performance over gfx of course.

system specs under avatar.

another from previous build, unedited, no hdr, quite happy with it tbh considering my specs:

 

Thanks denstjrio, this is exactly my point, also this shot looks much better than what I see :/ I do wonder what I am doing wrong

 

Hmm my bad it is a 4870, I guess the rest of the hardware in my Mac isn't the problem though, the only issue is the graphics card, I could put whatever in it with a sepearate PSU or spend on a Mac version.

Hence saying about the 7950 card or even a 680 gtx (sadly 2gb version)

But I suppose I need to understand what settings I should have to acheive those graphics. I am also not that interested, beleeive it or not, it is just the screenshots thread confuses me (you mention this) as does how different mine looks compared to all else.

 

Cant really help you card-wise, not up to date (anymore) on that. don't even know how big the gap is between yours and mine (but mine is bigger ahaha!)

But poor people like you and me need to find the sweetspots in rf2. took me quite some trial and error before rf2 was working properly in terms of balancing performance vs gfx.
And of course with some builds you gotta start all over again

And with each pc being different its hard to say what you should do, all I can say, find a high-fps track (I used Monaco when it still was hard on frames) and start changing settings and go back and forth using ctrl+f and keep track of what fps numbers its giving.
i'm happy when I get 60 to 80 frames. I don't include AI in this at all, with online racing and 15+ cars frames will drop a bit but still ok. even at 40 its doable when we go for rain-races etc.

As for the screenshots thread, just saw a Porsche-pic posted and someone saying 'omg didn't know rf2 looked this good!'
But when looking at the pic I saw nothing special lol. so its all relative I suppose.

I have not even done what some tech guys have been telling us to do, plenty of good advise (it seems) on the forums but I never bothered yet to actually test those advanced thingy's. but i'm positive there are some gems in there to be found.
Also never updated my drivers for rf2. who knows what that could bring?

as for my pc crashing with HDR. I think its heating issues. either cpu or gfx. haven't been checking that out either. so if you don't have that issue, also try testing settings with/without hdr.
Because I would probably trade some gfx settings for HDR as it really makes allot of difference. its like 2D vs 3D.

And we don't know what ISI will be doing to optimize future builds either. we can't wait forever of course but I have seen significant performance boosts. build 300 especially (but then again, they removed some features in rf2 which will come back later and might ruin it again)
But it could get better.

Oh, I don't use any plugins either. just can't afford things getting unstable.
And a fresh install also really helps, so if you have been updating builds since day1.....

here's my settings fwiw, invironment reflection is high but I often turn that down for a boost depending on what i'm doing with which tracks.

 

That's what she ... Hmm sorry couldn't resist that.

Good advice, just felt like I have been through hoops already, but it appears that maybe the graphics have moved along enough to make that early trial and error I did around build 1.43 irrelevant.

Some of the richest people I know wouldn't spend what they don't need to we can be tight on luxury items in life it is fine. I am sure you and I are little different in that regard.

Monaco is a bit of a crawl silverstone seems ok, but then having a heavy weight processor could be helping too.

I mainly race online, best races I have and the most competitive I am is when I know the sim is responding well, e.g. Has good frame rate

I agree, in fact one thing I omitted is I wish that thread just have some more reference to adjusted or not, which card and maybe even some brief settings, although I understand that isn't really the purpose of that thread and why should people, I could ask or check sigs :/ but that isn't easy on my phone as I work long hours up in the city and live in the blissful countryside (UK)

Not noticed much frame rate hit with this aspect, as above, maybe I should try this all over again

I too had it crashing like that, I think I upgraded my CCC and drivers, but if it is working I wouldn't bother, I have always had nothing but problems with catalyst drivers and radeons despite I often hear it round the other way, never had a problem with NV stuff.

True which is why I am hesitant on the full upgrade yet, because I want to do this when most of the optimisation is done and I have a better idea of what hardware I want or at least it will be more current.

I would rather focus on hardware and sim rig right now the more known quantities

Interesting I certainly don't have full for those things I tried high in between stuff and it looks like things are much better and still playable, could this all be optimisation that has happened on the way. I spent a lot of time optimising it so I could get good frames good laptimes etc, so I left it like that! I will play some more, although I think the 10 on the card could be a big difference I don't know 4870 I thought was a high end card for the time... Don't really know or care, like you say and I know, there is massive scope to improve this aspect without spending a fortune.

 

Well it was tongue in cheek of course. i'm not poor nor rich but i'm no longer a geek for graphics. used to run to the shops for better hardware as soon as a new game arrived but have since long stopped doing that. The developer to get me hyped up again has yet to be born
And besides, you don't get rich by spending

 

spot on same wave-length !

 

I'm having a similar issue with my GTX590 when I run rFactor at higher resolutions (e.g at the monitors standard 2560x1600). Although the CPU load on both GPUs is not exceeding 50% and the CPU on my i7-3770k load is at at 25% i get a very poor FPS of about 25 when I'm driving on "Nordschleife".

After Monitoring the Sensors with a tool like HWiNFO64 for a while my hypothesis is that I'm short on video RAM and the GPUs are slown down behause the graphical data and textures can not be kept in video RAM.

I suggest to reduce Resolution instead of going to less detailed graphics - that's what Denstjiro did in his configuration as well when using 1366x768.

If you don't like to go to lower resolutions from my point of view you Need to make sure that the graphics Card has sufficient Video RAM.

 

also good advice thanks

 

I did not go for a lower res though, its just my native resolution. that's what I normally do with games as I understand that is the resolution less prone giving issues, but I could be wrong.

Still sounds like good advice though, I might try it as well. I used to play QuakeII with 800x600 back in the days so why not in rf2, its only been 2 decades

 

My native is 1920x1080 ... It looks better at native res shouldn't run better though, AFAIK

Quake world / action quake II what are we doing lol, let's fire that up. Didn't carmageddon use a similar engine to quake? Sorry that is as far as I can get with a car related mention in that paragraph

Thanks for advice tho, I think I have some things to try and some saving to do!

 

I briefly returned to Q2 a few years ago, just for emotional reasons having done so many clanmatches in the past. I was surprised there where still quite a few servers out there with peeps innit!
Needless to say I was a bit rusty and got creamed

 

I tried a few things and it looks a great deal better! So thanks for the advice, still got the same frames, roughly :/ odd ... Obviously wasn't on optimal settings.

Env reflection was a killer! I think something reduced me to 10-18 FPS and a stuttering on at that, which suggest too far for CPU and graphics. Neither could keep up and it look like 2 FPS

Anyway, it looks better and more immersive. I don't care too much about it looking any better, as long as it is immersive and I can read the conditions better

 

Good to hear

in .PLR try:
Transparency AA="0" // Soften edges around alpha test objects.
Recently did that and it seems to work for me. its '1' by default.

Wont hurt to go through your plr file and check what's up with things. there could be tweakable items for you. some things are 'on' and we might not even care for it anyways.

There's so many little things we can do!

Also a good thread to browse through. as mentioned earlier things can be very 'local' so a fix for me could not work for you but in this thread they are diving so much innit all there's bound to be things we could benefit from or at least get a better understanding on items.

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...se-of-details)?p=121987&viewfull=1#post121987

 

Just had a quick go on isr megane / essington. Looked reasonable ran well with new build, seems a bit more consistent now as well. Still not going any faster but it seems a whole lot easier when it is running smooth

Definitely some encouragement to get a proper computer for it / setup.

Will try those plr tweaks as well

 

New build for me is a massive improvement, i'm very happy. better framerates/performance, much smoother and as a unsuspected bonus big improvement in graphics.
I'm even testing HDR again, previously would crash pc when racing medium/large fields. used to be within 5 to 10 minutes, then 300 or before it was after 30 minutes or so.
Sunday night we have our own event, fingers crossed it works


But I also tried this:
http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/16683-B342-fps-varies-a-lot

I tried this previously and went back to full fps quickly, don't really recall why but must have been a reason for it.
Now it seems to work much better, sync gpu & capping frames at 60 seems much less of a system hogger now which enables other goodies to shine through I suppose.

And as mentioned in the new build thread, rf2 'feels' much better. as if physics came to life. Tim explained it best I think ''allowing their brain to react and 'feel' nuances and visual cues that were previously not there, or as smoothly displayed, due to performance''
certainly does feel that way.

 

Just noticed this: ''try removing your player.plr file, the game will rebuild a new one to default next launch.
might help your fps hangup.''

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/16524-Fps-help

 

Denstjiro, thank you I have lowered the Res and made sure my FPS is better and improved my lap time by about a second ! so ... am now definitely needing an new PC

I looked at my times from that Clio race you were in the other night and considered that I didn't think (with limited options) my setup could find 2 seconds in the last sector, yet sector 1 / 3 were a couple of tenths above and below the pace :/

So this morning tried it and posted a 1:17:980 something on my first hot lap, so without practice broke that barrier pretty quickly. Low and behold sector 2 time is 2 seconds quicker.

I had noticed everynow and then a loss of FPS and cars surging forwards, but that was visual, accountable and I could roughly deal with that. It wasn't me... it was the hardware.

But I couldn't see what was occurring in sector2, my guess is micro stutters that were loosing me time throughout that section.

I am glad it isn't me, I was slightly confused why I just wasn't fast enough ... at least I have a new bar to try and raise now

 

Ah yes of course, I saw you and recognized your name, just didn't remember from where

Just the one night for me on that server so my times where not that good and I do wonder how the hell peeps got into the 1:16's
But then again, I also wondered the same with the Skippy @ LRP, but allot of practise and behold, 7th place overall

So good news you got it running better because those times we are looking for are only achievable when we don't have fps or framerate issues.

Btw, I have switched to Windowed Mode in rf2 now. since my fps is locked I can't tell if its actually better but since its exactly the same as normal mode (no edges etc) I figured why not because I often alt+tab and then rf2 needs to work extra hard it seems. now its effortless.
But some peeps actually see improvements so try it out. (would require the same resolution as your monitor though)

Cya on a server somewhere!