looking for better FPS

X

xenophek

Forum Fiend
Joined
Jul 18, 2008
Messages
735
I just installed a 4 GB kit of RAM, taking out two sticks. Now I have 5 gigs of RAM. I'm a little disappointed that I'm not getting any jump in FPS at all in anything. I originally wanted the kit for Fraps in GMod. GMod runs great, but when I try recording with Fraps my video card gets butterfingers and starts dropping frames like crazy.

I'm a little disappointed with my FPS situation. Is there a PCI card that is used for screen capture?
 
Well, just upgrading the amount of system ram really shouldnt make a huge difference in framerate...

Should help mainly with system performance and multitasking, ie, you should be able to run more applications now more smoothly.

Dont know about a pci capture card for what you want, sorry, good luck.
 
So it's basically a graphics card upgrade? My Core 2 Duo is overclocked to 3.6 GHz and I have a Radeon HD4850 graphics card.

Hmm...
 
well u shouldnt have an issue w/ ur fps then. how much u gettin in fps rite now? also how much u wantin 2 get when it comes 2 fps for video capture?
 
I used Fraps w/TF2. It was pretty good. Got a little iffy (low frame rates) on the 2fort bridge when there was a lot of action. Monitor at 1280x1024, I think I ran Fraps at half-resolution. You might try updating your video codecs and playing around with that. Minimal compression, huge files, but you can compress them later. I have a Intel E8400/3.0GHz Dual Core and a ATI 4850.
 
With a core 2 duo clocked at 3.6 and a 4850, you shouldnt be having framerate issues. Source should run at most resolutions for you with the graphics up most of the way and be smooth.

Question, does this only happen when running fraps and recording? or is it slow all the time? If it is only happening when running fraps and recording, it may be related to trying to do too many things on the harddrive and that could be slowing things down.
 
I agree with the others, with a Core 2 and a 4850, your bottleneck is most likely your hard drive. The only PCI capture cards I know of are ones related to A/V streams and unable to capture content delivered via the network or web.

One thing that I wonder is whether your Core 2 might be working *too* hard. Have you checked its temps before and during you're running FRAPS?
 
The framerates for all of my source games hover around 60 FPS and don't move. I can fraps in TF2 and get around 30 FPS while recording at 1280x800. However, the resolution doesn't seem to matter much. I get horrible drops in FPS no matter what resolution I use.

The CPU is stable. I've done lots of stress testing and temp monitoring.
 
So you are getting good framerates when you arent using fraps...

Pretty sure its gonna be the harddrive here... since fraps will need to be constantly writing to it.

The only other possibility is that whatever video encoding fraps is using really is just draining too much of the CPU.

Do you know what kind of encoding (codec) FRAPS is using, and do you know if you can change it? If it is doing encoding, change it to uncompressed. And if its uncompressed see if you can change that too.

And when it comes down to it, if you are really recording, 30 fps should be fine, most videos play at 30fps max anyways, so for recording purposes 30 should be fine.

Is it also possible that fraps has a framerate cap for recording and is actually slowing down your framerates on purpose to get a better recording framerate?
 
Yea, FRAPS has a framerate cap. Check under the Movies tab in the FRAPS gui. Default is 30fps, highest preset is 60fps, but you can technically set a custom framerate higher. Btw, I'm assuming you're using vsync. If you want higher than 60fps when not recording, turn vsync off. Though at 60fps, it really shouldn't matter much, and vsync makes it all look nicer imo.

If you're really interested in recording GMod stuff though, you should accustom yourself to recording demos and then use Source Recorder to convert them to AVI. They will turn out nicer than what FRAPS can produce, and it doesn't stress your system as much to record a demo as it does to run FRAPS.
 
well i get 80 FPS and i run fraps all the time and it doesnt lagg a bit :) 2.6 ghz hdd with 3 gb ram... mine isnt as good as yours but i dont have a problem. i say u need a new hd. should fix ur problem. and also like jaxory said. that should help a bit too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

LukePyro
  • Article Article
Community Thoughts On GTA VI: An Extended Look
Replies
2
Views
228
Sterling
Sterling

Latest posts

Back
Top