Sudden framedrops. (Advice needed)

[SO•Marty]

Hey everyone,

The last few weeks I experience sudden framedrops when playing LFS.
It happens on multiple tracks, and it seems random when they occur.
The frames drop from 40+ fps to 6-7 fps, the sound of LFS judders as well when this happens. After 10-15 seconds the issue resolves itself and in the blink of an eye the framerate resolves itself back to 40+ frames.
I have been checking the settings, turning the Anti-Alias down/off seemed to have solved the issue, but I find it confusing since it happened all of a sudden, and I cant find a real explanation for it. I have the AA set at x8 for years, and never had an issue with it.
Temperatures of my pc stay the same, and doesnt overheat at that moment.

Here are my LFS-settings:


I hope some knows what might be happening, thx in advance.

Marty

[[TC]►Bez◄]

Thermal throttling maybe? Have you checked inside your PC case?

[Adorable]

I have found that sometimes when skins are being processed the frame rate drops.

If your hardware is running just fine, then it could be something running in the background that cause the frame-drop(perhaps): Update, Driver crashing?

What you could do is check for errors in the events viewer when this issue pops up.

Step1: Press Windows Key + R.
Step2: Type in: "eventvwr"
Step3: Browse in the windows logs for errors and see if you could determine what might be causing the issue.

Could you tell us more about your rig? CPU, GPU etc... The new Blackwood track does use more resources than other tracks.

[◄Chuck►]

I guess your PC is simply doing other things in the background, ie downloading updates for Windows or Steam.

[SO•Marty]

Thanks for the hints everyone, next time it happens I will check the commandprompt and shut some stuff down next time I play on TC, hope it helps a bit.

Edit: My pc has a nVidia GeForce GT120 1GB videocard, 8GM ram and a AMD Athlon X4 620 CPU. (PC is nearly 8 years old already but runs fine)

[SO•Marty]

Update:
Went on TC tonight, drove 70 kms, went off, no issue.
Went online for a second time and got the same issues.
Did eventvwr but I couldnt find anything. I deleted a program which seemed to cause troubles (didnt use it anyway), but that wasnt the trick.

What I notice:
When frames and sound lag, and at that time I press Shift+O, the menus work just fine. It seems more hardware related than anything else, but my music and such in the background continue to play and music responds to their designated buttons.
To me it seems like LFS is asking something from the GPU/CPU which they cant handle for a brief time. LFSLazy says that when the frames drop CPU/GPU usage dont increase when the drops happen.

[Daklan]

(2017-05-17 21:41)Marty Wrote:  Update:
Went on TC tonight, drove 70 kms, went off, no issue.
Went online for a second time and got the same issues.
Did eventvwr but I couldnt find anything. I deleted a program which seemed to cause troubles (didnt use it anyway), but that wasnt the trick.

What I notice:
When frames and sound lag, and at that time I press Shift+O, the menus work just fine. It seems more hardware related than anything else, but my music and such in the background continue to play and music responds to their designated buttons.
To me it seems like LFS is asking something from the GPU/CPU which they cant handle for a brief time. LFSLazy says that when the frames drop CPU/GPU usage dont increase when the drops happen.

Do you listen to music in the background while playing and is it on YouTube?

If so: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1165...-same-time

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/721987

The fix to this is by playing the video on the lowest quality.

[SO•Marty]

No, music is being played with foobar, a player which barely used any CPU/RAM, and is not connected to the internet.

[Adorable]

Try opening the Nvidia control panel, then go to 3D Settings, Adjust image settings with preview and set it to balanced, if balanced doesn't boost your FPS set it to performance.

You could also try this if you're using windows 7: http://forum.city-driving.co.uk/showthre...?tid=10455

You could also try pre-rendered frames, these also increase FPS a little.

[SO•Marty]

A kick, I have been investigating a bit more in this.
At the time I asked this question I wasnt using LFSLazy, I now do and I noticed something.

When LFS is running, CPU and RAM seem fine (CPU is used for about 49/50% constantly, RAM is around 4GB (of 8GB, so about 50% as well). But the GPU is constantly maxing out, at 98-100%, and I notice a lot of framedrops happen when I change views (during towing/medding it can be useful), or when I stand still in SZ or at a pitstop. Especially the view changing asks much of the videocard I imagine, and I can imagine it cant handle it at that moment and stalls.

I think my videocard might be dying, is it possible to upgrade this and the issue might be resolved?
The advantage of an older pc, is that upgrades are relatively cheap, but I am afraid if I do that the cooling/motherboard and other ancillaries have to be upgraded as well, so it would be come too expensive and it would be better to buy an entire new pc.

I might be thinking of this videocard: https://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop...rce-gt-710 , the GT-710, but maybe its best not to invest in an 8 year old pc lol.

I hope you guys can shine a light on it.

[dyzio2206]

your video card is prety old... i have a GTS 250 and it still does some funky sh*t...
my suggestion is get something bigger than 710 so you get to keep it when you upgrade the rest of your rig, maybe you can ask your buddies if they have any spare gpus so you can get one on the cheap.. (with a card that old you will not have a problem finding one that performs better)

[Old Engine]

My PC was doing this. Spotify seemed to be the culprit for me.. Once it was closed it worked fine ever since.

[SO•Marty]

(2017-07-20 17:33)Old Engine Wrote:  My PC was doing this. Spotify seemed to be the culprit for me.. Once it was closed it worked fine ever since.

Thanks for the tip!
Sadly I dont use Spotify myself, it isnt installed on my computer, so I dont think it can be the issue.
Thanks for the input though!