Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: BoilerDown on December 23, 2010, 12:00:18 AM
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Has anyone had much success using Fraps (www.fraps.com) to record Aces High while actually flying (not the film viewer). I cannot seem to get acceptable framerates in-game while recording. I've tried unlocking the framerate, setting the capture framerate to something low like 15 FPS, capturing at half-size, and all these in combination. I've also tried using the minimal fraps settings with the minimum Aces High graphics settings (everything set to minimums). Nothing I can change seems to result in decent in-game framerates.
My conclusions is that the AH graphics settings have only a small impact on recording, as I could still only top out at a 45ish framerate in-game with everything set to minimum, yet with everything maxed and the same fraps settings I would be around 30 FPS. But gimping the recording that much makes it not worth recording the game live.
I'm wondering if there's something I haven't tried, if I just need a better system, or if its just a FRAPs or Aces High problem.
I should note that I can record live in World of Warcraft with no problems at all with settings near maximum.
My system has:
Windows XP SP3
Intel E8500
4 GB physical ram (less than that available to my 32 bit OS)
GTX 260
I run at 1680x1050 resolution
I record Fraps files to a different physical hard drive than my boot drive and AH installation drive. My Aces High films record to a folder on the boot drive, and I experimented with turning AH filming on and off without differing results.
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You would be a lot better off recording with the built in recorder and then using FRAPS to record playbacks on AHFilm. AHFilm does allow you to go fullscreen too so there really isnt much difference.
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I normally record the film with ah recorded. and only activate fraps when I think there's gonna be some good film. doesn't address your concerns, which are the same as mine, but at least i get good fr most of the time.
semp
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You would be a lot better off recording with the built in recorder and then using FRAPS to record playbacks on AHFilm. AHFilm does allow you to go fullscreen too so there really isnt much difference.
Not for what I want to do.
The problem with the AH Film is that I can't evaluate what I saw and what I didn't see, as I don't see where my head was pointed.
Also I think showing the pilot's actual view can add a lot of value to a potential video, especially when mixed with normal AH Film recordings. And you just can't do without recording it live.
Another thing I just thought of is that I'm using Track IR. And I forgot to test disabling it to see if that's what's causing Fraps recording to lag the game so hard. Though I doubt I could fly well at all without Track IR, I could have tested it.
In any case, I'd like to get Fraps to work with Aces High while flying live, not viewing a film, and using Fraps makes the game nearly unplayable right now.
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There is a check box in AHFilm labeled "Use recorded views" which will give you the same view you used in the game.
WoW has no where near the system load AH does.
There is a program available that will allow you to do what you want to do from what has been said. I dont know from personal experience what the frame rates are like. Akak had mentioned it once in the hardware forum when this same topic came up before. I do not recall the name of the program but I do recall it was $700-800.
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When I record with Fraps, I have it force the FPS to 30 while recording fullscreen (1920x1200). Rock solid and video turns out real nice. AH graphics maxxed out and I use TIR. The reason I force it to 30FPS is two-fold: PC video runs just fine at 30FPS and your eyes can't really pick up anything faster, and anything faster requires more drive space and the video files get enormous with no benefit to quality of the video. Without recording, my FPS is a pretty solid 60.
And I too think live recording in the cockpit adds a lot to a video - you can see how nice the TIR works and what you're looking at during a fight, and also shows blackouts/redouts where the film recorder won't. And, because I use TIR, the film recorder has no reference for "use recorded views" since I don't use the view buttons.
I would suggest posting some specs from a dxdiag and perhaps take a look at how many other processes you're running. Both might shed some light on what's over-taxing your system with the processor-hungry Fraps is recording.
My specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00GHz
4Gb RAM
Vista Ultimate 64-bit
DirectX 11
GTX 260 (drivers 7.15.0011.8120)
Creative SB X-Fi (drivers 6.00.0001.1368)
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There is a check box in AHFilm labeled "Use recorded views" which will give you the same view you used in the game.
As I'mADot said, that's useless if you use Track IR as I do.
WoW has no where near the system load AH does.
You're mistaken. Maybe a few years ago, but WoW has upgraded its graphics quite a bit since you may have last run it. And I'm not even counting the new system-crushing shadows that came with Cataclysm.
When I record with Fraps, I have it force the FPS to 30 while recording fullscreen (1920x1200). Rock solid and video turns out real nice. AH graphics maxxed out and I use TIR. The reason I force it to 30FPS is two-fold: PC video runs just fine at 30FPS and your eyes can't really pick up anything faster, and anything faster requires more drive space and the video files get enormous with no benefit to quality of the video. Without recording, my FPS is a pretty solid 60.
I tried locking the framerate as well, but I thought the 30fps it was giving me was way too jumpy to be playable... there were constant hitches in the action, to lack a better descriptor of what was going on, even if the fraps framerate counter didn't say so. This brings up another point, I don't think the fraps framerate counter was accurate while recording, as it seemed to move to a multiple of 15 and stay there... when I turned everything to minimum settings this was 45fps, when I had some or all things turned on it was 30 fps, but imo it was an unplayable 30. You're right, the video looks fine, but I'm not a good enough sim pilot to cripple my flying with framerates that constantly fluctuate.
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DXDiag is too long to post, over 10000 characters. Even when I truncate the last couple sections its still too long.
I uploaded it to MediaFire. http://www.mediafire.com/file/yv9vcxhbrmvx7cs/DxDiag.txt
If you won't download it from MediaFire, please mention an alternative. Some people have a "thing" about the public free file storage sites.
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Aces is set to use 100% of your computer resources due to all the calculations on top of the graphics. WOW on the other hand doesn't. If you start running other programs while you run Aces you start taking resources away from it. The more you run the worst it gets.
If you must run fraps while in game, get your processes down as low as you can go. Kill off any other program you have running. Unless you have a monster system you'll need to clear up some room.
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Just because a game has pretty graphics does not mean it is loading up the computer more. Pretty graphics loads up the video card more.
Aces High is far, far more demanding on the overall system than WoW will ever be. If WoW adds a dynamically driven physics based flight model, and gets into fights where hundreds of players have to be kept up with while in those mathematically draining models, then it might get to the hardware demand Aces High has.
Fugitive pretty much nailed it though.
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As I'mADot said, that's useless if you use Track IR as I do.
Yes I am aware of that. I dont use TrackIR anymore due to it deciding to show me the seat of the P-51 whenever I exceed the bounds of the IR pickups which happens all the time unfortunately.
Why not just ask Ack-Ack what the name of that program is?
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Back from holiday vacation, so I'd like to resume this now.
Why not just ask Ack-Ack what the name of that program is?
Well if its a $700 program it lacks relevance to me, as its too expensive, even if it is somehow better than Fraps, which I find unlikely unless its a hardware solution.
However, you are known on this BBS for having a top-of-the-line computer system, would you mind testing Fraps with Aces High and reporting back on how well it functions with your computer? If it doesn't perform well for you either, then I may as well not put a lot of effort into resolving this, as no adjustment I can make will likely matter. You can get a free trial version of Fraps at www.fraps.com if you don't already own it, as I recall the trial is restricted to capturing only 30 seconds at a time, but that is plenty for testing purposes.
Aces is set to use 100% of your computer resources due to all the calculations on top of the graphics. WOW on the other hand doesn't. If you start running other programs while you run Aces you start taking resources away from it. The more you run the worst it gets.
If you must run fraps while in game, get your processes down as low as you can go. Kill off any other program you have running. Unless you have a monster system you'll need to clear up some room.
Just because a game has pretty graphics does not mean it is loading up the computer more. Pretty graphics loads up the video card more.
Aces High is far, far more demanding on the overall system than WoW will ever be. If WoW adds a dynamically driven physics based flight model, and gets into fights where hundreds of players have to be kept up with while in those mathematically draining models, then it might get to the hardware demand Aces High has.
Fugitive pretty much nailed it though.
This is actually quite useful information. So what you and Skuzzy are essentially saying is that Aces High is CPU bound, while WoW is more GPU bound.
To me the computer's performance while playing a game such as WoW or Aces High is directly related to the framerates achieved (and consistency of said framerates). Saying Aces High is more demanding on my "computer" when I can get it to run at nearly max settings at 60 FPS (synced with my monitor) while I can't do the same in WoW is to me disingenuous. Because to me, the computer is the entire system, not just one aspect of it that you seem to be measuring against.
But I will agree that Aces High might be more CPU-intensive... or from another perspective, that I have over-invested in my GPU for Aces High and over-invested in my CPU for WoW. This neatly explains why Fraps might run well for WoW but poorly for Aces High even when I set the graphical settings to minimums.
The next step would be to test the theory. Unfortunately I don't have access to a quad-core CPU that might be able to do the job better than my dual core, but I'll certainly try shutting down as many processes as possible before trying again.
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When I was on a dual core system I could never reliably get more than 30fps out of AH with fraps on and frame rates in AH dropped just turning a recording on but got steadily worse as the action grew. Now I can get a good 50fps with a full frame recording in heavy action or 60fps at half-size no matter what the action is like. I have not tried to set processor affinity specifically for FRAPS but I can tell you it wont help a dual core at all.
I do not use a top-of-the-line computer for AH. My AH system is mostly made of components that have dropped out of my preference in other areas like FSX or CAD. FSX is probably the best soaring environment possible for a computer and so I spend tons of money getting the most I can from it. Still... it doesnt hold a candle to CAD systems.
My AH machine is:
Windows 7 x64 (x64 is NOT needed for AH and really no other game I can think of)
EVGA 780i SLI with custom thermal treatments of the MOSFET SPP and MCP as well as voltage regulator area
EVGA GTX 480 (2) SLI (custom modified with phase change cooling - constant -46C)
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz @3.6GHz (Thermaltake Blue Orb II air cooling)
Corsair 4x2GB 800 MHz memory @ 5-5-5-18-2t 1000 MHz
2 x 6Gb/s WD 1TB HDs w/ ASUS USB3-6Gb/s controller
6 x 3Gb/s WD & Seagate HDs (mixed) on onboard controller
2 x Seasonic X750 Gold PSUs
Phonic Firefly 302+ firewire audio interface (for vox)
Creative SB X-Fi Titanium Fatality Champion (uber 3D positioning)
And yes by todays standards that is a tame system.
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When I was on a dual core system I could never reliably get more than 30fps out of AH with fraps on and frame rates in AH dropped just turning a recording on but got steadily worse as the action grew. Now I can get a good 50fps with a full frame recording in heavy action or 60fps at half-size no matter what the action is like. I have not tried to set processor affinity specifically for FRAPS but I can tell you it wont help a dual core at all.
Thanks that helps me a lot. I think its fairly conclusive then that I need a better CPU, and probably more cores would help more than more speed. But... what resolution were you running when you did that?
My motherboard is closing in on 4 years old and the CPU can't be that much younger, and I used to be one of those people that upgraded both every year. So perhaps I'll get one of those Sandy Bridge CPUs that are supposed to be out in the next few weeks, if they bench like they have in the previews.
As for your tame computer, I'd hazard a guess that its still top percentile or two among Aces High players.
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I run 1920x1200x32. I think if you run into the i7s you would find FRAPs possibly would not effect frame rates but I dont know if the cores make that much difference or how much influence the second HD controller has. I would put more money on faster CPU for AH performance before I worried about the number of cores or how good recordings come out but thats me.
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I just tested Fraps with 22 processes running, including Fraps, TrackIR, and AlacrityPC, and it wasn't noticeably different than before. As before, the Fraps files look fine, but the gameplay is way too choppy even if it claims about 30 fps.
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Yes fps has always been misleading. Its more important that you get smooth video than whatever number you see. Your 260 is a nice card but it could be something faster. Which X-Fi are you using? 22 processes on Vista? I think the best I ever managed was 29 but probably I just dont remember correctly.
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Yes fps has always been misleading. Its more important that you get smooth video than whatever number you see. Your 260 is a nice card but it could be something faster. Which X-Fi are you using? 22 processes on Vista? I think the best I ever managed was 29 but probably I just dont remember correctly.
Nope it is XP SP3.
X-Fi Xtrememusic "SB0460". I think I'm going to wait until the summer to really consider upgrading the graphics card again.
I may write the author of Fraps to see if he can tweak the software for Aces High, he often puts in his change log tweaks for other games.
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Not sure why I thought you were talking about Vista.
Do you know your motherboard manufacturer and model?
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Do you know your motherboard manufacturer and model?
Its the Asus Commando:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131149
http://usa.asus.com/Product.aspx?P_ID=wWs3CTw57UtxaaHw
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BoilerDown,
you should be able to get down to around 13 or 14 processes with your WindowsXP SP3......
I would say even lower, for some people can dip down into the 7 to 9 processes range...... but you are going to be using Fraps and also using your Track IR
WMLute almost always played AH at around 13 processes running when he was on his WinXP system.... and he was not using AlacricityPC ( because it itself is another process / service )
I myself would normally be around 17 or 18 processes....... and I would still have my ESET SS4 loaded up ( anti-virus, firewall, etc ) among other things and still played AH but only totalled 17to 18 processes....
hope this helps.......
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I cant recommend using that board with a Quad CPU either. I didnt get this board (or any other P965 MB) because they suffer from two problems. The first is a lack of direct IDE support from the Intel chipset itself. Im not precisely sure about what ASUS did to solve it but most manufacturers used the JMicron as a secondary controller and if thats what they did you might try removing the DVD/CD temporarily to see if you get a more stable system. Stability in this case might surprise you but without reading a lot more and researching this particular MB I cant say what issues you might be having even though you dont see them. If you have an updated BIOS its possible ASUS has resolved most issues.
The other problem the MB has is the voltage regulators which might have resulted in poor stability overall. Knowing that and seeing the board has the second PCIe slot (the one the size of the x16) limited to x4 is what led me away from this MB.
However the final nail in the coffin as it were is that the Intel Quad Core CPUs that would provide more power than what you already have are all voltage hungry CPUs and I would never consider putting one of them in this board. They will not be stable.
And that pretty much leads to the conclusion which is that the MB is limiting your performance and probably leading to more frames dropping than you would have otherwise although it is not the only factor as we already discussed. The more activity you are seeing in AH the more the load is on all components and the less likely the MB can provide adequate power at the same time. As the MB ages you will most likely begin to see random lockups followed by spontaneous reboots and finally memory controller failure.
So now that I said that just remember two things. If you hadnt read it you would be in the dark but happier. The second is if it isnt broken dont fix it.
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TC: I knocked off one more process, but based on the lack of improvement going from 36 to 21, I'm not going to attempt to reduce it further. Its already in the recommended range for XP and I have the distinct feeling the other processes aren't doing much anyways. Diminishing returns and all.
Chalenge:
Well the motherboard's features list "8 phase EL-Capless power design" which "removes any worries of capacitor problems once and for all."
But seriously, the MB is four years old, I wouldn't put a new CPU in it... if I upgrade my CPU I will get a new MB. As an aside, this build is the most rock-solid stable that I've ever built for myself... as its stability has been flawless for four years. Even so I'm leaning towards a Sandy Bridge Intel CPU, which has a release date one week from now, which will be on a new socket, which will require a new MB and new memory. The only question is which variant of the CPU to buy (between 2300 and 2600K), and how soon to buy it... if there's a lot of price gouging going on I will certainly wait... if not then I might wait anyways.
I did send a note to the Fraps author about checking performance with AH. I'll see if and how he responds.
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You still take a FR hit with FRAPS even with an i7 and a GTX 580. Not much of a hit but you do take one. Lower end video cards will take a larger hit then higher end ones with i7.
TD
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That statement doesnt take into account the difference between half-size recording and full-size recording. With half-size recording I dont get a frame rate hit with a Core 2 Quad (LGA 775) and the same would be true of an i7. The frame rate hit at full-size recording exists but is hardly worth mentioning since it is still smooth video which is all that matters. In effect I am doing this with a single GTX 480 since SLI doesnt do much except post-processing with AH and since AH doesnt use PhysX and since I only use x2 AA and x4 AF (which can be done with a single card)... not much of a hit on a GTX 580 at all.
Of course there are still weaker i7s and the user is always free to add a bunch of junk on his/her machine to drag down the performance so... YMMV.
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Well I got a response back from Fraps' technical support, but it was barely more than a form letter telling me to do all the obvious things that I said I did in my initial email to them, but that they didn't read. I'll see where it goes from there.
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not really familiar with this stuff but have you tried to use another recorder? I did a quik search and found camstudio witch is a free on screen recorder...
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not really familiar with this stuff but have you tried to use another recorder? I did a quik search and found camstudio witch is a free on screen recorder...
I'm familiar with CamStudio from a tutorial I made recently. Its screencast software, not game recording software. It simply won't work.
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I'm familiar with CamStudio from a tutorial I made recently. Its screencast software, not game recording software. It simply won't work.
Yes it will, it's what I use in place of Fraps if I want to film anything I do in game seperate from the AH film recorder.
ack-ack
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Yes it will, it's what I use in place of Fraps if I want to film anything I do in game seperate from the AH film recorder.
ack-ack
Um... that's weird. I thought it was really low quality and very big hit on the computer's performance, and not at all intended for recording games, as its intended for capturing the Windows desktop. Would you explain how you configured it?
Also, now that you're here, Chalenge earlier said:
There is a program available that will allow you to do what you want to do from what has been said. I dont know from personal experience what the frame rates are like. Akak had mentioned it once in the hardware forum when this same topic came up before. I do not recall the name of the program but I do recall it was $700-800.
Can you elaborate?
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Um... that's weird. I thought it was really low quality and very big hit on the computer's performance, and not at all intended for recording games, as its intended for capturing the Windows desktop. Would you explain how you configured it?
Also, now that you're here, Chalenge earlier said:
Can you elaborate?
It is a resource hog but so is Fraps and from my experience, Camtasia actually has a smaller resource footprint that Camtasia. As for quality, it all depends on what you've selected for your settings when you set up your recordings.
Here is Camtasia's resource page that's of great help when using this program.
Camtasia Studio Learning Center (http://www.techsmith.com/learn/camtasia/documentation7.asp)
ack-ack
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I didnt realise it was Flash based. Thats going to be a problem. With a DirectX game like AH I think you are much better off sticking to FRAPS but at least there is a trial version of Camtasia for you to try.
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<snip>This is actually quite useful information. So what you and Skuzzy are essentially saying is that Aces High is CPU bound, while WoW is more GPU bound.
That is not what I said.
To me the computer's performance while playing a game such as WoW or Aces High is directly related to the framerates achieved (and consistency of said framerates). Saying Aces High is more demanding on my "computer" when I can get it to run at nearly max settings at 60 FPS (synced with my monitor) while I can't do the same in WoW is to me disingenuous. Because to me, the computer is the entire system, not just one aspect of it that you seem to be measuring against.
I will say it very clearly. Aces High is more strenuous on your entire computer system than WoW is. WoW is network, sound, and CPU light compared to Aces High. Graphically, they place different loads on the video card making a direct comparison difficult.
Check the CPU usage for each game, you will probably find Aces High is using around two times more CPU than WoW is (depending on the situation in each game).
Our graphic tradeoffs have more to do with the visual depth than anything else. To allow you to see 17 miles in any direction requires a lot more graphic time than the shorter distances in WoW. Wow is all about close up details, as you are almost always close to the objects in the frame. It will be more graphically challenging than Aces High, but far less CPU instensive.
Fraps does not place that much of a load on the graphics card. It simply copies the frame buffer from the card to the system. Writting the data to the hard drive is where most of the herky-jerky behavior will occur in Aces High as that suspends the CPU during the writes.
You really cannot use a synced frame rate to derive any load differences. Turn of vsych to get a better idea of frame loop load differences.
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That is not what I said.
Then one of us doesn't seem to know what it means to be CPU-bound vs GPU-bound. Or are you saying that WoW is neither-bound? Obviously something is the limiting factor for fps in WoW, and in WoW I can make the fps drop lower than I can in Aces High. So what is it?
I will say it very clearly. Aces High is more strenuous on your entire computer system than WoW is. WoW is network, sound, and CPU light compared to Aces High. Graphically, they place different loads on the video card making a direct comparison difficult.
Italics and underlining mine. The comparison is simple. If AH has higher loads on those three parts, yet WoW can be made to run slower on the "entire computer system" than AH, something other than "network, sound, and CPU" must be the culprit. I would bet on the GPU, because there's not much left to bet on.
Our graphic tradeoffs have more to do with the visual depth than anything else. To allow you to see 17 miles in any direction requires a lot more graphic time than the shorter distances in WoW. Wow is all about close up details, as you are almost always close to the objects in the frame. It will be more graphically challenging than Aces High, but far less CPU instensive.
I think we're at agreement other than agreeing that we're agreeing. Are you playing a "my game is harder than your game" game? Cause I'm not a WoW dev, I don't care. Other than I want to know why Fraps takes a much bigger chunck out of the gameplay experience in AH than it does in WoW.
Fraps does not place that much of a load on the graphics card. It simply copies the frame buffer from the card to the system. Writting the data to the hard drive is where most of the herky-jerky behavior will occur in Aces High as that suspends the CPU during the writes.
Again this is neatly attributed to... let me put it this way... WoW has more CPU-headroom than AH, so "suspending the CPU" wouldn't affect WoW as much.
What if I had a quad-core instead of a dual-core? How many threads does AH attempt to use? Would Fraps be able to do its work (in an XP environment) with a quad-core without suspending a CPU that AH is depending on?
You really cannot use a synced frame rate to derive any load differences. Turn of vsych to get a better idea of frame loop load differences.
I was under the impression that while you're at frames less than the vsynch of the monitor (60 fps in my case), suspending vsynch doesn't actually do anything.
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Then one of us doesn't seem to know what it means to be CPU-bound vs GPU-bound. Or are you saying that WoW is neither-bound? Obviously something is the limiting factor for fps in WoW, and in WoW I can make the fps drop lower than I can in Aces High. So what is it?
Game performance is not something easily determined when viewing desparate parts of a computer system. Aces High, nor WoW has to be either CPU or GPU bound. It will depend on the system.
Italics and underlining mine. The comparison is simple. If AH has higher loads on those three parts, yet WoW can be made to run slower on the "entire computer system" than AH, something other than "network, sound, and CPU" must be the culprit. I would bet on the GPU, because there's not much left to bet on.
The comparison is not that simple and that is the point. This is why I keep stressing "Aces High places a higher load on the entire computer than WoW does". WoW can be made to run slower if you pump up the graphic details. It (WoW) is all about the video card.
EDIT: I meant to say something but got side-tracked. A graphics engine can draw a frame in many different ways. The different ways places more strain/load on one part of a video card, versus another part. By moving the load around on a video card, the same video card might struggle with one game, but royally kick butt at another game. This is one of many reasons why you simply cannot compare one game to another.
I think we're at agreement other than agreeing that we're agreeing. Are you playing a "my game is harder than your game" game? Cause I'm not a WoW dev, I don't care. Other than I want to know why Fraps takes a much bigger chunck out of the gameplay experience in AH than it does in WoW. Again this is neatly attributed to... let me put it this way... WoW has more CPU-headroom than AH, so "suspending the CPU" wouldn't affect WoW as much.
I am not playing any game. This has nothing to do with "ours is bigger than his". FRAPS uses CPU which is going to hurt our performance more than WoW will be hurt, as we use a higher percentage of CPU than WoW does, in most cases. I told you how to test it yourself. You do not have to believe me.
What if I had a quad-core instead of a dual-core? How many threads does AH attempt to use? Would Fraps be able to do its work (in an XP environment) with a quad-core without suspending a CPU that AH is depending on?
You can have 400 cores, it will not matter. If the program cannot fit into the cores cache, then the core will have to access memory to fetch the next instruction/data. At that time, everything else that needs access to memory is stopped. If the hard disk is being written to, all the cores must stop if they cannot continue within thier cache. If your network card is a bu master (most are today), then when it needs to access system RAM, the CPUs are dead. External write access to system RAM invalidates the internal CPU cache.
Games are horribly large executables with even larger sets of data. It is rare (not sure it is even possible) to be able to contain much of a frame loop within the confines of a single cores cache.
Aces High is one of the few natively multi-threaded games on the market. We use 2 cores, if available (AMD users are out of luck here due to issues within the AMD CPU itself).
I was under the impression that while you're at frames less than the vsynch of the monitor (60 fps in my case), suspending vsynch doesn't actually do anything.
Incorrect. With vsync enabled, it can cause blocking issues within the frame draw that can extend the frame draw time. It will depend on the video card. When testing, it is generally best to disable vsync just to be sure.
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A faster CPU is the way to go versus the number of cores (I know... I said that already). i7 has other advantages being the later socket so it has things like native SATA3 which I believe helps out FRAPS too.
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Aces High is one of the few natively multi-threaded games on the market. We use 2 cores, if available (AMD users are out of luck here due to issues within the AMD CPU itself).
<--- starts scratching head ----
I thought all that was done and over with and why noone needed the AMD dual Core Optimizer patch anymore.....
I never have had any trouble with any of my 4 Dual Core AMD's I have built and tested or flown AH on
just saying ( and have been able to max out my FPS with hires text pkg and 70 or 75 frame rate depending whether iwas in XP 32bit(70 )
o r Win7 64bit ( 75 )
edited: ( I am not counting this piece of junk PC I am currently using which I have recently thrown together which I mentioned in the following thread http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,303290.0.html .... my main PC is waiting on a warranty replacement MB from ASUS where the PC User performed a ID10T error while doing my quarterly cleaning of it )
anyways, sorry if I sidestepped the conversation
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AMD supplied a work around, which basically keeps the game on one core.
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so the work around did away with the having to use the AMD Optimizer patch I take it???
sorry if I am mixing things up, I was just trying to go from memory
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It is a slightly different approach, but essentially solves the problem the same way. It still does not work with every version of the CPU, but it works for most.
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I didnt realise it was Flash based. Thats going to be a problem. With a DirectX game like AH I think you are much better off sticking to FRAPS but at least there is a trial version of Camtasia for you to try.
The videos made from Camtasia aren't flashed based unless you choose to convert them to that format after recording. The ones I've done are in .mpg or .wmv format. If he's using the trial version it may be limited to only being able to convert the video captures to flash format.
ack-ack
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Game performance is not something easily determined when viewing desparate parts of a computer system. Aces High, nor WoW has to be either CPU or GPU bound. It will depend on the system.
Obviously. But I was interested and talking about my particular system (the specs were posted previously), not "in general" computers with any conceivable combination of CPUs and GPUS. It was also a comparison between WoW and AH, with AH being more CPU bound and WoW being more GPU bound (on my computer).
If the program cannot fit into the cores cache, then the core will have to access memory to fetch the next instruction/data. At that time, everything else that needs access to memory is stopped. If the hard disk is being written to, all the cores must stop if they cannot continue within thier cache. If your network card is a bu master (most are today), then when it needs to access system RAM, the CPUs are dead. External write access to system RAM invalidates the internal CPU cache.
Games are horribly large executables with even larger sets of data. It is rare (not sure it is even possible) to be able to contain much of a frame loop within the confines of a single cores cache.
Aces High is one of the few natively multi-threaded games on the market. We use 2 cores, if available (AMD users are out of luck here due to issues within the AMD CPU itself).
This is good to know. So a faster hard drive sub-system might be more important for Fraps-ing AH than more cores on the CPU? Or are you saying it might be impossible to make it work better?
Also I just got an email back from a real human at the Fraps tech support. Not a lot of progress yet, but they did say:
If you have access to another machine with a quad (or higher) core processor, you may want to try using Fraps on it instead. We have designed Fraps to use up to two cores that are the least utilized by the machine, so having extra idle cores while playing the game can help Fraps to capture without impacting the game performance.
Incorrect. With vsync enabled, it can cause blocking issues within the frame draw that can extend the frame draw time. It will depend on the video card. When testing, it is generally best to disable vsync just to be sure.
I'll have to do some new tests then.
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A faster drive subsystem will help everything. The faster the data can be written to the drive, the shorter the times where memory is not available to anything else.
Faster system RAM can also help, but that is a rather controversial topic as most people do not know how to get thier computers configured to maximize performance when using higher speed RAM.
While there is a lot to it, the basic reason my home computer can boot to the desktop in 4 seconds flat is due, in large part, to its faster RAM. The HD is just a Seagate 500GB NS model.
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Got another email from Fraps:
Thanks for your reply. As an example, I have tested Aces High on a high end machine with a quad core Intel i7 processor and was able to capture 30 FPS clips at 2560x1440, with the game running at 30 FPS solidly. Alternatively, if I dropped the video resolution down to 1920x1080 (1080p) I could run the game at 60 FPS while still capturing at 30 FPS (with the Lock Framerate option disabled in Fraps).
From what I saw of the CPU performance meters on the system at the time I was playing the game, i noticed quite a high use of 2 physical cores, so having more than 2 will most likely provide the best performance boost for capturing this kind of CPU intensive game.
Some good work from them doing the testing I can't do myself without additional hardware. Granted I have no idea what the rest of their system was, but this gives a good indication to me that a quad-core CPU will help out, as Aces High wants two threads, and Fraps wants two threads.
The Sandy Bridge CPU is officially released in less than an hour from now, and to support it I'd need a new motherboard that supports faster hard drive I/O and memory than I'm using now. I think that covers my bases and I'm overdue for an upgrade anyways.
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So this past weekend I finally installed my new motherboard (Asus P8P67 Evo), CPU (2600K), and memory, reinstalled XP and drivers from scratch, re-did the tweaking to remove unneeded processes (mostly using advice from http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm ), got the new (3.2.8) version of Fraps and Aces High installed, and started testing a bit. Only my optical drives are plugged into the potentially faulty sata ports, so that isn't a factor in these tests.
For certain its much improved. I've been capturing full screen lossless at various framerates and the game-play framerate never drops below 30 while recording. 30 is pretty slow you say? Well I agree, but I noticed some really strange behavior.
First my results aren't directly comparable to my old results because of the newer Fraps. The changelog for the new versions includes the following:
"3.2.8 - 3rd Feb 2011
- Greatly reduced CPU usage while recording on most configurations"
So maybe making the Fraps people aware of the problems with Aces High led them to tweak their code? Who knows?
Anyways, what I found is that IF I capture at an un-locked framerate of 15 or more, Aces High always runs at a multiple of the framerate that I'm capturing at. So what happens if I set the capture framerate to 30 is that the game will run at 60 until I get into some heavy action, then drop down to 30 and stay there. It may fall back up to 60 if I leave the area that's hitting the framerates hard. If I set the capture framerate to 15, as soon as I hit some action that drops the gameplay framerate below 60, it falls down to 45 and stays there except one time I hit a rather dense dogfight and it dropped down to 30. If I set the capture framerate to 20, it falls to 40, a capture framerate of 24 was tested to fall down to 48.
But if I set the capture framerate to 14 or lower, the gameplay framerates change dynamically as you'd expect, lower in high action areas and synced at 60 in low action areas.
When not capturing this setup is good enough to keep the game at 60 FPS at all times, but I haven't tried unsyncing to the monitor frequency yet to see what happens.
Anyways, while improved, this problem makes things still not quite right. I'm guessing I have plenty of CPU horsepower now, but either my hard drive or my video card is too slow to keep it at 60 FPS while capturing at all times. But I can't justify the cost to upgrade those as well at this time, I'll just have to capture at 14 or 12 or something.
Btw, turning off lossless doesn't seem to have a measurable effect, so I keep it on. I haven't tried half-size yet, my experience is that half-size looks like crap and takes up nearly as much hard drive space as full-size anyways.