Fraps performance boost

Reaction · 2 Mar 2010 at 23:57

Hey, just looking for a bit of advice, I've been using fraps for a while now to record some of my game play in TF2 amongst other games and my PC can do this no problem. In the near future I will be looking to do the same for Bad Company 2 and possibly other games yet to be released.

At this moment in time im using...
i7 920 OC'd to 3.8GHz
6GB triple channel ddr3
HD 4870 - currently 750/900MHz
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB

Obviously more than enough for TF2 I get 155fps average when benchmarking with fraps. What steps would you guys recommend I take to minimize the performance drop when recording newer games?

Alex74 · 3 Mar 2010 at 00:16

record at a lower resolution/framerate?..other than that, not sure quite what you want suggested. It'll record as fast as it'll record, and recording will steal valuable resources from your game.

I suppose you could try allocating CPU affinities. Relatively few modern games will use all 4 of your cpu cores effectively, so you could allocate, say, a single core to Fraps and the other three to the game (or 2:2 if it's a badly threaded game

). Try that, see if it helps. Might not though

MikeHunt79 · 3 Mar 2010 at 00:18

get another HD to record onto.

Reaction · 3 Mar 2010 at 00:35

Alex74 said:
I suppose you could try allocating CPU affinities. Relatively few modern games will use all 4 of your cpu cores effectively, so you could allocate, say, a single core to Fraps and the other three to the game (or 2:2 if it's a badly threaded game ). Try that, see if it helps. Might not though

I read that most games will perform (marginally) better with hyper-threading dissabled, would this still be the case when recording as well as playing?

MikeHunt79 said:
get another HD to record onto.

Ohhhh, good idea. And with the F3 500GB at only £40 it's very tempting. Would it be worth getting two and using raid just for the videos? Bear in mind i've never used raid.

Alex74 · 3 Mar 2010 at 00:38

Reaction said:
I read that most games will perform (marginally) better with hyper-threading dissabled, would this still be the case when recording as well as playing?

Doubt it, but I couldnt say for sure. Try it with both

, see if one works better

(Also +1 for the 2nd HDD to record onto, can't believe I didnt think of that :rolleyes:

. Basically, MikeHunt's suggestion will be the best improvement, then consider my suggestions if you still want to

)

Reaction · 3 Mar 2010 at 00:45

Right, I will add that to my list then. I haven't earned free delivery yet so i'm ordering all my stuff together to save on packaging. I will try both HT on and off like you suggest. Thanks for the replies guys you have been most helpful.

mrk · 3 Mar 2010 at 01:55

Recording to another HDD will only stop the disk stuttering - FPS will always drop a bit even with FPS lock disabled in the latest Fraps.

You're recording a video real time, it's impossible to get no fps drop on any PC.

MikeHunt79 · 3 Mar 2010 at 12:43

Reaction said:
Ohhhh, good idea. And with the F3 500GB at only £40 it's very tempting. Would it be worth getting two and using raid just for the videos? Bear in mind i've never used raid.

I don't think you'll need RAID unless you're recording very high res high bandwidth stuff. Keep it simple if you can.