Fraps

DRHF · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:14

I use Fraps to record my gaming.

However, I sometimes tax my system too much.

My question is which components does recording tax the most?

What should I improve to get better results? I'm guessing RAM, however, I am probably wrong...

RJC · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:17

What are your system specs?

ToejaM · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:19

I'd say CPU especially if you're on core2 and not a quad

R088ieS86 · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:21

it hits CPU and RAM the hardest.

DRHF · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:24

Thanks,

my current system is an Acer Laptop, but I'm getting a new PC. I just wanted to know whether to get an i5 or the 6 core AMD when taking this into consideration

King Damager · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:34

An i5 won't struggle with this

Well it shouldn't do...

kd

d_brennen · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:37

Hard drive. Fraps records uncompressed video, can be a few gigabytes for a minute or two in good quality iirc. You'd see good performance gains by moving Fraps' default saving location to a drive that doesn't have Windows, your game or the page file on

LanceCrossfire · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:39

Well it's actually writing a file to your hard drive as you record, so you need a decent hard drive.

A 5400rpm laptop drive is a huge bottleneck.
Get an SSD if you can, if not a good mechanical drive like the Samsung F3 or WD black

Krony · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:49

I have tried a few vidoes with fraps too and had poor results with stuttering and stuff, game runs fine while recording but playback is awful, it also splits the video into more than 1 file, any idea what settings are best to avoid this ?
Edit: Fraps is installed on my main OS Vertex 3 which should be ok but i changed the folder where the vidoes get saved to to my Samsung F3 storage drive so maybe that is one of my issues, as for the video getting split up into multiple files will the setting for "loop buffer length" change the length of the videos ?

Reaper 392 · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:54

Krony said:
I have tried a few vidoes with fraps too and had poor results with stuttering and stuff, game runs fine while recording but playback is awful, it also splits the video into more than 1 file, any idea what settings are best to avoid this ?

i've heard good things from the beta version of MSI afterburner, especially about it being less of a system hog than fraps. with the beta it will record video and sound, the non beta just does video.

MSI afterburner can display FPS too, and take screenshots in several formats (not just .bmp like the free version of fraps)

Krony · 23 Aug 2011 at 20:58

I actually bought Fraps as it was only cheap anyway and just never really had any luck with it, might try messing around with it a bit and might change the video save folder to one on my Steam Vertex 2E drive.
Edit: Swopped the save folder to that SSD and it's loads better, recorded a quick FarCry 2 video @ 60FPS @ 1920x1200 and was smooth and it only used a single file for over a min of recording, before it was splitting it into 30 sec vids for some reason, big files tho lol.