Racing Simulators

gsf600y said:
My iRacing subscription has expired in Jan, but I've got an Intel E6420, and a 320MB Nvidia GTS8800 (until it broke), and that was running iRacing fine at 1280x1024. Obviously, I couldn't turn all the bells and whistles on, but it looked good enough, and was smooth.
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Thanks

johny dolan said:
| Athlon 64 X2 4400 | 2GB Corsair | 7800GTX will run it mid details ok.
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I should update my sig, not had that since just after it was all out! I only have laptops and an old imac here at the moment!!

On that basis, would a shuttle based rig with an i3, 8gb (or 4 does it matter?) with an ATi 5770 do a decent job - to begin with hooked up to a 720p plasma or LCD?
 
I'm suprised at the rigs above, I play on the rig in my sig (when i'm not in a different county to it) at 1680 x 1050, 2x AA and almost all the bells and whistles turned on. During racing it's pretty stable at 60fps, not dipping below 50fps except on the grid where it's hovers around 40 for the first few corners. I know that's a bit low for a sim, but it only lasts about 15 seconds and it worth it for the extra eye candy (imo iracing is under rated graphically). Oddly I found that one of the biggest performance hogs is the high detail in mirrors option, as long as that was off everything was smooth.
 
To run iracing well with most details on id say a i7 and 5870 kind of rig is needed but to play at mid details and there is a lot you can turn on or off a i3 and 5770 would do ok.

With my rig i run max details with shadows on everything and my fps unlocked are between 250 and 350 most of the time to give you some idea.

Iracing does like a good cpu and the i7s do much better than the amd chips.
 
An i3, 4Gb or more ram and a 5770 should do a reasonable job,

For a good while I was using a ~3GHz E2180 Core2Duo with a 4870 on 1920x1200 and that was perfectly usable, I only upgraded to the 5850 and a 4GHz E8400 C2D to be able to get roughly the same settings but on 5760x1200 :p

CatMangler/ScarySquirrel, I kinda offered to do a practice session then spent all my time racing, if either of you are still interested I'd be happy to do one tomorrow afternoon (or later today I guess :p)

On the subject of racing at zandy, did a 1:23 \o/, had some mess races :(, and my god it's hard to pass around here, makes for some fun close racing (can you say 3-wide around T1? :p) but also quite irritating at times :p
 
After the new build guys with lower licences can join practice sessions of the top cars so you can get a taste of driving lotus and williams with the top drivers.
 
SKILL said:
An i3, 4Gb or more ram and a 5770 should do a reasonable job
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The obvious thing to avoid, IMO, would be buying something which can't be upgraded. If he discovers that he likes, say, iRacing quite a lot, a decent motherboard will be a must.

I would be tempted to suggest the cheapest possible Sandybridge solution to leave as many options open as possible. (There may be better value in AMD but I'm totally out of touch with their kit these days... since Core2Duo Intel have, sadly, been out in front).

4Gb will definitely be plenty, that's for sure. And something like a 5770 will certainly be reasonable. But I see that a 5850 isn't too much more and that might be a safer bet. It's so hard to do this without feature creep setting in though. :-) However I do think it would be as easy to go cheap and regret it as it will be to spend too much and regret that. Finding a comfortable middle ground will be tricky, as ever.

FWIW I ran iRacing very well indeed with an E6600@3GHz on three screens (1680x1050) and a GTX260. A cheap card in that class (from the MM perhaps?) might be a good route to contemplate. DX11 is pretty worthless IMO (having shifted to a 5870).

Andrew McP
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, you are quite right i am trying to find the sweetspot between under spending and overspending. I quite fancy a shuttle again as would be easy to move between rooms (plan to use it on my current plasma and lcd tellys) but while i have seen a sandybridge based one it seems to cost more than the entire i3 build just for the shuttle!

Is an i5 and decent leap from an i3 down the line, even an i7 is supported on the shuttle ocuk sell (the 1156 based one)?

What has really swung the wanting a pc again is i hooked the Fanatec up to an old c2d laptop i have and teh FFB is in a different league to the console games, tried LFS and some other older games (on board intel gfx!!) and the actual physics/gameplay are so much better! However i did give up pc gaming as i was spending a fortune on it so dont want to fall into theat trap again....
 
Shimmyhill said:
I quite fancy a shuttle again
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I like Shuttle type systems. In fact I bought one in the Athlon days. However for serious gaming (and racing sims are) I'd be very reluctant to see anyone on a budget buy one. The extra money that goes into the tighter form factor could be better spent elsewhere. And of course heat's always a risk. If you get into iRacing, where races can be anything from 20 minutes to 1hr+ you want rock solid reliability.

I'm sure Shuttle can provide that if spec'ed and cooled properly, but why take the risk?

Is an i5 and decent leap from an i3 down the line, even an i7 is supported on the shuttle ocuk sell (the 1156 based one)?
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Two cores is still all that most sims/games will take advantage of, but if buying new 4 has to be a good investment. I'd be inclined to go i5 if you could. i7 would be overkill, especially for you. The hyper-threading is unlikely to be useful. And I only suggested Sandybridge because in the past I've made the mistake of spending too little and regretting it rather than making a genuine investment which'll last a few years (or retain more resale value if you bale out).

Tricky stuff, and there is no perfect advice.

What has really swung the wanting a pc again is i hooked the Fanatec up to an old c2d laptop i have
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I'm guessing the onboard video won't really be up to powering modern sims properly. Otherwise you might have been able to just use that... though again the heat/reliability thing could be an issue.

i did give up pc gaming as i was spending a fortune on it so dont want to fall into that trap again....
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Can't say I blame you. We all know how easy it is to make a wallet cry in this hobby. So you'd better not try iRacing then. :-> That's a whole new ballgame of potential financial pain. Except you sort of enjoy it at the same time. It's a sim for masochists.

Poor masochists. :-)

FWIW I blew £260 on a PS3 just for GT5 and although GT5 has some really disappointing weaknesses, I was particularly impressed by its FFB with a G25. It's a better feeling sim (IMO) than some PC sims, especially in the right car thrashing around the Nordschleife. So the grass isn't always greener.

Just most of the time. ;-)

Andrew McP

PS Remember that for general gaming Steam (and other) sales now make PC gaming much cheaper than it used to be, and there's no need to get back onto the upgrading treadmill. It is mostly for willy waving rather then genuine gains.
 
Ahleckz said:
This seems like a good place to ask. I really like GT5, but can't afford (nor do I really want) a PS3.
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The good news for you is that GT5 isn't worth it. I enjoyed my GT5 experience, and still fire it up to drive the Nordschleife, but the overall game isn't very satisfying. Very weak design IMO (unbalanced racing, slow AI, and so on.... and don't get me started about the endurance races). There are a a few really superb experiences in the right car, but overall I wouldn't spend the money again.

Therefore, what is the best driving game similar to this? It'll be for offline/casual play (as I'm hopeless at them!) with an xbox controller.
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Well, you'll probably find most of us around here use wheels, and controllers make for very different experiences (though some even -- scarily! -- use them on iRacing). Given how horrible Shift2 feels with a wheel (IMO) I can only guess it was designed from the ground upwards for controller driving, and this weekend you can get it for only £17.49 at EA's download store.

Although I'm a bit disappointed with Shift2's "feel" (no better than 1), I do think it's a very well put together product.

Of course there's always the LFS demo to try (and race online) for free. It's surprisingly drivable with a mouse, so I'm guessing a controller would be better. And I'm sure if I wasn't half asleep after work I could think of a few more decent options. :-)

But I wanted to say something before your question got lost.

Andrew McP

PS Dirt 2 is good fun as well for a game with just enough sim-ness to be quite satisfying.
 
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johny dolan said:
To run iracing well with most details on id say a i7 and 5870 kind of rig is needed but to play at mid details and there is a lot you can turn on or off a i3 and 5770 would do ok.

With my rig i run max details with shadows on everything and my fps unlocked are between 250 and 350 most of the time to give you some idea.

Iracing does like a good cpu and the i7s do much better than the amd chips.
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Used to run Iracing on a Q9550 at stock (2.93) with a ATI 5850 and 4gb ram had all settings at max apart from shadows and crowd and fps was locked at 80 and never dropped.
 
Andrew_McP said:
Helpful stuff
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Thanks for all the help, having looked into the shuttles they do a sandybridge based one and it has positive reports from gamers, have also seen a waterblock cooler from corsair that people seen to really rate in these for keeping temps really low so i think its still an option - look at the spend going up already :rolleyes:

I have GT5 and i do love it and like you say it has moments of brilliance much like F3 (do you find ffb in gt5 is totally random with some tracks having amazing ffb and others almost none?) but i am interested in the variety pc sims offer with cars and tracks - i can see iRacing getting very expensive but i wouldn't be jumping into that first and would start with LFS etc

Still some research to do but thanks all for the help!
 
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