upping my FPS

been playing the new version of trackmania and i'm having a few problems on the tracks with too much scenery

mainly my FPS drops into the 20's which isnt really much cop.

so, i have a intel e2160 @2.8ghz, 2gb ram, abit IP35, ati 3850.

am i better off going for higher overclocks (280x10 on the gpu, std clocks on the gpu)
should i replace the 3850
should i replace the e2160?

tempted to try higher overclocks, but i'm guessing that i'm only going to get another 10% which isnt going to make much difference.

would a e7200 make much difference, or are we just down to the card?

many thanks

Are you running dual monitors, if you are and disable one performance does increase. You could try and overclock the graphics card, ATI tool and RIVA tuner are the best for the job.

You could try and determine which part is the limiting factor by changing your cpu clocks and then changing your gpu clocks and see which one makes the difference in fps. No point changing your cpu if the game is gpu bound.

Now this may come as a big shock but you could always turn down the detail for the scenery when playing on the tracks in which you experience low frame rates, that should sort your problems out! After all its the game play that matters not what the trees look like in the background.

As to what you can do overclocking the GPU is easy enough using Rivatuner or you can use ATI Tray tools (link) the is a beta version designed specifically for 3000 series cards.

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Originally Posted by Webby

Now this may come as a big shock but you could always turn down the detail for the scenery when playing on the tracks in which you experience low frame rates, that should sort your problems out! After all its the game play that matters not what the trees look like in the background.

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Thats my feelings on the matter :)

already put it on performance settings, not sure if there is much else i can alter.

unfortunatly some track designers shove so much stuff in that one track can be running at 70FPS, then next goes down to 25 and the game offers to lower the detail settings, but i would rather avoid that.

basically overclock the nuts off everything then?

What resolution are you playing on?

HD3870 here (so hardly much faster), running at 1920x1200, and these are my settings - just tested it and got 74.6fps on the built-in benchmark, and I've certainly not noticed any choppiness when playing it. Very minimal quality loss from the full settings too. Just a bit of gloss really (though 4x AA would have been ideal, 2x is more than fine).

http://www.thisisgav.co.uk/tmp/tnforever_settings.png

I get poor performance on some tracks (C2D @ 2.4 and 8800GTS 320). If you play in 100 player servers and have grass on you will get low fps. Some custom tracks also give poor performance due to excessive amounts of decor.