Question on fraps recording, RPM importance, and multi-cores

[dainegai]

So it's been bothering me for a while whenever I try to record anything at around 1280*720 resolution or more at 60 fps. At more tame resolutions, fraps has no problem recording everything at 60 fps, but at the higher resolutions like what I said earlier, it consistently lowers the fps to around 40ish or so.

Now, I normally wouldn't say anything because I'd figure it's my CPU not being able to handle it, but I have an i5 clocking at 3.5 GHz, so that can't possibly be the case.

Then I look in Task Manager, and notice that fraps is using 25% of my quad-core CPU. Lowering the resolution made it still lag, but not as much; however, Task Manager still indicates that it was using 25% of my CPU.

If it helps to know, both fraps recording at higher resolutions and the game running is only around 40% of CPU used, the rest being pretty much free. I am recording onto a separate, but not empty, Western Digital 1 TB 7200 RPM drive.

So I was wondering, what is it that's causing fraps to have to slow down the game? Is it having too slow of a hard drive to write data to, does fraps not work with multi-core CPUs well, just what is it? And how can I fix it so that it'll record properly?

Thanks for your replies in advance.

[frapsforum.com]

It is more than likely just a limit of your harddrive. You might want to uncheck the lossless RGB option if that is on, that will ease the load significantly. Also, if you're not going to use sound you can disable recording that as well.

A decent drive performance utility can be found here if you're ever curious as to how fast your fraps drive can write:

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html


One day I'll get a SSD and do a side by side comparison of the gains you get from one. I'd imagine that is the bottleneck that most people are hitting.

Another interesting thought is that with a SSD, you are able to quickly write data which would allow you to use the Lossless option in fraps (if you could handle the space it takes up). This in turn might actually lower CPU usage, since the machine isn't having to compress the data which it does when you use the lossy option. With the right hardware upgrade, you could get higher performance by using a previously more system intensive and better looking option.

[dainegai]

Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but hey, it gives me all the more reason to buy a VelociRaptor. It also reminded me to uncheck "force lossless RGB capture"; that actually made it go from 40ish FPS to 50ish FPS.

But yeah, thanks for the response.

[frapsforum.com]

You might want to see if there are any other drives on the market that has a higher sequential write speed. I know raptors are good at quick small file access but I'm not sure if they are absolute top when it comes to writing large amounts of data.

Another option is a raid setup, but that can get pricey.

[dainegai]

As much as I'd love to, most faster drives with actual space required for some of my longer recordings are just way too rich for my blood.

So obviously, a raid setup's also out of the question as well :P

[frapsforum.com]

Do you know what line your Western Digital drive is? Blue, Black, or Green?

[dainegai]

My 1 TB HDD would be a Western Digital Caviar Green. On hindsight I should have gotten a Caviar Black, but it was the cheapest 1 TB HDD at the time, so yeah :v

[frapsforum.com]

Yeah, the green drives don't exactly give the best performance. That could be a key issue.