Thanks in advance for any help. I'm recording my games at 1920x1080 @ 60fps and I'm experiencing the drop in fps at the 4GB vid mark. After looking at this thread: http://frapsforum.com/threads/best-fraps-performance-tips-afaik.559/#post-2196 will 2x samsung 1TB F3 in raid0 cover my fraping needs or should I use 3x samsung HDs? I see the numbers but Im not entirely sure if it means I need to multiply 3x130 MB/s = 390 MB/s to match/exceed the number in red in the chart. Thanks again for any help provided. my system spec: asrock x4 gen3 2600k @ 4.4 Mhz + hyper 212+ 2x 6970 xfire muskin 2x4GB 1866 c300 128GB SSD 2x 2TB samsung F4 raid1 1000w PSU
1920x1080 x60 requires 365 MB/s uncompressed and from 70-100MB/s compressed, so a single HD might be enough, if you can get 129 MB/s like this guy: Rate my HDD. Don't say you want uncompressed please...
I guess uncompressed. The raw video that fraps puts out before I have to compress it using avidemux. Sounds like i have to use 3 HDDs in raid0 ey?
By uncompressed I meant the Force Lossless RGB capture option. Leave that off for lossless compression and a smaller capture file. See thread Thoughts on RGB lossless for a better explanation. The final compression you do with Avidemux etc is a whole different thing, we're just talking about the capture stage. [EDIT - after testing (see my post in the other thread) it seems the difference isn't as much as I thought; you should be able to have RGB On with a single fast HD]
Thanks for taking the time and energy to help me out bud. I went ahead and ordered a samsung spinpoint F3 1TB the other day. I'll report back in a few days.
My samsung F3 1TB HD from newegg came in last night. I used crystalmark to test the drive out and the read/write was ~ 145MB/s. I also formatted the drive to 64kb. Is 128kb any better? My previously used 2TB HD was ~130MB read and 107MB write. I frapped Vindictus (f2p mmo) 1920x1080 @ 60fps (RGB unchecked). The first drop was in the low 50s. As fraps continued to record and create new raw avis, the drops continued into the 40s, 30s and all the way down to the 10s. My next fraps test was Dead Horde (steam indie game) 1920x1080 @ 30fps (RGB unchecked). The same result happened. First drop was in the 50s and as the recording continued, the fps dropped lower and lower with every new avi created. Red Orchestra 2 (steam game) 1920x1080 @ 30fps (RGB unchecked): Fraps ran flawless for the first 4 minutes, then it went down hill from there. Same as above situations. The only game I can frap at 1920x1080 @ 60fps is left 4 dead 2 without experiencing any drops (frapped for 1 hour). This is even before I got the new hard drive. I don't know what to do at this point. A part of me says to give up and just deal with the drops. Edit: I'm gonna order another HD and raid0
That is a drag It's most likely one of four things, I think... Antivirus: disable full-time scanning on that drive. See if it has a "game mode". System Restore: disable for that drive. Background apps: No Torrent. No iTunes. No...whatever. Keep your browser and your chat going if you need 'em. Overloading the drive, causing delayed performance drop. See here, or here for a simpler test. Your fast performance at first may be illusory; the data is being cached to RAM, not written to disk; then when RAM finally starts running low, you have to either stop recording and let the disk catch up, or lose performance. When performance drops off, stop recording for a while. Watch the drive light; I would expect lots of disk activity after a delay period; when is goes back to idle, do another recording and see if performance is back to normal. Note RAID is not a guaranteed fix - as a matter of fact it adds more complexity, and may improve nothing. Please let me know how it goes.
raffriff, I forgot to mention that fraps also records my audio commentary through the gameplay. So it's just not game play that its recording. No worries with 1 & 2. However, I do have xfire and steam open. I still gotta sit down and do the calculations with #4 (not fully sure if I understand your formula). I did the test again with crystal mark using the 4GB block (Didnt realize I used 1GB before). My write this time dropped to 137MB/s. Video sample: Video length: 2 minutes 3 secs File size: 3.95GB | 4,143,285 KB Math: 4,143,285 KB / 1024 = 4046.18 MB 4046.18 MB * 1.05 = 4248.49 MB 4248.49 MB / 123 (video length) = 34.5 MB Now that you mentioned RAM, what is i get another 8GB to prolong the data being cashed to RAM? Will the extra RAM kit (muskin 1866) create any instability in my rig? Thanks again bud!
137 MB/s is great :jealous: Note performance can go down somewhat (20%?) as the drive fills up & starts writing to the inner (slower) tracks...) The math looks good. BUT were you doing 1920x1080 x60? I expect from this chart to see 95MB/s more or less. More RAM would just delay your problem by a few minutes. Don't think we discussed disk free space: you needs lots of it. As in 100GB free or more, and defragged.
I would also see if recording with nothing else running such as steam or xfire offers some improvement in performance. Anything that adds an overlay to the game. Check these settings, also: http://frapsforum.com/threads/looking-for-setup-specific-advice.39/#post-161 edit: you might want to check your EFI/bios settings also to see if your drives are running in IDE or AHCI mode. I think AHCI might offer better performance. I've never compared the two, though.
I honestly don't remember at this point if it was 1920x1080 x60 or not but I'm sure you're right. The drive is pretty much dedicated to just fraps videos. The most of used so far is only 20% of the disk space before I encode, upload the vids to youtube and delete all of the files for the next recordings. I did the steps in that link you recommended and my write to cache was turned on while the "Turn off Windows write-cache..." was unselected. I wish i could try out the AHCI mode but I have two drives in raid1 for redundancy. My additional drive came in today. I went ahead and raid0 the drives and got a performance increase as far as number goes but no improvements (as you said) with the hiccups every 4GB file. My next step is to try affinity. I have a 2600k @ 4.4Mhz. How many cores do you guys recommend I put on fraps and the game? Crystalmark numbers of the drives in raid0 that fraps record to: Uploaded with ImageShack.us
284 MB/s = Amazing performance that's 2x samsung 1TB F3 in raid0, correct? And you still get a hiccup every 4GB? How bad is it? Maybe you can turn write cache off on that bad boy.... worth a try. Re: affinity. Don't know but try one core for Fraps. If Fraps used multi cores I think they would have bragged about it. Some more links for you - solutions that have worked for others: http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/#post-1341 (disable win7 sound) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/#post-1346 (latest Fraps version) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-2#post-1350 (sound card) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-2#post-1354 (speed step, C1E, RGB) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-2#post-1359 (mic input) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-2#post-1362 (external audio input) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-3#post-1368 (external audio input) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-3#post-1369 (concurrent uploading..?) http://frapsforum.com/threads/fraps-freezing-when-4gb-limit-reached.304/page-3#post-2171 (external audio input)
