What settings affect FPS most? (Please advise)

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

I am not familiar with the game, will be launching it just tonight, so can anyone point me at graphics settings that impact FPS most?

Grass (Vegetation) ???
Reflections???
Motion blur?
Bloom HBAO etc?

Will be playing on all Medium (none on High - Ultra), aiming for 50-70 FPS with 1680 x 1050 resolution on the following rig:

Phenom II X4 3.0 GHZ 940
4GB DDR2 RAM
GTX 750 Ti 2GB OC
Windows 8.1 32 Bit

Thanks for any tips for suitable graphics setup.

[Gooseone]

I would set detailed grass on low or off, Shadows on medium (don't like it them high / ultra anyaway). Envmap and reflections can take same performance out of it also where i think that reflections become especially demanding when it's raining.
I would use DS2x as AA, looks quite good for the performance it costs.
Additional SMAA options won't drag you down very much.

You should be able to have a lot of the other settings at high where it is worth keeping in mind that a MP race with a lot of cars in the wet is quite more demanding then SP practice ;).
Don;t know how taxing the additional features like bloom, crepspecular rays etc. are.

[M00body OfTheGoat]

Track detail
Environment mapping
Reflection mapping
Detailed grass

There are some first time run preset settings that have been put in place depending upon your system specs, which you can tweak yourself afterwards, using the Steam overlay as an in-game framerate monitor.

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

Thanks for advice guys. Will give it a try.

[Freak]

OP.......I hate to p iss on your fire but I think your system will be struggling to play PCars bud.

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von TotalFreakUK:

OP.......I hate to p iss on your fire but I think your system will be struggling to play PCars bud.

I can run Raceroom and Asseto Corsa on medium with 60-70 FPS, so I guess Project Cars will have the same performance on Medium too. I am not running Ultra or High.

[Freak]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Saint Warrior:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von TotalFreakUK:

OP.......I hate to p iss on your fire but I think your system will be struggling to play PCars bud.

I can run Raceroom and Asseto Corsa on medium with 60-70 FPS, so I guess Project Cars will have the same performance on Medium too. I am not running Ultra or High.

Soz bud...Fair play. Well, not tried Raceroom but in it'll run AC ok then can't see why not. Was the DDR2 Ram that was a lil worrying, Guess you mean 3

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von TotalFreakUK:

Was the DDR2 Ram that was a lil worrying.

I cannot do anything about DDR2 in my rig. In order to upgrade I have to throw out the motherboard, buy new RAM sticks, new CPU. Basically throw everything away from the PC and build the new one.

I paid ~3000 $ for it five years ago, then swapped the GPU from AMD (4870X2 that burned) to NVIDIA (first to 550Ti then to 750Ti OC), changed CPU cooling, OS. This is all I can do.

I won't be paying the price of a decent used car for a PC again that gets outdated after 5 years, will rather get PS4 or XBOX ONE.

[Jin]

You paid 3k for that 5 years ago? Total rip off.

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Jin:

You paid 3k for that 5 years ago? Total rip off.

Well it had 4870X2 GPU then and CPU also not the cheapest, 1000W power supply etc. etc. - I have purchased the whole desktop system. And yes, if you want to buy the same level modern one now like i7 Extreme + Rampage motherboard + SLI Titans you will again run into a used car price range. Not worthy investmement when you can buy PS4 or Xbox One instead.

[SRR Krieg]

You already have a decent GPU you can pick up a decent pc for $500 and smack your GPU and 1000W power supply on it. Check out places like PCUSA.com or Tigerdirect.com. I had a friend go with pcusa.com and they did a good job building it. Just food for thought. I would never buy latest and gratest as, as you said, it goes on major price reductions within a yearish.

Note I would make sure you check the specs b4 purchasing. these places let you choose options and generally the ones they offer are not the best bang for the buck...especially motherboards. i.e. $12 upgrade gets you a whole lot more :D

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

Well, I actually bought MSI GTX 750 Ti 2GB, because I was short in cash to buy GTX 970 and local supplier did not had GTX 660 in stock (which he said is most suitable for gaming).

GTX 750 Ti is interesting because it works without power supply (you don't have to connect any cables), just insert the card into PCI-E slot, lock it and it is going.

[Lyngton]

(I haven't played the game yet so I don't know its engine quirks.)

Your CPU seems like your bottleneck (though the 750 is by no means a beast). Shadows are usually done on the CPU, so you might want to adjust/disable shadows (*shudders*) if you can't reach your fps goal.
Vegetation is also done on the CPU sometimes, but it varies from title to title.

The performance impact of HBAO/Ambient occlusion varies from game to game, but generally turning it off gives a performance increase that (in my book) justifies the loss of some visual quality.

[Pure Awesome]

Turning Vsync off and shadows down make a huge difference.

[♡ _GneevS_ ♡]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Froskefranz:

Your CPU seems like your bottleneck (though the 750 is by no means a beast). Shadows are usually done on the CPU, so you might want to adjust/disable shadows (*shudders*) if you can't reach your fps goal.

The only options regarding CPU I have are the Phenom II X6 on Ebay (very rare there), or overclock the existing one (it is Black Edition so should be clockable), but again motherboard with DDR2 RAM slots, so only things I can get is the ultra rare 1200 Mhz DDR2s.

Most likely I will have to construct other desktop tower (after multiple times I had to repair the AMD CPU cooling - I will go with Intel now and NVIDIA combo).

[Lyngton]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Saint Warrior:

Most likely I will have to construct other desktop tower (after multiple times I had to repair the AMD CPU cooling - I will go with Intel now and NVIDIA combo).

Wise choice these days. I used to stick to AMD cpus and ATI cards 5+ years ago, but nowadays the most robust solutions lie in the intel + nvidia combo.

As for overclocking, if you do decide to do it; make sure you de-dust your cpu fan. Any performance hit due to slight overheating now (unclocked) will be exponentially bad once you overclock.