What kind of hardware do I need to record games at 30FPS?

[MeddyDuo]

I have 2GB of RAM, AMD 3800+, nVidia 7600GT, but when I try to record Counter-Strike: Source with FRAPS I only get like 10fps with all the settings at their lowest (except resolution). What is my problem?

 

[ForumMaster]

any more info? are you running anything in the background? any process hogging all the resources? what HDD? do you have? does this happen in all games or just CS:S?

sorry for asking so many questions but you need to provide more info if you want us to be able to help you.

 

[MeddyDuo]

I have Vista RC1 right now, but I think it had a big slowdown when I had XP too. No other programs running. I've only tried it with CS:S. I have a 300GB Seagate HDD.
I only get 40-50 average FPS with CS:S when FRAPS isn't running, so I thought that was kind of low too.
Forgot - the CPU is 64 bit and so is Vista.

 

[DyslexicHobo]

That's a very low FPS for you to be getting. Is vsync on? Try turning it off (even though it doesn't appear that's the problem, considering your FPS goes down to 40).

Fraps isn't the problem, for some reason CS:S is running way too slow to begin with.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Make sure AA and AF are off, especially AA? Is your hard drive near-full and fragmented?

 

[MeddyDuo]

I think I tried turning vsync off and it didn't make a difference so I turned it back on. I think I left AA at 2x or 4x, but would that really matter? AF is off. HDD isn't fragmented and it has about 210GB free space.

 

[MeddyDuo]

I don't know if it matters, but the RAM is DDR2 800, but I had to clock it down for Windows to boot.

 

[bobsmith1492]

AA takes a LOT of video processing power. Turn that off stat! 🙂

 

[MeddyDuo]

Ok it turns out I had 2x AA on and 4xAF. I turned AA of and turned Bilinear filtering on, and now I average about 70fps, and about 25fps when recording with FRAPS.

I also wasn't using half-screen recording with FRAPS, so that was messing up the videos and making them seem slow-mo. I switched to half-screen and now they work great, except it won't record sound.

So I'm pretty satisfied with it now, but if I was to upgrade, which component do you think I should upgrade?

 

[bobsmith1492]

Video card, no doubt; the 7600 is pretty good, but if you want nice framerates and AA you'll probably need more (depending on your resolution, of course - you didn't mention what that was). You might try OCing your processor a bit and see if it helps any, but the video card is pretty much the only thing that matters for games assuming the processor is decent and yours is fine.

 

[MeddyDuo]

I just switched back to XP and now I'm getting 70+ FPS with 2x MSAA (don't know what MS means), 4x AF, and most of the other settings on high. So it looks like Vista was my problem.