Maximizing gaming performance

[goomma]

I wish to maximize my pc for gaming purposes. The specific game is a Java based game (Minecraft). I would like to know: the maximum RAM speed, maximum video card, any thing else you could suggest would be well appreciated.

As of right now i do not have a price range. Suggestions for a lower price would be helpful.



Current specs:
HP Pavilion p6000 Series
AMD Phenom 830 Quad-core processor
8GB DDr3 system memory(up to 16)
1 Tera byte hard drive
wireless LAN
ATI Radeon integrated graphics (mother board)
SuperMulti DVD Burner with Lightscribe Technology
Genuine Windows 7 Home premium 64-bit

[Rikky]

Welcome to the forum

You would see a nice performance improvement with a video card upgrade but I'm a little stuck as I don't know the exact model of your computer so I have no idea of knowing if it has a PCI-E X16 slot.

Could you post the exact model of your HP please,it may be one of these on this page

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en...6-3884665.html

I had a look at the recommended specs for that game and the only thing your short is a decent video card,I noticed in the recommended specs that there's a slowdown when you use 15 TNT or more which is related to the game engine not your hardware and so cannot be fixed,JFYI.

[goomma]

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/hp-...g=mncol;subnav

its not as much in performance just, i wish to record i have tried: Fraps, We Game and Camstia. Camstia was the best out of the three its somewhat laggy. Fraps dropped my fps down to about 5

[Rikky]

Originally Posted by goomma

http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/hp-...g=mncol;subnav

its not as much in performance just, i wish to record i have tried: Fraps, We Game and Camstia. Camstia was the best out of the three its somewhat laggy. Fraps dropped my fps down to about 5

Well good news according to that specification page you have a PCI-E X16 so you can install pretty much any video card.

Expansion Slot(s) PCI Express x16,
Memory,
Memory card reader,
PCI Express x1

When recording in fraps there really is no way around the frame rate issue its very CPU intensive,do you know what version your using there is a fix for minecraft listed in the latest versions so make sure your using version 3.4.7

http://www.fraps.com/news.php

Fraps 3.4.0 - 29th Mar 2011
- Added configurable buffer size for loop recording mode
- Increased video capture performance at high resolutions
- Fixed slow recording of Minecraft at default window size
- Fixed benchmark crashing when configured to stop automatically after 1 second

Here are list of performance improvements from the fraps website

Lags, stuttering, freezing, low frame rate? This should help you.
At least it will eliminate the most common causes of these things.

This post is for people looking for the best Fraps performance.
These are my best suggestions. (updated Jan 29, 2012)

>> GOAL: 60 fps in-game (or better) while recording at 30 fps <<

Basic setup:

Fraps Capture Settings
start with full size, 30 fps (assuming 60 Hz monitor refresh rate)
"Lock Framerate" - Off
"Lossless RGB" - Off
...
Turn off background processes and other features that can slow down your system
Anti-Virus "full time" or "resident" scan - this is important.
Turn off search indexing, or at least disable .avi indexing.
Turn off video thumbnails (WinXP, Win7) (optional but recommended)
Disable Windows Media Player's scanning of the Fraps folder.
Delete bloatware (unneeded programs that may slow down the system)

Hard drive performance is very important for Fraps. Fraps records at very high quality (no capture
program does better), but doing that requires huge capture files. That's just the way it is.

Anyway, here are my best hard drive performance tips:

Record to a dedicated hard drive. A dedicated hard drive lets your main drive concentrate
on writing.
...
500GB or greater, 7200RPM or greater preferred
(larger HDD's are faster, with the sweet spot at about 1 TB)
...
Use your SSD for your OS and games installation; SSD's aren't much better than
the better HDD's - if at all - for sequential writing (ie, Frapsing).
(that's as a rule; there are exceptions of course)
...
Don't use a "green" HDD (green HDD's can go into power-saving mode at the worst time)
...
If you you can't install a second internal drive, install your games to an external
drive and use your internal drive for Fraps.
...
I don't recommend recording to an external drive, but if you do: don't use a USB 2.0 drive;
they are too slow; use USB 3.0 or eSATA drives only. Check the benchmarks before
you buy. (note: using a USB drive to record may interfere with your USB game controllers)
...
For best speed, partition the first 30% or so for Fraps. The first part of the disk is up to
20% faster than the last part (this is known as a short stroke partition). A dedicated
partition is also easier to keep defragged.
If recording to the "system" disk (not the best way to go, but sometimes you don't have
a choice), leave 80-100 GB for OS & programs and create a Fraps partition after that.
...
Optimize the Fraps partition:
Disable Windows System Restore.
Disable file compression.
Disable the Recycle bin (if you aren't sure you want to delete something, move it
to another partition)
Have plenty of free space (try to have at least 30% free, or twice whatever you plan
to record, whichever is more)
Defrag often (Try a better defragger.) Fraps needs lots of contiguous free space to
help avoid the dreaded, so called 4GB freeze.
Perform chkdsk {Drive:} /r /f /v (requires reboot, but increases performance)
...
Check this CrystalDiskMark sequential write benchmark; if it's not at least 90 MB/s on a
7200 RPM HDD, use another drive (compare to drives in the same class; if yours is slower,
it may have a problem)

Tune your in-game frames per second (you may have to dial back from your
normal settings to leave some computer power for Fraps)

Turn down some detail settings & special effects:
HDR, bloom, or post-effects;
Anti-aliasing (more than about 2xAA won't be seen on the final video);
Any other GPU "performance" options
...
Try disabling vertical sync & triple buffering, if you use it - vertical sync may cause
severe fps degradation with Fraps & certain games.
GPU Setup: "vertical sync" - off; max pre-rendered frames 0 or 1 for reduced lag
Game setup: "vertical sync" & "triple buffer" - off
...
Try to get 100-120 fps in-game, minimum, without Fraps recording; more is always better.
This means there will be spare power for Fraps.

Try setting processor affinity (Fraps is multi-threaded, but I think uses only one core)


If you can't get 60 fps (or 2x record rate) on-screen, try some or all of these tweaks, until
performance is good enough:

Use lower resolution (1080, or 720 if necessary)
Record at half size. (1/4 disk usage for tremendous performance. If recording at
1080 or better, half size is not bad looking and can be up-sized to 720. Vertical sync
may affect resized image quality)
Turn AA Off completely
Force lower DirectX version
Play game in window mode (looking at you, Minecraft)
Lower resolution some more.
Record at 25 fps instead of 30 fps (uses 17% less everything)
Try another capture program...
Maybe go to a RAID-0 setup for extreme situations; RAIDs are tough to set up though;
unreliable too; a single, dedicated, high-performance HDD should be enough.

Certain games (mostly Java & emulator-based games) have other problems, which I can't
address here; search the forum.

So there is problem when using fraps to record emulator and Java based games which I think is what your experiencing,for that I don't have a fix as its the first I've heard of it due to not playing java or emulator games and neither do fraps apparently.

I've also found this video relating specifically to minecraft and fraps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re5IMohnkB0

Recording with fraps while gaming is very CPU intensive and so is onboard video so I would still recommend a video card upgrade if you play any games at all,I can't recommend one without knowing how much you want to spend or the specs of your power supply,unfortunately HP's website is either broken or you will have to post the full model number of your computer.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...link=ot_search

The only other way to find out is to remove the side of the case and read the side of the psu which you will have to do should you decide to go ahead with a video card upgrade.

[Rikky]

If you would like to try a different game recorder try this,its what I use now and have never had a problem with it.

http://www.bandicam.com/

[goomma]

Well I thank you for all of the support
Anyways with fraps I did update the driver's for the Hti hd card and that fixed the lag issues I will still be looking into a new video card if any other problem persists.

I thank you for your time :D

[Rikky]

No problem