User 52121

That might be tough without really over-paying. I've never seen anything at big box stores that was really worth it. Top of the line was $$$$$ and still mediocre or just "ok" compared to what you could build yourself.

Do you have a MicroCenter nearby? Probably your best chance at getting something truly decent if you want to have it in your hands TODAY.

Otherwise, I'd recommend Main Performance PC if you're not at all interested in building one yourself.

PedalFaster

That'll be tough -- you'll want something with a decent discrete graphics card, not just integrated graphics. Very few off-the-shelf PCs come with separate video cards; the ones that do are typically labelled as gaming machines.

Alternately, if you have a little bit of computer and mechanical aptitude, you could pick up pretty much any midrange off-the-shelf PC, install a graphics card yourself in twenty minutes, and have a rig that should run iRacing much better than almost any laptop.

sbelles

Yeah I know, building one is the way to go and I've built quite a few so that's not a problem, there's just no instant gratification that way. It's amazing how many "gaming PCs" are marketed with crappy onboard graphics cards. Since prices have been dropping, I was hoping there might be something decent out there I could pick up. The (Sony Vaio) laptop works but it just won't draw much of the detail so camber changes, bumps etc are just a guess as are braking and turn in points. I guess I'll put together a build sheet and start ordering stuff.

abqautoxer

Scott, how much time have you put in optimizing the video settings in game? I only ask because even with my fairly strong PC (SLI GTX 770s) I don't turn everything up all the way and even have some things turned off so the game runs more smoothly as I'm an old FPS gamer who likes my stupidly framerates.

baddogz28

I'd recommend cyberpowerpc.com, that's where I got my dedicated rig for iRacing... Only ran me about $1200 too.

JustinL

What's new in video cards now? I jumped in a few GT3 sessions with the rift and my FPS took a dump to the point I was getting disoriented. My detail is already trimmed down. I like AMD cards because I'm used to them. What we have to beat is a radeon 6950 from 2010, so that shouldn't be hard, but at a reasonable price ($300ish).

sbelles

I did a couple of years ago when I first set it up but now that I think about it, I diddn't after I reloaded iracing. I'll play with it tonight and then I'll try to stay out of the way. I should be able to get into the 16s but I don't think there's any way I'm going to see 14s with this thing.

User 52121

Extended mode or Direct mode? Makes a difference - Direct seems to struggle with framerates, even with killer cards.

I bought a eVGA GTX970 "SuperClocked" for $350 from MicroCenter. FULL detail on (Shadows, More Shadows, etc) in the Rift in Extended mode and I never go below ~90fps, even with a full grid and 2048 car textures. Usually hovers in the 115-125 range.

Indy Rev

I have been trying to figure out why I have FPS drops at certain times during a race and have found that running Trading Paints will kill my frame rates when a car with skin comes into my rear view. I only run 2 mirrors and have turned down the view in my mirrors. I may run tonight without TP's turn on.
Im currently running an ASUS Radeon R7 250X 2GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card

loxner

Back when I was still using my laptop in our last season I had the same issue. It would hold ~75FPS with all the graphics turned down, but as soon as I got around a TP car it would drop way down.

PedalFaster

I'm starting to wonder if your guys' systems have some issue other than the graphics card. I'm running a Radeon 6850 (i.e. a card that's slower than the one Justin's looking to replace due to framerate drops), and run at a rock solid 84 fps pretty much all the time with Trading Paints enabled.

The rest of my system for the record consists of a Core i7 2600K running at 3.40 GHz and 8 GB of RAM -- solid midrange stuff. Maybe you guys are processor- or memory-constrained?

Edit: I am only running a single monitor, though.

Indy Rev

On a single monitor Im am running in the 180's -200s fps if caps are turned off. On triples i'm all over the place. I can be at 84 1 sec and 45 when a tp car come by, then back in the 80's. It seems every new patch puts my system a bit further behind.

JustinL

On the triples with the same level of detail I run above 100 most of the time. With big fields of different cars in the GT3 series I see drops some times to 60ish. It's no problem with the flat screens, just when the rift goes below 75fps things get weird and it messes up my brain way more than the flats. I think I might have mistaken my card, I think I have the 6850 too.

I run in direct mode with the rift. There is just a slight, but perceptible bump in performance when it's working right over extended. It also makes it easier to pop back to triples if I need to. I can run 75fps alone around motegi, just not with other cars. Maybe I'll try turning off trading paints and overclocking my card a bit for tonight. If I can't deal with it, I'll go back to triples.

loxner

Some prior commitments got moved forward by a day, so looks like I'm out for the race tonight

Good luck to everyone tonight, hope the start goes smoothly

PedalFaster

Ugh -- second race in a row where I overcooked it and took someone else out in the process. Sorry about that Julian / carmad.

I'm self-aware enough to realize that I'm not yet good enough to drive these beasts in traffic, so I'm going to bow out of the series before I ruin anyone else's race. Respect to you guys for being as fast and clean as you are.