Best FRAPS performance tips AFAIK

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 Aug 20, 2013)

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

(TL;DR see the short version)

Basic setup:

• Fraps Capture Settings
  • start with full size, 30 fps
  • "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).
  (EDIT the newer, 120GB or larger SSDs can be quite fast, so this advice will be obsolete soon)
  ...
• 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. (Maybe. Still not sure about this.)
  ...
• I don't recommend recording to an external drive, but if you do: don't use a USB 2.0 drive;
  they're too slow; use USB 3.0 or eSATA drives only. Check the benchmarks before
  you buy. (note: using a USB 2.0 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. (UPDATE: Windows 7 lets you add a new partition
  without wiping the disk! See "Easily Shrink a Volume on a Windows 7 Disk" @ microsoft.com)
  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. 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.

More FAQ stuff - Raffriff's links page

If you have anything to add (or subtract) please let me know.

 

Here's a chart I made showing the
Highest Expected Fraps Data Rates
for various situations:

[EDIT June 2012 - chart version 3, with new data from our findings here]



Anyone with a well-tuned 7200 RPM, 750GB+ dedicated HDD should be able to record at any data rate marked in blue or green. Yellow will need a high performance drive, and red will most likely require RAID.

Raw data rate is calculated as

MB/s = W x H x FPS x 3 / 1024 / 1024​

BTW, this is the size of an uncompressed AVI without audio.

Fraps Data Rate is the maximum data rate observed in a number of games. Fraps always compresses the video. Depending on the game, the compressed size will be from 15% to 30% of the uncompressed size. See: Variance in bitrate between game titles while recording with Fraps - Why it matters.

Qf is a way of expressing the compressed data rate, factoring out resolution & frame rate:

MB/sec = Qf * W x H x FPS / 8 / 1024 / 1024​

Qf = (Mbps x 1,000,000) / (W x H x FPS)​

Compression ratio = Qf/24​

If a video was uncompressed (or 'compressed', but its content was incompressible), its Qf would be 12.0 (RGB off; YUV420) or 24.0 (RGB on). For most normal games, Qf seems to run between 2.5 and 7.0 (RGB off), so by assuming Qf = 8 (RGB off), my estimate is conservative. You may rarely see spikes going higher, but I only saw that with special test sources.

In the chart, some of the sizes have names: "Fraps Max" (2560x1600) is the highest supported capture resolution as of June 2012. [Edit - current max resolution is 7680x4800 as of July 2012]. "Triple" means three monitors; "2K" is a professional digital cinema format, just for comparison. Note digital cinema is normally 24 or 25 fps - never 60 fps.

NOTE: when you start getting into the higher Raw data rates, other factors come into play besides drive performance - such as PCIe bus and RAM bandwidth. If you really need super high-resolution, high-frame-rate capture with no lag, you need an external HDMI recorder - and hi-def ones aren't cheap!

 

Thank you. Tell me, would you give me some numbers from your experience?

Here's an example of what I'm looking for:
"1280x720 xF x30: 120 fps w/o Fraps; solid 30 fps recording, 60 fps in-game"

Here's an example of a setting that doesn't work for me; this is useful information as well:
"1920x1080 xF x60: 90 fps w/o Fraps; 7-12 fps recording"

Only if you happen to know off the top of your head.
If I'm wrong in the OP about what I will call the "4x" rule, I'd like to fix it or pretend I never posted it.

 

OK more testing, now that I have my external hard drive:

(All tests mentioned below using GTR2 @ 1280x720 xF x30; I did other tests, but the results weren't as interesting)

There were a number of variables I played with, with the goal of getting a solid 30fps recording AND a solid 60fps on-screen, with a selection of game replay files (some were more demanding on my system than others). I couldn't live with less resolution OR half-size OR with a 15fps recording, so that left me with a limited set of choices:

• Internal vs. External hard drive
• 4xAA vs. 2xAA vs. no AA
• Detail settings in the game
• Overclocking the GPU
• Forcing the game to use DirectX 7 vs. DirectX 9

Bottom line, ALL these changes made a difference, NONE outstandingly so.

• When I enabled recording, the on-screen frame rate would "lock" to 30 or 60fps; I didn't see it change during the recording in this particular test (you and I both know it does sometimes).
• There is a "threshold" raw frame rate that lets you lock into 60fps on-screen; for me, using my internal drive, it's about 120fps; using my external, the requirement is relaxed to about 100fps (this means my proposed "4x" rule-of-thumb, for required raw FR vs. Fraps FR, needs to be adjusted for faster hard drives).
• If my settings were right on the "edge", I would get 30fps on-screen while recording sometimes, and 60fps other times, with no way to predict what would happen.

Changing the detail settings in the game made basically no difference for me, in this test. In order to get a solid 60fps on-screen with this game at this resolution (and a solid 30fps recording, which was easier), I had to set it up with

• 4xAA/4xAF dialed back to 2xAA/4xAF;
• overclock the GPU by 15% (very conservative - it's a laptop);
• force DirectX 7, AND
• use the external hard drive.

The difference in raw FR was not that great: in one test, I went from 70-80 fps to 100-115 fps raw, and my threshold went down from 120 to around 100. That was enough to get me from 30fps on-screen to 60 fps.

This particular external HD setup is no prize winner; so I imagine a really good HD setup will make more of a difference than this one did. I'm thinking hardware RAID 0. Is it worth the $$?

To sum up, I would say you need to meet a "threshold" or minimum raw frame rate to get a good recording; a faster hard drive will lower your threshold, and other system tweaks will raise your raw frame rate. You need to look at both types of changes; tweak the system to bring your raw frame rate above your threshold, and/or upgrade your hard drive(s) to lower your threshold below your raw frame rate.

Now, different programs will require different settings, and some can't be helped I'm afraid. I tried these tests first on the benchmark program 3DMark 2001, because it would load faster then a regular game. Well, no matter whether Fraps was recording as 15 or 30, half-size or full, this program would drop to 7 fps when recording, while it got 240 raw. ::headscratch::

 

Bump for updates. First post.

 

Did you read the OP?? I know it's too long; all my posts are... but look for "record to a dedicated hard drive"

Doesn't matter much where you install Fraps, but it does matter where you save your movies. You want to save your movies to a dedicated hard drive if possible.

 

Processor is weak, you may want to upgrade. If you can get it, Core 2 Quad Q9505 @ 2.83GHz or higher is optimal.

 

Best FRAPS performance tips AFAIK (the short short version)

• Fraps Capture Settings
  • start with full size, 30 fps
  • "Lock Framerate" - Off
  • "Lossless RGB" - Off
• Turn off background processes and other features that can slow down your system...
• Record to a dedicated hard drive.
  • 500GB or greater, 7200RPM or greater preferred
  • Have at least 30% free space
  • Defrag often
  • Don't use a "green" HDD
  • Don't record to an external drive - but if you do, don't use USB 2.0;
    use USB 3.0 or eSATA
  • Check this CrystalDiskMark sequential write benchmark; if it's not at
    least 90 MB/s, use another drive
• Turn down some detail settings & special effects...
• Try disabling vertical sync & triple buffering...
• Try to get 100-120 fps in-game, minimum, without Fraps recording; more is always better.

 

allmhuran, you're gonna have to try it. Every setup is different. 25 fps uses 17% less everything compared to 30 fps, as I say above, so there's a good chance it will work for you.

 

Kasz, thank you for the RAID information. Sounds like excellent advice.

Write caching will work with Fraps for a while, but soon the cache will become full and your performance tumbles.

Regarding triple buffering, what you say is true - however if your frame rates are very low (less than 60? 30?) vertical sync can severely degrade your framerate even more, so I always disable it. When recording without v-sync, you may see screen tearing in the game but it won't be recorded. When v-sync is disabled, triple buffer has no effect.

*If* vertical sync does not cause this problem (we need more testing here) and is left enabled, then as you say, triple buffering is good for performance & smoothness - but note that triple buffering increases latency a bit -- 3-13 ms. [per Anandtech]

But, wait: Microsoft doesn't implement "triple buffering" in DirectX they implement "render ahead" [per Anandtech] [per nvidia]. This doesn't mean the game developer can't implemented triple buffering in the game engine. Actually the two are similar is purpose and function. Default render-ahead is 3 frames, with the range being from 0 to 8; lower render-ahead for less latency, higher for more smoothness.