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:
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:
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:
address here; search the forum.
More FAQ stuff - Raffriff's links page
If you have anything to add (or subtract) please let me know.
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)
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
- 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.
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.
address here; search the forum.
More FAQ stuff - Raffriff's links page
If you have anything to add (or subtract) please let me know.
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