Bewildering Gameplay/Graphics problem

[SKERICK]

Hey guys, I've been scratching my head over this one for quite a while now and it is hard to put into words but.... here i go.
Since the string of recent snapshots, where the steering lock thing was inplemented and maybe a bit before that, i have had a problem where the bike feels totally different from one launch of the game to another (i thought it was just me going nuts) till recently i did some testing. I have the game added to the nvidea performance tool and adjusted a few things as i always do eg. Vsync on and prefer maximum performance. I noticed that with most of the settings set to application controled, the game looks bad and plays bad. when i switch on fxxa (i think thats it?) the game instantly becomes smoother and more importantly the game feels like the sim i know and love.
Now to the bewildering bit. I have a "Core 2 Duo 2.66 4mb ram and running a GTX560Ti graphics card" But it seems that recently in time trial or online, the game seems to have sections of each track where everything slightly speeds up, slows down and runs perfect at the same places on the track each lap eg. slows on 2012 washougal after coming up horsepower hill and starting to drop down after the left hander. I can lower the graphics to 64x64 and have the levels on 40 and it will be exactly the same as having everything maxed?? I realize now that alot!! of my frustration with this game these last cpl of months have been due to the drastic handling changes required to keep up with the ever fluctuating speeds of the game.
Is this a memory thing? or a process priority thing? any help would be much apreciated THANK YOU!

BTW i have tryed mixing and matching all the settings in the nvidia profile and have also tryed the --glfinish command neither has solved problem

[Kording]

I hope you mean 4 GB or RAM otherwise the problem should be your lack of RAM Unfortunatly I cant help you out because i´ve never had such a problem even with a slightly worse computer then you currently have.
My rig: 4Gb RAM, Dual-Core CPU (~2,7Ghz) and a Nvidia GTX280.
Therefore i dont think its a hardware issue. Are the latest drivers installed ?

[Cooter181]

Skerick, I too have been experiencing these same issues and have gone to great lengths myself as well to correct them. I really would like to get it sorted out as well, it's cost me races that I was definitely better than my finishes show. Last night I went 9th-23rd, lol, wtf? The game was almost unplayable in moto 2 for most of the moto, I tried my best to keep up with the constantly changing "Physics" due to offset spikes. My info is:

Windows 7 64bit, 3.9Ghz AMD quad core, GTX460 Fermi, 16Gb Ram, Asus ROG Motherboard.

Anyone who may have a legit answer/reason for why this is happening to us, I would be very grateful!

[barrington314]

last night i kept getting just 1 big sudden offset spike. like it would be completely smooth and normal then every couple minutes id get that huge stutter. almost like it freezes for a second. its happened a couple times today in 03 as well.

[jlv]

If you get it at a time when you can quit, exit the game and immediately check the task manager. You might find a background process causing trouble.

Does it help if you raise the priority level for mx.exe in the task manager?

[Cooter181]

I actually use a program that stops anything in the background from running that isn't a necesary function/process, besides I never loaded my PC up with garbage that would do that when I built this thing, I only use it for gaming and all updates and such are on manual. I think it's got to be something else.

[Pumaxcs]

I have never gotten the "game booster" programs. You run a program to stop running other programs?

[SKERICK]

I must say that i may ocationally use xfire with a mate while playing, or have youtube (some standup comedy or somthing) on so it may be a proccess thing, i tried upping the priorety and it started cutting out the youtube thing so i changed it back. if this is the cause, have you done significant changes to things that would cause a process issue from say febuary this year. cause back in the day didnt matter what i had running in the background and that was on a hunk of poo computer?

[SKERICK]

Put priorety on high. stopped alot of the spiking, But no matter what i did there was always 2 or 3 spots after coming out a 180 turn where it would chug slightly, Like it has to load everything as it was all behind the rider before the turn, and wasnt loaded up prier.

[Cooter181]

I have never gotten the "game booster" programs. You run a program to stop running other programs?

Yes, one program that uses almost nothing cpu wise vs. a program/programs that try updating or running, causing a huge spike, makes a lot of sense to me. There were times before I built my new PC that the game would completely freeze up for 3-5 seconds because a program had started updating or whatnot, game booster completely stopped that. I run it now just as insurance during big races, but the issues I'm having take place regardless of whether I'm in single player or multi player.

[jlv]

Really hard to predict what it will do when competing with a video encoder or decoder. My best guess would be its memory gets paged out and then you get a stutter when the memory pages are loaded back in from the page file. All you can do is try to reduce the memory usage by lowering the texture settings.

I could use VirtualLock() to lock the pages into RAM but Microsoft's docs discourage that for obvious reasons.

[SKERICK]

yeh i put my virtual memory on system managed thus increasing amount of used VM and if i turn shader programs off all seems good!
Still strange how i make my pc and hardware better and game runs worse? Could also be driver issues, i remember a cpl yrs back i updated nvidia drivers and had to roll them back because in made the game unstable.

[SKERICK]

Sorry to keep assaulting the posts here but...
I think i found out the real problem and it might help the other ppl having probs.
What happened was in the nvidia performance tool a while ago i had messed with the cards settings and had bumped it up slightly and when i exited the program it poped up with a window saying "Would you like to load these settings on startup" and im not a fan of reading pop up boxes so i just clicked yes.
card has prolly been slighty unstable since then, cause when i switched it to factory settings everything went smooth like melted chocholate.

I hope this was the problem, i dont really know just trial and error at the moment. It definatly seems to have fixed it but only time will tell on this game..
Does this seem like a probable cause for the problems JLV?

[jlv]

If you mean you had it overclocked and it was overheating, you'd get a stutter when the GPU throttles itself to control its temperature.